History Drag cars in motion.......picture thread.

I may have posted this before, but have more information...Alex Xydias and Keith Baldwin ran this V8-60 powered roadster at the lakes and the drags, seen here at Saugus. If I remember right, Keith was the shop manager for SoCal...


Fred Salisbury's "Stemwinder" modified sports car at San Luis Obispo. Fred held the 1320 Standard record in his class.


Gas Ronda -- is not doing well health-wise.


Kalitta, who had a nickname for everyone, called them the "Rum-chasers."


The "Vineland Villians." Rear-engine dragsters go back a long way, this is an early version from New Jersey.


It's a really cruddy picture, copied from Drag News, but it celebrates one of the more competitive fuel roadsters in SoCal in the late '50s. Almost all the captions in Drag News commented on how loud it was. The engine would later go into a dragster, and the front-mounted blower went on top. Pete Teresa was Dean Lowe's math teacher, wish I could have had him as a math teacher, I might have learned math!


Unknown roadster at Perryville, AZ...back when we raced for trophies, and it was fun.

 

The sports car was built buy Don "Duck" Collins for Bud Kennedy, both from Portland. It was featured in Hot Rod around 1962. Yes, it was powered by an injected Hemi. These are shots of the chassis, when I had it in my shop back in the mid 90's. It has been restored and belongs to a HAMB member.

 

Sprint car lookin front and rear.

 

Thanks Marty for the info...it was a cool little car to watch run.....Wow it's been years looks like you have been staying busy in the shop.. I saw you in one of your track cars few weeks back over in Dayton at Archie's Friday night cruise , that's my brother's place,by the time I got a chance to drift down your way you were pulling out, the car was sounding good, anyways used to stop in your shop years back..crap I guess it's been..around 83-84 at the time I was running a dirt car in St. Helens and was going to try out one of the dwarf cars ...made a few trips over your way for info and trying on different body style's for fit , was going to go with a 34 Ford coupe ,your suggestion, I liked it ..was going for it..then last minute went another direction... I couldn't run with the Storedahls big bank rolled cars...and losing sucks... anyways thanks again for that info
Terry aka rudestude

Sent from my QTASUN1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Duck Collins built a Champ Car in 1958 with a Desoto Hemi and was buddies with Keith Randol,who built the Orange Crate, using a parted out Sprint Car for the front and rear axles. They were both master fabricators, and Indy mechanics who's work tended to have an oval track influence.

 

"It's a really cruddy picture, copied from Drag News, but it celebrates one of the more competitive fuel roadsters in SoCal in the late '50s. "

Yeah. The A/H on the side (as most of you probably know) stood for A/Hot Roadster – better known later as Fuel Roadster. Some real great ones stayed great for years.

 

Terry, sorry I missed you at Dayton, I am still at it, drop by any time !

 

Are there any shots of the car with the body on ?

 

Here's an original press photograph that I own. It was taken for our local newspaper and on the back indicates it is from July 1966 at Deer Park, WA Drag Strip.

 

Here is a link, with magazine article and history of the car.

http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com/...t-manta-ray-special-–-“as-fine-as-they-come”/

 

Pete's math class was the only class that never had me watching the clock waiting for the bell. Also one of the few A's I ever got!

 

A couple more from me:
This pair are from Coonamia, an 1/8 mile strip just out of the city of Port Pirie which is about 150 miles north of Adelaide in South Australia. The track was built on land owned by the family of one of the local racers and was the closest venue for Adelaide based racers when the Brooksfield track shown in my previous posts closed. First up is Jeff During's Green Hornet D/D with slant six Chrysler power. Jeff built just about everything on the car from the front wheel hubs to the fuel injection and later ran twin engine cars in both front and rear motor guises

Here we have Trev Johnson's D/D with early Holden (GM) power


Roo

 

I wouldn't have been surprised if the slant-six slanted in the opposite direction, but I didn't expect to see it standing straight up! Caught me off guard a bit this morning.

 

Larry Dixon in the lights at Irwindale, SPE car, before chrome and paint, Tom West photo


Porter, Ries, and Chambers


Lions, flathead vs jr fueler...after the rollers replaced the short push road...I loved Lions but was not a fan of either the push road or the roller starters (because I screwed up on the rollers, killed the engine, and got lots of laughs from the crowd)...


Bart & Helen Root, from Norwalk, CA...Helen drove sometimes.

 

As I understand it, the rollers at Lions led to the injuries Billy "The Kid" Scott got by running into the sand trap (with a hard crust from recent rain) at the end of the strip. I was told you had to stop the rollers with the car, then they would lock them, then you could drive off. He smoked the drum brakes stopping the rollers and they faded and led him into the sand.

 

The idea with sand traps was a good idea provided someone made sure to turn over all the sand so that it was not packed so hard that cars would simply fly over it!!!

It the exact same thing with semi trucks escape roads when you lose the brakes.
I see the state crews out there turning over the sand and gravel mix all the time so that it works they way it was intended to work in the first place.

