History whatever happened to ...El Cheapo Low Buck Special

think that was the name of that 26/27 altered that was in hot rod in the mid 80's...yellow with steve sanford lettering....injected hemi car....so bitchin , i remember it from when i was a kid in jr high.... anyone...?

 

Man I LOVED that car - it truely inspired me.

Floyd Lippencotte III - Priceless!!!!!

 

back up for the afternoon crowd.......

 

Blast from the past.....anyone know anything

 

Pretty sure that was Pat Ganahl's deal back in the fifteen minutes or so that he edited Hot Rod...

 

Didn't it have a cali license plate; "EL CHEAPO" airbrushed on the back panel?

I think I have a xerox copy of that article in my "inspiration" folder. Gotta check tonight.

 

The buildup/resto of that car is one of my HRM favorites. Was it the rollin Ricebowl?

 

Pat Ganahl owned it, Bob Mcray Drove it, and Gene Adams mixed the nitro and tuned it. No it was not the rollin Ricebowl. The Ricebowl was recreated by a bunch of Grey Baskerville's friends as a gift, and was awarded to him on the starting line at Fremont in 1986.

 

Yes Marty, I knew I was mixing up the cars. Both were cool.

 

Well, Pat's on here, and maybe he'll see this.

I thought I read somewhere that they made a few passes with it, and that was pretty much the end...and that the car has been separated into parts...really hope I'm wrong.

 

I found it!!!

Pat Ganahl wrote two articles about the Altered in the Aug & Sep 1984 issues of Hot Rod Magazine. Attached is a pdf of the second one.

It had a fiberglass '27 T roadster body.

The engine was a Hilborn-injected stroked early Hemi (420") with a Vertex mag, built and tuned by Gene Adams and Bob McKray.
There was no trans- just a clutch. Rearend was a 4.30:1 1950 Olds.
Steve Stafford did the lettering and gold leaf, Dennis Taylor trimmed the seat.

Purchase price was $800 and its best pass was 10.60/153 on worn-out slicks.

The owner is referred to as "Floyd Lippencotte III". (note: "Floyd Lippencotte Jr." was Bob Muravez' pseudo name when he was racing a FED and didn't want his parents to know).

 

This is the last reference I've found to it : http://www.dragracingonline.com/special/v10-hrrphotos-3.html

Pat also mentioned it in a book of his, dated (I think, too lazy to go look) 2006, but it's not a "current" reference, just mentioned the paint job as a past project.

 

Thought that was Pat's...

 

Does anyone have a copy of the August '84 issue of Hot Rod?

I'd like to find out more about this car.

 

I have it, but I wouldn't be able to pull the mag and scan it until next week sometime.

 

Believe it or not, as you were writing this post, I was visiting the Low Buck Spl. (El Cheapo Especial) in Longview, TX in Sidney Allen's air-conditioned building housing his excellent small collection of rods. It's sitting right next to Tony Nancy's injected-Buick 22 Jr. '29 roadster, both in pristine condition. Sidney bought the car from me in '85 when I advertised it in the back of HRM, and has had it ever since. He brought it out to the Hot Rod Reunion at Bakersfield about five years ago, and Bob McKray and I went through the engine, put some nitro in it, and ran it in the cacklefest while Sidney watched and grinned. That's the last time the car was out or ran.

I built the car and Gene Adams helped "assemble" the 420-in 354 Hemi as seen in the 2-part feature in Hot Rod. This was before my 15 min. as editor. But I had to be "Floyd" and put a bag over my head because the new bosses at HRM decided no staff members could be shown owning or actually working on hot rods in the mag. Apparently for liability reasons. Next I put my engine in Tom Prufer's clone of the Speed Sport roadster, and with Tom driving it to 150 mph at Palmdale, it spit out one of the old Don's Boxed Rods, so I had to build a new block with good rods and pistons. In this 2nd form, with Bob McKray doing driving/tuning, it ran a best of 9.12 at about 165mph on straight alcohol.

Steve Stanford did all the lettering/artwork on the car, which included a CA license that read "CHEAP" on the back, with painted '39 teardrop taillights, and "Pure Purgatory" on the grille shell (because it sure wasn't Pure Heaven or Pure Hell).

That car was a whole lot of fun. Beside Bob McKray, the crew was my wife Anna and young son "Billy," who apparently absorbed a lot. I sold the car (for "low bucks") to build the Adams & Enriquez injected A/Fuel dragster, with which we won the March Meet in Bakersfield in '88, among others, with Gene's engine and Don Enriquez driving. Good times!

Pat Ganahl

 

Thanks Pat! Your stories helped me ignore many a lecture in school (get A's and they didn't care WHAT you read!)

 

Thanks for the update. I'm glad it's still intact and cared for...even as a muscle car-influenced teen I thought it was cool as hell, with the first-gen Hemi and the resurrection of an abandoned car.

 

Cool Pat! Good to hear you weigh in on this one. Tman and I always seem to be on the same page, but this time we were definitely on the same page! Many an hour when I was supposed to be learning the finer points of anything school related were in actuallity spent reading Pat era Street Rodder mags... I must also add that education served me far better in my day to day adult life than the stuff they wanted me to learn!

 

Only he wrote about it in HRM Chip.

 

True the Low Buck Special, But when I was sitting in school it was a bit earlier... So Pat's editorship of Street Rodder was the mag of choice when I wasn't at the back of class sleeping...

 

Yeah, you mentioned the other day you were old!

 

You can get a copy on the auction site.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hot-Rod-Magazine-August-1984-/270739494493?pt=Magazines&hash=item3f0954d65d

 

Cool

 

Don't know how I missed this.....