8019 Wornall Road is still a valid address in Kansas City. Alas, Wes's Speed Shop is no longer visible, as least through a Google Maps area search. If prior posts on the H.A.M.B. regarding Wes Jerde's Speed Shop are accurate, one might have encountered Dick Harrell there at one time! Note to myself: If I'm spending my days following up on this genré of mystery while sitting at my computer in the middle of the day, it's fairly obvious that the sequestration has taken a serious toll! I need to get another life!!! c
Sorry I'm a little late to the party here. "Super Wedge" was originally raced by Tim Richards of Top Fuel fame under the name "Competition Torqueflite." It had a max wedge but was not a factory maxie. Timmy did own a 63 Plymouth called "Taxi II" (shown in this thread: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/stock-s-s-f-x-1959-1966.247089/page-59) that was a real max wedge car bought out of Montclaire Motors in Scranton. The car became Super Wedge when it was sold to Joe Super of Scranton. I'm not sure what year Joe got the car. He later sold it to my cousin Jerry Santorsa who raced the car from 1968 through 1972. It ran at the 1972 Gatornationals and at one point raced against the Fink's convertible Cuda. At some point it was renamed Santorsa and Graziano. The car was repainted red after retirement and last I checked it was still in the Scranton area. Regarding the steel, Jerry did own an aluminum front end but I do not know when he picked it up or if it was ever on the car. Jerry set several records (all broken soon after, of course) and spent a lot of time racing with Jerry Stein at the old east coast strips. He told me they once spent a whole day at the track playing with header lengths trying to get into the tens. I have some photos on my old computer, I'll try to post them.
Did you mean Jerry Stahl from Stahl headers? I remember how many sets of headers he used to send to Dick Moroso before Dick ever went to work for him and they would bolt them and head to a drag strip and some worked and others were taken off right away and send back. They used his car along with others for testing new designs. Jimbo
Interesting a Stahl sticker on the rear window and a Hooker Headers sticker on the front fender. Back in these day's Hooker started paying different guys to use their headers and also giving them the headers in many cases to help build their company. Just saying! Jimbo
Jimbo, in this part of the world, Hooker didn't originate that practice. It goes farther back than that and quite probably farther than I can recall.
Hooker never paid us unless we won they just gave us a couple sets of headers as they did many others. I believe that's a Stahl and Associates sticker in the back window. Us as well as many others had both stickers on their cars.
When you say they gave you a few sets of headers that is what I meant to say. Back in those day's anything you could get for Free saved you money. Jimbo
Chuck will vouch for this, but in the post HAMB era , whenever we went out west to race, a must do stop for us was to go and see Jack Davis at Hooker..He'd ask "what you working on? " We'd say 66 full size 283 car, or whatever. Jack would take his shopping cart and go into the warehouse, and come back with the requested headers, and we'd dump them into the rental car trunk.."Have a nice day".. (Those days are long gone.)
Mark Yac: I know what you saying is true about Hooker Headers but my point was for other manufacturers of headers the problem was how do you sell headers when your competitor was giving them away. I understand the concept of building a new company and one way is to give your product to certain racers who win a lot to get your name out there and yes this has been done for years in different forms like saying we are using certain cars for a test of new products. Jimbo
Jack was a one-of-a-kind guy. I spent some time around him much later in both our lives and we enjoyed talking about life in his hometown (which was also John Force's hometown). At various points of my professional career, I served as principal of both the Junior High and the Senior High in Bell Gardens. We knew some of the same people and Jack was a great story-teller!
To me it is funny how a color and wheels make me like a car or just say it's OK. Carmine's car in red and cragars pops off the page and the greenish and gold does nothing for me. Just my opinion. Pat
Opinions vary. You can see Cragars everywhere but when's the last time you saw those mags on the green car??? I like them a LOT!
Those appear to be very similar to a wheel that I remember being sold by Appliance Plating. Like Cragars, the Appliance wheels were comparatively heavy and therefore were less than optimum on drag cars. All of the plated steel wheels marketed were eventually displaced by aluminum wheels when NHRA allowed lighter-than-stock wheels in Stock Eliminator. Hurst and Motor Wheel enjoyed a moment in the spotlight but all were eventually eclipsed by Cragar Super Trick, Centerline, and Weld designs. c
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