The Mystery Of The RPM Valve Covers

A few years ago, I told the story of my “RPM” valve covers for Small Block Chevrolet. Essentially, I could throw these things off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic and they would inevitably find their way back to me. But as sticky as they are, I’ve never been able to figure who made them or where they came from.

A well experienced friend of my dad’s mentioned that he recognized them and was almost certain they came from the Mickey Thompson Indy Car effort in the early 60’s. A couple of years ago, however, I was at Indy and ran into a crew of guys fielding one of Mickey’s old Indy cars for the pre-race parade. They were busy as hell prepping the car, but I was able to show one of the older gentlemen a picture of the valve covers on my phone.

“I’m so old that I was around back then… My memory isn’t the best, but I don’t remember them. Sorry.”

And then he bounced off towards the car with the athleticism of a juvenile bunny after a carrot – leaving me with no answers and a fading hope of ever having any. In fact, I had all but given up on the idea of ever knowing the history of these things until about a month ago when I got this email:

“Hey, man. Do you still have the RPM valve covers you posted about in 2018? If so, I would like to offer you $500 for them.”

It came from an obvious throw away email account, but maybe this guy knew something? I replied and asked for more information and didn’t hear back until Friday of last week.

“No questions asked. I’ll PayPal $1500 today if you can get me a tracking number by tomorrow. I need these more than you.”

Ok… Damnit. Where the hell did these valve covers come from? Someone out there has to know!