When I see drag racers who have lost their lives because no one at the track had the sense to make sure this gets done before every race is when tracks getting their pants sued off.

Jimbo

 

That certainly could have happened...there were risks both ways...the Lions push road was short, so you had only half of the track to push up to speed, build oil pressure, fire, and then try to slow down as you approached the starting line. We had disc brakes but it was still hard to get stopped, especially as we had to go fast to lite off with a big nitro load ... several cars had throttles stick, and the result was mayhem and some injuries at the starting line. I love the push start when you could fire all the way down the track, like San Gabriel or Irwindale, or if the push road ran the length of the track, as at Fontana or San Fernando. Pomona was a bit dicey as you fired on a road that ran from the pits to the starting line...and again too much speed meant you had to really pull on the brakes....So they are not traditional, but the starter affixed to the blower is probably a lot safer.....

 

Not everything about the "good old days" was good.

 

We would push down the start lane at Dallas International, and it was always a flog trying to get the car turned to back into the bleach box. If we had enough people, we would just pick up the front end and "wheel barrow" the car backwards. It was always tough with a long W/B car trying to get pointed in the right direction.
At La Place, in Louisiana, the rollers were in the staging area, and put the car facing down track. I always thought that was better if something went wrong.

 

Mike: Nice to see your name again and hope you are doing well and staying busy.
Jimbo

 

A couple more from the bottom side of the planet. A couple of Fiats this time with the first being Roger Bassett's Falcon six powered D/A. As per the dragsters in the earlier posts the "D" class was for pre 1963 engines--inline six or 8 and flatheads.


When Phil Reilly first built this car is was called Bad News but it soon became the "Pig".Initially a carburetted small block but later with injection

Roo

 

Jimbo.
Had a lot on my plate lately. Been crewing on a team of 4 !!! Sprint Cars, and watching over my 24 year old grand daughter, who has come to live with me. Turned 69 in July, starting to slow down.... Good to hear from you!

 

GM did not introduce the small block to production cars in Australia until 1961 so for a long time the most common OHV V-8's were the 272-292 Ford Y block which had been available since the mid 50's. Because of that situation there were quite a few Y block powered dragsters and hot rods and here is one of the nicest. Built by Sydney based cam grinder Bert Jones and driven by Ross Mellish, Halley's Comet was not the quickest but was certainly one of the best looking dragsters of its time.




Roo

 

A couple more from down under for today.

First up is a pit shot from Brooksfield Dragway, the first track that I raced at back in the mid 60's. It was a club run 1/8 mile with real blacktop for the first 100 feet or so with the rest of the track being tar seal (gravel over hot tar with the excess stones brushed off once things had set up) The return road and the pits were dirt. In the foreground is Chris Marriott's six cylinder Holden digger (which I helped build and crewed on), The purple car is 292 Ford powered, #179 is Serge DeLuca's Holden unit and the blue dragster behind that is Jeff During's straight 8 Buick D/D

Another Brooksfield shot, this time it is Dave Gale's 318 Chrysler powered "Baron" A/D. Later this same day the car crashed violently on the top end.

Roo

 

unknown dragster at Saugus


Not sure who these are


Howard Cam Special at Santa Maria, before they painted the board that they found lying in the road on Alameda on their way to Lions


San Fernando opened in '56, this is from around that time...notice the modern ambulance in the background


Back in the days of innovation...one way to try and fix Buick's limited breathing ability, reverse the ports. I don't know who built this, but give them a lot of credit for taking risks...that is what drag racing was all about in the old days...and think about how much fabrication time went into all this...


and speaking of innovation, dual 6-71's on Romeo Palamedes' dragster


Caption is Ronnow-Roth roadster at Pomona...orange groves surrounded the track back then....maybe Mount Baldy in the background?

 

More Brooksfield shots from Oz.

Chris Marriott's Holden powered B/D


Top eliminator final round between Zeke Agars (Lane 2) and Serge DeLuca--both six cylinder Holden powered


Roo

 

The altered roadster started out as an A/gas altered owned by Simmons and Rossetti, which I believed won a championship in the early sixties, later after it was entered in a few shows it was purchased by Rex Carson. After Rex sold it, I lost track of it. I was a friend of Dennis Simmons and a customer of Rex Carson’s shop.

 

Rex sold it to a then friend of mine, Hank (lived in Glendale CA.). It had both port injected, gas burning Hemi that was in the car with a upgrade or two from Hank. It also had a blown fuel burning Hemi owned by another friend. Dennis owned and kept the engine running, while Hank drove the car.
The car was originally blue with the big "C" on the side. Hank had it painted metallic brown. Hank ran it at Irwindale mostly with a coupla trips down to Carlsbad (San Diego, CA). The car made an appearance or two at both of Rex's shops for..."Show and Tell" and to burn the eyes of the spectators with the Nitro coming out of the headers.
I don't recall who bought it when Hank sold it.

Mike