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Pretty interesting stuff, short blocks for only $225 and your right redbandana, A friend in Central Pennsylvania emailed me the other day and said that Don Ott Racing Engines in Pa. will now build you a top of the line 410 Aluminum Motor for $50,200 ready to bolt in, he said that was the first time he has heard of motors costs reaching the $50,000 mark, It still fun for me , just getting less and less affordable to do it, but still enjoy the competition.

What did Tires run you all back then? RR Diamonds and LR's

great picture, the big Tulsa track 1974, the #16 is Glenn Mayer in his own car, the 13 is Benny Taylor in pat Suchys the car on the outside i don't remember who is driving but the car looks familiar I will go to my garage and get out a program and try to see who it is.

Ray

Could the car on the outside be an early Court Grandstaff??

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

I dont remember what the tires run cost wise back then,dad always drove for someone else i never got envolved in the tire cost. I know i would clean the mud out of the grooves so the tire rubber could breath for the next night or week. Hot soupy water would open the pours of the tire.They ran March Racing tires in 68 i think they were 30 to 40 bucks a pop.I remember they had a problem getting then to brake lose they were hooked up so well.That was at Tulsa in the Supers.

Today brake cleaner will open your tires up for about 2 or 3 laps on dry slick,give you an edge on the start of a race on dry slick.

In the early 60s dad drove for Al Weiland up in the KC and Topeka area ,dad would throw dirt out on Topeka blvd as he went around the top of turn 3 and 4. Al had some kind of truck tire on it with big Nobbys and he would spray the cars on the road...In the early 60s and before they were not a racing tires it was whatever you could find that worked the best. Al talks about it alot.

In Joplin the fans would take a beating from the rocks,when they went into turn 1 the crowd would lay over and then they would pop back up as they went off turn 2..It was funny the people at the other end of the stands would watch the people in turn 1 and 2. I got nailed sevearl times.

Luther i know you got some good storys on the tires they ran up there and the cost.

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.

JD,

Just looked up price of a RR Diamond in a 1975 GDYR price book for a 31.0x15.0-16.0 M-15 the suggested RP was $142.61, a LR 29.0x12.0-15.0 M-6 suggested RP was $110.28, a G1A M-15 FRT sold for $102.50. Now if you didn't cut a FRT off you could run it roughly 25 shows 10/15 on RF then move it to the LF and finish it off. If you ran the old D1550 M-9 LR you could get about 10 or so shows on rubbered up tracks if you didn't blister it. Those old M-15 Diamonds you could get 4-5 50 lap A-FEA. on if you didn't blister it. Now Drag tires you had to be careful with even back then manufactures had soft rubber but they didn't have toughener's in it like today and they would just shred off.

When Harold won all 4 Features at the BOWL in '76 he ran 1 M-15 Diamond on the RR in the D,C,B & A. only thing they changed was the LR and that was for less stagger. Now they ran that same Diamond at OKC a couple of nights before changing to a new 1. Yes Tire expense is more now but the price of the tire hasn't changed near as much as the price of oil!!!! We just have to many options on tires and compounds today and to be competitive your forced to run a soft or next softest LR and you have to put a new RR on at least every other night if your running an AR like DJ uses, he doesn't like the ASCS RR as he thinks it seals up easier plus he thinks it's to much tire even for a city injected motor, I know alot of guys run them on the 2V cars and those URSS 305's ran an even bigger hard version of the HR RR so I don't think the ASCS tire is that big of an issue it's more driver perference.

Motors I have to agree with SPT 97 & RDBA, I can remember buying a 302 Z-28 shortblock for $500.00 taking it apart and blueprinting it putting on a set of Little Joe's Heads and a Z-28 intake with a Holly 750 carb and having $1500.00 or less in a motor that you could run damn near 60 shows on, 25 Friday shows, 25 Saturday shows, and at least 10 Sunday shows it might not be as fast as Zinks stuff or the Old Mans stuff but it was competitive. The motor I had Bob Brotherton build me in '77 was a good piece and we ran it about 50 shows and I had less then $1000.00 in it.

