Hello Hambers. I bought a fed a few years back and have had no luck with i.d. ing the chassis. I've looked through tons of picks to see if there's anything close. No luck. The fella I bought it from thought it came out of the Midwest. I picked it up in North Dakota. I repainted it last year and it had about 8 layers of paint on the body lol. It looks like it was gold originally then red. It still had the hand brake mount on it. I had to fix the rear end uprights as they only had 2 mounting holes on each side. Needed 4 to certify. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Barry.
Any stampings - like a certificate # up around the roll bar ? If there's one there there might be a certification trail somewhere.
No I went over it well. Didn't find anything. I stripped it down as i had to fix the center as it was bent. All good now.
Need pictures of the front end also a rear shot forward to see if the bottom rails come back straight or narrow in. Depending on those pics could determine if its a "woody" chassis. Since RCE was a factory of sorts and built many chassis, pin-pointing the original owner is extremely difficult as there are no records
Chances are that the roll cage mods/additions covered up any SEMA stamp/tag going from a 3 point to a 5 point
Not that I am any help in identifying your car/chassis...but I'm thinking it may have started as candy red. The gold would have been the basecoat.
Thanks for the replys! I have a couple more pics that might help. It has a solid front. Not like the old style. I'm guessing this might have been in a wreck at one time.
OK , with all the mods and repairs, what you have is a "DRAGSTER" nothing more and nothing less, Put it together and just run it, searching for anything else is a waste
It is! lol. nhra wants an identification on the certification. Just seeing if I can get it close. Or if anyone recognizes it.
Just tell them home built. If the tubes pass and are in the correct place it doesn't make any difference.
In later times, Starting in the 90's I as a manufacture , was required to stamp/tag a brand new frame as to who built it with a serial number. Older, refurbished, home built are not. Older cars were SEMA stamped with a chassis builder ID number- but that program was discontinued many many years ago and SEMA has no standing/recognition and has been replaced with SFI as the standards which NHRA accepts. Your cars rear cage section was built Woody (RCE) Gilmore "STYLE", but cant make positive ID unless the car is in front me to look beyond the visual changes. Its been close to 50 years since Woody was in business building cars. Don Long kept perfect records and still has them. If a claim was made about a found car--- We could go back into the list of known to exist cars and destroyed cars, and fill the gaps based on build specs. If turns up True, a copy of the actual invoice would be available to the owner
I have always wanted to know who the original owner of the Don Long car that I resurrected and raced in the late 80's. I think P-Wood told me Don built around 65 front engine cars, not sure if he built any replacement chassis. When we took it apart for the rebuild, there was an aluminum hold down bracket with "Ruth" stamped on it. Going from memory, it was 180" WB, and had a full body. Here are some pics of it, during the re-vamp.
Per a recent "HOOK KNOWS" video--- Don said that RUTH was one of his best and frequent customers. Wheelbase and motor "out" would help determine the original owner, tying that to Ruth's name would get it close
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