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To all, What about the difference between cross bar front ends and parallel bar fronts like the Walker cars had. It seemed like all the walker cars would push like crazy at the big Tulsa Track. That is why Hillenburgs went with the Stanton cars in the middle of the 1978 season.There was a lot of success with the old leaf spring front end until about 1979. What is the advantage and disadvantage of all 3 of these front suspensions? In 1968 the Zink car of Buddy Cagle had a 4 bar set up. They changed over to leaf spring font end and With Jackie in 1969 and ran it until the mid 70's, winning several Tulsa championships and 1 or 2 NCRA championships. I would like to her everbody's ideas about this.

Ray

Brian,

I would hate to put a price tag on this car, 1st off it had a stout Boyd engine, past that the machine work that went into building the componets for this car would be PRICELESS in todays market, I know Donnie & Bill never had any junk cars, they were always works of art. This car in the end would have been murder on the pavement or the smooth shiny slick tracks. Here again is a car that was ahead of it's time just like our Rich coil-over car.

Bkcr,

I'm going to take a swing at this just my opinion!!! Your right about the Walker parallel front cars, they were a beast at Big Tulsa track. This is another reason I have so much respect for Ray Crawford, he is 1 of the few guys I saw could run that type of car at Tulsa and be consistant. My all time favorite race involved Harold in the Old Man's #76 vs Ray in the #55 parallel frt Walker car. I know Jackie's Zink car had the parallel bars on the rear, which was a common type set-up in the early days. I think the reason that the cross 4-bar became dominant was the spring base is so much better with this set-up, however with today's technology on springs and shocks I believe if you could get a good leaf spring that a space frame car similar to the cars Benny and Jelly built could be very fast. Also if the wgt rules were differant I don't know that I wouldn't build a single rail spring frt sprint car to run the short tracks with, it would be ultra light. Jim & Bobby can verify one of the reasons that those old single rail 302 powered cars were fast, they didn't weigh shit. The single rail spring frt parallel rear car that George Armstrong & Benny drove for the Old Man weighed 1100-1200 lbs and that was all steel parts. 300-400 lbs is alot of HP that your not stopping and starting. Eventually Denny built the Zink car that ran coils on the front and Emmett won a ton of races with it. The technology is there today to make a coil car work, if you don't believe that look at all of those Dirt Late Models & all of those Open Dirt Modifieds at some tracks there almost as fast or a little faster then a 360 winged car.

At the time Bill Bishop stated that the final cost to customer would be between $50k-$75k. Developement and all. There was a pile of parts out back considered "imperfect". I guess it was more of an in-house statement of the possibilities.

Adjusted for inflation from the early '80s, that would put the pricetag somewhere in $125k-$175k price range! Making it quite possibly the most expensive 'dirt' supermodified of all time. Probably even when compared to any front-engined Oswego supermodified that ever turned a lap.

To All,

Today I had the pleasure of going to Tulsa to the Dirt Legends lunchon, I'm guessing about 65-70 people there, alot of them I do not know but you could feel the heritage in that room. Some in attendence Emmitt Hahn, Ray Crawford, Benny Taylor, Jack Wickett, Jerry Stone, Dave Grubb, Darrell Brazel, Terry Doss, Shane Carson just to name a few. There were also a bunch of Car Owner's, Crew Guys & Official's. It was a great time!!!!!

Just so everybody knows I gave Jerry Stone a big hug and didn't hit him!!!

They meet for lunch on the 3rd Wednesday of the month at the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, it costs $11.00 for an all you can eat buffet lunch. They announced that we have had a get together in OKC a couple of weeks ago and were excited to hear that, several indicated they would love to come when we meet again, Shane is trying to get a copy of there sign in sheet so we can contact them.

Old Rivelries don't die and they don't fade away, we may pass but our history is still VERY STRONG!!!

A note on James MacElreath, or more like an opinion-

At the time he died at Winchester in '77, James had been in 2 rear engine Indy car races getting ready for Indianapolis itself. He finished it appears 7th both times. The month of May was not so kind to him, an injured hand and engine troubles kept him out of the 500.

