History Drag cars in motion.......picture thread.

[rick finch]

Originally Posted by Special Ed

You mean except for all the stuff other people did first, right?

Funny and true....

[rick finch]

[rick finch]

[rick finch]

[storm king]

Big Daddy is correct. There's never been , and never will be, another builder, driver, innovator and thinker like him.
Car Craft used to have a captioned picture on the back page, and one month it had T.C. Lemmons standing by one of the front wheels of Big's car. I think it was John Weibe that was sitting one one of the front wheels with one of those little thought bubbbles next to him saying, "there's something trick going on here", and T.C. had one that said, "you wouldn't know a trick if you were sitting on it"!
I talked to T.C. about that a couple of years ago and he was just laughing like mad about that...

[rick finch]

Hmmmm.......okay, whatever.

[rick finch]

[rick finch]

[rick finch]

Early Mike Sullivan.....



.....and later.

[Special Ed]

Here's an example of a RED built ten years before Garlits. The Coleman Brothers out of Maryland were very competitive, and won their share of races...

[Tom S. in Tn.]

#28238;
I read on the net not long ago Roland Leong's last fe car was in some multi millionaire's collection in a castle someplace like Italy or somewhere. I lost the web page.
Rick, you have some of the most memory provoking photo's I've ever seen.
That shot of Bill Flynn's Hemi Dart on the other thread is stunning!
Tom S. in Tn.

[rick finch]

^^^ That's what it is all about Tim....we were lucky to live during a great time. All the years I was racing, I was too busy being in the moment and didn't take the opportunity to capture it. Finding & posting these old photos, kinda makes up for it. (and it brings back some wonderful memories.)

[rick finch]

Speaking of Roland Leong....Bakersfield, 1965.

[rcktscientist]

Yes, the Yankee Peddler Dart is awesome. I was at a Saturday Night Funny Car Show at New York National circa 1968. Bill Flynn's 'Cuda, Dave Strictler's Vette and others. They made a big deal about Bill on the starting line mixing up a batch of "Asphestos wrapped Coca Cola" in a beaker and gingerley poured it in the tank. No doubt Hydrazine which was a popular additive backin the day. He proceeded to stand the 'Cuda on it's bumper, all 4 wheels off the ground. Looked more like the Hemi Under Galss than the Yankee Peddler. Those were the days.

I build cars here in San Diego and when I get my new shop sorted out (long story) I will get back on my Stretched Tilt Front Funny Car project in the lines of Strictler's Vette.

[storm king]

Flynn had a 'Cuda in '68? He raced most of the season at Conn. with a '67 Coronet and later his '68 hemi Dart.
We had to run a special match race against him, Ed Miller, and the Grump when they claimed our engines were over the cube limit for their heads up S/S show.

[rcktscientist]

Originally Posted by storm king

Flynn had a 'Cuda in '68? He raced most of the season at Conn. with a '67 Coronet and later his '68 hemi Dart.
We had to run a special match race against him, Ed Miller, and the Grump when they claimed our engines were over the cube limit for their heads up S/S show.

May have been 1967, but yes, Bill Flynn's Yankee Peddler Injected F/C Cuda was a Regular on the East Coast. I'm sure I have some shots I'll post tonight when I get home.

[rick finch]

Storm King, about Garlits....yes he was an innovator, builder & a good driver. However, no man is an island.....innovation & ideas come from many sources. Alot of younger folks have been led to believe he built the first rear engined dragster, that is false, of that there is no dispute. He did build the first "successful" rear motored car, and there is no dispute about that.......

I've copied & pasted the following from the "We Did It For Love" website. It is a tribute to Pat Foster after his death from cancer. Read all the way to the bottom (it's pertinent.)





Test Pilot

Lions - December, 1969. Pat Foster in the first Woody (RCE) rear engine dragster. As Patty explains it below, the car had some flaws and although he doesn't expound on the subject, it almost cost Foster his life. I witnessed the incident from the starting line and it was so bad that I just knew he was dead. When the car crossed the track at 200 mph it literally leaped over the guardrail and flew a good 100 feet in the air about 10 feet off the ground. It struck a wooden light pole in flight and disintegrated. Luckily the car hit the pole just behind Pat. Had it hit another 2 feet (or less) further forward - well, I would have been right. As it was, the cage stayed in tact and the engine continued on through the field, over a fence and into the far end of the parking lot. Foster was in bad shape but alive. It took him nearly a year to completely recover and I would bet he still has some aches on cold days.

