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

Not sure you can call these "sprint cars" since they predate that time period, but it's definitely dirt track racing! From 1915 in my old home town of Burlington, Iowa. FWIW, this old dirt track was there as part of the fairgrounds until the late '60s or early '70s as I recall, when urban sprawl finally claimed it...

 

Attached are pics of a Champ car bought out of PA 10 years ago, now residing in Shepparton Australia awaiting restoration...............history unknown.

Got any ideas??????

Thanks,
Jim

 

Yes, Harry was a local childhood hero of mine. I had the chance to meet him when he was about 50 and I wish it never happened. He was a bitter, nasty, mean old man in an old run down workshop. The other bit of news I found recently was that Dick Zimmerman met and married a South African girl. He stayed here and was killed in a road crash a few years back. That's sad. He and Don were always ready to interact with the fans and were the coolest dudes around. I grew up next door to the Wembley Stadium and I spent every afternoon after school there. Don used to be there and he would always greet me and when I left he would say "see ya later". I was like 12 years old. Harry on the other hand was a scum bag and I guess Karma bit him hard. Harry singlehanded got rid of quite a few drivers if they showed any sign of beating him. Jurgy Bauer and Pete Sannan both arrived with radical designs that were very quick but the evil Van Der Spuy "parked" them and they never came back.

 

I also hate the wings. They look terrible. I just want to ask if the really work?.

 

All you have to do to answer that question is compare wing & non-wing track records; the first website I found that listed them both, Calistoga, shows the all-time and wing record is held by Mark Kinser at 16.057 seconds, and the non-wing record is Blake Miller's 19.355.
Look at a picture of a wing car in the corner and see how it's racked all the way over to the left side suspension stops, and that'll give you an idea of how much air they push, and therefore how much skill they take out of the driver's hands...
If you mean do they succeed in making them ugly, the answer is also yes.

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled program

 

You'd think someone on here should be able to at least ID the chassis builder by these 2 details:
The curved plates behind the radius rod spuds look like they may have been the original (adjustable) r.r. locating points, and the spud was added on later?
The extra set of rear torsion tubes is pretty unusual; again, maybe an add-on, so if those 2 things don't point to the original builder, some of the veterans may remember a car with these modifications...
Got any pics of the whole car? That may help too.

 

No idea, but the 2 pair of torsion tubes is interesting.

 

When I win the Power Ball lottery, I'm going to Australia and buying up as many of THEIR cars as I can and bringing them here!

 

Nothing against our Aussie friends but it does suck that historical cars from the states don't stay in the states, when I hit the powerball I'm going to go buy George Tatnell's Wedge midget and bring it here lol

 

National pride aside. cars go where people value them. Our friends from Down Under put their money where the hearts are AND they treat the cars right, By that I mean they use them to throw the dirt around not garage art.
When I win the lottery I will visit them every winter and join the fun.
If people want a vibrant vintage scene here in the states they need to stop whining and do something about it. I think the WRA did the right thing in allowing caged cars. The East Coast Old Timers did so a few years back. The best vintage club , IMHO, is the Mississippi Valley group concentrates on having lots of track time and minimizes the politics. That is how they get such huge car counts. Don't like a particular era of car? Don't watch their races.

 

You sure that's a champ dirt car? I don't remember them having dzus-on tails. As memory serves, they all had tail tanks and had been that way going way back.

Possibly the two sets of torsoin bar tubes were for dirt and pavement setups- with upper set being used on pavement.

 

good eye I never saw one with a fiberglass tail

 

Thanks so far guys.......working on pics of the whole car.
Jim

 

Guys , I believe this is the car at Shepparton , Victoria , Australia.
Owner ,Mal Church.
Any help in identifying this car would really be appreciated by Mal and his Crew,
Benny Rapp Jim, can you confirm that this is the car in the recent pictures
cheers greg

 

I was curious to see if I could find any records of a #36 entered in any late-60's, pre-cage dirt champ car races, and I did find something on Champcarstats in 1966; the Stahl Brothers #36 Kuzma-Offy was entered at Springfield, DuQuoin and the Indy Fairgrounds, driven by Bob King at Springfield & Indy, and by Ray Duckworth at DuQuoin.
It was listed as "DNS, too slow" at all three shows.
Ring any bells for anyone out there?
I'm still going on the assumption it's a champ car, even with the separate tank cover; the external oil tank on the left and clutch lever on the right, along with the starter hole in the grille have me leaning that way (IMO, it's the same car in KK500 and Trentesept's pics; you can see the oil tank in both, and you can just make out the starter shaft guide in Jim's shot of the underside of the nose).

