I have another mystery car I would like to know about . I know my Mom is pretty and Yogi is cute but I would like some information on the purple altered sitting in our driveway that my Dad use to drive because I have a pic of him driving it in black and white and that pic only has the #88 on it no other detal just like the color pic My mom doesn't remember some of those details from over 40 yrs ago but she did say Hartwell came to mind but she's not sure . My Dad drove for him often and he may have some other cars also Sent from my SM-G900P using H.A.M.B. mobile app
Actually found this on right here on the HAMB it's going to have a tribute car built http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/...automotive-b-a-fiat-topolino-tribute.1003256/ all photos from that build thread. Otie's Automotive B/A fiat.
Just a few today still recovering from my I&I R&R.. Today the Super Thief altered is remembered as much for its appearance as its performance. The beautiful altered with the cowling over the driver was owned by the Horchar Brothers: Bill, Bob, and Chuck. The brothers had previously run the Paraphernalia AA/FA Bantam and replaced it with the lighter Super Thief. The Super Thief name was a play on words from the Super Chief funny car of Nelson Carter. Kenny Youngblood painted the Super Thief in its distinct colors from a personal Blood design. The Super Thief was powered by 354 Chrysler Hemi unlike the 392 Chrysler used by most other altered racers. The brothers with Chuck at the wheel ran the car from 1970 from 1972 with best times in the seven-second range. (L&M Photo courtesy of Bob Plumer; info from Draglist files) Colorado joined California as one of the hotbeds of fuel altered racing. The High Heaven Bantam AA/FA of the Jackson Brothers was among the toughest in the Mile High State. Cal and Les began racing this Bantam with an injected Chevy on nitro around 1971 but later added the blower. Cal did the driving for the team while Les tuned the nitro fueled 427 Chev. Pure Hell the history Guasco said he got the bug to build a Fuel Altered – what he said they called A/Hot Roadsters back then – when he returned from the service in the 1950s, but replica fiberglass Bantam bodies had yet to come to market, so he instead built a couple dragsters. After crashing one and putting an end to his driving career in the early 1960s, he decided it was finally time to build that Altered, which he debuted in 1963. Initially, he powered Pure Hell – a name that came out of painter Tony Del Rio’s description of Guasco’s temperament – with a blown Chevrolet small-block V-8 mounted so high the rocker covers just about sat level with the top of the cowl (and that’s before the wheels-up action started). “First time out we were in the 8s,” he said. As the need for maximum weight transfer decreased and as tires and traction improved over the years, the engine position slowly descended back toward the frame rails. Also initially, Guasco had Fred Cerruti in the driver’s seat, but Dale Emery soon replaced Cerruti and became the driver most people associate with Pure Hell. Emery helped push the elapsed times down into the 7-second range and top speeds up above 180 MPH, but as Pure Hell plateaued at about 199 MPH and as other Fuel Altered dragsters entered the scene – Wild Willie Borsch’s Winged Express and Dave Brackett’s Pure Heaven II among them – consistently running 200-plus MPH, Guasco and his crew decided to swap out the small-block in favor of a blown 392-cu.in. Hemi V-8 for the 1967 racing season. “We went from stars to the back of the bus with that small-block,” Guasco said. With the Hemi, they immediately leapfrogged the competition, broke through the 200-MPH barrier, and started setting records again. The newly found competitiveness wouldn’t last, however. In about 1968, while driving through New Mexico, the two vehicle got a flat and Emery ended up flipping both tow vehicle and trailer with Pure Hell atop it. The accident “totaled it all,” Guasco said, so he sold the remains of Pure Hell and began racing a series of Pure Hell funny cars. Small block chevy This version looks to be missing the front exhaust pipe.
The history of Fuel Altereds is just bitchin... Long cars, shorts cars, big blocks, small blocks, big wings, no wings, and the names are super cool.