In his own words, here's how Patty answered the question: "How did the ill-fated Woody car come to be?"
"There was no particular reason that Woody and I decided to build a back motored car. It began as lunch talk and grew from there. We decided to do the car with Woody supplying the materials and me donating the labor. We approached John Bateman to use his running gear and one of his 392's. He agreed, so the work began. We felt to be able to achieve the balance of the better running front motor cars of the era we needed to get the static load on the rear as high as possible so we inverted the rear end, used a small gear drive off the pinion to reverse the rotation, came back through the rear housing to the bell housing. Back of block to centerline of rear ended up about 18 ".
Some how, John and Woody had a falling apart and Leland Kolb ended up the motor supplier. After two outings with the piece, both marred by poor handling, we slowed the steering from the regular 6-1 ratio to 10-1 and headed to the Beach for more testing. The car hooked hard and made a very nice, straight hard run until entering the lights, at which time it picked up the front end violently, got on the fifth wheel just behind the seat, tipped on to left rear and catapulted the car over the right lane guardrail where it struck a light pole. By the way, we started in the left lane.

Pat Foster
More to The Story from Foster...
Woody and I built the car and used Leland Kolb's engine and clutch. We thought it was time to get the driver out of harms way, so did the car as a spec project. This was before Garlits and Swingle did his. Soon after crashing the original car Woody made the changes needed and did another for Duane Ong, that performed well.
The car I crashed had the engine too far to the rear and needed a front. wing. Also prior to the night at Long Beach we had made a couple of attempts at OCIR and Irwindale, where we determined the steering had to be slowed considerably. That handled, we went to the 'Beach' convinced we had it figured out. On it's initial run that day it hauled ass, straight as an arrow to the 1100-1200 ft mark then violently started a blow-over. A single fifth wheel, close to the axle centerline caused it to tip onto the left rear slick and launched it over the opposite guardrail, where it hit a phone pole about eight feet from the ground.
Myself and the front half of the car dropped to the bottom of the pole while the rear half with the engine went through the spectator parking lot and ended up almost at Willow St.
Gar called me in the hospital after two weeks and asked if I had any suggestions for his back motored car he and Swingle had on the jig. I told him to slow the steering and not locate the engine as far to the rear as we had done and to consider a wing on the front.

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[408 AA/D]

Originally Posted by Tom S. in Tn.

#28238;
I read on the net not long ago Roland Leong's last fe car was in some multi millionaire's collection in a castle someplace like Italy or somewhere. I lost the web page.
Rick, you have some of the most memory provoking photo's I've ever seen.
That shot of Bill Flynn's Hemi Dart on the other thread is stunning!
Tom S. in Tn.

Tom, the car in the pic from #28238 is not the car that is now in Italy. The car in Italy is an earlier car. The car in pic #28238 is a 180" wheelbase Don Long car. This car came to Texas in about 1968 and was owned by the team of Peebles & Williams out of Ft. Worth. This car sat in our shop from about 1971 to 1974 before it was sold and went to East TX. I later had this car back in my posession until 1977 and at that time it went back to East TX. The last time I saw this car was 1984 at Green Valley and at that time the car was painted yellow and had a blown smallblock in it and the car still had the gold front wheels, axle and radius rods (Jackie Peebles touch). This car has a unique chassis feature as the car was originally built for a 392 but was later powered by a 426 so there was a kickout welded into the top frame rail to clear the 426 oil pump. I have chased many leads trying to locate this car since about 1995 without any luck. I have heard that the car was in a chicken coop in Oklahoma to the car was crashed and destroyed.


If anyone has any leads on this car please PM me. This car needs to be located and restored to it's original glory days.

Foot note: There is a car running in the SWJF association now that is also a Don Long car that was also ran by Peebles & Williams but this is not the same car. The car I'm referencing now was bought new from Don Long and was never owned by Roland. This car was called the Texas flag car due to it's paint scheme.


408

[rcktscientist]

Here is a shot of The Yankee Peddler Cuda (not mine) that probably came off this site. I have some shots I took I'll post when I get a chance to look for them.

[296ardun]

Rick has a good point...take nothing away from Garlits (I used to drive to Bakersfield to get him M&Hs when he was in California)...and he does not claim to have built the first successful rear-engined fueler...there were several, including the "Pawnbroker" that Pat Foster mentions in his story, Duane Ong won the Long Island AHRA Nationals (or maybe the Springnats??) with it, before Garlits built his ... Mark Williams of Denver also built a rear-engined fueler that did well but usually ran locally and didn't get much press...and then the Coleman Bros, noted in an earlier post, the various Sidewinders, Speed Sport, etc.

Again, nothing against Garlits, but just to correct a too-common belief that he was first with a successful rear-motored fuel dragster...(but, to his credit, he did kick butt with it!!)