60'-70's Vintage Oval Track Modifieds

Bones, I've only seen one pic of the Clarence's Steak House Pinto and Ray Hendrick was driving it. Guess that was after he got out of the #1 Pinto. I believe Hank Thomas may have driven it too. Never heard anything about a one off frame but Clarence put alot of money in his cars. Paul Radford's favorite car of all time was the Gremlin.

 

LMAO ! fond memories. Westhampton was thrilling night for me. I ran a Timken rear with 4.11 gears and locked the tranny in second. Young, crazy and dumb. Bunny and Jimmy Malone were in their modified bugs so they started me on the pole. The flag dropped and I was gone, scared stiff. When I came off of 2, I checked the mirror and nobody was there. Looked for caution lights but they were green, so I kept going. When I passed the starter, he covered his ears and leaned out of the stand. One lap later, the tranny blew going into 1. Charlie, Jimmy and gary Winters went by me. 3rd gear was still good and I finished pretty close to them in 4th. That was Tony Wetzel's 301 Chevy that won many features in the 23 car, Al Mathon's studabaker and the 4-U
I tore the motor down and found the rocker studs jacked out, valve marks in the pistons and 2 broken main caps. Jimmy told me he ran a 6 to 1 gear and my final drive was 6.90. He turned 7,000, so you can guess what I did to that motor.

I guess the turn 1 incident proved my insanity. When O'Rouke wouldn't throw the caution, I threw my helmet on the track, No caution, so I threw the seat cushion out the window. Still no caution, so I climbed out and walked along the track. That got the caution flag. Later, in the pits, I put my fist thru Mendelsohn's blackboard. They gave me a trophy for "Wild Man of the Year".

The part of my story that most don't know is I sold the car to Tony C. and he re-built it into the "Crown 7" car that Tommy Baldwin drove to success.

This year I turned 74, got 5 heli-coils in my heart and I'M STILL DRIVIN A RACE CAR !

 

Hogans Goat, Thanks, I had Gil's number but misplaced it. I'll try not to loose it this time, I'll give him a call. Al DeAngelo.....nice guy, good driver and yes a colorful character well liked by all. I'm gonna start a boat load of comments with this....Do you remember a guy named.. Dick Corbeal? Denny Z

 

Hey Bones, I spoke with Jay, and he said he did drive the Clarence's Steak House Pinto at Caraway and at New Smryna.

 

I well remember when Larry Mendolsohn brought Dick Corbeil and then Dick became the promoter when Larry passed away. The big buzz that was pushed was Dick traveling with the Eastern Bandits. How and what year did Dick get involved, how long was he involved and what did he do while traveling with the Bandits?

 

Yes and no.
Money has always made a difference, but it used to be that that difference could be compensated for by cleverness, skill and hard work.
In the '60s, the only computers were the ones between people's ears, regardless of whether you were talking about Formula One, Indy, Grand National, or a demolition derby. That is to say, the calculation and analysis part was simply man v man.
Nowadays computers are heavily used in all areas of car development. The more of that which you have available, the faster you will be, and that costs money.
Len Boehler made his cars out of some pretty meager (and often previously scrapped) material, Ed Flemke did the same (and others did as well). They both won a hell of a lot of races in cars that had next to nothing in the way of investment, apart from elbow grease and the application of their steel-trap minds. There is no way, today, that somebody can make a quick car with simply hard work and brains. If you haven't got a big checkbook, it just won't happen.

To put it another way, in the '60s, the best guys could build and run a winning car with no outside sponsorship. It would pay for itself. That can't happen anymore.

 

Info on the Swift car....http://www.jakessite.com/09/six/topsix2.html



....courtesy or jakessite.com

 

Radford, by "one-off" I meant that it wasn't a store-bought chassis, or even anything close to a knock-off of a Troyer, Chassis Dynamics, Evans, etc. frame. It looked totally unique. Can't believe I didn't recall Ray Hendrick driving it, because for a damn Yankee I was full of admiration for Ray, Satch Worley, the Clarence's #26, the Mason #45 and #46, Speedy's #07 ... and of course Mr. Radford. I watched Paul everywhere from New York to Florida.

