History Allison Brothers 64 Chevelle

Hoping Ryan can cut me a little slack.
I have a student building a stock car model. He chose Bobby's 64 Chevelle because of the impact it had on the sport. Problem is, we cannot find much more than a few grainy pictures. I remember an article about the car in Stock Car Magazine I think. Went into great detail about the suspension. Pretty sure he used Ford Spindles and built his own control arms, and this was supposed to be the first car running chevy truck trailing arm suspension. The chevelle with a small block was putting the hurt on full size big block cars.

Looking for any verifiable information.

Thanks for any help you can offer

 

Wow.......I remember the car very well. I may even have some pictures in the archives (cardboard boxes in the basement ??). While doing a stint in the Navy in 1968, I was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola Fla. I attended the annual Snowball Derby stock car race held at the Pensacola oval in Dec ? Jan ? that year. The Allisons showed up from nearby Hueytown Alabama.

If I remember correctly, Bobby won in the red Chevelle and brother Donnie was close behind in a red 1957 Chev. I was in the pits after the races and was all over both cars. Prior to the Navy, I had built several dirt track cars in Iowa right out of high school so I was very interested in how the southern good ole boys put their cars together.

I will see if I can find any of the old pictures.

 

Nice looking race car.

 

I was there and Junior Johnson's '63 Impala was generally considered the first truck arm car. But, there's nothing really new in racing.

Yes, Bobby made his own front and rear suspension. Notice the big right front spindle? Bobby had a simple mold made to pour a big lump of steel and spent many hours on a manual South Bend machining those for his cars and others. It was sized to use 3/4-ton pickup rear full-floating hub bearings.

jack vines

 

The Chevelles and ChevyIIs on the outlaw dirt and asphalt ovals used tri 5 frames and floorpans. You found a tri5 with a decent frame and floor pan, cut it on the firewall as far UP as was vertical all way across and then down the very OUTER edge of floor pan to a point in the back seat area, and then discarded the body. If it was to be a ChevyII, you then shortened the frame enough to get a ChevyII wheelbase. For a Chevelle, the wheelbase was the same.
Then you trimmed the donor Chevelle or ChevyII body on the firewall DOWN as as far as it remained vertical and down the floorpan as far to the INSIDE as possible to a point also in the back seat area.
Set the body over on the tri5 frame and floor pan with tri5 body mounts still in place under floor pan, trim both to a close fit and start welding. This worked quite well. This was after the cup cars were no longer using mid 60s cars prolly '69 or so.
NASCAR did at that time have quite a few of these cars in the Sportsman races however and they eventually required them to run on the Chevelle type frames.
When Bobby Allison was running them in Cup Racing, or Grand National as it was called then, a Chevelle type frame was used.
One of the publishing companies of the period of using them in Sportsman racing in NASCAR, put out a book dedicated to all the details of the way the Allisons built them in their race shop for Sportsman racing, think it may have been HP books.

 

Wow!
Plenty of great info so far. Thanks guys.

 

steve smith motorsports had books chassis blueprints.Most used 3/4 ton spindles.Still have books and blueprints here somewhere.jimmie king

 

Now we are getting somewhere.
Alright!

 

Mr Bracken owned the grand national car number 2 .. It was a 65 year as far as photos of the gran national car go to the Alabama Auto Racing Pioneers web site. Tom Gloor sponsored the gn car .I never looked at the GN car..As far as the short track 64 Chevelle that Bobby ran it was owned by Roy Milligan and built by Jimmy Morris. It had 63 ford Galaxie front spindals with GN hubs and a 5 on 5 bolt pattern. Franklin QC and a 4 point rear set up...Why do I know I helped keep the short track car up. It won races all over the south east states with Bobby driving. The number on it was 19. Later Roy Milligan took back the driving after Bobby built a 1968 chevelle short track car. If you want I can get you some other contact info.. Good luck Bobby

 

Add more it used lower control arms with a 1 inch step and a long Lincoln lower ball joint. The tie rods were ford truck with ES 150 tie rod ends. This was the Allison set up he sold for years I still have a set of upper and lower they were stick welded by Allison racing

 

Way cool history lesson.

 

The car in your photo is a tribute car not the car Bobby raced in Grand National. It is a mixture of parts mostly sportsman car parts. Still a good display unit.

 

Thanks guys. This is just what he needed. Trusting the fading memory of a magazine article from almost 30 years ago was a risky proposition. 20 years from now that pesky magazine will fall out of whatever box I stashed it in.

 

Contact information would be awesome. The student is really getting into this project.
Thank you so much for the information so far.

We will be at barber Motorsports Park on April 30, maybe we can figure out a meeting the Sunday before.

 

I had read that Bobby asked NASCAR if he could install a Holman Moody front clip on the car and they nixed that. So he built his own on the garage floor, chalk, plumb bob, etc. This was in an old Stock Car Racing magazine article.
Locally to me, the car ran Islip Speedway and possibly at Bridgehampton.

 

That is probably the article I have been looking for. The article says that in one race, Bill France walked out onto the track and flagged him into the pits for fuel so the pack could catch up.