History Classic Indy roadsters: Most beautiful oval racers ever?

Mac, back in the early 70's I worked at Hatfield Ford in downtown Indy. It had a upstairs storage area and my boss Tom Trusty let some friends store a couple of Sprinters or? some sort of car with the Ford Indy engines in them. I heard him mention A.J. Watson with some connection to the cars. I bought a short bed crew cab F250 that they towed the trailer with to tow my drag car. Very cool engine but being a drag racer I didn't really apreciate what they were back then. Tom.

 

AJ Watson did have a 4 cam Ford powered sprinter in the second half of the '60's. Mike Mosely set a one lap world record for the half-mile at Dayton in 1967, on his head, backwards and upside down. It was a coilover car, I believe. I'm pretty sure he had a 4 cam Champ Dirt car also.

 

Quite right -- a number of famous drivers ran Watson's DOHC Ford sprinter, including Mario. There were also a number of dirt champ cars running the engine, including the Vel's team with Al Sr.

 

Lesovsky 1959 Q1, P3 at race end, a distance cousin

 

Here is another one to add to the collection. The Elmer George Luije Lesovsky roadster during its restoration at Motorkraft in the early 1990's. This is another car that has one of Mac's tails.



The finished product (with its little brother)


In the pit lane at Indy with Duke Nalon in the seat, John Hajduk on the right of the car and me on the left

 

What are the teardrop shaped things on left side of some of these cars?
Oil tank?

 

Absolutely correct.

 

This midget Kurtis Kraft roadster built by Frank Curtis of New York was inspired by Vuckovich's win. Absolutely love roadsters and absolutely love offys. Though this car does not qualify as an Indy car it's still a roadster and an offy. I must admit however, someday I want the "big car" really bad. lol

 

Couple of good links here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4nMNjOIRbA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHJ4tCCPAfU

 

Great stuff, thanks!

 

Here's another roadster midget, a Kurtis. The first midget Kurtis ever built back in the '30s was nicknamed "the jewelbox" due to its exquisite construction. That would be a great name for this one, too. LINK:

Miniature marvel: Kurtis-Kraft Midget Roadster | Mac's Motor City Garage

 

1957 R.O.Y. Don Edmunds trying on the Braund Plywood Kurtis for size.

 

This is the same KK500C that Vukovich died in, in 1955.
In 1957, this car was owned by racer5c's Dad.
In 1959, the car, owned by Frank Arciero, had a Maserati V8.
This car is, currently, in a museum in The Netherlands.

mac miller in INDY

 

They are beautiful cars, what an time it was!

 

Great info, thanks.

 

Mac, please school me on this Kurtis. It doesn't seem that any cars came out of the Kurtis shop new with the sidepod-like structure with grille on the left side that this car has. What's that about?

 

The car was new in 1954, owned by Lindsay Hopkins, driven by Pat O'Conner.
For 1955, Vukovich was suppose to drive the new Keck streamliner. When it became obvious that the Keck car would not be finished in time., Vukovich was released from his Keck contract and signed by Hopkins to drive the Kurtis.
Following the '55 Vukovich crash, the car was rebuilt and modified by Eddie Kuzma with a new style nose and the left side fairing, covering the oil tank.The grill was, probably, to get some cool air flowing over the tank.
I believe, this was the first ever installation of an external left side oil tank.
This would have been done for a couple of reasons. Taking the hot tank out of the engine compartment would reduce engine compartment and driver compartment temperatures. Placing the tank on the left side, in the airstream, helped reduce oil temps and added left side weight bias.
Kuzma used this same oil tank and fairing design on two new 1956 cars that he built. Following Kuzma's design, almost all new roadsters and many earlier roadsters, after '56, started using left side oil tanks, but instead of using a big bulky fairing, they built streamline shaped tanks.
Jim Rathmann drove the car in 1956.

mac miller in INDY

 

Oil tank on Sweikerts 1956 D-A Kuzma.

 

That tank looks positively huge. Did they need it for excessive consumption or ballast? Gary

 

More surface area to cool the oil and there probably was a series of baffles to help de-airate the oil before it was returned.

 

Thanks, great info. Enjoy your website, too.

 

These oil tanks would hold around 5 gallons. The OFFYs generated a lot of crankcase pressure...They needed big crankcase vents mounted to the crankcase side plates. They were known to leak quite a bit of oil during the course of 500 miles.
As Mr. Kazoootie said, the large tanks also gave the oil more time to cool between cycles.

Not sure the exact time frame but, eventually, in the turbo era actual oil system radiators were needed to control oil temp... Also we used oil filters at several locations in the system to eliminate air bubbles that formed in the churning oil.

mac miller in INDY

 

Indy from 1952 to 1964 was a great era
my uncle was lucky enough to be in the pits from time to time

 

The other new '56 Kuzma using the left side oil tank was the Agajanian #98....

mac miller in INDY

 

Ditto. Sorry I didn't do my "read before posting" duties before I asked for an answer already there! Gary

 

Thanks again for the info. These are great stuff and it's nice to touch base with such a knowledgeable source.

 

Just ask Jim Clark and Parnelli Jones about that...

 

I used to have a magazine picture of Parnelli's oil-stained roadster tail from that 1963 500. I'm sure it was in an Open Wheel from the early to mid '80's. Didn't Parnelli punch Eddie Sachs out at the awards banquet over it?

 

lets see if this link will work. Bit of a pain to read...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...WogAAAAIBAJ&sjid=amYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1023,3267964

 

I'll take that as a YES