Thanks for emailing this to me C5HM. This building was an old hanger at the Charlotte airport. When it was replaced with a larger one H-M purchased it, dismantled it, and reassembled it on their property. Now, you can see how massive this turbine truck was. You needed a step ladder to get in it. By the way, the jetliner that crashed on approach to Charlotte in a storm in '94 went down only 2 blocks from this hanger.
Six Gun, Looking good! Your chassis is sure hooking good were can I find more info on your combo of parts? Building a 63 Fairlane with a 300 to go drag racing again.
bubba22349;he has posted over on the 64/65Comet thread.You could send him a PM.Basically what I know is he has a destroked 300,with a Jerico 4-speed,ladder bars with coilovers. ROY.
I copied this from one of my posts on the Holman Moody visit thread. You might want to search for that thread and read the comments there too. Back in '69 we were running a Boss 302 in our dirt track car and bought a stroker kit from Ernie Elliot that had come from HM. The rod bearings were wrong so I had to go to Charlotte to pick up more. We had been drag racing on Sunday before I was to go up on Monday and had gotten home (Blairsville, GA) late in the evening. We were all full of p & vinegar and adrenaline so we decided to go on up. We arrived at the HM shop early in the morning and noticed a door open so we went in and followed a security guard around until he figured out we weren't susposed to be there and ran us out. When we got outside they were bringing in Bobby Allison's Coke Torino (or Talladega) after having won some where Sunday. There was an area with Ford GT bodies and parts stacked what looked like five high where they were taking the car into. We decided to take a nap until they opened so we laid down at the car, one in the front seat, one in the back seat, one on the hood and a couple on the trunk. Unknown to us we were in the employ parking lot and when we woke up we were surrounded by cars and people with funny looks on their faces passing by. We went in and arranged for our parts and looked around as much as we could. I remember a tunnel port 302 sitting on a counter and a Mustang coupe with big tires up under the fenders all around and an area back in the shop that was fenced in and had a sign on the door, "Property of Ford Motor Company". That was my trip to HM, I still have the patches I bought that day on a jacket along several other patches from that era. On another note, we didn't know how to get to HM so we stopped and asked a fellow in front of a little store where Holman-Moody was and his answer was, "Herman Moody, yeah, he works down at the pecan factory". <!-- / message -->
I about forgot, I have the sale catalog and information sheets from when Holman-Moody had their "Yard sale of the century". A couple of scans: Woops, I'll have to rescan or resize the cover shot as it is too larger to post.
I have a feeling this thread is going to be as great as the Thunderbolt thread. Hanging on every word, boys, hanging on every word..............Tell us more. Kevin
As I posted earlier in this thread, I became friends with Randy Holman as junior-high classmates. Sometimes his mother would pick us up after school and we'd end up at the H-M shop to hang around all afternoon...To me it was Heaven on Earth !! One Friday afternoon ,she took us out to the old Charlotte Fairgrounds ( North Tryon St & Sugar Creek Rd ) . There was a dirt track there, with a lake in the infield. Mrs. Holman dumped us out in the parking lot to wait for the racecars to come . As was the norm ,they towed the cars with a towbar , behind a 0ne-ton stake-bodied truck filled with tools,tires ,etc. When Joe Weatherlys car got there ,Randy & I crawled inside Joe's car and rode into the track . I remember seeing Lee Petty up on the hood of a race car(a 56-57'Olds ,I think),with a sledgehammer pounding the hood back down!! I actually thought my head would explode, I was so thrilled.... Damn , this thread is better'n Viagra !!! Stan
Stan, My Dad took me to the same Charlotte Fairgrounds several times in the '50s. That is where my love for loud cars is deep rooted. I didn't know any "names" but most of the stars of the era were there. My Dad went to the very first NASCAR strictly stock race in Charlotte in 1949. He drove to the Barringer Hotel in downtown Charlotte to buy advance tickets. Big Bill France was selling them himself. I was only 5 or he probably would have took me.
AHH !!!!! The turbine truck,"Big Red" i think it was called. I heard it sat outside at Dearborn Proving Grounds for years but what is the story on it's whereabouts today? The cars in the background appear to be all crashed. Is this the "Property of Ford Motor Company" area? I have read they kept crashed cars like the JCar Ken Miles died in , Les Ritchey's AFX Mustang and several others. Is that the case and if so are they still there?
None of that is there. The entire complex has been razed. I sent Frank some shots of some of the other parts of the hanger circa 1971. One or two show some of the "death cars", to include the Kwech Boss 302 that killed a spectator at the MIS T/A in 1969.
The new Charlotte runway that opened last year was built on top of the former H-M property. The hanger was off limits and something I never went in. I am not sure if FOMOCO leased the whole hanger or not. I will get answers to many questions asked here the next time I visit H-M. Jimmy Tucker, who has worked there since '64, can be a great help on technical questions that Lee is too young to have lived.
if someone will tell me how to post pics and an avitar , i'll post another pic or 2 of "big red" , and hopefully some other pics in the future . jack
Frank: My Dad first took me to some "Champ Car " open-wheel races at the Fairgrounds.(Late 40's? ) My Dad also took me to the track on Wilkinson Blvd ( near Allison Used Trucks ) . We may have not attended the first NASCAR race in '49 ( I would have been 8 yrs old) ,but I distinctly remember going there. My Dad was a real race fan. He worked as a Dodge mechanic in Charlotte ,when the Boardtrack was open in Pineville. One of the Dodge race-teams dragged him along to a race. He told me it was so crowded ,that all he saw all day long was just a glimpse of the cars as he looked between other people
The caged FoMoCo area at H-M held new parts inventory for factory sposored race teams. Car owner would requisition their parts and were charged for them against there pre-arranged budget for the year. This was in the era when special parts, especially race-quality engine and driveline parts were engineered and produced by Ford generally for only sponsored teams. Today of course most NASCAR parts are aftermarket produced except for engine blocks and heads.
