Event Coverage AHRA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS NOV. 1962

The build of my C/A altered marked my attempt to transition from a casual sometimes drag racer
to a more serious competitor with a car built to the standards of sanctioning organizations.
The pieces I put together was a '48(?) English Ford Anglia body that I bought with the proceeds of
selling my D/A Model A coupe. The Anglia was sans engine, trans.(nowadays called a "tranny" by newbies),
and no interior. I dispensed with the fenders and towed it over to A.W. Tackett's Welding in So. Dallas for
installation of the roll bar just behind the door posts, welding solid suspension mounting brackets on my
Spicer rear end, splitting the stock wishbones and welding in brackets to mount them. Also fabricating a
"H" shaped bracket to mount the Crosley steering box in the center about even with the rear door posts.
We also added a fabricated cross member to mount the rear of the '51 Ford truck trans.(with 2nd & high)
with open drive rear output shaft. Working as a machinist, in the J&J engine shop, I was able to liberate a
worn out '55 Chevy 265 (the "no oil filter block") which I had Mr. Beach bore out .060 so I could use a set
of used forged .060 over TRW flattop pistons that I had salvaged from a rebuild. I put it together with a set
of Perfect Circle plain cast iron rings(for fast seating) and a Crower 100F cam. Since I needed high compression,
and was too poor to afford expensive "pop-up" pistons, I used a set of rare '57 FI heads that had the same little
knobs, flanking the spark plug hole, as found on the Power Pack heads. These heads (marked on the ends with ll
instead of the Power Pack -^-) had larger ports and valves than the lesser heads. I had my heads ported and also
polished by a California transplant, named Paul, at a small start-up speed shop owned by James Holston in his
parents Holston Moving & Storage in So. Oak Cliff in Dallas. I added dual springs and hardened aluminum
retainers to the heads and also modified the camshaft sprocket for a 4 degree cam advance.
After adding a "good" used Schiefer flywheel, and a 11" Long style pressure plate, I installed the engine with the
allowed 25% setback allowed by the rules for altereds. The engine was right there when you opened the doors,
sitting high on 5" pedestals that I had A.W. weld in. That, coupled with a 4" aluminum block I put on the front
spring with long shackle bolts, provided the "nose high" design to accomplish the desired weight transfer to the
rear wheels that I learned about from the famous Ram Chargers "High and Mighty" 50's Plymouth coupe.
I enclosed the engine in a large square sheet aluminum box with a Sun tach, SW mechanical oil & temp gauges,
and a large 3" dia. red idiot light coupled to a "below 15psi oil pressure switch.
I topped the engine off with a '57 Rochester FI unit and distributor that I got for $125 (from the proceeds of
the D/A sale) which I rebuilt with a kit from the Chevy parts dept.
My best buddy, Jesse Measles (B/G Anglia), built me a set of headders (which can be seen used inverted and
on the opposite sidse on my TE-440 dragster).
Jesse and I started it up, for the first time about midnight in his neighborhood one night(Bad Boys- Bad Boys!)
and I experienced the first wheel stand from the Crosley bucket seat against the back window. WOW-EE!!!!!!!!!
I had a hard time getting to sleep that night!

 

Ram Chargers High and Mighty. A study in weight transfer.

 

Blackrat40, that sounds like a mean 265. Now days it seems like the 265, and 283 engines don't get much respect do to the displacement. Back in the late 50s thats what people were running along with the Cadillac, Olds and Chrysler Engines. Did you have any problems getting the fuel injection to run well. I know that most people pulled them off and traded them for carbureted intakes due to problems. I guess most people couldn't tune them.

 

An old '64 time slip ...

 

I had no problem getting the FI unit to work good elgringo71. It functioned perfectly as far as I was concerned.
I had just freshly rebuilt it. That was very much like rebuilding a carburetor.
I would suspect that most of the problems people had with them was related to contaminates in the gas plugging
up the tiny orifices in the nozzles. Junk that could pass through carburetor orifices would be still to large to go
through the FI orifices. Just a guess on my part.
For those that don't know, you had no choice but to use the stock Corvette distributor which has a speedometer
type cable that drives a positive displacement high pressure fuel pump submerged in the float bowl.
They were a very good system that was well designed in my opinion. Cheap direct port injection through an
injector plate that had a separate nozzle in each intake port! At least the Corvette distributor was a dual point.

 

Life with my older hot rodder brother Outrageous Eddie. Eddie, at 20, loved to drive his Chrysler powered
'54 Ford with the loud pedal all the way down(scaring the crap out of me!). One night, shortly after the install
of the Chrysler, still with the hood off, we were blasting down an unfamiliar dark street when we launched over
a cross street that was about 3' below the street we were on! We saw the amazing and startling sight of the
battery, hovering briefly above the engine, restrained only by the battery cables, before smashing down onto
the engine spraying pieces and acid all over everything. When we landed in the intersection we bent the dropped
tie rod back and up against the pan. We had to get a buddy to drag us home with a chain with his truck.
I say Outrageous because of his crazy driving and other shocking things he would do when he was young.
For example; he worked for the City of Dallas on a surveying crew in the 60's. About a year after the terrible
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Eddie had been working on a downtown Dallas street with his
transit tripod set up in the middle of the street. He told me that tourist kept interrupting his work by stopping
next to him to ask "...do you know where President Kennedy was shot?". He said he started telling them...
"...yeah...he was shot in the head!" He thought it was funny then but it sounds awful today(especially just after
the anniversary of the assassination). He is still a bit of a smart ass today at age 73 but not as bad.

