History Real Blood Sport: Old-Time Demolition Derby

Pissin' blood? DAMN, guys, you DO suffer for what you love to do, eh?

But I'm glad to see the safety hints, so maybe some newer guys don't have to break fingers, knees, get unnecessary whiplash, etc.

 

Jeezus crashnburns!!! That's straight brutal!!! Never was a big fan of the k-rails in a derby. great for keeping cars in, but once you nail one of those things, you feel it for a week or two after...

 

So you and your brother were the last 2 left in the Main event. Did you pound the crap out of each other and put on a show for the fans?

2 weeks ago my buddy ended up in the same situation with his brother in law. By the time they were done, both cars were nothing but crusher material. The fans were a little shocked by this. One yelled out, "I thought you guys were friends!" My buddy yelled back - "no, we're family"

 

New York State Fair championship this year started about 70 cars in the main event and came down to two Chrysler Cordobas and about a '74 Buick Electra. Funny how two years in a row the last three cars included two of the same car (last year they were like '99-00 Chevy Luminas, ass ends folded right into the back seat and still going). About the only car I saw that made me cry a little was a '73 Pontiac LeMans. More guys ended up on top of other cars this year than I ever remember seeing before, too.

Those Cordobas are strong, I've seen them used to win two or three other derbies in the past. I guess for every one you kill in a derby it's one more for Ricardo Montalbahn to try to sell when you get to the other side (you decide if that's Heaven or Hell).

JN Productions runs the show and their rules keep the cars pretty stock, no upside down manifolds, usually no welded doors, or that sort of thing, relocated battery and fuel tank and that's about it.

One guy in one of the heats kept putting his arm outside the door like he was backing up in a parking lot, they were going to DQ him if he didn't stop but he ended up being one of the last two cars running.

The way this works, county fair champions and runners-up from across the state are guaranteed to start in the final, local guys and those not qualified have to work their way through a heat that runs down to two cars, plus they do a last chance heat for anyone else not in. But it puts you at a terrible disadvantage, because you have to run your beat up car against a whole pack of fresh ones. But you already won some prize money for your trouble.

At least one of this year's county fair champions was a woman.

They combine the show with a double figure eight race in the front stretch for compact cars and a compact car demo featuring mostly the same cars. One guy ended up with his Honda upside down in the figure eights - they get pretty crazy but it's a tight little track on the dirt frontstretch so they can't build much speed. They flopped the car back over and he ran it in the demo later.

 

I've heard of only two fatalities from derbies over the past 30 years, one from a seat coming completely out of a car. I don't recall what the other was, maybe a fire. The worst injury that I ever personally witnessed was a driver getting a severely broken jaw and pretty bad concussion from a loose bumper end flopping into the driver's window. WHAM! Lights out...

Personally, my worst injuries usually occur when building the fuckin cars. When I used to run in the fair circuit in NW Ohio back in the '80s (six to eight shows), I'd only get a whiplash from the first derby of the year. Would never get another whiplash in the rest of them, and I drive balls out, WFO!

Attached are a few build picks of the car I'm driving this Sunday night at the local fair. I'm trying a small block 360 this time. Check out my shifter, wish I had the car it came out of...

 

JM productions SUCKS fat monkey ballz!THE MOST hated promotor in the sport!Unfortunatly for some the fair boards put them in there.

used to be gas tank stayed in stock position as well as the battery!

 

as for injuries lotsa stiches here and there over the years!

 

HenryJ429 wrote: So you and your brother were the last 2 left in the Main event. Did you pound the crap out of each other and put on a show for the fans? 2 weeks ago my buddy ended up in the same situation with his brother in law. By the time they were done, both cars were nothing but crusher material. The fans were a little shocked by this. One yelled out, "I thought you guys were friends!" My buddy yelled back - "no, we're family"

HenryJ, that's hilarious! Reminds me of (who was it?) Cayle Yarborough & the Allison brother getting in a donnybrook at Talledega right on national TV. LOL

Sure shows that this competition is fierce & gets the ol' adrenalin PUMPING, eh???<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

 

Rusty & Killer: Great stuff! Gas tank in STOCK position? YIKE!!! That would be dumber than dog shit.

Seems to me that if those putting on a SHOW for an audience want (1) entertainment, and (2) driver safety . . . THEN it just makes sense to let guys weld doors & trunklids shut, do some mods to protect your radiator, move the gas tank & battery. I've been to derbies where rules were tight and guys would get knocked out by ONE LITTLE THING. Then what do you have, several cars dead in the water and making maneuvering hard for those still running. Doesn't enhance entertainment, just my two cents' worth! What a bitch, to work for sometimes MONTHS to get a car ready, then get knocked out by a mashed battery.

