I lived in Temple City and a co-worker lived in Tujunga in 1959. He had a Offy 220 powered oval racer. For tune-up runs we'd head west on Foothill to the Templin Hwy and cruise up to Castaic Junction and then park at the Fire Station to make any adjustments. You should have seen the looks we'd get from the motoring public. That was one tough engine and the blue flames from the alcohol at night looked cool. Normbc9
As a machinist I can see the beauty in the machine work in remaking the Offy. The original was done with a lot of lathe work, I have seen photos in old magazines with con rods machined on a lathe. Ago
WOW, I saw one of the cars run, the super mod. I was friends with Pete and Jim Hurtubise R.I.P. and they had a few parts...but this is amazing collection....priceless
steve has started a new project, a late 50's, early 60's indy roadster. he has a blueprint and a photo to go by. the offy is laid down on it's side. he spends a few hours on the weekends on it. i try to stop by and check out the progress each week. very cool
Love the pix... over and over. I always think of rear drive vintage Indy cars as being the hot rodder's version of Formula 1. So cool. Gary
Simply incredible photographs of some very historically important race cars. Thank you very much for sharing. Unreal. Can't believe I missed this when the thread first started.
Bill at Speedway would be jealous. I sure enjoyed the pictures. Thanks When you post some more, I will thank you again. I do not give thanks in advance.
Absolutely beautiful.For guys who dig this kind of stuff, you CAN'T MISS Speedy Bill museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. Guided tours only, I missed one, had to wait a weekend, worth it!
Some friends went to the Speedway Museum. One individual is an Offy freak. He spent two days looking at the engines. They said three days may not be enough time to look at everything. I think the museum is only open for about four hours a day. I hope to go sometime this summer with or without the dog. He enjoyed Bonneville so he should enjoy the Speedway Museum. Thirty pounds of ice a day at Bonneville. The salt surface is cooler than the air temperature.
About the centrifical supercharger. Years ago I read about these. They tried mounting them on the front of the engine where the gear train is. They did not live long. the fix was to mount them at the back and run them with a small diameter quill shaft the lenght of the engine. The long small dia. shaft acted like a vibration damper and smoothed out the accelerations of the pulse of the engine firing. There was also a lubrication issue that was solved by lubing the shaft bearings with oil vapor instead an oil stream. Fantastic engineering !! Thanks for posting these pictures! Frank
so i stop by from time to time to check on steve's progress and shoot the shit. back a few weeks ago, a vintage cosworth indy engine showed up at the shop, but i didn't have my camera at the time. on my next trip, i brought the camera but steve had already stuck the cosworth upstairs in storage. so what happens when there's no cosworth to take pics of? you take pics of two engines to make up for it. enjoy this pair.
stopped by the shop on sunday. steve has the new car back with a body now. it needs some minor adjustments but it looks good.
he wants to cut down the cowl a little and straighten out the nose and grill and a few other things. he was hammer forming a piece when i arrived. there's 3 or 4 scoops around the car meant to bring in air for the driver and possibly the oil tank.
he still needs to message some metal for the torsion bar adjustments and cut an opening for the exhaust. looking in the cockpit. the offy is layed over on it's side with the trans and driveshaft running down the driver's left side.
some more pics from sunday morning there's offy stuff laying all over the place. i think steve has become the go to guy when it comes to these engines. these two have seen better days. steve will repair them though.
That sir is pure sex.....the cars, the engines, the fabrication.....all of it. I would like to see the tutorial on how he repairs those windowed blocks....that would be something to see.....
It's always interesting and fun to see what you post next on this thread. I think he nailed it on that car. He could put a number on it that wasn't run at Indy in that time period and have guys swearing that they saw it run there.
but a small part of it was at indy back then. i don't know how many of you know, but the only numbers on an offy are on the cam boxes. steve bought some a while back not knowing what, if any, history they held. he ran the numbers and they came back as being from the winning car at indy in 1960. the ken-paul owned car driven by jim rathman, smokey yunick mechanic. how awesome is that
Cool that a part of it has some real history. Actually I was saying the car number it's self. There have to be a few car numbers that didn't get run in the time period that the car is set in. Unless it is a clone of a former car that raced.
These are the cars and engines that I fell in love with as a kid. Beautiful stuff! Thanks for sharing.
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