History So all Stockcars were crudely built junk? You better think again!

As mentioned above, small left front tires were the norm for short track cars back then. Besides they were in the air most of the way around the turns. With old Ford front suspension, i.e. split wishbones and a Flemke spring up here in the northeast, and parallel leafs in the back, the chassis would roll over on the right rear, causing that left front tire to be upwards of a foot off the track. It was an unique way to get forward bite on rock hard M&Hs or Firerocks...

 

The XL1 was built by Don House. Engine was a 368 Lincoln, 56-57 , with fuel injection. I met the guys that built a replica of the original XL1, they went to Fla. to talk with Don to get all the details of that car. One of the hardest parts to find was the fuel injection unit, very few made, don't remember the mfg.
Also, the XL1 won the 64 Trenton 200 with Joe Kelly driving, and from the restorers, it was powered by FE Ford with tri power carbs. I think Sammy Beavers drove it at Langhorne also

 

Langhorne! Now that was a nice safe sane nothing bad ever happened... no, wait, that track had such a reputation. Some AAA/USAC drivers wouldn't drive there, in the days before roll cages.

 

I had an old Ted Horn book and he mentioned Langhorne as a treacherous track. He was killed in 1948 at DuQuion. Kenny Weld was the first credible car builder/driver that ran roll bars I guess around 1965.

 

Drivers of that era either had BIG BRASS B@[[$, or were crazy. Cromwell helmets, no firesuits, skinny tires, not even a roll bar until what, the late 50s. And most in spite of the era, lived to talk about it.

 

Puke Hollow between turns 1 & 2

 

And quite a few were killed too early. How about those Sam Browne seat belts... I saw Will Cagle with one as late as 1986 at the Eastern States race at OCFS. Some of those tracks the sprint cars ran on were quite dangerous. I saw a Sammy Sessions quote, he mentioned that he was the only guy (at the time) that went over the rail at Winchester and survived.

 

My cousin owned a truck stop in Bath NY and loved to venture down to Langhorne to race, and did pretty well- Dutch Hoag. He was one of those brass-balls guys, and when Car & Driver did a car comparison article, '66 IIRC, Brockway Truck brought a semi loaded to 40K to Bridgehampton Raceway for the event, and brought Dutch to give rides around the road course and scare the schidt out of the scribblers- worked pretty well, too

 

A great example, the car Maynard Forette ran in the Permatex Modified/Sportsman race at Daytona.

A local guy wanted to race Late Models at Fonda and asked my dad where he could find a car to run, my dad knew this car was at Rorick Brothers truck stop (the car owners) dad asked about it a deal was made, and the car found it was to Delaware County NY.

The car languished then my cousin bought it and run it as a late model with the 60 body, then reskinned it with the 61 T-bird body (another one dad found) dad also put tubing from the center of the rear axle back.

Latter it was reskinned with a 67 Cougar body, the sad thing is the chassis sat behind my cousin's house until about ten years ago. His son in law was ramming and jamming with a piece of equipment and broke it in half.

As Maynard Forette race it at Daytona



After my cousin reskinned it as a 61 T-Bird


The last reskin with a 67 Cougar body


What was once a well-built car with the reskins bars, mounts, etc. having be changed wear, tear, and fatigue, being repaired after being stopped under a red flag and tail ended by someone going full throttle (the other guy didn't see the flagger) the chassis really showed age.

This is another thing I don't think people outside of oval tracking realize. Unlike other forms of motorsports, a car will lead many lives.

In many other forms of racing a car is put out to pasture, in oval track racing a car might be sold off raced for years with different bodies engines entire drive lines and might have changed to the point it is no longer recognizable as the car was first built.

