At the Hot Rod Hayride this year, a Soapbox Derby was held. Given a basic set of rules, 19 competitors turned up with a diverse range of machinery and got stuck in! No, not vintage but certainly built in the right spirit and we all had a right laugh. To be honest, the "illegal" race for money, in the dark the night before was probably more fun but not so good for spectators..... Me and mine.
In our race we ran starting ramps (first picture) and then a 1000 foot track. Everybody got one trial run. After mine my dad noticed one of the steering turnbuckles had loosed up so we got a wrench and tightened it. He didn't realize that threw the whole steering off. In my first heat the car gradually went left until I wiped out the kid in the other lane. If I had a clue I would have braked as soon as I crossed the line. Fortunately it was double elimination and I won the next 7 heats. The final heat for the championship is pictured below and I beat him by about 15 inches. Winners of the local races went to Akron Ohio for the championship race in early August. We stayed at Camp-Y-Noah for the week and the race was on Saturday. Pictured is my championship jacket that I wore in the big parade in downtown Akron before the race.
Love the old stuff and am building a cart close to the specs just safer .. Get your a@@es out racing !!! every month
Start 'em young, I say! "Although not specifically hot rod related, its hard to argue with the form of these little beauties." Very cool lookin' billy-karts.
Somewhere I have an "in action" picture, but I can't find it right now. I still have my car, sitting up in the rafters in my garage. I was in the Soap Box Derby in the late 70's. At that time, for the Junior Division, you had to buy the hardware kit (axles, steering wheel, cables, turnbuckles, brake pad and surgical tubing "spring"), and you got a parts list for the lumber yard and put it together at home. I didn't do too well racing, but I did win the Best Paint award for my Parnelli Jones, Willard Battery inspired paint job. (I cringe at the threads on here with brush and roller painted cars, but I guess I did it too! No automotive stuff allowed, just brushes and latex! Of course, I was also twelve.)
Not exactly a vintage soap box car, but these are some pictures of my scratch built gravity car project. Made it from bicycle parts, scrap metal, and a mac tools creeper. I don't have recent pics showing the louvered hood with cal custom scoop, superior wheel, and roll bar. Front axle has a center pivot with the cut of sissy bar wishbones working as torsion bars.
I always thought these were neat, but seeing as how we have no hills in Florida, I've never seen any around here. What I'd really like to know is how do you steer? How do the brakes work? Can anyone give me a quick run down on how these things operate?
SOAP BOX DERBY, is where a lot of motor heads got started even though the derby cars were powered by gravity. Several open wheel racers got started in a soap box racer. I may be wrong but I thing A. J. Foyt raced one of these little cars in his youth. I raced in the Tidewater Soap Box Derby (Virginia) in the early 60's. Three of my brothers raced also. My parents had a life time of friends resulting from our particiation in the derby. My mom passed away several years ago and we lost dad last year. While going through there stuff I found lots of derby memories. I have messed with cars most of my life and now at 61 I'm living a dream. My garage is full of hot rod stuff. My yellow 32 coupe made it to the Lone Star Roundup last year, my 55 F100 is getting some up grades and with the Jalopy Rama rapped up I'm hoping to get my 30 Model A project going. Thanks for the post.
Got these last week when I bought some parts guy had them in his garage thought they were cool, all 50's except 1 '66
Sorry for the poor quality of pics, but I have been chasing the old derby cars for awhile. SCORED BIG TIME about 2 years ago...found this old bird (owner claims it was from the 30's, but I think a bit later!) when a Richmond, IN bar sold its contents. I found this on their obscure auction site and bid (for a hell of lot more than I thought I would have to!) and we met at a truckstop and I picked it up. Damn this is so heavy...and PERIOD...it sits on the landing perch of my "Man Lounge." If you are curious, the HUGE three foot+ trophy behind it is Tony Bettenhausen's URA winning trophy from 1947!!!
The vintage stuff is priceless! They used to cover it on Wide World of Sports when I was a kid. Now...i'm addicted to the SFVISBF!!!!! Check it out and enjoy.... www.SFVISBF.com
I got to thank my brother, realkustom51, for putting those pics on. He has all the old family pics. That multi-car shot was of a float for a parade, they would put the cars in a parade every year. The trinkets are things that my dad or mom would trade for when they went to Akron. If I remember right, each city would make a momento to throw to the crowd, ours was a plastic bottle with nothing in it with the label , "Fresh Hickory Air". They were usually gag or corny stuff like that. My mom met the actor Chuck Connors on the hotel elevator, he was doing some kind of apperance for the derby then. They would always use new Corvettes to haul people around at Akron. To answer some other questions, you had cables wrapped around the steering shaft going thru various pulleys until they ended up at the ends of the front axle. The standard brake worked off a cable coming from a pedal going to a hinged 2x4 setup that would come out of the bottom of the car and hit the ground with a patch of tire rubber on the bottom of it. A popular kind of front suspension was to use a super whammy rubber ball or balls with a bolt drilled thru them in between the axle and floorboard or whatever. You always wanted any extra weight to be at the back of the car, and you wanted the full weight of the car on because the more weight , the more gravity pulls you down the track.There were always controversy over whether to oil the wheels or graphite them, to have a layback or a sit-up car. You only wanted the helmet to stick up out of the car. In that pic of my car when I finally got in, I would be inside the carcompletely with just the helmet sticking up. There would be about a 1/4 in to look thru. I'm sure theres a lot of soap box derby guys on here, thats about all I remember about it.