 

I was hoping to post a video of me starting my midget tonight, but things did not go as planned today so I am in need of some more tech support.

I am new to mechanical injection so here is what I have. I am running gas. EVM injection freshly rebuilt from Ron's fuel Injection with #14 nozzles. 1 main bypass with a #80 Pill (Ron's Recommendation), barrel valve set at 8% and a pro con pump fresh from Ron's. I am using a tilton starter and clutch to start the motor.

I have 2 main problems.

1: It will start and run for a few seconds with starting fluid or a little gas poured into the injectors but then dies. It starts instantly when I hit the mag switch. That tells me it is getting spark and timing is close but not getting fuel. When I take the spark plugs out and turn the engine over I am getting just a small dribble of fuel out of the nozzles, not a spray. When I disconnected the Line into the barrel valve and turned it over fuel came out the hose, but very little and hardly any pressure. I did this with throttle closed and wide open.

So here is what I am thinking could be problems: Fuel pump weak, Starter not turning motor over fast enough, air bubble in fuel system somewhere, Wrong size pill or bad pill holder spring?

2: I have rear end grease filling up my torque tube all the way up to the U-Joint. Am I missing a seal? My torque tube does not seem to have any provisions for a seal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Those few seconds it did run sounded Awesome!!! All worth it.

Thanks

 

It's not the whole story but I believe that the Australian dollar has increased something like 60-70% against the US dollar over the last few years. American vintage cars are on sale when you look at it that way. Maybe some of our down under friends can comment on this.

And this has been going on even with some Asian collectors. There are reports of vintage F1 and Indy cars finding new homes in that part of the world in recent years.

 

Don Rogala out of Pennsylvania had a car that was similar to the one pictured and I think the color and number on the nose are correct.

 

Thanks for sharing these wonderful old photos.

I'll have to do some investigating on this track.

 

bzneil-is the front bearing on your quickchange a sealed bearing?even with sealed bearing you will get some leakage around splines-lots of rtv sealer helps some.is the #14 nozzle what rons recommended for gas?seems big,would have guessed an#8.mechanical injection is a pain to start with a battery starter even with everything perfect,is pushing an option?even though your pump is fresh is it put together for the proper rotation?pumps can be used for either rotation depending on the position of the back cover.good luck!

 

oops-not sure if the procon pump is reverseable like the hilborn,enderle etc.

 

Jim, can you confirm that this is the car in the recent pictures
cheers greg[/QUOTE]

Yes Smithy....that's it........the wheels face the ground tho ..like this >

 

Give me a break Jimmy, I got it nearly the right way up from Down Under.
I have phoned in the replies to Mal and he is very excited with the progress.
thanks guys
Cheers Greg

 

BZNEIL, Seals-it makes a seal for your grease in the torque tube problem. Give Skip Matczak a call at 860 979 0060.

To Stan and all the folks I was hoping to see at Stan's party...sorry I missed it but my wife wasn't too keen on going there on our anniversary so I stayed home....I will be there next year for sure because the anniversary won't interfere. Denny Z.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

Denny, Thanks for the seal suggestion. I think that will be my best bet, pricey seal though!

The engine is a Chevy II, fuel pump running off the cam, turning opposite direction of crank. Pro con pump not reversible but is set up to pump in the right direction for this application.

Push starting is not really an option for me right now, that would have to wait till spring. This same starter and clutch is proven to start full race midgets and Silver crown cars so it should turn my low compression Chevy II with ease.

#14 it the nozzle size, The inlet hose is a AN#6.

I do have direct flow into the pump, but I have to have 5+ gallons in the fuel cell to achieve it. Seems the pump should be able to suck the fuel from the cell to pump or there would be no reason to have the lower part of the fuel cell. The point the Fuel line passes over the motor plate is the highest point at 22" off the ground, and the pump is 17" off the ground. The lower outlet of the fuel cell is 10" off the ground. I can lower the point through the motor plate but there is still a big difference between the lower outlet and the pump height.

 

I just visited with Don Hamilton at the vintage races at Havasu. Great guy. He verified the story about leading at El Cajon when the throttle felt jammed or limited...he thought some dirt got into the butterflys. He went backwards and lost the race. They later found the shift ball had come off and was under the throttle pedal..He said he won the first three times he drove the 24 Edmunds. Also got to visit with many old timers including Carl S. Great fun. Thanks.

