History 1938 hotrods at the dry lakes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fujo5fHSCzk&feature=related

If you haven't seen this take a look and see what it was really like.

I was there at the Harper's meet, and saw Tomy Lee's offie, but can not remember any but Rufi's .

Which suprised everyone

If it is a duplicate , so be it!

TraderJack

 

you must have some good stories to tell, amazing... the REAL McCoy! thanks for posting them pictures up, real treat

the picture of tommy lee's car and the 4 roadsters runnin' abreast are fantastic.

 

That is a great clip. Put together by SUHRsc (Zach).

Jack, here is a few pics from Bob Giovanine pre-WW2 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149631

Do you have any pics of your early cars?

 

Wow thats awesome!!

 

thats so cool. the 4 roadsters together are bitchin!

 

Road to Harpers with my neighbor football player in a 29 roadster with winfield Redhead and Winfield carb , plus, of course the straight pipes. Left San Diego about 8 pm and drove up their at about 65 miles per hour, which was a great speed at that time. Exhaust manifold glowing red, and headlights that let you see about 100 feet ahead of you. thriilling ride. Coming into Victorville, we lost all the bearings in the engine coming down the grade into town, so had to put in in garage in town and fix the bearings in the morning, Might have been because the A used about 2 quarts of oil in 75 miles, and , of course , we had little money. We would stop in a gas station and look for the used oil drum, dip out a couple of quarts and take off again. Didn't know what the oil was, but it was free! Any way, we got there and were sitting in the Road Ramblers pit when Rufi went by and everyone stood up to look as it was the fastest car we had ever seen.

Road back to San Diego in a Studebaker President Convertible that had a 90mph tag on the dash board. Long and slow at 45 mph back to San Diego, I was all of 16 at the time.

I remember at one of the Harper's meet, Kong, of the ignition makers, fired up about 5 in the morning, came storming back to his location and hit his tow car dead center in the rear.

But, it is amazing what you can remember as you get older!

Tommy Lee had an Alfa 6C, two 1938 Cadillac V16s, a Figoni-Falaschi coupe and the offie roadster there. Amazingly rich man!

TraderJack

 

<http://www.sonic.net/~jho/auction/20071125_2.jpg>

 

Awesome pictures and stories. Thanks for sharing

 

Great stuff, thanks for remembering and sharing those memories.

 

Thank you

 

Very cool indeed.

 

Wow! Thanks for the stories! This is heavy.................

 

Very cool! Thank you.

 

great stuff, thankyou sir!

 

Wow!
Really cool.Anyone know who sang the soundtrack?

 

Incredible stuff Trader Jack. If you have any more please share them with us.

I hope you don't mind but I'm putting up the picture you were trying to put up in your last post. It looks like it has the makings of a cool car, any more info on that one?

 

went well with morning coffee

 

The modified at 1:28 secs thru 1:30 secs is awesome!!! I would love to see some more pics of that thing. Very cool video!

 

Wow, thanks so much for sharing the photos and the story. Do tell more!

Thanks Zach for putting it all together.

 

Truly an American treasure. thank you.

 

At the end there is a couple shits of them running a belly tank type car. I thought that was not until after the war when Bill Burke had the idea of running one of them on the lakes. Any info on that?

 

Outstanding!

 

Incredible!

 

Grey hairs ... B/w pics... Neat old stuff is new again!

 

thats Bob Rufi....home made body
maybe why Burke thought the tanks looked so good?

 

Wow, I had no idea that they were making hand made belly tank type bodies in the 30's. That's something that I am going to have to dive into and start learning about. There was so much growth in that short period of about ten years it's crazy. Forward thinking minds our grandfathers had huh?

 

So the Whippet grille shells were allready being used on hotrods way back then. Nice stuff.

 

very, very cool... damn

 

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

 

Yep, that big picture of me in my Rajo is from 1937, Notice the complete lack of safety equipment, and,of course, no floorboards. That is a Rajo 8valve, with winfield carbuerator, had no exhaust pipe , exhaust was direct out of the exhaust manifold,. Had a Ruxtell rear end, and that gave if 4 speeds forward, and 2 speeds in reverse.

In the center of the dashboard (lol) you can see the air pump for the gasoline tank.

Too you younger folks the T had a 3 pedal system for the transmission, One reverse pedal, one brake pedal, and on two speed pedal, and the Ruxtell was a two speed rear end that was lever shifted in the cockpit. so when you took off with it you would press the pedal for low with the ruckstell in low, then shift the rucktell for second, pull the ruckstell back to low as you let up on the transmission pedal, and then shift the ruckstell to high gear. All sorts of action, but not really very fast.

And notice it only had rear wheel brakes, besides the transmission brake.

Had too much camber in the front end, so one time I went around a corner, up a guy's drive way and into the guys garage wall. cost me $25 to have the garage fixed.

Speaking of the cost of gasoline, when I was running this thing, gasoline was 11-15 cents a gallon , with ethyl at 15 cents.

When I was going to highschool I had a 50 cents a week allowance!

But 15 cents was 2/3 of an hours salary! Equivilent cost of gasoline now, here in California, would be about $6 a gallon.

Trader Jack