 

Ray Hendrick in the #26 at Trenton, I think for the 1978 'Dogleg 200'.

Time has not been kind to some of my slides, this is the best I could do with the faded colors.

Jack

 

That's the car, Jack! Thanks much. Good-looking Pinto, with a stance all its own. And Rich, thanks for the Hedgecock info. I'm guessing it was at New Smyrna that I saw him in the #26. I always liked Jay. Neat guy to talk with. But I'm even angrier with my fading brain now that I see Ray Hendrick in the seat at Trenton. I was there for the 1978 Dogleg 200, and I guess Ray was also in the seat when I saw that Pinto at Martinsville, but somehow those mental images slipped through the cracks in my gray matter. Senility, here I come, hammer down!

 

Great pic Jack. I've only seen one other pic of that car and I believe it was in a Martinsville program. And Bones, Paul Radford told me a story about racing on the road course at Daytona. Said Paul Newman was there attempting to drive one of the cars and being a road-racer himself saw that Paul R. was really getting around the course. Newman asked Radford how he learned to drive a road course and Paul said he hated to tell him about running moonshine on curvy backroads in Franklin County.He said he'd been making right hand turns all his life! He said he partied abit with Richie Evans and still gets choked up when he talks about the day Richie died at Martinsville.

 

Bones, that Clarence's car from 1978 has a Mike Laughlin chassis. Mike built one for Cook too. The difference was the Steak House car had a bent left truck arm so the seat could be lower. Ray won at Wikesboro in the fall with that car.
We changed Cook's car to a 3 link rear with the assistance of Jay Hedgecock and made it a lot lighter. Cook's speedway Monza was also a Laughlin car. They were good cars but getting them repaired was tough. By the time you got to Mike's shop in Greenville, SC the boys at Maynard Troyers could have already fixed it. Something to consider when you run 100 times a year.
Shane and I will be at IRP for the Silver Crown race Thursday, hope to see you- steve

 

New Britain hit the nail on the head, the car would pay for itself and anyone with talent could compete. My father started in 1952 when Riverhead was dirt and early on got some tutelage from a mentor who gave dad some insight into cross weight & springs and dad started going pretty good on a consistent basis and was a top 5 runner and steady (5+ wins per year) at Riverhead, Islip and Freeport building his own stuff and getting more in payoffs than invested in the car for the next 19 years. In 1971 he took his last win at Islip and got a payoff of $1,100...I believe the winner gets $1,600 at Riverhead now.

Once the M&H tires were eclipsed by the Firestone steamrollers in the late 60's the die was cast. The better bite afforded by the better tires allowed the previously unused HP to be put to the ground coming off the corner rather than a millisecond before you had to lift for the next turn. Now that the engine could be utilized to it's full potential the suspension design had to be notched up to keep pace and the progression from straight axles to Chrysler torsion bar clips to fabricated clips and on and on to the highly precision modifieds that exist today and now an engine & car is probably $100k for the best of everything in brand new form. This progression is exactly the same in the dirt modifieds.

Anyone could successfully race a modified which was very top racing division in the Northeast and Southeast with basic junkyard materials, some basic sound chassis setup principals and a lot of effort. There were many hundreds of modifieds in existence and I well remember in 1968 when Islip had a 24 car feature and (2)18 car consis.

Heck today the working person is hard pressed to run the very entry level division at any track anywhere without using either their or someone else's personal money.

 

rjaustin421,

Best I can remember Dick only traveled with us for a year (62 or 63) at that time he had a seat back concession at Islip. What did he do...what else, he told jokes and kept us laughing. The fans that came into the pits after the races loved him too. Denny Z

 

I must have been at this show because I remember Bugsy driving a NEMA midget. Second place in a Fusco. It was 10-3-76. He was also wearing his Wally Saleeba girl watchers patch.

