60'-70's Vintage Oval Track Modifieds

hugh m, True statement. He knew the importance of putting on a show for the folks in the grandstand. Denny Z

 

Starkey Speedway was in Roanoke. Perk Brown was king there,along with a few other places. I believe Flemke hit it a couple of times.

 

The Frank Kelley owned car???

 

Probably Roger Griffith #8

 

This one?

 

Radford, Nope I don't think I ever raced there (Starkey). Denny Z

 

Denny Z. The stories my mother has told me...you guys were nutz about racing and traveled a lot down south. Steve

 

Does anyone know what the gerald chamberlain street legal car is? The real thing?

You tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyUruRVR2zw&feature=fvwrel

 

Assuming that this is the original car:



I believe it normally resides in the Wood Brothers Museum.

 

I guess that nobody, either, mentioned to Ryan Newman that it doesn't take a lot of class to come into a much lower-bucks series with a big-bucks car and, even then, feel the need to cheat:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/blog...of-Modified-win-for-violati?urn=nascar-wp2592

 

Yes,that's the original. Went to Butch's house before he restored it and you could tell by the damage that was still done to it,and even the old sponsor decals that were faded into it.Paint was about gone as well as the numbers. I had photos of it then but lost them in a computer crash. I don't know if it's still at the Wood Bros. or not. Was gone for awhile. The guy that had it restored let them keep it there for awhile.That's where it should be.

 

Dr.John a Baldwin motion air cleaner is on E-bay # 250858432348 in case you have'nt found one yet at a reasonable price.

 

Probably the old " I only drive the car. I don't know what they did. " I guess some of the regular drivers felt like he was toying with them. That's what I read into with some of the quotes after the race.

 

I have seen enough scanned photos and have an "original" idea, how about an original photo from the original photographer?

I took this at Trenton in 1976.

 

That darned #6 Pinto still looks fast just sitting there. I was at Trenton that Sunday in 1976, and watched Maynard's short-track car, with a few slight aero modifications, dust off a lot of rides with sleek noses, swoopy hoods and even (gasp!) fenders. And second at the checkers was another iconic short-track special, Len Boehler's blue #3 Vega, with Fred DeSarro at the switch. Fine memories ...

 

All the Virginia posts recently remind me of a Modified I've long been curious about. Anyone got any good pics of the Clarence's Steak House #26 PINTO from the late '70s? I've seen plenty of the Clarence's Gremlin and the Vega, and of course the old sedan, but that Pinto doesn't show up in the normal Modified sites I visit. I recall it having a one-off chassis, and I'm also a bit stumped about the identity of the driver ... as I remember it, Satch Worley was in the Bob Johnson #17 by then, and Paul Radford was aboard the Speedy Thomas 07. Maybe it was Jay Hedgecock in the #26? Anyone got pics? Driver info? Help!

 

Since any 1 car in todays modified tour has more money in it than the entire field of modifieds of the 70's which in my view is 1 reason the modifieds are in the stateof dismay they are in, I fail to understand why there is such an uproar over Ryan Neuman. I'm not condoning cheating by any means, please do not misunderstand what I'm saying but I recall a couple years when Richie & Geoff won like 55 or 60 races & nobody said anything. I'm also not saying they were cheating because I don't think they were.They had good cars & worked hard @ what they were doing. But the article mentions that Neuman had won 4 races in a row & that raises eyebrows? & as far as the statement that they were toying with the field. I also remember a time that Richie & Maynard went to stafford w/wings on their cars & lapped the feild. Nobody said anyting about that as I recall either. So I don't see the validity in these statements as a reason to go as indepth inspecting his car as opposed to others. But then again we do have the selective rules enforcement factor used by NASCAR to acheive Preferable results. Which by the way in my opinion is another reason for the NASCAR modifieds to be in the state of dismay they are today. I hope I haven't ruffled any feathers because I surely don't intend to. I'm just pointing out some of the ways NASCAR has hurt The modified ranks & the hypocracy of their ways.

 

A few points that represent one man's opinion, if I may:

- I'd disagree that no one was bothered when, starting in the mid-'70s, there were 2 or 3 Modifieds that were vastly better funded than the rest. Richie was a great driver, Bodine was a very fine driver, but neither was 10x better than the best of the rest, although they won 10x as many races as the best of the rest did. Money has always mattered in racing, but it seemed really to start to matter in the mid-'70s, and that is when fields began to shrink, attendances declined, and results became more predictable. It is not for nothing that we think of the '60s, not a more recent decade, as the golden age of racing.

- Even if we say that the second half of the '70s, with Richie and Bodine dominating, was as good as it could get, that time is not comparable to today, and their situations are not comparable to Ryan Newman's.

- Richie was a lifelong, full-time Modified racer. Bodine was a full-time Modified racer for a decade, and had his first full Winston season only when he was 33 years old. When they were dominating the Modifieds, they were Modified guys. That was their life.

- Ryan Newman is not, and never was, a Modified guy. He had his first full-time Winston season when he was 24 years old, and has been full-time Winston/Sprint ever since.
Ryan Newman is a multi-, multi-millionaire who dabbles in Modified racing I guess because it's fun for him. He has ready access to the finest equipment known to man. The Modified races in which he has competed were big money races, for Modifieds. In his and his team's 4 victories, how much money would they have taken away that otherwise would have stayed in the division - $75 grand, that kind of thing?