Buy '85 Motors were up a load in price I bought a fresh Carbone for $10,000.00 and it had some nice parts but wasn't a killer motor, the Old Man spent a ton developing the SS/BB motors close to $250,000.00 from '82 thru '87 but when he figured them out they were MONSTER'S !!!!!!!!!!!1

David , That is some interesting info .

David how much were the drag tires that we started to run in 1975? Norman only ran Firestone tires after tha he started coming to Tulsa. Marsh loaned a set of the Humpers to Norman on opening night at Tulsa in 75. David and Mike said that they did not want to try them and Gene See said he would. The track was real tacky and Gene started Behind Mike in the heat, they drew fro stating places on opening night, and Gene passed mike very easily and Mike decided that he would like those tires. Jon Kalb told Norman that his drag tires were better so Norman bought enough fro all 3 cars. the drag tire would not last over 2 or 3 shows but man they were fast. we quit using the jalooney even on dry tracks. A worn drag tire would work better on dry track than a new one so we would put the used tire on and reduce the stager and mike would fly in the feature. Norman's biggest expense in 1975 was tires.

Ray

Bkcr,

The pic that you posted of Glen Mayor & The Old Mans car at Tulsa has to be in early '74 this was the '74 paint job and Benny won the first race at that new Tulsa Track on low profile tires, in this shot then sissy bars had not been put on the top of the cage yet and they came early after the '74 season started because of the speed at the Tulsa track, in this photo you can see that Glen already has an M&H drag tire or Marsh Recap on the LR, thats a GDYR rain tire on the LR of The Old Mans car and a 93/94 inch Drag 500 on RF.

JD, The motor in this car at about this time had a new Z-28 short block that had been disassambled bored .020 with TRW pistons that had been custom worked by Bill Miller, had carrillo 5.825 rods with the stock 302 crank, Moroso 7 Qt left turn pan & pump, Crower Cam with Engle roller lifters, Jackson gear drive, Little Joe Mondello ported cast iron heads, had all TRW valves 2.02 IN & 1.6 EX with Crane Steel Retainer's and dual springs, used the Z-28 Balancer with a stock short water pump with 3 impellers cut off, used the stock Chevy water pump single groove pulley with a Moroso aluminium big bottom pulley to slow the pump down. Harlan Sharp Aluminium Rockers 1.5 ratio on 3/8 studs with a stud girdle patterened off of Crowers Flat plate stud girdle, Torker Manifold and a 750 Holly DP carb, M/T valve covers, Accel dual point ignition with one of those big yellow coils. It made 426 HP & 400# TQ on Wilsons dyno. I know the rods cost $800 and that the heads cost $1100 the pistons cost another $800, the S/B was $500 so I'm guessing he had about $4500 in the whole motor. It was diffently a player and they ran it probably 35 races and it still was ok he just had a couple more that he played with also. I still have the Cam Card from this engine it would suprise you what it was and as I've said before a good RK-38 wouldn't be that bad in a 2V or city injected motor today!!

David i can't take credit for the picture, Brian posted it. the only dyno numbers that I heard that are higher than those are on a 302 Ford that Jerry Wilson built for Norman. it had a pair of Gurney Weslake heads on it. They were the best looking heads that I ever saw, Cast aluminium with the name embossed on them. They were mad to take 4 weber carbs Jerry made an intake manifold to take a Holly carb. Jerry ground the cam. It was supposed to have put out over 450 hp on the Dyno. It ran 2 times in 1976 before it burnt a piston. It was never re-built.Norman sold the heads i wished that he hadn't there were only 100 pairs of them made and they are priceless now. Mike said it had a narrow power range and the chevy was better. I heard that the Zink car had 350-375 hp but they might have been sand bagging. Benny was great on opening night in'74 that track was so much faster that the old won. He won over $1200 that night. Benny was teh first to run the drag tire at Tulsa in 1972 or 73 we used to call him sper dougnut ther is a pisture of him and Mike Jimmerson in this months issue of Flat Out with a history of the NCRA

Ray

That was a Tim Malone pic that I posted thanks to Dan Marcus of OkC.