His connections, talent and timing could have been key to having his name on the Borg-Warner trophy. With his Dad and mentor Jim, I'm certain he would have closed the deal by 1990. There were quite a few high caliber teams that would be interested back in those days.

Throw in the fact that along with Pancho Carter, he was a second generation driver winning high profile dirt races. Pancho would have gotten 'choice' if 2 rides came to both men, James being the under dog would most certainly have turned any disadvantage to his favor. The only real obstacle from winning the 500 would have been the Penske faction. After Gary Bettenhausen, Roger Penske was not entirely keen on drivers with "fresh" dirt under their fingernails.

His best window of time would have been the early '80s up until 1984. By then he would have been around 30, and that age back in those days was considered prime. So, who knows how far he could have gone?

Me thinks the 'Roundup Pizza' is going to have a wee bit 'o trouble with room for all the people that come for that one. Might need to find another place.

What a kick it would be to get those guys in!

David:

I think you are right on about the cross torsion front/rear being better because of the longer spring base. On a rough, tacky, horsepower track they were the ones to beat. I bought the parallel bar car from Junior Hillenburg that Ricky Walker built for Ray with the bars "inside" the frame rails, not inside the engine compartment when they switched to the Stanton chassis. I told Joe John and Troy that Junior had one more and they bought it. It was a heck of a chassis and worked extremely well on the shorter, hard, dry slick tracks that you would normally see @ OKC after about July ever year. It worked fairly well at Lawton even though Lawton was always tacky and a horsepower track, but Lawton was fairly short and rarely was it rough. The long, rough tracks that required horsepower were better suited to the longer spring base cars such as cross torsion front/rear. I think that is why the coil overs work so well on dry, slick tracks is because most that you see are mounted where the shocks are normally mounted therefore making them a shorter spring base car. If Bishop would have moved those cantilever arms and coil overs out to the front and back to the rear, who knows? You talked about the 01 car that Arron sold to George Stephens. I think it had parallel front and rear and was hard to beat on dry slick. I heard

Arron had cross torsion mounts front/rear along with the parallel and could change depending on the track. I never saw that, just heard that when he had Jack build it, that was one of the options.

GRC35

Crawford, Hahn , Stone , Doss to add to who was at our last get together , now that would be just a good deal.

Might have to have an all day get together with all those VIP'S.

Brian your correct , for the next get together we need a bigger place, Need to start looking around for something affordable and that would work for us.

David, i like your idea aboout the single rail frames and spring front. Norman's 3 modifieds wree all built this way and they were very light and could fly on a heavy track. Mike was the only one that could go on a dry slick track. We were able to gear these car a lot higher because of their light weight. When James Warren started driveing the 17, he said our gears were any where from 20-50 pts higher than he ran on his old modified. These cars wre a lot easier to fix than the space frame Stanton car that Norman bought for the 1978 season. I have a story about Harold Leep and Raymond Cates Walker car later. Have to leave and go to the Dr.

Ray

Jim,

I remember a similar heat race in '69 with David Jr. David jumped right out into the lead and was about a full straight ahead when Leep moved to 2nd, David was running right on the edge of the cushion which was 1/2 way up the track, Leep moved up above the cushion wide open on 2 wheels most of the time and coming down for the checks he was beside David and only lost by maybe a foot the stands were going nuts and ol Jack had the fans worked up then also, me included as I sit in those old bleecher just north of the concession stand. It was neat the cars would pull out and Jack would give you the car# driver and sponser, he really knows how to work a crowd. Remember Hacking Hack Hackney use to do the modifieds if he wasn't driving they were a good duo. My hearing must have been alot better then as I could hear Jack giving the lap by lap car by car pass, now if I'm standing up front I just hear mumbling, sure miss those open headers!!!!! Remember when they used to go into the corners and let off and you could hear the exhaust bang and see the fire belch out of the pipes!!!