 

Thanks, Steve ... I love that sort of trivia. Not sure what that says about my life in general, but it's probably a bit late to change now! On my way to Wisconsin right now, will be at Sun Prairie tomorrow. Certainly looking forward to seeing you and Shane on Thursday.

 

Has any recent Modified series tried running with a spec tire, one with little enough grip that an extra 20 hp is of no use?

 

When Islip started a spec tire deal (early 80's) it was cheaper and harder than the previously used open rule tires and racing a modified almost looked enconomical. Then all of the promoters realized that there was money to be made by having one vendor to get the track tires from and between the tires, multiple classes, racing fuel concession etc. that they no longer had to depend on the front gate to make money.

I believe the slow but sure decline modified racing will continue until there is but a few tracks left much like the super modifieds.

I well remember the life we could get out of the M&H 10:20 tires racing one night per week. Denny Z chime in and give us an idea how often you & the rest of the Bandit's went through tires running as often as you did.

 

rjaustin, I don't remember but I can say this, tires were not a problem and the rubber compounds were harder so they lasted quite a while. I don't remember buying tires on the road much (unless I cut one) so that would be one circuit, 5 nights of racing. Of course if it was a 100 lap or longer race I would start with new right side tires. They were M&H. Wish I could remember the cost of tires but it was not a big expense and buy the time Hoosier came along I was out of stock cars and into open cockpit racing. I think my biggest expense during the Bandit days was fuel and tolls for the tow vehicle and fuel for the race car. O yea once in a while a motel. It would be impossible today but back then it was possible to earn a pretty good living just racing.
Denny Z

 

Yeah, they're called IMCA Modifieds, and they use a tire as hard as a damned rock.

On the dirt, we'd get about ten or fifteen nights out of a right rear, if we could manage to keep it in one piece that long. Usually they got cut long before they were worn out.

The only tires I ever wore out, in all the time I ran those cars, was a single set on a test day. They made about 200 laps over the course of that day. I ran all through the heat of the day, in mid-July. Ambient about 95° F, God only knows what the track temp was, hard packed and black from the races the night before.

Then the tracks around here started letting us use softeners and grooving irons on them, and they went from indestructible to only being good for about two races, and we were right back where we started with the gumball Hoosier chainlinks.

The local pavement track running ASA Modifieds (which are pretty close to their IMCA cousins) is running Hoosier rib tires, and they seem to last about eight or ten races, and not fall off a whole lot over that time. Good racing too, so they've got decent bite.

And, at ~$115 a piece, they're not super expensive either. With race gas at $5-$8 a gallon and diesel for the tow rig at $4 a gallon, you end up spending a lot more on fuel than anything else (assuming you stay off the hook).

Well, in my case, food is a major expense as well, but that's not caused by the kind of tires we gotta run.

 

I agree, 100%. The discussions on a number of racing oriented sites about where the modifieds have gone wrong, have been numerous. I joined one of these discussions 3-4 years ago, as my very first posting on that particular site. In essence, I said EXACTLY what you've just said, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've been saying it ever since....

 

the dirt modified have certainly gone that way even on the short track level where a small time guy used to be able to be competative. Restricted rules like tires and spec engines which we thought would save the sport have breada new kind of crash you way to the front racing . Talent,skill have been replaced by the buy your way to the front racing.

 

I know what you're getting at, but I don't think it's that last 20 HP that's the really expensive part....It's the jump from 500 HP to 650+ HP, where the real $$ are spent.

As "rjaustin421" said quite well, in the "old days", on the "hockey pucks", that little extra bit of power that the well funded teams had under their hoods, didn't come into play until the last 40-50 feet of the straight....maybe. With the advent of the "steamrollers", the driver could get on the gas MUCH sooner, and accelerate the car ALL the way down the straights.

