Here are several pictures of Don Montgomery's "A" fuel coupe from 1956. In my mind his car defines the word "Hot Rod." Don has shown pictures of so many others cars through his books. This is his highly successful car. Don wrote about the fuel coupes in his Old Hot Rods Scrapbook book: "In the early 1950's the fastest stock bodied coupes and sedans on the drag strips were the Fuel Coupe class machines. although different class names existed at the various drag strips, the cars were mostly 1929-1941 coupes or sedan with full fenders and "full race" engines burning alcohol and perhaps some nitromethane. Many of them were street rods that the owner had started with and then moved up into the faster fuel competition." Karl Knecht
Another bad ass coupe is Ben Rizzo's full fendered '34 #102 in this shot. This coupe has sat, exactly as last run, in Ben's Pomona garage for over 50 years. No, he won't sell it.
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Here are several pictures of Don Montgomery's wicked "A" fuel coupe from 1956 Those are awesome pics!!! But the parts shown arent from 1956- at least a few years later on the Gilmore belt. What timing cover is that ?
I still get goose bumps from the Hawkins/Webster/Allende , 15 OZ. coupe. I saw it at Bako in all its patina with "Big Mike" tuning it, THAT was bad ass !
Karl, thanks for keeping history alive for us young whippersnappers. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
A little bit of history. Don had to retire this car due to rule changes in 1957. The car as it existed was no longer legal (fuel ban?). I think it had to have a full interior to run as a gasser. He sold it. The trail goes cold there. It could have been raced some in the 60's and vanished until I bought a cool chopped 3W body and doors in 1992 that was reputed to have come from California. After a lot of searching I found that crazy as it seemed, there were some telltale signs that it may the same car as was featured in "Best Hot Rods" volume no. 3 which was published in 1956. That was the first time I heard of Don Mongomery and I got his address from one of his books. After letters, conversations, and photo exchanges with Don it was determined that it was the same car. Today the car has undergone an amazing and detailed restoration by Dave Crouse and the Custom Auto and survives as the Larry Shinoda "Chopsticks Special" as raced by Larry Shinoda in 1953 (Don bought the car as a roller from Larry after the end of the 1953 season.) I was able to see the restored car at its debut at the GNRS in 2009 and it is outstanding. It was a great experience in the early nineties to talk with Don and the late Larry Shinoda about some of the exploits and the stories surrounding the racing of this car. Greg Sharp assisted in the identification. The photos previously shown are courtesy of the Greg Sharp collection. Makes you wonder if some of the famous or not so famous old race cars did survive in an unknown as street rods of the sixties, seventies. This one that never got street rodded. Karl Knecht
Don raced the car very succesfully in 1954 and 1955 with A GMC 302 engine. The Chrysler was used in the 1956 season. Would like to hear more about the engines.
Great history, Thankyou for sharing this. I would also like to hear more about the engines used in this outstanding car.
Attached is a photo of the Chrysler engine on the Cobbs-Hilborn-Engle dyno on April 6, 1956. The Gilmer belt drive used steel industrial pulleys. Unfortunately the small diameters of the pulleys resulted in only a few teeth in contact. The 2" belts were fairly easy to strip teeth. Don Yates had used a Gilmer belt a little earlier. More sucessful use of the Gilmer belts would come several years later when the manufacturers started making bigger diameter aluminum pulleys, the belts were improved and widened. My setup worked well but I had to be careful because the belts were expensive for me. The SCOT blower nose broke when the engine was first put on the dyno on March 16, 1956. The SCOT setup used a v-belt drive but that could not take the downward force of the Gilmer drive. The quick fix was to add brackets to the blower nose just behind the pulley. It worked well. The front cover (timing chain cover) was made by Howard. I was running Howard cams at the time. It was a fun time Don
Rockerhead: Thank you for chiming in ; I just love to hear it from the horse's mouth! Your old coupe has always done it for me,from the 1st time I saw a pic of it. Really appreciate all you have done with your books ( think I have them all).
Holy smokes ! Thanks for that . I really thought that Howard's was only making chain drive covers in the mid- late 50s. (I actually have a hemi blower manifold for chain drive cover.) I've not seen the swing arm mounted to the timing cover like that before. I see water lines, is there a water pump involved. Man I would love to hear more about all of that. It goes against the popular rhetoric about the drives.
In late 1955 the local distributor for the SCOT blowers gave up on selling them and wholesaled out his inventory. I bought about 7 of them, one for a Cadillac engine, and the others for flathead Ford engines. I kept the larger Cadillac blower and sold the rest to Don Blair. Although I had very good success with my 12 port GMC engine it was obvious that the big V-8 engines were taking over. So I bought a 331 Chrysler and mated the blower to it. There were no available parts for that then. Phil Weiand gave me a four carb manifold to which I built a steel tube log for the blower to mount over the manifold. Industrial Gilmer pulleys were adapted using a 2" belt. The idler was fabricated to mount on the front cover that Howard had given me. I machined a pair of injectors using a war surplus Evans (deicer pump) to deliver the fuel. The engine was basically stock except for the Howard cam and some porting and valve work. That day on the dyno was done to basically check out the engine setup and get the mixture into the ballpark. I was happy to get a 411 hp @ 5500 rpm recording that day using menthanol. Hot rodding was then in the period before you could dial 1-800 and buy anything you wanted. But it was fun and you could go to the races and see guys trying all kinds of inovations (some were even dumb). As I said, it was a fun time. Don
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