One more fun hobby I missed growing up in the flat desert. Pretty cool to see some of those old racers.
Ryan thank u for bringing back very fond memory,s of being 13 an having to build and to learn to think about how to realy be creative then construct one soap box and ah what fun taking the first spin and this is what went through my mind at the time was it going to have good brakes only one 4x4 piece of rubber tire . wood it steer right .wood it be fast enought to place in the top 3 in my city .but what i really learned was how to make things and make them work thes are very fond memories of great rivalry and friendship with fellow competors i had a blast THANK U RYAN
Those Soap Box cars are sort of like Fixed Gear Bicycles. A bit impractical, but cool as hell and wonderful to look at in all their simplicity. I wanna build one.
I found in a junk store a few years ago, wheels, axles, steering wheel, helmet, and rules and plans for a soap box car for 1967. I think I paid 70 bucks for it all.
For steering the front axle is mounted on a single bolt in the middle. There is a steering wheel mounted either horizontally along the top of the car or vertically between the driver's legs. From the wheel & shaft are cables that run through a pulley system to the back of the car and then back out to the front axle out by the wheels. Turning the wheel pulled tighted the cable on one side while loosening it on the other causing the axle to turn. As I recall, the rules specified minimum travel of two inches at the end of the axle. As for brakes there were basically two kinds both actuated by a foot pedal (of a certain minimum size according to the rule book). My car used a scissor brake which was mounted behind the driver. When you pressed the foot pedal, a cable (running through various pulleys) pulled the scissor which brought a pad down to the ground. Another braking system was similar but used a plunger instead of scissors to bring the pad down to the ground. Both worked pretty well but depending on the incline of the hill, there was always a long run off. Some tracks with shorter run-offs had hay bails which you wanted to avoid if it all possible.
In the 70's, the Soap Box Derby here in town, was run on a hill on the Army base(Ft. Bliss). My brother ran one year and then put his car away. Then I got my hands on it and really Fucked it up! He forgave me, though! I'll try to post some pics.
I remember the Soap Box cars. I had an older cousin who attempted to build a car, but he never finished it. Six or seven years later I begged for a set of wheels so I could build one (You had to buy them through your local Chevy dealer) and my parents got me a set. Unfortunately, I never completed a car either, but those wheels got used over and over on a bunch of different homebuilt coaster cars. We used to get an old wooden ironing board, nail or screw the axles on, use a rope for steering, and race down the local hills. A few years ago I got interested in something called Electrathon. The cars are purpose-built like Soap Box Derby, but these are electric powered for ages 16 and up (I'm 61). In the pics below, the silver #14 and orange #94 were my cars. The white car is my current Electrathon car. I guess I'm recapturing some of my missed Soap Box days with these cars now... You can see the rules and see some pics here: www.electrathonamerica.org and see some of our local pics here: www.electrathonfl.homestead.com . There is also a build thread of the white car below on the local site.
Spent alot of time in downtown Fort Wayne in an old warehouse working on derby cars for me and my buddies...all of us there with our Dads...empty pizza boxes everywhere...those were some good times
Wow, what great memories. I raced the local race back in the mid sixties. My car was all salvaged wood from the water treatment plant the City was building at the time. I painted the car silver, with a black stripe, and painted the name "Chrome Coffin" on the side. then I got sponsered by Smith Ambulance, a local ambulance company. They had their name lettered on the car also, i always thought that was funny...I really don't think any pics were ever taken....
Here is a picture (circa August 1977) of me being weighed in at Derby Downs in Akron for the All American which was the championship race. Race prep takes all week believe it or not. The next picture is me getting my trial run and the the truck ride back to the top of the hill. The final picture is me getting my ass kicked. The All american is different from the local races in that it's 3 at a time and single elimination. If you draw a tough opponent in your first race you are all done. Funny thing about the dude in the silver car that won my heat. He was a complete dickhead the entire week - just kind of a bully prick. He lost in the next round and came up to me and shook my hand and was nice for the first time all week. I remember that 30 something years later clear as a bell.
Very cool pix and stories. When I was a kid I always wanted to do this but there was no track around so we just raced go-karts in the streets. that was fun too.
This is my father-in-law winning the 1935 (2nd)(first in Akron) Soap Box Derby Maurice Bales, 13, of Anderson Ind., is shown winning the first national Soap Box Derby held in Akron in 1935.
Here is a pic of the car my father-in-law won in; 1935-Maurice Bales, Jr. (Winning Car shown in museum display)
Wow that's cool. When I was a kid, any All American Champion was treated like royalty or a rock star. Did you ever talk to him about how he did it? Why did his car run so fast?
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