60'-70's Vintage Oval Track Modifieds

Bullfather,thongs go this site,panties don"t let the guy post his models. I have a friend up here that is a major model builder too. Spent 220 hrs from original spec of Shampine,s super mod, also many models of his dad Joe Fel Felber who raced in Upstate Ny in the 50's at Waterloo. Weedsport ,Lafayette and Oid Speedways that no one on this site ever heard of.I love the down state stuff you post but a lot more existed in the 50's & 60's that will never be posted because somebody got burned by Dr John or someone else. I would be glad to share but I asked Dr. John to plezzieee take off the shots of Richie's Car who restored by my cousin who crew chiefed for Richie for years ,who restored Richie's short track car for 4 months which was supposed to be a surprise in nascar hall of fame, but no !!! Dr. John has to steal the pics off of Richie's kids Facebook and then say I"m sorry for posting same please ignore the posting...Bullfather you and I spoke about this and Bisci or what thinks he is better than this thread. I truly give the guy a lot credit for dhis posts on this thread but sometimes COMMEN SENSE IS NOT COMMEN!!!!! As he once said John SOON TO BE BANNED!! Well John Bici maybe you should been.You have never given any remorse or apology for what did to my cousin.This has been brewing for over year now ,I put my phone # on this page and did have enough guts to even call me. All I asked you for is to bring the HOL pics down. SOON TO BE BANNED !!!!

 

Excellent! that at the Weedsport museum? Never been there,only the track.

 

Fulton 1969

 

Fulton 1970......My first two successful scan and posts with the help of my wonderful daughter Alissa.........

 

Do not know much about this old picture maybe Plainville, Ct?

 

Gary Membrino possibly another Plainville shot.

 

"Gentleman" Jack Lecuyer at Riverside Park in Leo Matte's #92.

 

Rob,I can put u in touch with a local model builder up here in Upstate NY .This guy spent 220 hrs alone on the Jim Shampine offset super mod alone. He has major and I'm talking major collection of mods from the early 50's & 60's from Upstate. I'm sure that if u guys could connect u guys would have a ball.U built from south and Reading PA. I'll hook him up with U just let me know if U are interested.
Rod

 

RAF, great pics I love them all.You are a true gentlemen and thanks for sharing for all of us old guys who remember.!!!!!!

 

Thanks Dirtmodcar31 for the kind words, more than happy to share pictures with those who remember early modified racing and also provide a view into the past for those who were not there during one of the greatest racing eras of all time. Here are a couple of Bobby Stefanik in the Czarnecki Brothers #20.

 

Looking at the Richie Evans picure, I got to wondering, when did tires start to become a big factor in the handling and speed?

 

I believe these were a couple of Plainville cars. I know Ronnie Mayer in the #111 also ran at Riverside Park.

 

This car was obviously built/painted/lettered by Jake Hafke

Barry

 

Hi Barry,
I have been friends with Jake for over 40 years and I am still amazed at the talent this man has. He has done many, many modifieds over the years like you say cutting the bodies, painting and hand lettering them. He can chop tops do custom body work and his race cars were some of the best looking I have seen. He recently lettered a gasser for me and hasn't lost his touch. He has a ton of racing stories and his memory of the cars is amazing.

 

I was at Seekonk that day with Bob "Nu-tin" Nutini and we ventured over to talk with the owner. Bob thought that it was originally John St. Angelo's street rod recreated. Sure enough they found it in field and created this replica. It is a Troyer car. Sorry,reply to this question on the 6 shot at Seekonk. Bob worked with Ed St. Angelo for many years and is still Nutin Bodies.

"Can someone please tell me more about the Nagle Ford, Troyer car in post 9663, is this a restored car, or a recreated vintage car? I can see that the engine is a chevy, & didn't think the car had a chevy engine when it was painted this way, maybe someone could comment a little on the history of this great looking car.

 

Hey KT, What is Maynard up to these days?

 

This is an interesting question and I'm sure there are many opinions on when tires became a "big" factor. Some will say that tires always have been a big factor. I'll offer my thoughts and focus on asphalt Modifieds.