 

Nice pics blackrat40!! I rode down to Florida for Biketoberfest, and stopped by a buddy of mine who lives about five miles from Big Daddys. It was my second time there, but it never fails to amaze me. Cool stuff!!!! Thanks for the pics.

 

I saw the Anglia and thought I was seeing the one I was involved in in the sixties. It was B/altered and 265 powered with a Packard trans. When it was built The gas class was limited to American built cars so it was made into an altered.
Norm

 

Glad to share them with like minded gearheads!

 

Outstanding...Hemi's and small blocks everywhere. The engines of choice.

 

Wandering WEIAND Manifold (say "why-and"). When I originally built my 1st '40 Ford coupe, for B/G
in 1961, I was able to easily obtain a WEIAND with 3 97's for cheap. Hot rodding was not too popular yet
and there wasn't much market for used speed equipment. What an excellent time that was!
I traded my black primered '34 Pickup(previous pic) for a '40 (B&W pic above)coupe with no engine.
I picked up a '52 303 Olds with an Engle 116 cam with adjustable push rods for the '40 coupe.
I am now working on my 4th '40 Ford coupe which I am trying to replicate my coupe from '61.
I have a '56 324 Olds engine (looks the same as a '52 303) which I bored to 4" and put '57 pistons in it for 346 ci.
With more bucks nowadays I bought an OFFY 3-2 manifold for Rochester 2 bbls. and s Schneider cam.
I always liked the look of the 97's with the side pump linkage.
I happened to spot a WEIAND manifold with 97's on ebay up North somewhere. Well I just had to have it.
When it arrived, and I opened the box, I almost fell out of my chair. It was my original 3-2's from 1961!
It was identifiable by a small drill bit I broke off in the linkage and the red base on the center carb.
What are the chances of that???
I have my Rochester carbs mounted backwards so fuel inlets are on the same side as the 97's (so I can swap 'em).
Since I'm not gonna' be racing this '40 I'm not worried about the Rochesters being backwards.

 

That's cool, sometimes you wonder not just about a car from the past but a specific part like that, that made an impact on you. That's pretty neat it made it back to you all these years later.

 

Excellent thread! Thanks for sharing all these photos

 

Wow blackrat congratulations on getting your old intake manifold back from halfway across the country after all of the years, talk about a needle in a haystack. I like where you are going on your 1940 ford coupe build.

 

A NEED FOR SPEED. After having some radical fun with my C/A Anglia (pictured earlier) I saw a
Chassis Research TE-440 chassis in a guys backyard one day. It had no engine or trans. but was otherwise
complete with an Olds rear end with brakes and steering(sans steering wheel) and a Crosley front axle.
(Hmmm...Crosley enters the picture once again) Well I made a deal with the guy and went home and pulled
the engine out of the Anglia and sold the car for enough to buy the dragster chassis with trailer.
I had seen a new class for dragsters that AHRA had formulated called "Experimental Gas Dragster" for guys
to get into the dragster ranks. It was B/XGD for under 300ci with one 4 bbl carb. or A/XGD for 300-350ci
also with a single 4bbl carb. Well my 272ci sbc was good for the B class! I pulled my Rochester FI unit off
my engine and sold it for enough to buy a Mallory Mini-Mag and an intake with an AFB 4bbl.
I fabbed a 4130 plate for a front engine mount, got an early Ford to Chevy trans. adapter, got a '48 Ford side
shift trans. that I modified for 2nd and high gear only. Had Ed Mabry Machine shop make me a 35lb flywheel
from steel billet and I was in business !! I put the altered headders on the opposite sides upside down..."zoomies!"

I used to love running this dragster at night at Greenvalley between Dallas and Ft. Worth, Texas.
After a few seconds of extreme violence and noise, hitting the mag kill switch on the bowtie wheel,
and seeing the residual blue and yellow flames from the mini zoomies fiicker to dark, and listening
to the whir of the slicks on either side of me and silence while rolling up the hill pulling the brake lever.
Running on a Sunday afternoon, in Texas heat, you would just about pass out sitting in your car, fully
suited up waiting in the push start lane. I didn't care if I won or lost. I just wanted to get out of the fire suit!
I had a "white-knuckle" experience one night in this dragster. Green Valley Raceway had taken to renting
to the SCCA some weekends to run road racing cars. The road race course utilized a loop on the pit side
which came out for a 90 degree turn onto the dragstrip right in the finish line lights. After a number of
those events, a roll in the asphalt began to build up a bump there. That was no problem for the "door slammers"
but was a different story for cars with solid mounted rear ends!
In those days I used a (legal) leather fire mask with built in goggles that had an elastic strap that went around
the back of my helmet. One night, as I cruised through the lights, when I hit that bump my mask and goggles
slipped down about 2" putting the forehead portion of the mask right over my eyes! YIKES...DON'T PANIC!
I had to hold onto the bowtie wheel with my left hand while pumping the brake handle with the right hand.
As I whizzed up the shutoff hill I was completely blind. Luckily I had done it enough times to know about how
much more time I had to slow it down and finally turn loose of the brake handle long enough to flip the mask up.
All ended well. I began plans and a build soon for a new lighter A/XGD car with a 341 DeSoto Hemi.
Unfortunately(?) I got my draft notice for the Vietnam War fun shortly thereafter. (Grrrrrrr...!).
That put my plans on hold for a few years as I joined the Navy to avoid the bullets.

