Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post: Happy 103rd Birthday, Ed Iskendarian! Continue reading the Original Blog Post
As a teenage kid interested in all things automotive somehow I found an ad for Isky Cams that I think said send for free information and decals. Well of course I did and I got my decals and a four page cam spec sheet. On that was an order form for more stickers and an iron on for a t-shirt for fifty cents so I taped two quarters between two pieces of cardboard and sent it to Isky. Of course I ironed on the huge orange transfer to my white t and wore it to gym class where only one other kid knew about Isky Cams. We became buds from that day on. Here's to Ed, Happy Birthday and thanks for free merch and fifty cent iron-ons. Keep on trucking er hot rodding!
you come up with some really cool videos. How cool not only to interview him but get to ride on the desert with him is way cool! I think everyone who watches this site has had a Isky Camshaft.
Hello, Well, if we all live to be that ripe old age past 100, it would be a miracle. 7 years ago, I filmed a portion of the original Lion’s Dragstrip Museum opening day happenings. It was in a short area of the Stone Woods, Cook section of the whole large warehouse. I was talking to Mike Cook and completed a set of photos, plus a short video of the afternoon happenings. They had set up dinner tables surrounded by a lot of local drag race cars and the invitees were the old Lion’s Dragstrip racers. Mike Cook was very informative. His information on the Willys and other builds was enlightening. He gave me his original copy of the famous “drag race” at Pomona that most have seen on the web. In a way, I wish I had left my "mic" on to record the whole conversation. We exchanged periodicals, original drag race photos versus digital images from 1957-60 of his dad’s 37 Chevy C/Gas and B/Gas Coupe. Jnaki On opening night in 2017, Mike Cook and friends... Someone holds his age quite well. And it was a surprise at the end of the film I took of the surroundings of the original grand opening activities. Wow… that is 23 years from now, almost a lifetime of memories, but 23 more years? What are the odds? Thin, at most… although my wife’s dad was 96 and his mom was 98 when they left us… Plus, our granddaughter will be 42 years old!!! YIKES and YRMV… Note: My brother and I are thankful for Isky Cams. When we started fiddling around with a 283 SBC motor, it had an Isky Cam, lifters, rods and worked well for the somewhat modified motor. Street driving + power for the drags was the goal and the cam worked wonders for the build. Then, when my brother decided to go for “More Power…” we had an ace in the hole. Our friend from Los Angeles was close friends with the Edlebrock clan. The topic was supercharging an SBC motor and the conversation turned to… “I have a custom manifold, especially built for a new product line coming out in a few weeks.” It turned out to be an Edlebrock special manifold for an SBC motor to use the latest design for a 671 supercharger on a 283 block. There were already 471 manifolds for SBC motors and 671 manifolds for big hemi motors, but no 671 manifolds for the small block Chevy motor. Now, the combination of the new Isky-Gilmer Belt Drive set up used the special Edlebrock blower manifold for the SBC motor. So, despite the change over to a Howard 5 cycle blower cam, we now had the latest from Isky Cams product catalog. We supposedly got #2 in the new kit offered to the general public weeks later. #1 is in the photo above…
While stationed in California in the 60s i went by Eds shop and actually talked to him about a cam i was going to use. 50 years later someone posted a picture of his old shop. I told my friends i walked through that door.
My best friend was a shop "gopher" for Ed in 1960 or so when he went to the LA area to attend Art Center in Pasadena. (RIP Gary!)
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