Ron, would you share what indicated to you it was a repro? I saw that listing but didn't study it very carefully.
Rick, I thought showing you an original Dooling Frog would help to show you the differences in the two cars. See the following post for pictures of my Frog. 1. The castings on the repo are a rough finish because they used a coarse sand and did not pack it tight. 2. The repo body castings are held together with two screws fore and aft. While the original is held together by four screws on all four corners. 3. Where the front axle mounts the wings on the body are solid. Whereas, on mine you can see an indentation in the wings. 4. Motor mount is an extremely rough casting and does not center the engine in the body of the car. 5. Tires and wheels are not Dooling. These are most of the things that are wrong. There are a few other minor ones. Ron
1939 Dooling Streamliner also know as the Frog. Unusual design made this one of the first cars I collected. The Frog is driven by a spur gear set up. The front end design is unique because it has two separate axles that are controlled independently by a torsion bar set up. The quality of Dooling Brothers' cars was always first class. This Frog has a Hornet engine and the original Dooling wheels and tires. Ron
Thanks for the comparison Ron.Here are a couple photos of parts being offered as an authentic 1930s Dooling kit for $400. It looks pretty rough, like it might be a modern recasting. what do you think?
Lepus new castings Dooling never made a car that looked like this. If you ever need any guidance feel free to get in touch. Ron BTW Somebody bought the Frog on ebay.
I have always loved the cars. I have several, and now it's getting close to time to sell. Dooling F, Rodzy,Cox. All original. Pm for pics. All of you have amazing skills and cars.
I just painted the 1939 Speed King that I found at an estate sale. The body is now finished and as you can see I re-shaped the rear end. I never liked the bulbous look of the original. The frame and all the suspension parts and grill were painted and after stripping them they look new as the paint protected them all these years. See the prior post showing the car before I started to refinish. Still looking for the proper engine. Ron
1941 homebuilt Flat Tail. This car was built by a Lockheed employee during the second world war. He was a welding instructor and used scrap pieces of sheet metal from the shop. Car has a hard to find Bunch Speedway engine and a one-off rear end. Many rivets were used in the construction of this car. Ron
Here’s the latest addition to my collection. It’s been in NewYork for the last 25 years or so. No other info. One-off car about 13 inches long. Powered by a Rogers engine that delivers power to a small transmission, which then turns bevel gears on the rear axle. I love the 3-tube exhaust and extended intake. Somebody invested a lot of time and effort. I can’t help but see similarities to the last photo of a pair of Richters from the Ames book.
I have more questions for the experts, since I'm planning on building a 30s or 40s style tether car some day. When the driven wheels of spur gear drive cars had sprung suspension, was the drive train mounted on a subframe so engine, flywheel and driveshaft all pivoted and stayed in line with the driven axle? None of these cars seems to have universal joints on their driveshafts. From looking at the photo on page 98 of "Spindizzies", this seems to be how the B.B. Korn Indianapolis model worked. The Depalma car looks similar, but with one connection at the front, so maybe the subframe can rotate, as well as pivot with the rear axle. some of the early cars look like the driven wheels were solidly mounted, with suspension added just for looks, like the Packard Cable Special , on page 114.It has a solidly mounted front wheel drive and double quarter elliptic suspension, which I don't think could work unless the car has 2 tiny universal, or CV joints on each side. I guess the early friction drive would work if the metal disk on the driven axle was moving up and down relative to the rubber disk, but you can't do that with gears. One other question. Did anyone use an actual differential on their cars? I know people call the spur gear housing on some cars diffs, but they really aren't.
Rick J, neat car. It looks like a good design to make it easy to change gear ratios, but why is there no flywheel?Won't that put a beating on the gears?
Lepus few of the early cars use a subframe but almost everything has been done. The best example of a car with subframe would be a Dooling second series front drive
Hi Rick, I checked with John Lorenz this am who I feel is the last word on mite cars. John says for sure, absolutely a one-off, home built creation and the builder thought a two-stage gear reduction was a good idea. John has known about the car for about 20+ years belonging to a guy in New York who bought it from another collector John Fietze. That is all the info I could find on your car. BTW, I like the style of the hand hammered body. Ron
Hey Ron, John is a wealth of knowledge and is always helpful! I bought the car from the gentleman in NY, but he didn't recall who exactly he bought if from, so that's a nice bit of info to get. The body is nicely done. From the underside you can see that it was done in several pieces and then joined together. Very cool. I don't mean to imply that the car is in any way associated with Richter. Just that when I saw that photo, the similarities jumped out at me...body shape, grill slits, paint colors. I can just imagine someone with mad skills, but little money wanting a Richter and thinking..." I could probably build one". By the way, this site is supposed to have a private message function, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. There's nothing in the Conversations window to allow starting a private message. I may ask John L. to forward an email to you so I can ask some questions?
