Crazydaddyo, Do you have any pic's of rail cars? My friends dad made one years ago. His name was Fred Wise. I found a Popular Mechanics magazine about rail cars from 1948,and I gave it to him. The article was really cool! I guess they ran on a big,banked track. Anybody have some pic's???
I collect, restore and build tether cars when I have the time. My Avatar is one of my O&R NOS .049's. Here are some that I have completed and sold. This is a non-powered All American Hot Rod This is a Cox pusher Another pusher for Coors fans.
My Great Grandfather raced these and I'm lucky enough to have his cars and a few photos and clipped newspaper articles form the late 30's and early 40's. I've never collected beyond what was given to me but have always thought they are very cool. My great Grandfather is second from the left in the front row (holding his hat in front of his chest)
Hey Bob, I see you found some pictures of rail cars. Here is some old movie footage. This was at Ray Snow Hobby park in Fresno Ca. Some time in the mid 40's. These cars were going 100+ mph and weighed @ 5 lbs. The engines were .60 c.i. and ran aon a mixture of methonol, Nitro, and Castor oil. They had additives that the put in the fuel to make the 60% nitro mixtures burn better. Many of those additives are very toxic and are now banned. Those toxic additive are the reson many of these guy died later in life. Any way here is a link to the film: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/12221
Important, There are a lot of "Gold chainers" out there that will pay big money for some of these old cars. When you post that you have your Dad's or other relitives old car on here, you will probably be contacted by some one that does there buying. These "Dealers" will try to buy your car at a fraction of what it is worth and re-sell it at a large profit. My advice is to keep your car. It is probably worth more to you as a reminder of that person then what they will offer you for the car. There are some real scumbags on the collector side of this hobby. I know people that have gone into an old guys house who was an old racer on a fixed income and buy up all of his old cars for a couple of hundered dollars and re-sell them for tens of thousands of dollars. If you are thinking of selling them, PM me and I can give you a value of what it is worth. Really, no BS Dan
I bought a 56 F100 a while back from an older guy in Paso Robles , he had this Thimbledrome on a shelf in the garage . When he saw how much I liked it , he sold it to me pretty cheap (I think he said he paid $1 for it many years ago ) . I always really liked these . If I could only talk him in to selling me the 36 3 window buried in the garage that he's had since the 50's !!
Here are a couple of pics of a Dooling F-car I restored a few years ago. It was originally owned by my uncle and built by my dad around 1947 or 48. I spent almost a year on this project. Lots of NOS parts I have from my dad's stuff; 1.5 volt wet cell battery, champion sparkplug, Hurlman coil and condenser, etc. I used the original Hornet 60. It needed only clean up to run well. All of the painting (except the 1/4 in checkerboard) is individually masked(which means that there is only one color over the primer/sealer, no two colors overlap, each one masked and sprayed individually), which was a weight saving trick my old man used on all his racing planes and cars back then(anything to get an "edge"). After I finished, I gave it to a friend for his birthday(yeah, I know what these are worth... He's a good friend who has done many favors for me over the years). It's a runable car, but I doubt he will ever fire it up. I still have the F car my dad built for himself at the same time... unrestored and will probably stay that way. I have a pic of the car on my lap taken in '49.
The Dooling Brothers mentioned in the ad's art work were the originators of nitro-methane fuel in "full size" miget racing. As stated in both the Edelbrock biography and the new Roger Ward biography, Vic Edelbrock got some "rocket fuel" used in tether cars from the Dooling brothers and used it at Gilmore Stadium in his V-8 60 Kurtis against the Offys. Roger Ward won in that car that night, which was the first time that a V-8 60 beat the Offy migets. Just a sidenote.
Here are some pictures of rail track. This is the Tyrone , PA. track @ 1950 This is the Fresno, CA track as it was beeing built And this was the Oakland, Ca. track. (thanks for the corection Papina)
His car was a McCoy Railton with a McCoy .60 engine and a hand carved balsa wood top. Back then (late 40's) the kits went for @ $40 had that car survived in one piece it would be worth @ $2,500
Dude that cat looks sick,I guess $40.00 was a lot of dough back then. But hey cheesecake is my favorite!!>>>>.
Joe Dooling lives about 40 minutes from me. He's a grandson or nephew, I forget which! He's got a few of the family cars. The family talent continued, Joe made/makes cams for those 1/2-a-chevy-small-block roundy round motors. One hell of a machinist and a prince of a guy and, of course, has alot of cool old stuff and a bitchin' shop.