A family friend has a '70's Flatbottom Drag Boat with an original Holman-Moody Boss 429 in it. What an amazing piece that is.............
*********************************************************** And this is exactly why we made the decision to install a big block Chev in our tired Thunderbolt in 1970. We have received a hell of a lot of criticism over the years for this, but living (and working every damn day) in the real world of limitations and realistic financial budgets, you don't have the option of simply parking a good working modified eliminator A & B/Gas car, and holding it like some kind of out grown toy. But, once the block has been sleeved and heads brazed beyond their last usable limit, what the hell is a non-corporate individual supposed to do ?? My opinion & view is for instruction purposes only, and in no way intended to create a brand war, but........; if the advanced and racing specific technology exhibited by FOMOCO and the other racing involved competitor, had been made commonly available to the racing public like all the rest of the 'stuff' (pf), there would never be any other brand names recorded in the record books. Other 'non racing influenced' brand names won races largely and simply by virtue of their numbers from being easily obtainable through mass production. Think about it: How many more big blocks were humming up and down the boulevard licensed and registered in Camaros and Vettes than Cammers, Tunnel Ports, or even High Risers in Mustangs or Torino's. We were never so disgusted as we were trying to locate a usable pair of High Riser heads, over and over again in 1970, only to find the road persistently dead ended at H & M.
I have a friend, Milo Coleman, who used to own and race a `64 Fairlane called the "Little Lord Fotus". It was a play on words referring to the Little Ford Lotus Indycar program. I believe that car was SS/B 289 car. Later he was involved in the Ford Thunderbolt contingent. A few years ago he cloned one of the Thunderbolt cars and installed a 429 or 460 Ford in it. In your comments you compare 3 of the most rare engine combinations that Ford produced in the `60's. Yet the 429 and 460 Fords were pouring off the assembly lines by the thousands at that time. Those engines contained most of what Ford had learned from the Total Performance program. For example the cyl heads, even the basic ones, used Tunnel Port technology. The shallow combustion chambers and moderate valve angles are exactly what you see in use today, most notably the Nascar engines. Today it is common to see a standard production 460 block holding 7 or 8 hundred horsepower. Way more than that even, with a good tune. I wonder why almost no one saw it's potential back then. The truck pullers were the first to gravitate en masse to the big Fords. Bob Glidden did fine with them in the pro ranks. To this day those engines are largely underutilized. The reason is because the aftermarket has created basically an entire drag race engine package which is very big Ford like in the middle but has the GM bellhousing and front cover flange so they can call it a Chevy. I'll bet you would have liked the relative ease at which the 429- 460 Ford could have produced great power and longevity per dollar.
Okay Henry here's better details, Milo Coleman won D/S at the 1963 Indy Nationals driving a '63 HiPo 289 Fairlane sedan named "LI'L LORD FOTUS". Here is the photo of Milo pulling a holeshot on his opponent, none other than Doug Nash who later went on to own Doug Nash Racing Transmissions. Doug was driving a '63 HiPo 289 Fairlane hardtop.
Holman & Moody was in the race wheel business too. You could special order almost any width and offset you needed. When the big auction was conducted in the early '70s I purchased a couple pallets of wheels. That was about all the extra funds I had. You had to be there to believe all the "stuff" that was sold.
I made a small air dam for the front of my modified '67 Ranchero and fitted a Holman Moody decal to it. I have been asked a few times now why I called the Ranchero Holman Moody. I guess some people will never understand. Great thread.
Thanks for cleaning up the details. Milo Coleman was a good customer of mine here in west central Florida. He had some pretty interesting projects going on during my tenure at the local Ford dealer. I already mentioned the T- bolt clone, but even more interesting was his Saleen Mustang road race venture. He did pretty well with that program. He even had the very accomplished Terry Borcheller driving for him. That may have been one of Terry's first big rides. I even got to pit for him at the St. Pete Grand Prix in the late `90's. That was fun.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the H&M wheels were Firestone wheels that they were a dealer for. Mine have both H&M and Firestone stamped into them and I have also heard them referred to as Firestone rims by some.
This post is in reference to the previous comment about the difficulty in obtaining Ford parts. Ford has oft been criticized for not making enough of the good stuff available during the `60's and `70's. That is absolutely false but it made for good stories by the Chevy guys writing for the hot rod magazines. Here is proof that their motor racing ventures produced good parts that were not hard to get. 1st pic) The Trans Am 302 Tunnel Port which spawned the Boss 302 engine (rare) 2nd pic) The famous 427 Tunnel Port head (common in big league racing) 3rd pic) The 429 CJ with twisted valves to allow the tunnel port design without pushrod interference (muscle car head, anyone could get them) The quickest and fastest F.A.S.T. (Factory Appearing Street Tire) competitor is a `71 Mustang with these heads bolted to the engine. Other cars in this class are powered 426 Hemis, 454 Chevrolets, 455 BOP's, yet the Ford resides at the top. 4th pic) The standard run of the mill 429 head with tunnel port technology produced from 1968 thru 1996. (Probably over a million units produced over the years.)
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