Perhaps I should clarify what little I know about the history of this car. Prior to the period of time when the car was in a collection in NY, I recall seeing photos of the car in another collection. That “may” have been John Fietze’s collection, but I’m not positive.
Alexander The company started in 1937 making it one of the first to produce a tether car. It came in a kit form and approximately 200 were made. Colonel Alexander did not only manufacture the car but also was an avid racer. The Flat Tail model shown here was very detailed and resembled a real race car of the day. These were almost 20 inches long. They are highly sought after by collectors. The last picture is a brochure showing a couple of models and is quite large and printed on both sides (16x20). Ron
Ron, thanks for showing your collection. Are you going to post some close-ups of the green and yellow car in the background?
Lepus, I am looking for a 1950's Rail and Cable magazine that has a picture and text showing the car in the background. As soon as I find the article I will post pictures of it. Quite an amazing car. Ron
Great cars, Ron! I appreciate you sharing your collection and knowledge. Very helpful for those of us trying to make informed decisions on additions to our own collections.
1947 Roadrunner formerly owned by Curly Glover of C & R Tires. Curly got the body from Ed's Specialty Co. He traded one of his Curly proto car bodies for it. He first ran the car with a McCoy engine as he did with all of his early cars. Tom Dooling had been trying to get him to run one of the new Dooling 61's. He ended up giving him one. He put it into his Roadrunner and set a track record the first time out. That was the end of Curly using McCoy engines. This car came to me from Michael Burgess who Curly, before he passed, gave Mike all of his cars and the Curly tooling. The Roadrunner was short lived due to the fact that they were almost an exact copy of the McCoy Hot Rod, and Dick McCoy threatened legal action to have Ed's Specialty Co. cease and desist building their cars. Ron
Circa 1940 Bunch Speed Demon. Unlike the early Bunch I posted (first car on page 17), this car was the last model they produced. It came with a front gear drive and instead of a flattail body it had a head rest. This car belonged to a lady who lived in Los Angeles. She and her husband both had Bunch cars. They were featured in the 1941 L.A. Times Parade Magazine (see last picture). I had a copy of the three page article, but like so many other things I can't find it. Too much junk! This car was not built to the original Bunch plans unlike her husbands'. It included a custom metal grill, front apron, and custom tank. As with all Bunch cars it came with pressed steel wheels and Gardner tires. Last picture shows the two cars together as it was published in the L.A. Times Magazine. Ron
Ron, Thank you for the information on the Walt Petersen front axle. I was surprised to learn that Ed Tate made it for Walt Petersen. Your comments on the car made me realize, I should have included a better picture of the car and added what I did know about it. Below is a photo of the car as I received it from Colin Wade. Colin described it as a Dreyer Special built by Mickey Fearon in the 1980’s, adding that Mickey built these cars to trade with his friends. As you can see from the above photo, this car was never completely assembled, so I assumed that Colin meant that Mickey gathered enough parts to make a mostly complete car. When I asked him if he knew any further details, his response was, he found the various components in Mickey’s “work space” and he didn’t know any more, because he bought the car from the Fearon estate, Mickey past away in Nov of 1988. I got the car from Colin in early December of 2019 and evaluated all the parts to determine what they were, what needed to be done to them and what else I still needed to locate to complete the car. The body of the car from the fire wall back is an original Dooling Mercury body with one slight modification. The back edge of the seat opening was leaned back about 5 degrees, otherwise the body is original. The frame is also an original Dooling Mercury frame but it was highly modified. To start with, the front of the frame was cut off just behind the coil spring mounts. A Whirlwind front frame piece had been welded onto the front of the Mercury frame to give the look of a typical Pop Dreyer Sprint or Indy Car. The radius rod tabs were cut off, why I don’t know. At the back of the frame, the coil mounts were also removed and a cross member welded between the frame rails, to accommodate a Whirlwind leaf spring and rear end. Whoever did the welding was very proficient. Note the damaged hood louvers and the unattached empty rear end in the picture above. The hood was home-made and ill-fitting with damaged louvers. I made a new three section, hinged hood to replace it. The rear axle is a Whirlwind but it had no cover, gears or drive shaft. I purchased Boston bevel gears