 

About my 4th year of dirt track racing my buddies and myself needed a new ride for our hobby stock car. We had already killed 3 different cars in 3 seasons. The "stock" cars in our hobby class were pretty advanced already and most of the cars that ran the year before were older late models.
We were broke, so finding a decent car we could afford was a big effort. I remembered an old car this 22 year old guy helped with back when he was a 15 year old kid. I knew the car had been retired for many years and we were pretty desperate. I contacted the guy that last ran the car to see if he might know where it was. The guy still had the car! It was laying back in the weeds behind his garage, where it had been for nearly 6 years since the last time it ran, back in the early 70s (this would have been around 79 or 80. He told me he would sell it to me for $200. The car was pretty rough, nearly everything of value was long gone, but the chassis, cage, and sheet metal was pretty much still there. Back in the day, it sported a 427 tunnel port FE under at the time nearly new 70 Torino sheet metal. We bought a couple used wheels (that fit on the car, none of our wheels matched the bolt pattern) and some really wore out racing tires (I think we actually had to recruit a rear axle as well) and drug our prize home. Being broke, the only drive train we had was a 383 with an auto trans out of the last car from the year before, which was an early 70s Chrysler New Port, the the Ford chassis got a Mopar drive train.
The car was originally built around 1960 by Darrel Dake, out of Iowa. from an original brand new 60 Ford Galaxy, supposedly also ran a few races in Nascar before spending years running on the dirt tracks of Iowa. My understanding was the car was the first late model the guy I bought it from ever ran, and he ran one of the fastest old coupes at our local track. Our track ran the coupes until the end of 1966, but a few local tracks ran them another year after that, so I'm not sure what the the year the guy started running the late models. I know it was a 66 or 67 Fairlane the first year he raced it, and I know it was reskinned with another 67 Fairlane body after a crash he had with it. It ran two seasons with the Torino body. That guys cars were always very nice looking. He had a very good sponsor that wanted the car to look good. The trail showed at least 6 different rebodies, and at least 2 owners before us. and 5 reskins that I know of for sure. The car was pretty heavy by the time it reached us, and it was way under powered by us, but the old ride still worked really good for us. We used it for 2 years then sold it to someone else. That guy repowered it with a Ford, and decided he needed to cut a bunch of weight out of it before he added the last reskin (even though I advised him not to). He could never get to handle. Last I heard, he cut it up.
If the original 1960 build date was correct, the car's racing carrier spanned over 22 years. I can account for about the last 13 or 14 of those years. Gene

 

My last stock car was an OT Nova I picked up in a junk yard for $250. It already had the roof sawed off it and an old heavy roll cage plopped in loose that someone said came from an old coupe. We dragged it back to the shop and dove into it, 6 weeks later we were racing it.

The old cage needed a ton of work, it was tubing and black pipe. We managed to make it look presentable and cut anything out that we didn't like or deem to be safe. Nobody knew where the cage came from and I never found out who started the car and abandoned it.

 

Don't know if I posted this picture before, I was organising files and figured it was worth posting. Sorry for the poor quality, it was taken fall 74 with a Poloroid SX 70 camera. Yeah, 48 years ago! What you're looking at is Gerald Chamberlain's 76 Pinto, before the Lebanon Valley 200.

End of the season wear and tear, but still fast. Big Ford engine??? displacement, Hilborns on methanol. Other interesting differences from the normal unlimited modifieds of the era, Ford 9-inch rear, and that unique independent front suspension, using early 60's Falcon front suspension components. Well sort of... inboard coil springs operated by an unique bell crank setup, operating on the upper a frame. Light strong enough, and the loads transferring thru the upper balljoints. Same as Ford did, because they end up in compression.

 

Should have finished the files rearranging before posting. 1 more from 74! Same car... in the background is Dexter Door's #44 coupe, and a couple of cars that I can't tell who they were. Oh well...

 

Those DIRT racers were innovative as it got. If it worked... others followed and made their own iterations on the OG designs. Plenty of those cars were made on the family farms, even out by me on asphalt I knew at least one guy with a frame table he built a chassis on. Those racers were better than most.

 

Dutch Hoag was the only car with power steering when he won Langhorne. Quite a controversy about who won that race between Dutch and Al Tasnady. Heated debate with scorers, scoring done manually. Too long a story, Dutch won.

