Hot Rods Front Engine Dragsters of the 50's

216 Chevy power !! About 1954.... Note the scattershield...

 

Cyr & Hopper, Riverside, May 1959...Doug Peterson photo

 

Emery Cook trying out the Cook & Bedwell dragster, at Lions. Scotty Fenn built the chassis, and ran it with Lou Baney's Cadillac, with Kenny Arnold driving. That team sold it to Emery and partner Cliff Bedwell, who tried it out with the Caddie and then dropped in Cliff's Chrysler. When the Cook & Bedwell team built a new chassis, Scotty reclaimed the chassis and moved it to Tulsa. Here it is when Scotty ran it:

 

Melvin Heath, 1956 NHRA Nationals top eliminator.

 

Boy! That's one story about the Cook & Bedwell car, I'd never heard about! Thanx!

 

Mather & Trubery Wayne king photo.

 

I hope that scattershied is steel belted.

 

Or at least 6 ply !

 

Top Banana 2 against the Flying Bedstead at VacaValley.

 

1952. First dragster in NW. 136 mph. No ET clocks back
then.

 

One of the most significant race cars of all time, the Yates-Mikkelesen dragster. The time was 1954, and this car set the record by running 144 mph in 8.9 seconds at the Santa Ana Drag strip, driven by Don Yates. It became known as the "World's fastest accelerating car." The car weighed in just under 1200 pounds with driver. The engine was a 284 cubic inch Mercury flathead with Ardun "overhead valve conversion" cylinder heads, and rated at an unbelievable 400 horsepower. Fuel was 80% nitromethane and 20% methanol. The car builders and owners were Don and Ray Yates and Verne Mikkelesen, from Inglewood, California...

 

Twisters CC Vista Ca.

From an earlier post with Old power.

In '57 next to the Dragmaster

owned by Bradly at the world series of drag racing in '57 with flathead power. According to @296ardun

 

Maybe injectors ?

 

1958
Hello,

In the early days, there were chassis makers for each driver’s choice. Some looked very cool as the bodies covered the bare chassis. The head protection was almost nil, but close enough to be considered race cars. But as the designs changed and safety was the important thing for all concerned. Then only a few companies stood out. Chassis Research Co. was front and center in the popularity of the full head clearing roll cage for FED racers.

Cyr and Hopper

With a title like in the advertisement, what is next in the line of race cars for this team? Every weekend we would read about the Ted Cyr and Bill Hopper team using the famed Chassis Research frame and components winning some title of sorts. Top eliminator was the most seen in titles from So Cal to the Northwest and even out of the comfort of So Cal dragstrips. To meet new challenges, the Chassis Research FED went just about everywhere to race against all comers in their class.


1959 Riverside Raceway Pits


1959 Riverside Raceway VS Colburn Glaze

Cyr and Hopper FED on this race. Power, dirt, smoking tires all made for an exciting race.

This was one of the most exciting races of the day.
The guy in the dark blue nylon jacket outlined as a shadow was my brother. We were standing several feet from the starting line for a ring side seat, as it were...


Ted Cyr Cyr and Hopper Riverside Raceway 1959 on a single time trial run…

Jnaki
Then, several months later: March 1960


Then they went from the world’s fastest Hemi to the world’s fastest SBC powered FED.

(Cyr and Hopper, Dragmaster, World’s Fastest Chevy powered FED. DRAG NEWS 1960)

The new challenge was a Potvin styled 671 in front of an SBC motor, in a lighter, Dragmaster frame. Instantly, it became known as the “Worlds Fastest Chevy.”

at :31

 

Hello,

That Top Banana FED was one for the books. We were fortunate to see it in action recorded on one of our forays to the Bakersfield March Meet in 1960.

We were inspired by the powerful SBC motors as we had started our own 292 SBC 671 blower spec motor build from the bare block. So, we liked that others had the same idea for drag racing class power. We did not all have to have a huge HEMI motor for drag racing…



During the March Meet, I was battling the fence post position for filming and it was crowded to say the least. In several of our films, a head or two comes into the film for a split second. There was this “bubble head” lady next to me and she did not notice that every move she made, the beehive was jammed into my face and camera angle.

But, I was able to record some original drag racing films from this historic time period for posterity. It was all done on a point and shoot 16mm camera using kodak color movie film. If I had a telephoto lens or a larger focusing camera, I could have been above all of the “fence folks.”

Jnaki

As it was, what films I was able to take despite the intrusions, was a miracle. It was not until digitizing them in 2015 that I was able to go film frame by frame and some interesting things popped up unexpectedly. YRMV



watch carefully, it goes by so fast…

 

Thanks for the videos. Here is another shot of the Top Banana.

 

1959 early morning photo in the pits, Adriance Appliance FED




Hello,

It was 1959 in an inland raceway drag race meet. The morning was cold, but by 9:00 am, it was T-Shirt weather. It was fun walking around the large pits area seeing the racers we usually saw at Lion’s Dragstrip and the newcomers from all over the USA. It was going to be a fantastic drag race held at the Riverside Raceway course. The whole area was different than we normally were accustomed to seeing. The cool ocean breeze was non-existent and the different racers was a pretty good list of So Cal’s best in almost every class available.
1959
What more could one want with the popular Chassis Research frames and supercharged Hemi Motors in play? There were plenty of top racers with this combo and they were all going for the Top Eliminator honors. They also sounded like the thunder was exploding right in front of anyone walking in the pits or at the starting line…

Old photo from another So Cal dragstrip... Adriance Appliance A/FD, George Adriance and driver Dick Lechien A/GD

My brother was the insistent one, saying this drag meet was one for the record books. Every top racer in the USA as known to all of us from articles in the Drag News Weekly Paper was going to show up and prove the Westcoast racers that they, too can set records. The “Who’s Who of Drag Racing” in the USA was in the pits and on the dragstrip. It was a sight that will not get erased in our collective memories.

Jnaki

The new experience was being able to walk around all over the open fields and top of the cliff that gave a different angle on the racers that zipped by from morning to the afternoon. The “valley” between the cliff sides, with the dragstrip below, just made the sound of every race car like a roaring train coming towards you. They came by at speed, but it did not matter, the visions and feelings were there.

It is/was a record setting day and some were pleased at the outcome, while others were left standing around seeing a controversial race go down in history, changing the Top Eliminator winner for the event. YRMV

Note:

65 years ago on a March weekend, they traveled to the Bakersfield Smokers March Meet # 2 to compete against another round vs. the "best of the best" in the USA.

Adriance Appliance vs. Tommy Ivo “Close… but that only, “…counts in the game of horseshoes…”



A Top Gas Dragster wherever it raced. It was owned by George Adriance and driven by Lee Drake, and features a Chassis Research TE-440 Chassis and a supercharged Chrysler Hemi running on gasoline. A chassis like this could be purchased already welded together or in kit form, where it could be welded together by the owner to save money...