I put the dragsters in storage with our household furniture before reporting for induction to the Navy.
I decided to pull the mag out off the engine to store it separately( thinking it would be easy to steal).
Ironically, when I returned from the service, the dragsters had been stolen from Bekins Van & Storage
and the only vestiges that was left of racing was the Mini-Mag! I had the storage company by the nads
since their bill of lading said "one racing car on trailer" for the TE-440. I could have said it was a F1 car!
To their relief, I was honest on the claim of value, and they paid up promptly!
It was OK since my 1st wife (brand-X) didn't like me racing. So I took up flying(which she didn't like either!).
So I traded the Mini-Mag for a Mustang motorcycle.

 

Thanks for your comment elgringo71. Check tonight's post and story of REAL HOT RODDING.

 

Just when I was starting to get the image out of my mind of the high winding fuel injected 265 pulling the wheels on the Anglia and now you come with this

 

I think maybe I had more than my share of fun growing up as a hot rodder in the 50's-70's.
This thread is intended to give the younger guys(I'm 72) a feel for what it was like "back in the day".
I would like very much for guys like "296Ardun", "Dean Lowe", "Rooman", My friend Bobby "wbrw32"
and other dinosaurs like us to trace their history in hot rodding like I have here for the enjoyment of the young
hot rodders of today who we would like to pass the torch to. Feel free to add to this thread...we owe our history
to those who will follow us. It's old hat to us but it's like reading Huckleberry Fin to guys who were not there!
Here's a pic of my '59 Corvette that "brand-X" and I drove to California on "The Mother Road Route 66" to
report for my first duty assignment after joining the Navy(note my old beater '51 Studie at the curb).

 

We have lots of the same interests blackrat. See my avatar picture, and it's a Texas car too. It previously ran a 427 and a Muncie 4 speed. I used to not post much on the HAMB because I was not around in the golden years and didn't want to say things that I didn't know to be true but I realized that as I post pictures and say what I have heard from people that were there it brings out more first hand information and that is what I am here for. Some of my friends raced in the Gasser Wars and I soak up all of their storys of running at Indy or at the Winter Nationals or at some dirt tracks with dangerous shut down areas in the south. It's all solid gold to me and I am trying to soak it up. This information needs to be documented. Thanks for starting this thread.

Here is a Crosley powered dragster that you might enjoy seeing.

 

Glad you're in the hobby buddy!

 

These are great stories, much appreciated, and keep 'em coming. I suspect Elgringo71 and I are the same age (going by the 71, I assume that'd be birth year), so we're both too young to have first hand experience during the golden age. So these stories and pics are fantastic

 

Glad to have some guys interested in stories from the glory days brad2v.
One night at Greenvalley Raceway I almost had a nasty accident.
That was back when dragsters were push started. Push start race cars were lined up in pairs on
the return road, parallel to the drag strip on the pit side, pointed toward the starting line.
I was lined up next to the guard rail along the pit area. I had a bad combination that night.
An inexperienced push car driver and a push bar offset to the left side of my chassis.
So we got our call, started rolling, and I let the clutch out with the switch off to build up oil pressure.
When the push car driver felt the resistance and it was not starting he thought we needed to go faster!
So he pushed harder and I started heading toward the guard rail. When I had the bowtie steering wheel
all the way to the left lock, and still veering right, I quickly reached around to the left side of the bowtie
with my right hand and flipped the mag switch on. It fired up and I pulled away from my push car with
inches to spare from the guard rail. Whew!!! ...almost wadded it up! My fault for not briefing my pusher.

 

Hey Mick !! back in your post #138,you asked for me,for one,to tell of our old racing experiences.There is a thread here on the HAMB already doing that.It was posted by Karl Knecht and is several pages long and many photos.Karls screen name is KKROD

 

btt

 

Enjoying your posts, hope you keep them coming.

 

They are a window in time for us youngsters and a trip down memory lane for those that lived similar experiences.

 

YOU DID VERY -- VERY GOOD-- BEST DAYS -- CAN WE -- BRING THEM BACK ???????? ----- YOU THINK ---????????

 

YOU HAVE DONE A # 1 JOB on this truck we NEED more MAN like YOU

 

Thanks for your comment JimmyD!

 

thanks for starting the thread...missed it the first time thru....was a great read tonight....thanks for posting !