 

Gerald Chamberlain's 76 was built Gus Frear and Gerald,the Everrit Express. Car was owned by Joe Bullock in Warrington,Pa. The 76 was powered by a 427 Ford H.R., stroked w/428 crank, 20 over, =454 c.i., first time using a mag(usually dual points total loss). Qualified in the heat, pulled the pumpkin out and changed the gear, won the 200 lap feature.

 

And it was a cold day...

 

I have always wondered why more of us didn't follow their example with the front suspension on the 76. It was lighter, probably cheaper, and they really got it to work. Not many, if anyone else, could drive into 3 at the Valley, turn left, and drive under anyone. Chamberlain could and did. It was impressive!

 

A lot of owners and drivers liked the durability, weight transfer and quick repairs of the solid front axle. Gerald was an exceptional smooth driver. Tom Carberry's 47 had independent front with GM control arms, good handling car with Ploski and Grbac, but Tom eventually went back to solid axle

 

Yeah, I was young (19 for the 1st one) and new to building modifieds in those days and figured I wasn't smart enough to march to the beat of a different drummer. So I built stuff that looked like what I had wrenched on since I got started. Except for the rear suspension. It was a pretty good copy of the stuff under that exact car, the 76.

The rear suspension worked so much better than the front did, so of course we did away with it! Oh well, live and learn...

 

Birmingham Fairgrounds stock car race 1954 311 Jazz Special



Look at how the people who were in the grandstands (that came across the track after the races) were dressed there is a misconception that all stock car racers were a bunch of drunken hillbillies (some were) but the majority were working class family men.




Hot Rods in the pits at a stock car race? How can that be?
Everyone knows that there is absolutely no connection between hot rods and stock cars, and the hot rodders and stock car racers disliked and had no respect for each other!

Maybe history isn't as cut and dry some people think it is!

 

I used to park my OT '68 Mustang in the pits at Islip, my wife usually showed up a little later and she was driving it. I recall a few nicer cars there too.

 

Yes, my dad remembers nice cars in the pits at Fonda too, but over the last few years there has been a tremendous amount of revisionist history about oval track racing and hot rodding (much of it unfortunately I have seen/heard on the H.A.M.B.) Thing like "There is absolutely no connection between hot rodding and stock car racing", "That stock car racers had no respect for the hot rodders" "Stock Cars were all crudely built who destroyed good bodies and all the did was beat and bang" etc..

If you truly know and understand the history there was always an overlap.

There were people like Bud Hinman that started out as a hot rodder and moved on to stock cars, and some open wheel racing.

Dad remembers the night the Hemi Under Glass made an unscheduled appearance at Fonda.

My Great Uncle was Chief Steward at that time, it wasn't planed they were traveling through and asked about watching the races and parking in the pits, and ended up making a few laps around the track during intermission.


"Bud" LeRoy Hinman (Hot Rodder and Oval Track Racer 1969 Mid State Speedway track champ, 1972 Watertown speedway track champ, Central NY Stock car H.O.F. ), my father Willard and myself at the 2022 Mid-State speedway reunion and Central NY Stock car H.O.F.


Bud's Hot Rods



Bud built his first stock car in 1960



Bud with his Super Mod


Bud's 1969 Mid-State Track Championship winning car, which is the 34 Ford body from his first car mounted on his super mod chassis.


Note Fonda is 1/2 dirt, and the Hemi Under Glass was running drag slicks not dirt tires!


That why I started this thread to show the full and correct history.

 

Our local dirt track (actually clay based) had tire rubber on the racing surface at the end of most nights.
As a kid with a pretty hot street car, and a like equipped hobby stock dirt car, I can tell you the clay on our "dirt" track provided better traction then the blacktop on the streets of out home town ever did!

 

By the end of hot laps Fonda is dry slick now, but as a kid I remember at the end of the night the track was still heavy and tacky, to the point it would about suck your shoes off.

 

After the races at OCFS, we would head into the pits and walk across the track. It was as hard as asphalt and had a thick layer of rubber laid down in the racing grooves. The track magazine was The Hard Clay... very fitting.

