History Vintage/period correct roll bar photo thread

fantastic photos Robert; thank you. i've never seen, or even thought of, combining square & round tubing in the same ***embly. [obviously never done any fabrication of the sort]

Q: is the piece on the drag link (3rd picture from bottom) to control/ stop the link from vibrating?
Q: last photo; are the brackets on the split wishbones for "aircraft" shocks?

thanks again; you always come through!

sid

 

The following car owned by Ken Gypson, it was built and raced in the early 50s and competed at Bruton Lake also known as Ups and Downs Speedway (Watch the attached video and you will understand), Route 66 Speedway (named for NY state 66) and Pine Bowl.

Route 66 or Pine Bowl was later now tracks as Hollywood Bowl.

 

ha ha - "ups 'n' downs' indeed.

Q: was that track particularly short or just camera work made it appear so?

those interior pictures are a great help not only for the roll bar/ cage, but to see how the inner body steel was configured.

as always, thank you for helping my continuing education.

s.e.

 

Circa 1960

 

"i told my best gal i had a bench seat; she cooed like a dove.
when i picked her up, she was a little frosty . . . "

 

I believe it was a 3/8 mile.

 

Close up view point along the starting line fence for an anxious teen.



Hello,

A wide variety of roll bars were shown even from the early days of our drag racing involvement. The FED roll bar style was popular and copied the ch***is research mode. Parallel bars up and over the head of the driver. Measured and fit for the original driver. If a new driver was necessary for some reason, the seat was already in place and since it is over the rear axle, not much room was left to adjust for the new driver.

But, as one can see, even as early as 1958, adjustments had to be made for different styles and space for different folks.

Jnaki

So, does the original dual parallel bars in an upside down “V” formation cover the new driver to the rules? NO… so an additional tube curve was installed to be above his head. If the case of the roll bar being the top part of the roll over if it ever happened, the motor or tires are the front end of the triangle of safety. Does the little arch addition of a curved pipe have sufficient clearance to be safe?

The original “V” design touch point Yellow line to the triangle.

The addition of the little arch is the blue line in the triangle roll over. Each time, original or additional, it does not keep the helmet inside the roll bar in case of a flip over. YRMV

NHRA 1958 rules for rollbars:

The ruling would be up to the tech inspector at each dragstrip as far as safety.

By 1965:

 

it's kind of a wonder either jalopy, or quarter milers, survived the early days.

 

Well despite what many people believe it wasn't just beat and bang by most racers or tracks, there were unwritten rule of engagement.

It used to be unless you were to someone's door and they could see you the line was theirs's roll out and try again in the next corner.

The same goes for driving in too deep and shoving someone out of the way, you could give them a tap and move them out of the line but allow them to recover.

 

This car is own by some friends of mine, it ran in the lower Hudson Valley of New York State driven by a female driver "Doll" Macintyre in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

 

well . . . . the roll cage is still in tact; there's that.

 

Hello,

Safety was a main concern in those early drag racing rules. The roll bars were required for all compe***ion cars in every cl***. Street legal cl***es the rules were relaxed somewhat due to those cars being mostly daily drivers away from the dragstrip.

So, the early days, were over in a flash, although it seemed to crawl in horrendous speeds, at times. Ha!
****tershields for all race cars regardless of full race compe***ion builds or street cars, they all had to have ****tershields.

But, the placement and types of roll bars were all there, they were just questionable at times.

Sometimes, the actual roll bars were well away from the helmeted head and allowed plenty of area in case of a roll over.

Other times, the helmeted head barely covered the top of the white Bell Helmet.

Jnaki

As nice as the build is/was, the records fell, but the safety rules were always in question. Roll bars for protection?



You be the judge… YRMV

 

wild stuff