and made a cover, drive shaft and ball and pin universal to connect to the engine fly wheel. The gears fit in the rear end housing with no trouble. I also added aluminum brake drums and radius rods to the rear axle. The existing rear spring had too much rise so I made new springs both front and rear for the car. The radius rods were made from standard Ford Model A carburator connecting rods, as were used by the Dooling factory. The car came to me with what looked to be unmatched Gardner wheels, which I replaced with polished aluminum spoked wheels and slightly larger tires. I also added Gary Arnold’s (www.tlctethercar.com) Whirlwind style knock off wheel nuts. For asteadic reasons I added an aluminum belly pan under the frame from the grill shell back to just in front of the rear end. Note the damaged hood louvers and the unattached empty rear end in the picture above. The hood was home-made and ill-fitting with damaged louvers. I made a new three section, hinged hood to replace it. The rear axle is a Whirlwind but it had no cover, gears or drive shaft. I purchased Boston bevel gears and made a cover, drive shaft and ball and pin universal to connect to the engine fly wheel. The gears fit in the rear end housing with no trouble. I also added aluminum brake drums and radius rods to the rear axle. The existing rear spring had too much rise so I made new springs both front and rear for the car. The radius rods were made from standard Ford Model A carburator connecting rods, as were used by the Dooling factory. The car came to me with what looked to be unmatched Gardner wheels, which I replaced with polished aluminum spoked wheels and slightly larger tires. I also added Gary Arnold’s (www.tlctethercar.com) Whirlwind style knock off wheel nuts. For asteadic reasons I added an aluminum belly pan under the frame from the grill shell back to just in front of the rear end. Completed Car with spoked wheels and Whirlwind knock offs, photographed in my shop. Note the hand painted numbers and lettering, no decals. Note the Aluminum rear brake drums, leather seat and cockpit trim. Note the Wood steering wheel aluminum dash and gauges. In doing the research on the above car I found a photo of a Dooling Mercury that was modified by Walt Petersen late of Reno, Nevada. While the Petersen car modifications are nowhere near as complicated as the Mickey Fearon car, it does show that tether car collectors where modifying some of their cars in the 1980s. This car has a Morrison Silver Rocket slanted grill, Dooling F Car wheels and tires, a seat of unknown origin, and decals, otherwise it appears factory. As you may have noted in the fourth photo I am working on several other tether cars and would be to post some details in the future. Thanks again, Al
Al thanks for the info. The incorrect information I gave you came second hand to me. As there were many craftsmen building these cars over the years it is sometimes hard to pin any car to a specific builder. They also copied and traded parts with each other. They were recasting these cars back in the 50's. I have a car that I built 20 years ago that has the same basic construction as yours. Ron
Curly Glover and his wife Ruth owned C&R Rubber Products. They made tires for tether cars after the war. Their two sons are still in business making tires. Curly also designed and manufactured the C & R Special better known as the Curly car. He made two models--a short tail and a long tail. It came fully assembled with a Dooling 61 ready to race. A limited number of cars were made, between 35 and 50, depending on what book you are reading. A few unassembled kits were also sold. My car is a short tail and has a Dooling 10 fin with a magneto ignition. Curly's cars came with either an aluminum pan or one made of magnesium. This one has a mag pan and correct C & R tires and wheels. The body is also carved wood as opposed to aluminum. I think Curly is one of the best looking and well engineered post war cars. Ron
A Dooling Arrow I bought about a year or so ago. The nice lady (widow) seller seemed to think that it had once been Glen Fairabend's personal car. Although it does have some Fairabend parts on it, I could find no proof of Mr. Fairabend's ownership. Doesn't really matter, it's a nice example of a complete Arrow. The yellow/purple scalloped is one I cosmetically restored quite a few years ago. Mick
Dooling Deluxe Mercury-- sort of. This car is unusual for me as most of my cars are original. But I had a bunch of parts and I thought I would build a Dooling second series a little different. The second picture shows the mock up. As you can see I stripped all the suspension, took off the headrest, and welded together the cowl and tail section. I was very happy with the way it came out. Thinking it makes a sleeker looking car than the original Mercury. I would like to thank Al Book in Burien, WA, for designing and making the hood and belly pan--a true craftsman. Ron
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