You know we've watched some great races at that old Fairgrounds on the 1/2 and 1/4 mile, the sounds the fumes the fans, when you have 5000+ in the grandstands it's not hard to get some excitement going. We've watched some of the greatest drivers in the country run those old Supers and Modifieds, IMCA Sprints and later on the Champ Dirts. I sure don't want to see it end!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gary,

I've always wondered how did you hold the end of the torsion bar in the frame, I've wondered how Walkers did that? Most of them were out side along bottom edge of frame. Those parallel front cars always seemed to work good on the shorter tracks, it appeared to me that they turned in good and then would roll over on the RR in the middle of the corner. I'm trying to remember somebody built cars that were parallel torsion on all 4 corners back in the day, there were a boat load of spring front parallel rear cars I think every body built some of them, there were alot of 2 springers also, Walkers built 1 for Joe Farley. The #01 that I'm talking about had cross torsion on the rear but the tubes were mounted under the seat and the arms ran back and hooked to shackles, it was bad on the slick.

I always felt that the reason the parallel front cars pushed so bad on the big tracks was because of bar size (couldn't get big enough) and so much of the wgt was above the spring, GT built a modified years ago that was cross torsion front but the tubes were below the axle and the car worked good in the dry but they fought roll on the tacky tracks. 

The Fairgrounds needs what we're doing here. That really goes for just about any track out there.

What I miss about OkC-

1. The sound of any 1/2 mile open wheel field coming through turn 3 full throttle expecting the green. Especially the first run of the evening, that one let you know you were in the big town now.

2. The sense of urgency to find a decent seat when you realize you've showed up during qualifications and not before. The sight of a lone car at speed with the sun blaring down while the noise bounces off of the Grandstand roof.

Tulsa-

1. Just about anything, cause it's just about all gone.

Lawton-

1. Everything before 1980. Most of it before 1990.

David:

Ricky inserted a splined boss into the frame rail and he had pre-drilled a few holes around the rail at the spot the bar would go into the boss and then spot welded the boss to the rail through the holes. As you said, it was the one and only I ever saw. Several people did the bars in the engine compartment including Walker, B & T and several others. In fact, this car I bought from Junior was the primary #55 that Ray drove and the back-up #55 looked identical, but had the bars inside the engine compartment. Only difference as far as I know. When I bought the car, I had my choice of the two and I was really intrigued by the bar in frame, how the arms attached, adjustement, etc. I really enjoyed that car and it reacted all together different than a spring front. It really wanted a large, wide tire on right front and that took me a few races to figure out.

GRC35

First off, sorry I didn't make the last get-together. We have had a sick girl.

These pics are from 93 or 94 when I was helping Neighbors. We were doing the Bear Chassis deal and me and Larry cut the front tubes off of this car and built a coil-over deal for it. It took a little while, but we finally got the car hooked up real good on the slick. When we finally got it going, we were at Wichita and started in the back and was coming up quick. He got up to around 3rd or 4th and right coming off of 4, some one blew up and Larry got pinched between him and the wall. He started flipping and landed out in the field off of turn 1. Right after he landed Charlie Rishell somehow drove off of turn 1 and drove right into the cage. It was bad enough that C. Ray told them to call 9-1-1. But as usual Larry got out. It killed the car and that was the last coil deal we had.

On a funy side note(not at the time). We were parked off of the back straight. That was when we had the old yellow truck and trailer. I was on top of the trailer and jumped for the hole in the roof. I missed the first step and bounced my chin off of every step on the way down. It was about Perry on the way home before either one of us knew who we were!

In 1979 or '80 Harold was driving the Cates' walker car at Tulsa It wasn't working very well but he just man handled it and won the feature. I was in the pits between 3 and 4 and he would drive in so deep that I thought that there was no way that he would make it. Emmitt finished 2nd in the Zink car and commented that Harold must have wanted the feature more than he did.

Luther what is your opinion about the different kind of suspensions?

David, Did Ray Crawford drive the Suchy car at the 1979 NCRA race at Muskogee?

Ray

David, Curious if you all ran a standard 50" axle or a wider one?, Nice work by the way on the fabrication of that front end, Bear Chassis now there is a name I have not heard in a while.

Sounds like that was a hell of a night in Wichita, Ks.