Forum: Racing From The Past (go)
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Tim....The reason I went to the 44" front axle was because Geo Shalalli, (tapered springs for the USAC sprints) the guy I bought the front spring from sent me a chassis sketch of the Ackerman system ( I thought some engineer on the west coast came up with it) and said all of Hank Henry built cars were that measuement & with the narrow axle & geometry made them handle better in turns & cross grove in the corners better. He talked about the Hank Henry car that Dick Fries from San Diego campaigned in IMCA in 63, 64 & 65 was one of them. I saw that car run several times. It was yellow & black #3 & Brian will likely find it somewhere. It was a beautiful car. Shalilla advised me to use 44" axle on 86" wheelbase & 46" axle on 100" wheelbase & use the Ackerman geometry. To me, that is as important as putting the engine together correctly or any other part of the car.

I can not take credit for it but I thought it was sucessful. ....Luther

Tim,...The axle is centered in the car, so the left would move in same as the right. Another thing to consider is the stagger you run. On a short wb sprint car the stagger is more effective. The driver has to get the feel whether the car is coming around to much or front wheels pushing. There is so much that affects handling in the turns. Stagger, lr or rr weight, rake front to rear. The better the car handles in the corners, the faster the driver will take it into the corners. ....Luther

Its said that Benny Woohoo Taylor was afraid of Snakes and Chick Shaddox( The Joker} was scared of Mice. If anybody wants to get a little pay back you know how.

Chick walked around with a snake that was real friendly. He got Benny to trusting it,, to help him with his fear of snakes ,,Benny got to petting the Snake weekly.. Well one week Chick got a differnent snake that was mean.... O benny walk up to pet the Snake like he had been doing the Snake bit the heck out of ol Benny. And a few weeks later Chick walked up to Benny who was setting in his race car ,,Chick dumped that snake in the car with Benny, Benny like to hurt himself to get out of the car..Benny would not talk to chick for quit a while after that.

Then one night Chick was sitting in his car and ol Benny walked up and dumped a load of white Mice in Chicks lap. Chick like to tore himself up getting out of the car. Tim

Win as if you are use to it.And lose as if you enjoyed 
it for a change.Its hard to get to the top and alot 
harder to stay there.

TA,

I remember going to I-70 in '83 with HTD we had at OKC on Friday and finished 5th or 6th but we hurt the motor so we had to change engines before we went to Lawton on Saturday night, we won there and drove like hell to get to I-70 when we got there Indian Tom layed down in the truck and slept, I crawled out on the trailer runners and slept there until HTD showed up, we knew that the engine we put in was more for short track stuff so out in the parking lot we pulled the front off the motor and redegreed the cam, it wasn't to bad as we ran a alum. Morosco front cover which you could pull the top half off. As HTD and I worked on it KK walked by and says you guys must be hard up, at which point HTD started giving him a lecture about camshafts it was funny KK took it all instride and poked alittle back at HTD. We didn't do good in the heat but made it out of the B-FEA. and started in the back of the A and finished 8th or 9th. The Old Man wouldn't let us go on to Knoxville that year so we came home after the I-70 race. We went back in '84 and I remember Ronnie did kick our ass in your old car but if that was a wore out motor you should have ran it more, that thing made alot of speed. We ran 3rd or 4th there I really don't remember because Ronnie did beat us so bad but I'll never forget Knoxville that year as your teammate and my rivael JS busted his butt sailing over that turn 3 wall and Shorty breaking my fingers changing tires on that red flag!!! I also remember the crash on the front stretch that broke Jack Molton's car in 1/2. We did fair in the heat and wound up 4th in the A-FEA. When we returned home we checked our wheel centers and found 2 broke, 1 of them being the tire we changed on that red!!!! I wish NCRA would have kept after Knoxville to keep running there, I always thought it would have been neat to have ran a western swing, running Amarillo, Albaqerque, Manzanita & Las Cruces. I really liked going to Amarillo on Labor Day running that Southwest Championship.

Been out 3 weeks straight just getting caught up on what everybody's been talking about. Luther if you redo one of your cars I have a couple of 283's & 327's SJ stashed if you want to make them period correct, I've told Kim Parson if he ever gets his dads orginial 4-bar car I would put a period correct motor in it for him. I believe we ran either a Isky or Norris Cam in his car later on we ran a RK-38 Engle. Don't run a cam much differant in the 61J currently then the RK-38. Funny how some things don't change much over the years and other's have just went stupid!!!!!!!!!!!

is this it? Black and white

Brian,...I don't know where you found that. I have searched for him several times. This is not the car, it was painted light yellow with black trim simular to this paint job. There was multi colored pin stripping dividing the black & yellow. This is a CAE car with CAE grill, nose, straight axle with the spring mounted behind the axle & has the wishbone type radius rods. It had a profile like the first car I built for Stan Borofsky ( car #6)shown on the link here with Stan accepting a trophy.....Luther

Pretty simple really. I go to MSN homepage(the one with all the paris hilton, angelina jolie updates), type in a name in the 'search box',

Next page, I click on images, just below the search box

Next page, looked for a sprinter, in this case.

Of course with a name like that, ya never know what yer gonna get!

Technical question for all you guys that know a thing or 2 about later model Nance cars.

I finally found the cage for a future Champ/super project, it's an '87 model with the widened frame rails. I bought #1-87-1 last fall, but now I have found one made in June as well.

$500 for a basketcase roller! The guy wants to move in a few months and he came down on his price.

HERE'S MUH QWESHTIN-

From the firewall back, are the sprinters and Champ cars the same? I expect to move the rear engine plate forward an inch or 2, then the bellhousing will get it to 50% setback. Have not measured, just thinking. I have a front clip that should go nicely with it, but I wanted to see what you guys had to say on this.