 

That was August 8th, I'm walking on it now, but it still hurts. Ha ha. That's the price you pay to show fuckers your not scared of them. Plus, I got the 4 ft. tall madddog trophy for my efforts. Which was cool considering our derby is a two day event, and I won it in one heat. I would have run the second day, but my motor was seized up.(you'll have that! ha ha) This was the first year in 31 years that our local derby gave out a maddog award, and it was bigger than the main event trophy. Well worth it. Everyone around here knows if you're in my heat, I'm not going to fuck around, and I have destroyed fresh cars (my own) to take someone out that I don't like. A few have never returned.

 

Boys, CRASH&BURNS is hard core!

 

No Doubt!!!!!

 

Ha ha. I just get tired of seeing these guys baggin' around not hitting just to win, it's not what the sport is about. So I decided that it will be my duty to god and my country to make these pricks want to go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before. I can't get all of them of course, but I do my best, and it's a blast. Check out DemoDerbyUSA.com, they are the people that film our derby every year. They call it Cowboy Crash '09 (gay), if you watch the trailer for the video, you can see the hit when I broke my foot. I'm driving the dark red Cordoba style Charger.

 

LOL. Sand-baggin' in ANY motor sport is a sin. The real diggers HATE that crap!

 

Early eighties - a demo held at Roosevelt Raceway.


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My friend Rocky's circa '70's - a KILLER!!! Lasted about half of a season, running at least twice a week!

 

Great stuff, Dog427! BTW, that scruffy-lookin dude in the MoPar, thta wasn't YOU, was it? LOL Excellent show, bro!!!

 

Dog, Rocky didn't lead those poor kids down the primrose path to . . .

DEMO DERBY, did he? Yike

Hey, at least it's a FAMILY sport!!!

Good stuff, guys!

 

Same here i dunno how many times i would go in and run,come out of the heat and my friends would say holy shit man you were tearing things up!
i thought i was taking it really really easy!

It took me a few yrs to figure out how to build a car to take my style of driving.and dool out an ass whipping at the same time,without the car being destroyed before the end of the feature.

 

No were pretty stock here 2 side to side pipes(finally) and a 3rd for the drivers door.weld band or chain,wire the doors shut.in 4 places(per door) if welding i belive 2 by 3 inch.personally i prefer banding at a show like this,holds things WAY tighter together than welding 80's sheet metal!

and a derby is a derby you can be the best prepared Mo-Fo on the planet,and it can still happen sometimes on a mild or NO hit at all!

 

RIGHT ON!!!!!!!

 

Well, that's what it's about. You adapt your tactics for ringers & sand-baggers. THIS has been an awesome thread, and I am glad the HAMB editors let you guys sound off.

THAT said, do any of you guys who wanna fight FAIR (as I see it) see a need for some regional, local, et.al., rules changes to at least TRY & guarantee younger guys a fair fight in the arena?

I don't think I'll be popular with guys who travel around to pick up purses, ya know? (OK, they'll hammer me, but my question stands.)

 

Dog, what a daggone warm-fuzzy PIC THAT is! I'm still pickin' my tongue up off the ground, dude!

 

A friend of mine and myself made up rules 2-3 yrs ago for a derby his family ran.They are stock 1980 or newer rules,they do however allow drivetrain of choice.(motor tranny and rear end) 2 side to side bars also.

he is a builder of modified to seriously modified cars i am a builder of stock vehicles.we eliminated just about every "grey area" a sinister builder could think of.It is an affordable class and a very good build for a biginner,who if done right could win against the best.

I would welcome what you suggest.You can have the best builder in the world but you STILL gotta know how to drive!

 

Good for you, WagonKiller. Wiping out "gray areas," YES! Evens the playing field for less experienced combatants and, as YOU say, the experience and "blood in the eyes" of the driver is maybe MORE important than the integrity of his machine! Well done!

 

At our local fair on Sunday night, 44 cars showed up. My run was kinda weird. The engine and car was stout as hell and I was busting serious ass, full tracking front and rear WFO like always. But I was running my old Kevlar 727 trans- got down to three cars in the heat and the trans up and quit. Then it started working again before they timed me out. It worked for a few more minutes of full blastin', then burped fluid out the dipstick resulting in a big ball of fire. I bailed, and FD put the fire out. Watercooled the trans afterwards, topped off the fluid and it started working again. Made a dump tube for the trans dipstick with heater hose, cleaned up the powder from three extinguishers. Ran it in the feature, WFO again, full tracking and got down to six cars- when there was a big clunk, no trans for good this time. So the trans blew up twice and burst into flames once. Won a best of show trophy and the mad dog award too. Pics attached.

 

what are you running for a tranny cooler?(if you use the rad it may be clogged witch will cause the dipstick burping as will a clogged vent tube on the trans body.) and i know from my experience with mopar trannies you have to have a clean filter almost every time out those fiber filters clog fast . and are you runnig your kickdown wired 3/4 of the way open at all times?

 

X426X, at least there was a silver lining in the black cloud for you, buddy! Mad Dop AND Best of Show! You got something for all the headaches. Good goin' !!!