Features VINTAGE SPRINT CAR PIC THREAD, 1965 and older only please.

I want to be just like you when I grow up.

 

My replica champ car will get a single axle trailer - the kind with the wheel ramps running over the tires and back down into wells - and get pulled / pushed off by a '46 Ford pickup:

 

Everybody gets an 'A-plus' to start the day.

 

Great comments on open trailers and service stations supporting racers when they were in their area. Not sprint cars, but one of our ASA teams actually made race fans out of the owner and staff of a service station in Scottsburg, Ind. once. The driver, John Anderson (also a former sprint car wheelman) came to me on a Saturday at Salem after qualifying and said they'd done some real damage to their engine and transmission and needed a work bay. I called a friend of mine in Scottsburg who owned a station and he reluctantly agreed to let them work there that night.

I stopped there on the way back to Salem the next morning and he was effusive about it. "They brought in their own tools, the did the job faster than anybody I've ever seen. They were neat guys, they explained a lot to my guys and I who stayed to watch, and then they cleaned the place up. We're all going to the race today to see how they do."

Later that week he came in the newspaper office and said, "I'm not gonna miss another race over there. That is neat stuff."

 

"Iron" Mike Nazurak

 

I've been called an "A" before....

 

I've seen a number of photos of Mike Nazaruk in the Nyquist Offy purportedly taken on the day he died, but I had never noticed the picture taped to the nose of the car; is that him? Anybody know the story behind it?

 

I noticed that also. At first glance I thought it might have been a tribute to Larry Crocket, who was killed there a month before, but really doesn't look much like him, to my eye anyway.

 

Looks like Nazaruk to me. Some irony???

 

Anybody tracking how Steve Stapp and Johnny Heydenrich are doing?

 

Notice anything missing here? Hope they got it hooked back up before the race started!

 

Thats a puzzler, steering is a definite advantage.

 

I saw that, too. I was thinking maybe they had one on the right side, but if so I'd think they'd remove this arm as it creates drag. They were definitely into aerodynamics.

 

Yeah, it might have had the duplex steering and they just used one side for pushing it around the pits. But in this shot, the guy in the background seems to find something quite humorous, maybe his pit crew was just messsing with him.

 

Kinda looks like there is some kind of a cable between that steering part and it is attached to the chassis, below? Might be to keep the wheels straight?

 

Blowing the last picture up, that looks like a seam of a small body panel and there appears to be a heavy metal bracket in the airstream with a couple holes that I have no familiarity with.

At any rate, my best guess on the steering is that since the first picture shows a grandstand full of people, this car was ready to run. Therefore it has a duplex steering gear that in this case allowed the car to be set up for pavement (right hand steer) or dirt (left hand steer) by having a tie rod, (unlike a truely duplex steering arrangement) but also having the option of connecting the drag link to either a steering arm and pitman arm on the right or the left side of the car, not both.

An academic note... The car in my avatar has a true Duplex steering, no tie rod. Schroeder made some Duplex steering gears. Mine was made by F.Davis Engineering which was Floyd Davis, co-winner with Mauri Rose of the 1941 Indy 500.

 

The Schroeder duplex steering had 2 drag links, one pushed, the other pulled, much like the coaster carts we built when we were kids.

 

Schroeder's duplex

 

So...what would duplex feel like? Would you get bump from both wheels? Was it heavy?
Wow, this is a first for me....

 

Yes, exactly, but there is nothing to prevent removing the drag link from either side, adding a tie rod between the spindle arms presuming they were still in place, and ending up with a conventional left or right hand steer.

The only bug-a-boo is you might have needed a slightly shorter drag link to connect to an alternate pivot hole in the right or left steering arm to provide proper Ackerman using the tie rod as opposed to the location of the pivot on the steering arm of the two drag links to approximate proper Ackerman when using the true Duplex mode.

 

Mine had rope!!!!

 

What does it feel like? I have no perception of any diference in feel.

I don't think bump steer was an issue or a reason for this design except for IFS. Does anyone know if the Federal engineering car had a solid front axle? If not my guess is flawed.

Up until the guess I made as to the reason why the Federal Engineering was pictured without a drag link, I thought the main reason was independent front suspension and situations where there was no room for a tie rod like maybe a front wheel drive, or a deep oil sump. There was a car that had a tie rod that passed through a transverse opening in the oil pan.

Someone hypothesized to me that it is was for safety so the car could be steered with one wheel in case of damage on the other side. I don't know if I buy into that.

Someone on here must know more. I tried to question Schroeder on this once but it wasn't a good time to do that.

 

Up here we saved our rope for our Flexible Flyer snow sleds. LOL

 

Kinda what I was thinking but don't know why they would leave the pitman arm on the unused side unless they planned to use 2 drag links and a tie rod during the race but left the one off while working on it in the pits. I've been looking for right side views of the car during the race, but haven't come up with any.

 

This thread is the coolest thing in internet history. Thanks to all you guys.

 

So did all the other poor kids but MINE had rack and pinion

 

From 1953 with Russo up. Left side drag link-odd brackett and wierd cable/rod running up to the sector shaft?

 

Near as I can tell the bracket-cable/rod dohickey was standard fare on KK3000's. Maybe one of our resident KK experts will chime in and clue us in.

 

Hamber 29AVEE8 pm'd me that the Gordon White book KK Indy Cars 1941-63 has various pictures of interest on pg. 31-38, for those who have the book, I don't.
I suspect the bracket below the pittman arm is the rear anchor for the option of parrallel torsion bars, though I haven't found a pic of that setup yet.

 

Steve is supposed to be the grand marshall for the first race at the dirt track half of the Plymouth, Indiana track complex this Saturday night ( May 5 ).

Read somewhere that Johnnie is recuperating in Conn.