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Hey guys, how's everybody doing? Want to let everyone know what a great time our last get together was, can't wait to do it again!! I was absolutely floored when I found out Harold was there. I felt 13 years old again & was in the presence of a hero! Great stuff!

You know anybody who ever strapped in & gave it the gas is due some respect & so many racers have come & gone. Just great to see so many who still love the sport. Jerry Schwartz, Gary Cole, Mike Allison, Shane, Harold. wow. Wish I would have gone on the road more like David, but Don't regret staying home doin the family deal, being an official.

Just thinking a little about it, as an official, car owner, driver & fan, you know we used to race 3 nights a week pretty regular, when I did the McCreary deal, one year I did over 200 races. doing a little adding, I come up with over 2000 races I've been to!! Good God! Don't regret 1 minute of it, you guys are my heroes, don't think I'll ever quit.

Things are starting to settle down at work a little, so will start sharing more stories soon. Keep going David, you got some great stuff there.

Jim

To All,

In '85 we were going to Little Rock to I-30, I really love that place even though I haven't been there in years. NCRA was having a Champ car race there I had never been there but Shorty had raced there a couple of times, we had the Gambler car and Sonny Honey Bear engine, the track was fast and smooth, about 45 cars showed up, we drew bad started on the back of the heat and won pretty easy which gave us enough passing pts to start on the pole, it was getting pretty slick by A-FEA. time, that first Gambler was a little light on brakes so we put a low gear in it to help slow it down, 7:28 was as low as we had but I was able to borrow a 7:52 from Earnest Jennings he asked me your really not going to run that are you and I don't think he believed me until I handed it back to him after the A-FEA. and it was still scolding hot. Shorty started from the pole and just drove off I didn't know who was 2nd at the time because I was to busy trying to keep up with him about lap 20 he hit the infield tire and knocked the frt end back on the LF (he did this a few times in '85) it was one of those deals that it helped instead of hurt the car, it would fall down entering the corner on the LF corner and it would just kinda pivot and when he hit the gas it would just stand up and drive hard off the RR. We lapped all but Ewell and MP and after the race ole Sonny Honey Bear was setting on 8900 RPM Shorty didn't even have to use the brakes with that gear which led us to another victory there later in '85 when we had a brake line knocked off on the 3rd lap of the A-FEA. but didn't need brakes anyway, there were alot of people didn't believe us about that gear which was ok by me but Ernie always knew from that 1st time.

Jim,

Good to hear from you, I have to agree it was neat with all who showed up and hope next time is bigger. You know when we were racing back in the mid '70's to late 80's it was not hard to run alot a whole hell of alot as you say 3-4 times a week you didn't have to travel far, you could race OKC or Devils Bowl on Friday, Amarillo,Lawton,Enid or Tulsa on Saturday and '81 or NCRA on Sunday. There was and still is alot of racing in Pennslyvannia but during this time period they didn't have anything on us, they had Weld,Opperman,Paxton,Snellbaker etc. we had Leep,Hahn,Howerton,Lies etc. car for car I would take our guys anywhere. I used to love racing OKC on Friday, Lawton or Tulsa on Saturday and '81 on Sunday. I dreamed of winning the Triple Crown but never did get it done not even close, but a couple of guys were close but I think only Leep got it done!!! We should have started these get togethers earlier we have missed out on alot of fun with the GREAT GUYS that have past away, it is only by our memories that we honor them MY MY WHAT A GREAT TIME WE GREW UP IN!!!!!!

I hung out with Dutch Ter Steege Sunday for a while. I had to ask a few questions as to the truth about some things I had heard over the years.

1. Yes he did! Ter Steege once finished up an engine change while riding on an open trailer. His then- wife was only going 60mph, and the engine was already changed. Dutch only had to put on the headers, and those other pesky things a man needs to race. All this while on hi-way 81 to Enid. His engine blew on Friday night, got it fixed just in time to land it in the car before heading out. Finished it up while on the road. I asked him if he dropped anything, and he said......"no".

He was still more impressed with the time all of his friends and even a few of his enemies jumped in to fix his car before a race at I think was in Mesquite.

2. He told me his view on the Hutch fire in '74. I still find this is a touchy subject with some people, but before anybody puts their verdict to bed, they might think about the input from a man who actually lost a car in the mess. I can spend ONE HOUR, and give you at least 3 examples of the different places that I've heard over the years about where the blame was thrown. Dutch basically gave a big picture that really shows a common sense approach to setting up this disaster.

In the Bob Mays book you see him standing there while his car sits with obvious fire damage. If you're like me you might think he at least had a frame to start back with right? No... The temperment of the steel was so compromised from the heat that it had the reasonance of a lead pipe thereafter. He had to junk that one.

3. He has always stayed with the Modified lineage. He did take a turn or two in a factory stock in order to help out a Powder Puff driver. Otherwise he stayed with what he knew best.

