Creighton Hunter sat in his make-shift dragster at the starting line in silence. His pal, Dale Kersh, staged him by carefully pushing the car in position. Then, in order, Creighton pulled hard on a long lever from inside the car. Through a series of ... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
That's nutz. That ranks right up there with the guy with the V-8 bike. I am assuming that it was chain drive, and that front suspension is unreal. Gotta love it.
Gee ...pushing running in gear vehicles OFF a high lift bumper jack is what we used to do for fun.. get hurt nahuh break stuff... wasn't mine so what.. dangerous =exiting .
In 1957 at Parks Field in Illinois, Harry Hovis had a similar setup on a dragster. It didn't work or work well as no one took much notice. That was a time when any idea was copied and there was a dragster with two flathead engines back to back Bustlebomb style. When it handled poorly and ran worse the owner took a cutting torch and cut the rear frame and engine off the back and ran the car as a single front engine dragster. Those drags were run by the Bellville Gear Jammers, Anyone remember those spookey times. Square roll bars, carb flame covers and some sort of flywheel shield. deChrome
After surviving one pass in that sombitch, he could lose the dolly wheels and just do the "prop and drop" off his balls......that is some crazy, cool shit.
The v8 drag bike Widowmaker did the same thing. Direct chain drive to the rear wheel, set rear of bike up on rear wheel stand, spin it up and push it off the stand. Away we go!
sneaky pete robinson had one with a sbchevy with a setup like that he ran it at lions but was asked not to run it again......... some one should have pics..... when in school i took a list of all the parts needed to run a dragster&then removed what i thought was not needed..... i ended up with a 3 wheeled design with the back wheels bolted to each end of the engines crank ect............
That is just flat out crazy thinking there! There is no way to predict what that setup would do next! I bet that everybody at the track would stop whatever they were doing to watch that thing!
Steve, aka sikopal here on the HAMB, might have more info. Creighton lived by him in Santa Ana's Floral Park and owns Creighton's last car, a 34 roadster. I have a pair of full race heads that Creighton ran on one of his flatties.
Yeah, the Widowmaker was EJ Potter's (The Michigan Madman). Stack injected sbc between the legs, get the thing fired and spin it up, slide it off of the stand, and smoke it down the track.
2nd craziest! right behind the bustle bomb that ran Cad and Olds V-8's two pinions on one ring gear and the rear engine was direct and started on compression with the throttle wired wide open and only a kill switch to control it. the front engine ran second and high gear.
he almost got killed when he crashed it at Colton. I was there and it WAS a crazy machine. Everybodys estimation on its crazyness is right on. ! was at the starting line when he came up, and asked my buddy, 'what the Hell is that'? In fact it hauled ass about as good as I had seen any flathead dragsters go, and Colton was where John Bradley 'Mr. Flathead', reigned supreme. Now that was a longtime ago and I think he took out the lights at the end of the track, either that or run off the end, which happened now and then. HMM this sounds familiar??? ha yep I already posted about this before! great to get old everyday is a new world! http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=328960
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