- Ryan Newman's car was built and is run by a current Sprint Cup crew chief. It's got a Childress engine. How much insider knowledge can he take advantage of, drawing on the collective wisdom of hundreds of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing professionals?


I appreciate that your post was meant respectfully, and I hope that you consider this one to be the same. I do think that there is a major difference between Ryan Newman's influence on Modified racing and Richie's and Geoff's influence on it, and that makes the Modified achievements of the latter two much more worthy than those of Newman, regardless of whether his motor was legal or illegal.

 

Great pic of #6 at Trenton.....Just to add to what Bones said: MT wrecked the primary big track Mustang in practice. The crew then drove all the way back to Rochester to retrieve the Pinto pictured above. Then added the windshield and air deflectors at the track........The rest, as they say, is history.........

 

Things progress exponentially. Even back in the "golden age" there were high dollar cars. The Dick Barney 14 with disc brakes in the very early sixties being just one example. The high dollar cars back then weren't outspending there competitors as much as in the 70's and the cars in the 70's weren't outspending as much as they are today.
Connections? There were cars in the sixties running HM stuff which sometimes placed them a couple of leagues above the regular Saturday night guys.
Cup drivers running modifieds....I can remember Lee Roy Yarbrough, Tiny Lund and others running big shows back in the sixties.


The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

Good points, both of you.

 

I have a 1/25th scale model of Maynard's 1976 Pinto. kt has seen it and if I ever can remember when I'm home, I'll try to get a couple pics & post them. May be of interest to some
Bill

 

I was listening to Gary Danko radio replays and a caller mentioned what I think is this car. He said the car ran with no radiator, somehow it was built into the chassis. Anyone have more info on this. The driver was Nolan Swift.

 

The late-great Nolan Swift raced his 10-Pins coupes before he switched to Super Modifieds at Oswego. I seem to remember hearing something about a car w/no radiator, but believe it or not, I am too young to have seen the car in the pic. race. That car looks like it had a tube chassis, and if so, I'd be interested to know where that would have been legal in those days (early to mid-60s?). What my father always told me was that he had 10 plastic bowling pins on the roof that he would light up whenever he got the lead. Now, that was cool! If Terry Kamp is monitoring this forum today, I'll bet he can provide more info on Nolan & his cars.

 

Denny Zimmerman, a while back you asked about Gil Hearne, Bob Rossell and Tom Green. All are hangin on while fighting age, health issues. But we get together as often as possible. You can reach Gil on his cell. 1-609-304-2555. He made the number public, so he won't be offended.
LOL, I have to mention that I stole my handle, "Hogans Goat" from Al DeAngelo. He climbed out of someones car at Islip and stated " this car is as ****** up as Hogans Goat. Thereafter, anything wrong on Long Island was deemed such. He was a helluva driver and a storyteller. A nickname for everyone and always made you laugh.

 

folks, hogans goat has some long island race experience. lets see who remembers who drove the "4 u" at islip in the sixties?

 

I don't recall hearing that the radiator was built into the chassis, and if you look at the car it's sitting up front like any normal self respecting radiator would be. Just really low in the chassis.

Per the "Oswego 50 Years" book (from what I recall from reading it, don't have it handy), Swift and his mechanic Billy Wright built this car for the 1961 season and used a tube chassis (as opposed to the standard frames) after seeing them on Indy cars. Shortly into the season Oswego banned this car as the rulebook stated at that time that modifieds must have passenger car frames. Apparently when they banned it Swifty parked his rig on the front stretch in protest and they had to call in the gendarmes to get him to move it. He ran his old car except for special events, where this car was scary fast. I think it finished 3rd in the Classic that year.

The following year when they opened the rulebook to allow supermodifieds and "bugs" Swift took the body off the car and ran it until 1966 or so, when it was sold to a succession of drivers over the years and eventually ended up behind a barn in Scriba NY. Someone recently bought and restored the car back to the general appearance of the 1961 Modified version, although they couldn't find a proper 1933 body and have a 1934 coupe body on it instead.

 

Nick Catone!

 

"Mr Bones" I guess we were both on the same wave length that day !

Here is Fred De Sarro in the 'sleek' Boehler Vega at speed on the back straight, before the Dog Leg, at Trenton.

I have Ray Hendrick in the #26 Pinto as well. If you want, I will find the negative in my archives.

Jack

 

Nick Cottone in the 4U, what a character indeed. And one memorable night Friday night at Westhampton Speedway which was a banked 1/2 mile long straights and tight turn track Nick Cottone was there in his # 4U Chevy humpback coach and impressed the hell out of me.Coming off the
turns he was a rocket ship and absolutely blew by everyone like they were tied to a pole.

One issue that reared it's head was that he had a straight rear instead of a quickchange and was running his Islip gears so about 300 feet out he hit the RPM wall and it looked like HE was tied to a pole!!! That is a sight I will never forget.

Now Nick if you are lurking it would be cool to hear your story about the night you had a problem and you were parked between 1&2 at Islip and O'Rourke would not let the yellow be thrown and left you there...while the feature continued. I Know what I witnessed but it would be great to hear what the actual party who was hung out to dry has to say and especially tell all how you got O'Rourkes attention.
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