Up through the 1950's and into the early '60's most of the cars used production tires from passenger cars and light trucks. Shaving tires was common. As drag racing became more popular, the "Cheater Slicks" and recap cheater slicks became more available. Recapped on a standard casing they put more of the tread on the road and oval track racers started using them.

M&H probably saw a market for this type of tire and started making the M&H Racemaster tires which had a stronger sidewall and were primarily a drag racing tire. This was a tire of choice for many oval track racers until about 1968 when Firestone introduced the gold stripe 15 inch wide Indy style tires. These grew to 16 and 18 inches wide with the 18 inch referred to as Steamrollers.

I believe the introduction of the Firestone tires was the pivotal point where the tires made a big difference in asphalt modified racing. Prior to the availability of this tire, most of the mods used a straight front axle and there was little advantage to an independent front suspension. With the wider stronger Firestone tires the independent front end took advantage of being able to make a better contact patch with the front end and handling became more of a factor than motor.

Goodyear and Hoosier were a bit later to the game of short track Asphalt Racing with each raising the bar in tire technology.

Independent front ends (and improved rear suspensions) have constantly improved to maximize utilization of the tires. We may be at the point where the modified's limitations are not the tires or suspension, but the ability of the driver.

I would like to hear what Denny Z. has to offer on this subject.

Regards,

Moselli

 

Buzzie Reutimann, early 1970s (John Grady photo)


Dutch Hoag at Lancaster (NY) Speedway, 1971 (Gordon Reinig photo)


A model of Gary Ball's (Rochester, NY) Mustang Modified from '68 I built a long, long time ago...

 

I think that you've hit the nail on the head with this reply. There have been many discussions on what "killed" modified racing, especially with regard to the "backyard builder" being competitive, and I've always felt it was the creation of the GoodYear/Firestone "Indy" tires, which pretty quickly trickled down to the local ranks.

Previously, 300 HP was enough, because that's all the tires of the day could handle, and 300 HP was pretty inexpensive to obtain. The newer tires (in '68-'69) could handle 500 HP, and since the modified engines rules were pretty liberal back then, 500 HP was suddenly needed, but came with a price tag. Add in the costs of independent front ends, as "Moselli" pointed out, and what was once an affordable, $3500, ready-to-race modified, evolved into a $10,000 race car (in the late '60-early '70s), and now is a $50-60,000 machine...

 

I have always been amused by the fact that the "highest" form of racing, Formula One, which contains some of the most pompous, self-important blowhards on earth, didn't start to use slicks regularly until '71, which was years after they had become the norm on our "jalopies".

 

I could be wrong, but I think that it might have been because they had to be prepared to race in the rain, without using "rain specific" tyres. When it rains here in the states, our "jalopies" stay on their trailers...

 

You guys must be talking about these:.......lol......Nice to hear some educated opinions on the "downfall of the mods" other than the standard "Troyer and Hutter" quips.............Moselli, the 1970 picture I posted(9756) was Maynards first car with independent front suspension. I know that Geoff Bodine was one of the first with it also. You being from that area, I was wondering if you might have a timeline as to when Geoff first introduced his?.......................kt

 

Not really, because, once they figured out that slicks were better, they went straight to them. Also, there were plenty of races (Spain, southern France, Italy, Monaco) at which you would know long before the race started that there was no chance that it was going to rain. Also, also, they were allowed to use different tires for qualifying and race, so they would have tried at least qualifying on slicks if they'd understood them.
At that time, there was a notion that the edges of all the little tread blocks or sipes were an important factor in overall tire grip.
Even Andretti, who was a great tester and developer, has said that slicks in his many forms of racing were unappreciated for too long. He tells an anecdote that, at the end of a normal Indy car tire test, the Firestone (?) engineer asked him if he'd do a few laps on what were actually or effectively slicks, for some reason. He said that he was sceptical but agreed, only because he had nothing better to do. He went on to say that he was immediately amazed at how they not only had as much grip as the then-standard lightly grooved tires, but actually had more.