WOW forgot the Ramchargers started as an C/A altered. The Gretchko Bros. were one of the toughest AA Fuel Altereds in the Midwest. Altereds of the day way back were built from tubing and fiberglass replacing the heavy steel coupes and roadsters that came into drag racing from its hot rodding roots of land speed cars, street roadsters, and rods. Denny Forsberg was the driver of the 272 cid Chevy powered car tuned by Al Hubbard and Jerry Forsberg. Forsberg ran a best of 9.46, 162.17 at Fremont in October of 1960 on fuel. In 1961 the team ran AA/A on gas before going dragster racing in 1962. (Photo and info courtesy of Denny Forsberg) The Low Blow AA/FA of the Campos Bros. had a nice varied history in altered racing. The first Lo Blow altered had a crank driven blower thus the low blow name. This was the final Low Blow 23 Ford T built and campaigned by the team. The altered was driven by Rick Campos, Dan Collins, and Tom Ferraro. Tom Ferraro was the best known driver of the car running a best of 7.74, 175.00 before a very bad fire almost killed Ferraro. Tom Ferraro's burn injuries earned him a place in the AMA Journal of Medicine. His burns, of 3rd degree severity, healed on their own sans any necessary skin grafting; a virtual medical anomaly deserving of recognition. (L&M Photo Courtesy of Bob Plumer/Drag Race Memories; additional text by Bill Duke) The Monkey Motion AA/FA of Gil Hayward and started with Chevy like many other altereds only to switch over to a Chrysler Hemi when tire & clutch science caught to the horsepower was able to make. There were several drivers of the Monkey Motion Bantam altered like Rob McKibben, Ray Higley, Rob McKibben, Maurey Hoover, and Lyle Webster.
Altereds started out like any other form of drag racing, something scabbed together in someone's garage to go racin. Some of them were purpose built to run altered class and some got bumped either by a rule change or because the car was built and didn't fit into any other class. Not to say that the class was a catch all but sometimes the cars don't look like they fit. One thing that happened that moved a lot of cars into altered class was in the later '60s with the wheel base rule for gas class, I am not sure so someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe that the wheel base rule became a 98" cutoff. This moved a lot of Morris and Thames gassers into altered class for example.
Mark Emery and the Maryland based Wild Rat A/FA was part of the injected nitro Fuel Altereds Unlimited group that booked in four car altered shows after the success of the US Fuel Altered Tours. Mark Emery raced this little Fiat up and down the east coast as seen here at Lakeland, Florida. Mark Emery hailed from Hyattsville, Maryland near Washington D.C. The Wild Rat was built by fellow A/FA racer Phil Lippard and was tuned by Red Bailey. Emery ran a best of 8.00, 177 in Lakeland, Florida before retiring from fuel altered racing. Emery later went on to drive the Gorge of the Jungle funny car, while Greg Lippard, the son of Phil Lippard, later drove an updated version of the Wild Rat with a blown Chevy on alcohol. (Photo and info courtesy of Greg Lippard) Van Duvall was also part of the Fuel Altereds Unlimited group in his Born Wild altered. Van Duvall’s Born Wild was equipped with a bored and stroked Chevy that reached 488 cubic inches with an automatic transmission. Duvall ran a good 8.03, 175 in A/FA action on the East Coast. (Photo and info courtesy of Greg Lippard) ET Shaker Hyder Koulan Bishop & Buel
All of us altered lovers owe Ryan a debit of gratitude for giving us a place where we can appreciate our fondness of Altereds. To us altereds epitomize drag racing, when in the beginning of our sport, the people that ended up in the altered class were either too inexperienced about the rules, when building their cars, or were one of us non-conformists that seem to populate the HAMB and just didn't give a rats ass about the rules. People in the early years did just what porknbeaner has written: Altereds started out like any other form of drag racing, something scabbed together in someone's garage to go racin. Some of them were purpose built to run altered class and some got bumped either by a rule change or because the car was built and didn't fit into any other class. Not to say that the class was a catch all but sometimes the cars don't look like they fit. that is just what he is still doing today with his latest build: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-southern-employment-special-insanity101.1001953/ Just like the early versions of altereds, and the people who built them, they took whatever body, chassis, and engine they had at hand or could scrape together enough of their hard earned money to buy and stripped, cut, and modified, that pile of junk into the fastest car they could build and went drag racing. No throttle stops or black limiting boxes you wanted that car to be the very fastest you could get it to go and spent a large proportion of your spare time making and changing things to get the 2 extra MPH or 0.02 reduction in ET many times just for the FUN of it because you were never quite fast enough to be at the top of your class and didn't care you were racing yourself and your old results. And THEN the fuel era started, superchargers and HEMIs hit the scene and altereds liker NANNOK literally started to fly. Who can every forget watching those early AA/FA MONSTERS with tires smoking the entire quarter mile, belching flames two feet long out the pipes, using the entire width of the track to make a run, with real characters as the drivers bigger than life rooten, tooten, MEN not a man purse among, them our super stars. As a kid, like many of our members on the HAMB, I ran two paper routes, cut lawns, shoveled driveways, built and sold mini-bikes at 11 years old and took any work I could find, just so I had some bucks to buy the latest Hot Rod mags or models of my favorite cars, or had some money saved just in case by some miracle one of your friends fathers said he would take some of you to the local dragway. When we grew up our parents didn't have the money for extras so we did things ourselves and the HAMB spirit began to grow in us we were the non-conformists that did things our way and are still doing it today. Look to the threads and you will still see guys cutting the roofs of perfectly good cars or making drag racers out of a numbers matching corvette just to build a car FOR THEM, not to conform to some mold of what we should be like, emulating early altereds people that saw a number of their members go onto huge careers in drag racing. One just has to see that photo of "High and Mighty" Ramchargers car and now we know their story and the huge success they go onto but I bet at the time there were a bunch of people, that will never understand, laughing at their efforts because they were "different" but they didn't care they just kept doing the best they could with what they had. That folks is the HAMB spirit that lives on in here today.
