We picked up this racecar form a customer of ours here locally. I have no idea or info on this thing at all. I figured i would turn to you guys first and see if you had any thoughts or info on what it might be. There are some very rare and cool parts like the 12 inch mags and some other types of things on the front suspension and pedals. I looked online and it is very Lotus inspired in design. The car body itself is fiberglass with the finned pieces around the cowl being aluminium. Any help on this thing would be awesome, i just want some info on it before i go customizing it any further. Thanks in advance. I will post more pics as necc.
How about some additional photos? A 3/4 view standing up looking at it. Some of the cockpit and some shots of the suspension. Perhaps dimensions. What I dont see is any sort of Roll Bar or Cage on this one. The comment that it looks Indy Car-ish is a good one. Lots of odd stuff ran and finished and there are years that this looks.. like the norm. Many of these cars ended up being modified and running elsewhere as teams moved on to newer equipment. It appears to be offset and that makes it a circle track car if I am looking at your photos correctly. So we are talking Indy but potentially a Super Modified. I have to ask.. Why would you "Customize it" ? Hell its a racecar and if there is any sort of history it should be restored and it could make you some bucks in return.
Why customize? should be restored or brought back to a 60's style racer again. If do customize it you should do candy paint or something wild like that but do not modify the body.
If it truly was a race car with even a small amount of History, then to do anything other than restore it to as raced condition would be a crime!
I would think the drivetrain would point to what era the thing was built in. I would also find out exactly what I had before I changed ANYTHING on it. Larry T
No drivetrain at all , but it was apperantly chain driven. Thats kindof why i posted it on here to see if it was worth anything before we made it our own , thats kinda what we do around here. I will post some additional pics in a few. If it were am Indy car i think it would have a way better setup?
Oh man, that thing is cool!!! It definitely has an "Indy" look to it, back in the day when builders would design and build radical stuff, not the crappy cookie-cutter spec series it is today. Any idea on what engine is has/had? If it's an old Indy car, it was probably an Offy. I figure that it's from the 1963 to 1964 timeframe. If I recall 12" wheels showed up in 1963, and were outlawed in 1964, because Mickey Thompson ran them through tech in 1964 and he got bounced. They made him change out to the mandated 15" wheels and do a bunch of other mods to his car and it made it so evil-handling that his driver, Dave MacDonald was killed early in the race, along with Eddie Sachs. That crash and ensuring inferno made the officials change the mandated fuel from gasoline to methanol in 1965. Maybe there's an Indy Car forum that you might pose the question? Those Indy Car restorers are a very sharp bunch. DO NOT CUSTOMIZE THAT CAR!!!! YOU MAY HAVE A VERY, VERY RARE PIECE!
Chain drive? Hummmm...Looks a bit like an old SCCA "D" Sports Racer, but not without a roll bar. It's way cool though! Eric
looks like a ride from Disneyland or something. if that was ever at Indy the rules must have been pretty lax that year.
Way, way cool! As previously stated, it's probably a motorcycle-engined SCCA 'Class D' racer. It's in amazing condition for an old racecar and it looks very well built and engineered too. Track down the history of car and restore or preserve it - either for display or even better, to run as a vintage class racer! Mart3406 =============
The red car does look "Indy-car" like, and I'm always ready to muddy the waters, but this HMod special also has chain drive. It's a square tube chassis with no suspension. It's powered by a outbard 2 stroke marine engine turned sideways. The drive sprocket was a lot larger than this one though.
I just had a really sick and beautiful vision of that car restored - but re-powered with a tubocharged Hyabusa motorcycle engine putting out about 350 hp!!! In that case, though, those small rear drum brakes you mention might need to be upgraded a bit!!! Mart3406 ========
Please tell me the unit shown on the inside of the front wheel close-up is not a torsion elastic rubber spring unit. This whole thing smacks of mechanically being substandard as contrasted to the initial aestheticaly pleasing look.
Twelve inch Halibrand wheels sounds like a Midget racer part to me. The brakes look pretty small, I don't think it's anything that would be up to SCCA standards in the 60s. No gauges, not even a tach? And chain drive? I wouldn't be surprised if the original motor didn't carry the Briggs & Stratton label. I just can't think of any SCCA, Indy, Midget, Sprint formula that this would have fit into. Wonder if it was a display car of some kind?
We are gonna start cutting on it! Sounds like exactly what we all said when we picked this thing up. We will make something useable, traditional, and unreal out of this thing. Stay tuned. Sent from Boerne Stage Kustoms
With a 350-plus hp turbo'd Hyabusa for power, maybe??? (Oh, man, how could ya' not 'do it to it'!!!) Mart3406 =========
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