 

Markim1......You asked about the history of the car in post #9663. It is of significant importance history wise because it most closely resembles the 1975 vintage car. This car was the first "tube chassis" that Maynard built. I enclosed a picture to illustrate the differences between it and other cars of that era. This pic was taken on the night of the cars first victory. From the picture you can see that it is considerably lower than the others. That along with it being lighter allowed the use of more weight lower and to the left.........As for the restoration , the guy really did a beautiful job. It did have Chevrolet power, something MT first started using in 1973. As far as being "period correct", you can see from the photo that there are some subtle differences. No chrome, no rear nerfs etc....

ejayg......Maynard is retired and lives in Sarasota Florida about 8 months out of the year. While he has had many toys since his racing days, his present passion includes remote control boats and helicopters. He says the helicopter thing is the hardest thing he has ever attempted.....I would say he is in very good health at 72.........kt

 

KT,

Don't hold me to the exact date, but I'm going to take a shot and say that Geoff Bodine built his Valiant in time for the 1969 racing season. Rip is building a replica of the #99 car and knows the exact dates. I'll look to him for a more accurate history of this.

In any case, I remember that it was a Koni coil over front suspension and while the car was very competitive, Dutch Hoag and several others had perfected the spring bar (Reese Trailer Hitch Equalizer bars) front suspension using a straight front axle. This configuration was very rugged and allowed for some "rubbing," whereas the independent front end was somewhat fragile and didn't take a "hit" very well. The bigger and better tire tested the weakness of the parts on a front end.

Better front end parts and some learnings soon made the independent front end the suspension of choice. It may well be that when the straight front axle went away on asphalt, this was the "moment."

Sonney Seamon came up with an torsion bar independent front set-up that was pretty good. It used a '57 - '58 stock Chrysler front clip with Lincoln upper A frames. He and Richie Evans were very competitive with this set-up for several seasons and reasons. It was simple, inexpensive, rugged and it worked. I would say at that period of time Sonney was one of the best innovators in Modified racing who could go to a junkyard and build a car for half the cost of what the competition spent and still outrun them.

Back to Tires. The other important features of using the Indy type tires was that it automatically lowered the center of gravity for the modifieds and with it's thin bias wall construction, generated less heat and was able to be more consistent during a race by minimizing stagger change.

I think that Firestone used a number system for the compound hardness. Seems to me the 136 compound was soft and the 172 was super hard. There may have been some intermediate compounds. We had a set of 172's that we used for Pocono and Oswego for several years and I think we finally had to replace them because they were getting weather checked yet the tread was still okay.

The Firestone tires were not truly slick - if you looked close you could see a fine tread pattern. Almost as if it were cut with a razor blade. I was told this was there so the tire would wear evenly. I was young so I believed anything I was told. (Now I'm old and I believe none of what I hear and half of what I see.)

Other than knowing that Jupiter is the largest planet, that is pretty much the extent of my knowledge.....

Regards,

Moselli

Frequently wrong, but never in doubt....

 

the blue #6 coupe is indeed plainville, Warren Lee

 

While reading this, my mind suddenly skipped back a number of years, and I recall reading something about American vs. European race tires. I don't remember where I read it, but it was an interview of either a Goodyear or Firestone engineer, and he was commenting about when some American "stockers" were on a tour of a couple European tracks, and the subject of tires was discussed. (this was a LONG time ago)

I remember the American tire engineer commenting that the Europeans were down right flabbergasted at how lightweight and thin, the American racing tires were. They though that we were insane using those tires on almost 4000 pound American sedans. What they didn't realize, the engineer said, was that we Americans had a lot of development time on high-banked oval tracks, which aided their perfection of carrying high loads and developing high amounts of grip. The Europeans, at that time, were still primarily using Dunlop and Pirelli tires, which were strictly road racing tires, used on lightweight sports and Formula cars.

So in essence, since the "slicks" were an American thing, the Europeans were slow to adopt them. Plus, at the time, I think thety thought that the tread pattern aided cooling, with the openings in the rubber.

 

As opposed to their actually generating additional heat, through block movement.

 

I gave credit to the wrong oganization in my post # 9963. It's STAR, Senior Tour Auto Racers. Here is the photo album.
http://www.seniortourautoracers.com/photo_album1.htm

 

yup!!!