Not only the drivers, but also the innovation. I keep running across evidence that tells me this stretch of racingdom took what the rest of the world said was perfect, did a few redo's and handed those items back in better shape than they came in! A lot of small inventions came from the territory.

On the driver issue, I still claim that James MacElreath was from our corner, and he HAD the stuff! There is no telling how far he would have gone in the '80s. Indy for sure, but maybe even beyond the Buick v6 program that awaited sprint car veterans and into a car that really had a decent chance.

Central Pennsylvania had bigger engines, wings, and writeups in SCR. I'm sure this area matched, or bettered them on everything else.

1974 NCRA Hutchison Nationals, I was but 14 years old and not allowed in the pits, so from my Grandstand perch I witnessed one of the most horrific sites in auto racing. The track was so dried out from the heat of the day, the heat races, the Trophy Dash, the C the B and by the time the A Feature rolled around, it was no less than a tornado the dirt (sand) in your eyes was so bad that some folks around me said they felt like they were back in the Dust Bowl of the 1930's again.

Remember this was back when the Drivers wore Cotton paints, and cotton T-Shirts, (short sleeved) some had longsleeve cotton jackets. Very few had the "new" Simpson Fire Suits with Nomex underwear.

I remember D.E. (Dalton Eugene) Suggs showing me pictures several years after the fact where his car was in the center of the inferno. He somehow was able to escape injury and in his words "with the addrenline going" I run back in there and grabbed the only thing left I could see of a fellow racer and that was his hair.

"So I drug him out by the hair of his head, thats all that was left to get a hold of and I jumped on top of him to put out the flames. Hell I didn't even know who it was". The driver D.E. saved was Jerry Soderburg of Enid. He and his Dad Ira at "Ira's Speed Shop" were famous back in the day.

But, if you have ever seen D.E. change out of his street close into his uniform with out a T-shirt on, It was not pretty. He never let on, but the scares told the story.

I was pretty much amazed at our last get together, Ol' Farts & Fans, or Shinny Foreheads and Belly's that no one in the room spoke of Aaron Madden.

I've heard also that there were a lot of cars in the field that day. According to Dutch, they threw the "B" feature lineup behind the "A" . Asked why , it was said no one showed up in time to lineup for the B in the first place .

That is interesting uncle a on D.E. never knew that , heard alot about the deal at Nance's shop in Wichita one time from I believe it was Carol Nance who was talking about it when we were up there in 79 or 80 for an NCRA at Wichita, they use to have that series of pictures of the fire on the wall in the showroom at the place, was quite a bad thing.

I agree wholeheartdly on the comparison of guys from this area and Pa. area back in the 70's and 80's , take the talent from around here and go anywhere and compete.

I also agree on James MacElreath , the guy had the talent and the name and the right people to pull the right strings to put together a deal for him and he was on his way to the big time.

I think I might have said this before that one Sat. night at Lawton in the mid to late 70's Lanny Edwards told some of us standing around there after MacElreath just swept the program at Lawton from the back of Heat , Dash and A main that he had more talent than anyone else he had ever seen run at all the race tracks he had promoted.

I know when he did show up and run at Lawton , he seemed to win everytime he pulled into the pit gate.

Ya know David about 5 yrs. ago I almost bought a 97 J & J non down tube car at the Wichita , Ks. auction for about $150 if I remember that what it went for , just frame and body and it was a coil over front end , thougth about it but got skeered that the coil overs might run about $400 each to get and then like you said you have to play around with them , well I talked to Marcus Jackson later that year and ask him what the coilovers cost and he said you could build em for about $125 to $150 by getting springs in OKC , guess he had a place, since I knew that always regretted not buying and trying to run that car, Might have been a headache but it would have been different to deal with.

I'm seeing a lot of coilovers in the USAC ranks these days. Not so much in the winged cars though.

back in 1980 a coilover 100 in. car ran out of wichita. had nance speed equipment on the hood, driven by larry dewell. it was a fast racer was tied for title at st fair and hutch nationals with harold leep. should have won but had run on 7 cyls. at the nationals, had plug hole stripped out on # 8 cyl. so coil overs are not something new, in fact are very good set up when ya figure out the spring weights ect. various tracks and conditions ect make it a lot more difficult to set up for each !!!

bushwacker,

Your right that car was very fast and it was generally a good handling car no matter what the track conditions were. I actually saw this car before it left Nance's, it is the reason we decided to try the coil-overs on the #01, also if you remember Zink had a 100" car that had coils on the front before this time and I believe Wally Ledford had those Coin cars that Emmitt and Tommy drove. I think Carol had a decent grasp of what needed to be done with it, I feel real confident that Denny and Bobby Moore know what to do with them, in later years I think Travis Bickel had the best grip on them around here. I know the car your talking about came to OKC and Stan Constant drove it some it was owned by a company called Aero-Prop which built wooden airplane props they were pretty amazing, I also think Jon Johnson drove it some for them also.