I do have several of the oval Nance steel tube arms and they are all with the same measurements, L&F. So from there I'm thinking it shouldn't be too bad.

The basic idea is to have all the cars setup to accept the same arms, bars, etc. Each year , should I want to lay a car back, I can just bring out another one to play with. Crazy maybe, but at least it'll keep them out of the scrapyard until reality sets in.

Does anybody know if this is Buddy Jackson of Marlow? Word has it he is kicking around Tulsa these days.

Brian,

This is one of my photos and it is James Shepherd out of Wichita Falls. This was taken at Lawton Speedway, 1976.

Mike

This picture is one of the few these days that gives me that 'split second' flashback, like it is really 1976. Twilight, the supers are doing the heats, and there is no other place to be.

Yes Mike, I'm sorry I didn't give you credit. Brain fade

I really hope you can make it down to the show next weekend. I got to thinking about it and it dawned on me that this all really started for us in this area at Wichita Falls at the Overpass dedication. Compared to all the other times I have wanted to see these cars come back, this journey has had a lot of 'coincidences' that just added to us getting to where we are. I don't mean people wanting to help, I mean small coincidences, too many to count or remember.

Mike, when the long list of people to thank gets written, your name will need to be on there.

Mike; This the car that me and you went looking for after the Wichita Falls reunion. I had talked to James brother at the reunion, and he told me who his brother sold it to we went over there. I went and knocked on the door among all the dog barking and a older lady came to the door. I asked if the car was still there and she told me she sold it to Harold Lindsey about two years ago. Another one in Harold's stuff just two years to late. Dwane

Harold has got some stuff he's wanting to sell at the show next week. He admits he has too many projects. There are quite a few cars and parts collectors out there, many have two partners, one is usually silent. Yet still, there are 5-6 hunters coming through here looking for parts. That says they is a market somewhere.

His main thing is to keep these cars out of the scrapyards and hold them for someone who will really put it back together. He just pulled another frame out of Snyder the past month. Nice frame, nothing special. It could very well have gone to the scrap pile since the owner hadn't been back to get it, and the landowner was owed some money.

One great memory was Dale Reed in Shot Hampton's orange 94, passing George Armstrong, last lap, last turn on 101676 NCRA race at Tulsa.   About froze to death that night.  It was well worth it.

BO0ing Hahn in Tulsa.  However, when we went out of town to an NCRA race,  I cheered for all the Tulsa drivers. 

The awful year of 1981 when we lost both Junior Taft and Gene Daniels.

and last but not least, I will always feel, that the cars lost there indivduality with the sprint tales and the wing.  They became generic looking.

mlcole

That was probaly the best race that I ever saw on the big Tulsa track

Ray

To All,

Been on road for most of the past month, tired of NASCAR. Was able to go to races at OKC Friday nite, it was crappy weather but got to see alot of my friends. Congrats to JD on your win, I'm sure it was special and Joe Jr. is looking pretty good. Talked to OJP and he told me he had been reading some of the stories on this site and really enjoyed them. So here's one for him and his dad MP, I know MP will remember this race it was in late '86 we had our newest J&J car it had all of our P/U points and design features built into it, it was a very nice car and would take us to the '87 NCRA Championship.

It was late August of '86 MP & I were racing with Mr Bill we were at Tulsa SPDY out on old HWY 75, it was tough at that track tight corners with 2 Drag Strips connecting them, it was usually right around the bottom in 1 & 2 and with a little luck you could run the middle in 3 & 4. DC was the guy you had to beat there 80% of the time but there were all those good local cars (Hillenburg,Offixco,Grandstaff,Telford etc) & a few travelers (Ewell,JJ,Constant,Shorty part time etc) wasn't unusal for there to be 45 cars there with 20+ of them having a chance of winning. MP had just been driving for Mr Bill for just a short time but we hit the ground running up front and winning right out of the box. On this paticular night it was slick and shiny from the bottom to the cushion which had ledged up to a big curb abought 3/4 the way up the track, it wasn't fast there as it was so far around. MP finished 2nd in the heat, we didn't run the dash, with our point avg we were starting 18th, I honestly thought we would be lucky to finish 10th because it was so slick and hard to pass. We went out and looked at the track MP came up with this hair brained idea that he could run the top and win, I wanted to tighten the car up and drag race but MP said it was to slow there and he wanted to be able to carry speed, we put alittle higher gear in and an 1" taller LR on but basically left the car loose, I wasn't happy but MP had that look in his eye and the tone of voice he was going to win it or wear it, I had seen and heard that tone before and 90% of the time he made it work. On the start Andy jumped right to the cushion we were right behind him everybody else was banging on the bottom. We could pass on the top going in but you just could get off the corner with them, there was a red flag on the 4th lap I wanted to change everything but MP said if I get by Andy I'll be ok he's slowing me up, so all we did was ck the air and added a splash of fuel. I wasn't ready for what happened next and I don't think Andy was either. On the restart when they got to turn 1 MP drove in straight over the cushion on the outside of Andy that car was on 2 wheels I don't know why it didn't turn over but it didn't, MP came off of 2 about 4 cars ahead of Andy and drove into 3 above the cushion there again I don't know why it didn't turn over, I was hanging on that fence preaching to him in every corner, MP never got below the cushion after that he was running her flat footed bouncing and hopping for the next 16 laps and on the 17th lap he passed DC on the outside coming off of turn 4 and went on to win, Andy passed DC a lap later and finished 2nd after he to moved above the cushion. The cars I worked on won alot of races at this track with differant drivers but this one was my Favorite win here that MP willed his way to that victory I was just lucky enough to be part of it.