 

Another misconception is that the early stock car guys would beat, bang knock each other out of the way until the cars were used up junk if that were the case none of then should have survived, and shouldn't the bodies be totally used up and junk on the following cars?

Charlie Jarzombek Bug



Don Rounds car


The P-13 owned by Charley Pierce of Deansboro, built by Fred DeCarr and driven by Tommy Wilson. Current owner Jeff Ackerman found it in a field!

Tommy and the car dominated the Eastern Mutual Racing Club at Vernon, Brookfield, Morris, Sharon, Lafayette and other tracks in the 1951 & 1952 seasons



Cliff Kotary (The Copper City Cowboy) won the New York State Fair (One Mile Dirt oval) race 6 consecutive times 1960-1966 with this 33 Ford.
Car and Photos owned by Jeff Ackerman



Buck Peek car found, restored, and currently owned by Mike Gray

 

I think a lot of people think is crash damage is a result of damage in the junkyards long after the car last car the track.


The Henry J owned and raced by the Warnerville Garage. currently owner by Mike Gray


The car discovered in the junkyard behind the former Warnerville Garage over 20 years ago.


When found the roof was in good condition but in the years from when it was discovered until the owners decided to sell it local kids got in the yard and jumped on the roof, (and broke glass and lights in other cars.) I have also seen photos of race cars clearly moved with bulldozers and people with no knowledge of auto racing claim it's damage from the track!

 

Well, maybe.
Our 1st car we ran 2 full seasons. When we junked it, the outer shell was still pretty straight, the underside was rotted away!
A couple of seasons after that, it took 4 cars to make it through one entire season. Stuff happens.

To assume a specific car made it through several seasons just because the pictures looked the same is pretty brave. I know several cars that ran more then a couple seasons, but every one got new sheet metal before each season. I know I replaced several front or rear sections of cars that got wrecked during a season on several fellow racer's cars. Every one of them were painted the same as before, or even year after year if the sponsor didn't change.

My dad's buddy ran old Ford coupes for many years. Every car looked the same. They raced competitively 2 or 3 nights a week (Friday night depended on if he could get off work in time to haul the car 80 miles to the track). He had 3 back up bodies waiting if he needed one. I know one year they destroyed a car (wrapped it around a light pole on the infield during the feature), but in 2 weeks (had to wait until the driver said he was ready to race because he had bruised ribs caused by the crash). They were back with what looked like the very same car. Several people couldn't believe he rebuilt the same car. He didn't, it was all new, but he let them believe whatever they wanted. They scrapped cars to fund racing and took the scrap to the yard that shredded the cars they took in. The Friday before the new car debuted, I watched him run his D9 Cat over it and load the pancake onto the truck with 2 other pancakes and headed for the shredder.

 

Yes, they would move each other out of the if need be and there was body damage, but this idea that you would hit someone full throttle with no regard for their or your own car/safety that some believe is complete nonsense.

There were always Dale Earnhart types, but for the most part these were working men who worked during the week, and even in the early days there were guys who raced for a living.

When you have a family to support you can't be taking food off the table to put the money in a racecar, and if you're racing for a living if you have a torn-up car you can't do your job until it's fixed.

There is a difference between race damage, crash damage, and damage that from being moved around in a junk yard.

Both of these cars (both own by friends of mine) are survivors as well, both ran multiple seasons at multiple tracks,
the Plymouth ran the mile at Syracuse

The 99 shows typical race damage down low, things happen when you race but these people who post photos of cars hit on every corner bent axles cages laid over bent broken frames and then try and claim that is typical of stock car racing.



If all these guys did was beat and bang and destroy cars how and why do any of them still exist?

Many of these stock car haters are jumping to conclusions and making assumptions (we all know what happens when you assume.) based on their limited knowledge of the subject and have never tried to learn the history of stock car racing but many of them never bothered to learn the history of hot rodding, drag racing or lakes racing either.