Brian speaking of Dutch he was the first driver Aero-Prop had and he did a stint as a Super Modified for them.

I can pretty well tell you the Rich coil-over was just to advanced for us, bushwacker your right about figuring it out the shock and spring pkg is just a minor part of it, shock angles,pick-up points,shock heights and roll centers play a bigger part in the coil-over pkg. I would still love to try that Rich car today in a sprint format!!!

I'm thinking Travis Bickel's Dad , Mike had that very coil over Nance car. That's where he got most of his education for coil cars in the early days I'm sure. Mike had an '80 Nance coil-over, ran it as a Champ Dirt in '87.

I'd heard Kenny Jenkins was involved somehow in building it before he went to Gambler.

Brian,

This is the car and this would be at Hutch, That's a D2041 on the RF I still have 2 of these mounted on sloted US Mag's, a D1689 on the LF, a D1694 4BLK on the LR, I'm undecided on the RR. This type track would have been up it's alley, this would have been in the 302 motor days, the car is hooked pretty good as the LF is up and you can count the tread blocks on the tires. Brian if you look hard at this pic it will tell you alot about coil-overs and how they work. I don't know what it weighed but I bet it was light.

Uncle a,

We might not have talked about Aaron much the other night but I saw alot of pic's of him, 1 that I know Gary Flatt would have loved, was his dad as a young driver punching Aaron in the jaw after an on track incident.

I remember mike having a coil over car and I believe your right it was this car, if I remember right Mike bought all of the coil-over stuff that we had for the #01 and the Rich car.  

Remember one particular summer night in 1971. Heat race time on the half mile & the track was just comin around. Melvin Rogers shot into the lead in the white & gold # 3 and he was just gone. About half way through Harold leep in the Cates # 2, broke into 2nd about a quarter lap behind Melvin. What happened in the next 4 laps you had to see to believe!

Leep jumped up on the cushion, planted the right rear, throwing a perfect rooster tail. It was a thing of beauty & actually a clinic for running the cushion. Jack Miller had tthe crowd whipped into a frenzy, the whole grandstands was on their feet, & in 4 laps Leep ran him down & won that heat race!!

Just one of those perfect memories , you had to be there.

We never really messed with coil cars much, but I could always see the simplicity in them. Besides Sammy, can't really remember the big guys trying too much. like anything else, if the theory was really played out, I'm sure it could be perfected. Seems like if you really got a base set up working, you might be able to fine tune them more. just my thoughts on it.

Yeah the Arrowprop car was fast at times, but seems like when it missed, it missed BIG. We were always cheering for Dutch, it was fun to see him on the big track.

This had to be the most different car from the area. The Bishop ifs/irs super

no, kenny jenkins had nothing to do with the design or development of the coil/over car, it had been built several years before he was at nance speed equipment. it had a 305 chev engine, weighed around 1600 lbs. was owned by larry bietler from s/w kansas, driven by larry dewell from fowler kansas. car really hooked up on dry slick surfaces, was easy to get too tight on a heavy track.... often wonderwhat happened to it after it went to oklahoma !!!!

David and Brian, I remember that #9 car Blue car of Mike Bickel , in the early 80's he ran against the Champ Dirt cars with Coil Overs, That is when I first met Mike and Travis and later on Dennis, all 3 very sharp with stuff on openwheel cars, I had Dennis last year make me a 25% reduction crank pulley for my Champ Sprint and it was and excellent piece of work.

I to miss Travis Bickel as well, he would always listen to you and then try to help you with what he thought might work, talked a lot to him back in the late 90's when I had Tommy Holder driving my car and he gave me some ideas (shocks/ride heights) to try and they did help,

I remember standing by Travis one time at Lawton Speedway in the early 90's and he was helping Billy Turner and it was a yellow flag and he was really giving lots of hand signals to Billy on the back stretch and so I moved over there and just ask him what he said to Billy and his answer was J.D. So far it's like this if he does'nt run a differnet line in 3 and 4 then were not going to finish good enough to make enough $ to buy a Hamburger tonight and he went on to say that it was a Bag of Chips and a Soda the previous 2 nights after the races. That was classic Travis Bickel, sure was glad to see him get up to Indy and have some success up there, he was very sharp and a genuine good guy.

Best I can remember,

Bickel toyed with the idea of a sprinter beyond '87. The coil over car eventually was sold to some guy in OkC and raced a few times but the frame was wrecked and tossed. The coil over shocks were kept since he was thinking of doing a street rod. Can't remember who it was, it's been 15+ years since I saw him.

The Bishop car met the same fate, but it was never sold. Bill Bishop told me the suspension ended up on a T-Bucket rod in Tulsa.