Heck just let him know a bunch of crazies from CO, IL, MN, NY, MD, CA, OR, PA, MO, MA, SC, OK, MI, DE, WI, IA and VICTORIA Canada are all following along already!
What a GREAT Find! Get all the parts & info you can before you do anything with the car. Have fun with the project, but you need to realize you are the caretaker of a car with history, not many people get to enjoy that part of the hobby. Bob
I have been combing photo archives from strips around north Texas looking for a glimpse of my car. I would think an all white, chopped, hoodless coupe with no running boards would be pretty distinctive, but honestly I don't see a lot of photos of flathead drag cars in that era at all. Seems like all the attention was on the ohv mills, rails and funny cars... if anyone knows of any good resources for photos, especially from Green Valley, let me know. The owner has photos of the car running but he hasn't showed them to me yet and I think it'd be fun to send him some to show I'm serious...
Don't know if you're on Facebook (my wife is) but there are a crap load of pics (and a couple of old videos) on this GVR Drag Strip page. I didn't look it over but it took me a while just doing a constant scroll to the bottom of it to see how many pics there were. I did notice that there was a bunch of old programs/results and articles mixed in with the pics. Good luck with your search. https://www.facebook.com/groups/118266191544742/media/photos
You know this but don't KNOW it. Back then, a movie camera and film was a serious investment. If you were careful, you might be able to get 10 minutes over a full day. Pictures were 12 or 24 exposures, then change to another roll. Not even close to today's pocket full of digital storage, no added cost or automatic exposure and focus. The ones I posted I went through and like you've found the lower classes were not captured nearly as much. Best of luck on finding something. Don't worry, if you can't show the car on video, it should still trigger memories. Capture of the car would be gold, though.
Thanks for the tip... I have joined the group and perused the photos and also dropped a post. Hopefully someone recognizes the car! That would be cool. The odds are slim, for sure! Fingers crossed though!
What an unbelievable find, however even more unbelievable to me is how somebody would scrap a vehicle like this, especially having history (and stray parts!) still attached to their old man. I’ll be following along for more updates, this is the exact reason I am on the HAMB. Congrats!
That's some mighty nice drool material indeed...Congrats @trevorsworth, and like the others...I look forward to your bringing it back to Street/Strip Duty...
Wow! Great find, you could just keep looking and looking and keep discovering new things about the car that are so make it so cool. Congratulations.
The eagle has landed... Now we're on shop time, so as soon as I have a lift free we'll start tucking in. I can't believe this car was less than 30 minutes from me my entire life just waiting on someone to call and ask if I wanted it... and that it may have been crushed if I hadn't decided to answer while I was working, which I usually don't... a boon from the gods of speed!
Sounds like God definitely meant for that car to be yours. I feel similar about my 56 which is why it is the one I will likely always own.
Wow, this has some great shots and at least one poster says they have thousands of pics. I made it through page 2 and grabbed one Black A and one white one. Not yours, judging from no chop, running boards, the rear and the stripe, but they may help with memories. https://www.chevelles.com/threads/w...rag-strip.358846/?nested_view=1&sortby=oldest
Same poster has another 3 page thread of pics. https://www.chevelles.com/threads/vintage-drag-racing-50s-60s-70s-30-000-photos.359182/ with this quote on the first post. "The great guys at HAMB have done the hard work, I am just showing it to others." Your A might even be in the huge pics threads here! Previous post enlarged.
There are quite a few videos of drag racing in the Kansas City area in the 50’s on you tube and even a big long one of the 56 nats on prime I believe. It’s labeled something generic like “drag racing video” Lots of cars traveled to race based on what I see in the little books. Wouldn’t be surprised to spot it in one of those
Here’s one if anyone feels like watching grainy hot rods race. Some real neat stuff at/past the 13 minute mark
"It's a Christmas miracle! " with the leftover dough from the two grand you were gonna spend, ya gotta get that built flattie or see what's in the warehouse you mentioned. Good on ya man, I would give $200. For 1 door
Like I said before, I couldn't think of a more deserving person to have found this car. I'm so excited for all of this—so much, in fact, that I've sent pictures to friends far and wide. Can't wait to see it come back together!
I guess I will take a drive over to Trevor's on Wednesday and see what hunk of junk he bought this time. The last coupe that he had he traded for a pickup that got traded for a roadster that has been sitting in my shop waiting on parts for awhile. He bought the Model AA truck that we drove across 7 or 8 counties in Texas to retrieve on the coldest day of the year last year and his little roadster got pushed to the back burner. Now this pile of rusty metal....sheeesh!! All kidding aside, I have the flathead that caused me to meet Trevor sitting in my shop. He and I made some kind of trade awhile back and I ended up with the flathead. I don't know if he wants to wait until he can buy the built engine that was supposedly in the coupe but I guess if we need to make a deal on this engine we can talk about it. That guy can never make up his mind what he wants to do! Great find Trevor....looking forward to helping you get this one running. One of these days we are going to have to get my old Sedan Delivery back on the road!
We managed to get the car on a lift today so we started digging in. Here are some better shots of the rear end. It may be smoked... one side is locked super hard but I haven't tried to free up the brakes or anything - waiting to get it situated in the car, to which end I was able to get some u bolts today at NAPA (for almost what I paid for the car!) The drum retainers are welded and will need to be cut off. Sid took that approach to a lot of things on this car... He wasn't the best welder but considering when he built the car I'm sure this was done with a Tombstone or similar AC stick machine so we'll applaud him now and fix the really sketchy stuff later. This was fun to find, but mice have eaten almost all of it. The good news is the seats were piled up with glass removed from 7 or 8 different cars which seems to have deterred the rodents from them and kept them clean and pliable. When we remove them we'll shampoo them and see if they can be saved. How cool is this dash? I have no idea why this was done like this but it's staying like that. It had an old Stewart Warner oil pressure gauge in it that looked like it might still work, but I didn't get a picture of it. Had to get sort of a family photo... I remembered that the farm built trailer I bought for the Model A bed to put on my RPU came with two steel wheels on the Model A axle that was under it. Going to scrounge some used tires for rollers. Sitting in this car and looking over the cowl with that big '40 wheel in my hands transports me to another time...
The Jalopy Journal