In fact, I observed Richie Evans quite a bit in the early 80s, at Spencer Speedway, in Williamson, NY. For those who are familiar, Spencer resembles Martinsville quite a bit, in that it's a flat, paper-clip of a track. Tire technology had progressed to the point that Richie, as well as the other front runners, were able to get FULL ON the gas while still covering the last 50-60 feet of turns 2 or 4....and carried that speed even into the first 50-60 feet of turns 1 and 3.

 

Indeed money is what moves you up the ladder as evidenced in the "major leagues" where family or benefactor money gets a young person who thinks that lug nuts is just a new cereal on the market way up the ladder to the big show.

How far would talent such as Richie Evans, Billy Pauch, Bugs Stevens,Bobby Allison or Ray Hendrick go in current times? Would they even attempt to get into racing? On a more troubling note what about the racers today that will never progress past the lower divisions or choose not start out at all due to not being willing spend money they or their families do not have?

 

I think I recall seeing the Clarence's Steak House Pinto at Oswego Speedway for a Budweiser 200 with Merv Treichler aboard. But, it's been a long time and my memory might be suspect. Can anyone else confirm this? Would have been in '78, or 79.

 

What I meant was that the most well-funded teams will spend what, by historic standards, is a considerable amount of money in order to get another 20 bhp.
This is a problem common to all branches and levels of motor sport, unfortunately. Depending on the series, largely the problem's been driven by sponsorship money, partly by TV money, and partly by the increasing gap in wealth between the national average and the top, whatever, 1-2%. We probably can't put the toothpaste back into the tube, and shall have to live with this. Society has progressed in some ways, but certainly not in all of them.

 

As New Britain points out, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and that can mean one hell of a mess. But the cost of racing has never, ever gone DOWN, only UP. And the awful Catch 22 of trying to legislate major changes, like drastically cheaper engines, is that most current car owners have too much inventory that would be obsoleted. I find myself thinking that maybe the time for super-tight, cost-controlling rules might have been the mid-70s, just before things went crazy, but back then the promoters and sanctioning bodies were doing pretty darn well and didn't want to shake things up too much, which is just human nature (and grab-it-while-you-can business). I recall everyone going tilt when Dick Armstrong rolled out that killer Jack Tant small block in 1975, rumored to cost $7000. Gosh, a seven-grand motor today sounds like just what the doctor ordered. But, hey, gasoline and groceries ain't cheap anymore, either. Maybe the best approach is just to remember yesterday fondly, while still appreciating what we have today.

 

Timmy Solomito driving Charlies Vega & Don Howe driving the Coupe. Timmy was the last car to go out in time trials for fun after the qualifiying was done for the field. The car was loose but he turned a respectable 12.028 which would have easily put him in the race! Then he and Don turned HOT laps during intermission and with some prior adjustments to the Vega the car was now on rails, I wouldn't have been surprised if he put it on the pole! Bet Charlie was smiling...I know I was!

 

I agree, especially the highlighted sentence...

As a point of reference, in an earlier post, I mentioned that one fo my neighbors built a modified back in '68-'69. A number of eyebrows were raised in the racing community, when he bought this creation out, as he spent around $6000 on this car, including $2995 for a Holman Moody 427 Tunnel Port Ford engine (an early "crate motor"). This was at a time when $4000 could buy you a pretty decent street car.

Today, due to inflation, a decent street car is now $28-30,000, but is a "top shelf" modified still only 50% more?

 

Steve, Is this the Jerry Cook #38 Super Speedway Monza you are referring to?

BTW, I invite you and Shane to view some terrific Sprint Car photos shot by my contributing photographers.

http://www.JacksRacePhotos.net

I even have Fidays' WoO 'Top Ten', plus Saturday night's WoO VL, as well as action coming soon from the famous Williams Grove Speedway in PA.



Jack