"2 Engines" ?????? ONE Potvin blown, injected Oldsmobile in Bob Tindle's legendary Orange Crate. It looks like the show where this photo was taken was in Minnesota as the #777 Crosley in the background (that is quite often mistaken for the John Batto car) was from that area and there is a Minnesota Drag Ways logo on the wall behind the Crate. The Crosley is the same one that appears in post #1353 (second photo) Here is how it looked in the swap meet area at the CHRR in 2016. Roo
I knew that this looked familiar and just got time to look back through the thread. Posted by rudestude on December 4 (and by loudbang on December 30), it is Bob Lundsford at Riverside. Roo
Never raced as an altered--it was one of the early funny cars. Later raced topless after a transmission explosion damaged the roof. Roo
You are correct Roo. Dad used to run with these guys. They were experimenting with stroker cranks, long before they were commonplace. Dad said he had about 390 cubic inches out of a sbc in the car way back in the early days. Always ran hard.
posted by nhranut in the vintage thread Hamberis & Mitchell running altered Lentz? M&M Automotive At Maple grove
The Ratican, Jackson, Stearns Fiat with Bill Jackson holding the 5 gallon can. Possibly Don Ratican behind the injector scoop but the guy with the buzz cut does not look like the period shots that I have seen of Ron Stearns. Roo
All at pomona 63-64 Bedllino's Bros from Cleveland Cliff Bell Pontiac power Hildebrant's Auto Body J &J driven by Bones Balough
^^^^^^^^ And all from https://quartermileclassics.wordpress.com/pomona/ apart from the Hildebrandt Auto Body 39 Chevy coupe. And the background to that photo does not look much like Pomona either. More likely east coast as the car was out of PA as evidenced by the body shop's location and the fact that it ran a transmission from Joe Pirrone's Boss Hydro business out of Philly. I am guessing late Hemi power judging by the injector stack spacing and height. Roo
The J&J Muffler Bantam, I always loved that car, got a big picture of it on the wall in my shop to this day. As a kid we used to see it sitting out from of J&J when we'd go shopping in Inglewood. Good memories. Rooman, I'm amazed at your knowledge of old drag cars. You're always busy building cool race stuff, how do you find time for all the research?
loudbang wrote - "All are from Pomona" (post 1369). Na, none are from Pomona except with the possibility of the last picture (J&J Muffler). Mike
The first shot (which I am pretty certain is Jon Halstead's A/A) is definitely Pomona and while the Bellino and Bell cars may be from Ohio the background sure looks like 63-4 vintage Pomona. The Hildebrandt Auto Body coupe shot IS definitely not Pomona as I stated in my earlier post and looking at the photo again I would guess that it is from Indianapolis Raceway Park with the mound for the oval track in the background. That photo also is not part of the original source that loudbang tapped for the others. Roo
Actually I was not there in the era that a lot of the photos on these pages come from but I did follow the sport as closely as possible through every magazine available in Australia at the time and since moving to the US 30 years ago I have been lucky enough to get to know a lot of the people involved in that era and I pay attention when I am around them. It is amazing what you can learn if you get a chance to sit and have lunch or dinner with people like Ed Iskenderian, Bones Balogh etc. Also remember that Google is your friend if you know how to use it and sort the wheat from the chaff. Incidentally Dean, I see your name in the 1963 Winternationals results listings on the site that loudbang lifted the Pomona photos from. Roo
I MAY...concede to the first shot being the "possibility" of being Pomona, but since 62, I've never seen background like those shots from any location/direction/angle at the Pomona Fairgrounds. Mike
Looking at the Photo of Halstead's car, Fairplex Drive/E Street would be to the left, Arrow is straight ahead and White off to the right as the other cars in the photo are in the staging lanes at 90 degrees to the strip. As for the Ohio altered shots there are a couple of other photos in the quartermileclassics collection that indicate that the photos are from Pomona. Check this one of Len Richter's T'bolt and compare the background to that in the Bedllino Brothers shot. And for confirmation here is a shot of the Richter car at the 64 Winternationals in exactly the same trim as the above photo. A little research will show that this may be the only time that the car ran this wheel configuration. loudbang polluted the original post with the shot of the Hildebrandt car but the other shots all came from a big collection of 63/4 Winternats photos with virtually all of the photos readily recognizable as being from Pomona. Maybe the disputed shots are from the south end of the Fairplex down around West McKinley or possibly over by north White to the east. Roo
Mike Vincz with hearse push car. Somewhere on earth Despite Mike VW's reaction to some of the other photos from the quartermile classics page, anyone who has ever followed 60's era drag racing will instantly recognize this as Pomona.The fence on the west side of the fairgrounds (not yet named the Fairplex) was draped to stop "lookyloo's" from watching the races for free although as can be seen here a few appear to have have parked on E street (now Fairplex Drive) to stand on their vehicles anyway. As for the coupe in the photo the Indianapolis based Vincz eventually replaced the 34 Ford with the former Hamberis and Mitchell 33 Willys with which he won class at the 1969 Winternationals. Mike passed away in February of 2014. Roo
The Dunn, Merritt, Velasco Fiat. This was Jim Dunn's third race car following a VW and an Anglia and it was the source of his first victories as he won the 63 and 64 Winternationals with blown small block power. In 1965 with backing from Drag Racing Magazine he dropped the motor into a dragster to compete at the US Nationals. Running on fuel the little Chevy had too much compression so Velasco used a chisel to cut down the piston domes in the pits at IRP. Dunn first raced in 1953 and is still active as a car owner. Roo
And as for confirmation that the photos on quartermileclassics are indeed from Pomona here is another shot of the Bedllino's Model A coupe with a definitive Pomona background thanks to George Klass. Roo
Joe Reath evidently had a thing for sponsoring Fiats as following the Ratican, Jackson, Stearns sale of their car to Woody Duke in 1961 he backed this blown small block topo, the original iteration of the Davis and Ingram Fiat before the better known version with the Joe Wilhelm applied purple paint. Roo
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