Kenney Goodell in Don Jacksons Bantam. Thanks to Marty Strode From the Great Oregon Racers thread. Local guys past and present. Rest in peace Kenney Goodell.
Small batch today LOL One favorite nitro burning roadster in Northern California was Fred Cerutti's Quality Auto Bantam. Cerutti was a Fremont regular and would race anything in the next lane including dragsters, altered's, or whatever. Cerutti also helped Guasco get the new car bugs out of Pure Hell. Northern California's Fred Sorensen had his own ideas about the fuel roadster class. This is his 1965 version of his Warlock roadster. Two Northern California top fuel drivers shared the driving chores, Don Argee and Jim "Lizard" Herbert both drove the big black roadster. The "Gunfighter" 1957 ford D/A Homemade HELL Falcon Reath automotive fiat vs john watson
the bear claws on the gretchko car are now on my car. I found them on ebay and had to drive to Cleveland to get them. they are stamped with their name on the inside. when I had them polished I gave strict instructions not to buff the name off them. the guy had the matching fronts sitting there also but I didn't want them. the car ran out of the Cleveland area. he didn't know what became of the rest of the car. does anyone know if it still exists?
Nice find. I'm up to my head with racing our car, but I'd like to find and restore a Fuel Altered someday.
The prototypical Fuel Altered, roadster body, short chassis, big fuel motor, with header flames. Rod Hynes Black Magic , not my photo.
In the early '60s I was running an Altered coupe. Roadsters were in Roadster class. Running NHRA we were required to have a minimum wheel base of 98 inches. i have no idea of what was going on with gassers.
The Reath Automotive photos are actually two different cars. The first two are the Jamison, Mcllend and Knootz maroon blown Chevy. The second car is the dark blue blown Olds of Ratican, Jackson, and Stearns. The first one is a rare solid top Topolino, and the second one has the full open sun roof top. The maroon Fiat had the most complete, unmolested, steel Fiat body I've ever seen. If you look close, you'll see it has the only original cast aluminum grill I've ever seen.
I think I am wrong. Reading my previous post, I think it should have been 92 inch wheel base minimum.
In '68 ( I believe) Gas Class (once gas coupe/sedan) became above 98", still 10% max setback, and etc. Prior to that you could run gas class as long as you were not in a car that fell out of the normal gas class rules. They were letting imports run by then and there were a lot of fellas running Morris and Thames gassers that all at once became altereds. it was a tough deal I think, more money involved to be competitive in altered class. When I was little my old man tried to run the TD in Gas Roadster, but because it was an import they wanted him to run Modified Sports car, but he found out that if he removed the fenders he could run it altered so he built a Gas Altered out of it. At least that is how he explained it to me when I was old enough to grasp the story. He used to laugh and say that the TD was a poor man's Bantam (I think he bought it for 15 dollars with a broken motor). I am not sure that they didn't bend the rules for him because he was local. Probably better fodder for another thread but I have the body from that old heap and eventually I intend to build it and drag it behind my altered A sedan. Note: For the uniformed or new to the game HAMBers, @RichFox and I are not arguing, just discussing. No drama involved.
The Jalopy Journal