 

Glad you came by as did a few other HAMBers.
We wound up with about a dozen sprinters, 10 midgets and 6 indycars.

Happy you got to take the Boyle Valve Spl around and hope you can make it to one of our future events.
Any event photos you may like to share would be appreciated.

Here's a photo of you photographing Don Robertson and his self built 1928 Studebaker straight 8 Indycar.
Don has his own track he carved out of the land at his Jerome Ghost Town Mine West of Sedona.
http://www.goldkingmineghosttown.com/

I'll be putting together an event report and will post some more photos in this event album over the next month.
http://s1011.photobucket.com/albums/af233/carl44s/Havasu Nov 9-10 2012/?start=all

 

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</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #e5e5e5 1pt solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 3.75pt; BORDER-TOP: #d4d0c8; PADDING-LEFT: 3.75pt; BACKGROUND: #f2f2f2; PADDING-BOTTOM: 3.75pt; BORDER-LEFT: #d4d0c8; WIDTH: 452.75pt; PADDING-TOP: 3.75pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d4d0c8; mso-border-right-alt: solid #E5E5E5 .75pt" vAlign=top width=604>Re: VINTAGE SPRINT CAR PIC THREAD, 1969 and older only please. <O
<O
BZ Neil…I am going to go back to your original post and inserting in red some thoughts into some of what you have written on the original post (where I underlined and changed to bold) and then the subsequent one where you had tried some of the suggestions<O


I am running gas. (My experience is totally with alcohol, but the main difference is flow requirements, nozzle and pill sizing, and sensitivity to over fueling.) EVM injection freshly rebuilt from Ron's fuel Injection with #14 nozzles. 1 main bypass with a #80 Pill (Ron's Recommendation), barrel valve set at 8% and a pro con pump fresh from Ron's. I am using a tilton starter and clutch to start the motor.

I have 2 main problems.

1: It will start and run for a few seconds with starting fluid or a little gas poured into the injectors but then dies. It starts instantly when I hit the mag switch. That tells me it is getting spark and timing is close but not getting fuel. When I take the spark plugs out and turn the engine over I am getting just a small dribble of fuel out of the nozzles, not a spray. When I disconnected the Line into the barrel valve and turned it over fuel came out the hose, but very little and hardly any pressure. I did this with throttle closed and wide open.

So here is what I am thinking could be problems:<O
Fuel pump weak…fresh from Ron’s should mean new or at least flow tested <O
Starter not turning motor over fast enough, air bubble in fuel system somewhere… yes and yes <O
Wrong size pill or bad pill holder spring? Doubtful, see more later

2: I have rear end grease filling up my torque tube all the way up to the U-Joint. Am I missing a seal? My torque tube does not seem to have any provisions for a seal. Help me out here, does your torque tube not have a downward angle from the in/out box or firewall mounted U-Joint to a presumed Quick Change? Grease should not be being forced upward.


<O
The engine is a Chevy II, fuel pump running off the cam, turning opposite direction of crank. Pro con pump not reversible but is set up to pump in the right direction for this application. Meaning in a counter clockwise arrow on the pump label as viewed from the front?

Push starting is not really an option for me right now, that would have to wait till spring. This same starter and clutch is proven to start full race midgets and Silver crown cars so it should turn my low compression Chevy II with ease. Agreed, after it has been purged and started the first time.



I do have direct flow into the pump, but I have to have 5+ gallons in the fuel cell to achieve it. Seems the pump should be able to suck the fuel from the cell to pump or there would be no reason to have the lower part of the fuel cell. The point the Fuel line passes over the motor plate is the highest point at 22" off the ground, and the pump is 17" off the ground. The lower outlet of the fuel cell is 10" off the ground. I can lower the point through the motor plate but there is still a big difference between the lower outlet and the pump height. The pump will pull fuel to some degree but is happier the less pulling it needs to do. Filling the tank assured us of a positive head of pressure or supply at the pump for testing purposes.

Continued<O





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While it's not a 100% match it looks alot like this Championship Dirt car that was driven by Johnny Rutherford in the 1972 Hoosier Hundred. The car in this Ken Coles photo has the same shape tall roll bar with a added on roll cage. And the lightening holes in the right front shock mount look the same as well. There are also a couple of mounting brackets on the right front part of the axle that look about the same. These cars had long lives and got modified alot. See what you think but this could be the car.

The photo is on the Ken Coles website and all of the photos are for sale. Here's the link:

http://www.colesracingphotos.com/Ke...0s-60s/10716978_kb2MkZ#!i=784758551&k=MdVM69p