'Lil John Buttera had a set of the Gurney-Westlake heads and he hated them. I'm sure he liked the looks of them, but he apparently never had a good word about their overall performance. I don't know why.

I believe the 9 car is Gary Lowman . Jim Lambert later drive it.

David was Harold's first time driving for Pat a Friday night late in August in 1975 at Muskeg? We were there for the only time that year with the 71 for Mike and the 17 for James Warren. Harold came up and started talking and Norman asked what he was driving because he knew that Jelly was not going to be there with the 24. Harold said that he was waiting for Pat and his car.That was the first time that I saw him in Pats car. The next week Jay Woodside was driving Jelly's car at the Enid fair race and Harold was driving Pat's car. At the Wichita NCRA race in September Harold was back in the 24 but I never saw him in it again. He drove Pats car at Enid NCRA show in October.

Ray

Bkcr,

'75 was a rough year for the Old Man, We didn't have the Parson car done at the start of '75 so Benny & Pat started the year with the Jelly car it had a beautiful Blue & Silver paint job, when we had the Parson car done DP drove it the first night at OKC and lost a clutch do to some linkage problems. We fixed the clutch and the Old Man went to Tulsa and Benny destroyed the car when Johnny Boe got into him in turn 3&4, so the Old Man had a new destroyed car and no driver as Benny was hurt pretty bad. A little later in the season Larry Holman was in a heated battle with David Brotherton for the OKC title when Larry and his owner Evertt Walton had a falling out with 5 or 6 nights to go in the season so Larry needed a ride so the Old Man repainted the Jelly car Ruby Red and Silver and numbered it 24 as he could not use the 21 number and Holman finished the season and won the championship over David (as Jim could tell you we could write a book just about these last 5/6 nights), anyway something had come up with Leep and Jelly and he drove the car a few times at NCRA's and WN races at the end of '75. The Parson frame was hurt really bad and The Old Man was going to scrap it but George Armstrong had told Pat that he could save it and he was able to straighten the frame so the Old Man and Leep were talking and they struck a full time deal for '76 and the rest is histroy!! I can tell you this that car was tough, that Leep man handled that thing like you wouldn't believe and he crashed it a few times real bad himself but they always fixed it and came back to win more races.

JD,

Just dug out a couple of those 302 cam cards, the Old Man had 3 cams he really liked back in those days, his favorite all around cam was a Crower special grind W/O # C-6528 this was a grind that Crower made for his 289 Fords orginially but when he went to chevy's Crower made him the same cam grind and told him it wouldn't work in a chevy but this is what they ran 70% of the time. It was 510 IN & 510 EX lift 284 duration right off the flank of the cam. His next favorite cam was a Wilson it was 505 IN & EX lift 290 IN & 302 EX he used this alot at OKC & TULSA big track, then his all around cam was an Engle S-238 it was 532 IN & 500 EX lift 288 duration.

My first V-8 was a 350 that Charles Jarvis and I had built at Richardson Mach. had to be toward the end of 74/75 we had been running 6 CYL modifieds and wanted to move up to Supers so we had that illegal motor built only ran it once at the Bowl at the WN, didn't make the A-FEA either night we came home and Gene Jones got the motor and I don't know what happened to it after that.

My next V-8 was a 302 built by Richardson it lasted a couple of nights and blew-up, I had another motor up there and picked it up only to have it blow-up in the #01 and I was flat broke so Lyndon bought the #94 and we raced it. Later that year Bob Brotherton built me a motor out of all the parts I had left and Charles started driving the #01 and we ran it quite abit never had any more engine issues after that and it ran good. I sold the #01 Jelly car and this motor to Butch Roberts and he ran it for a couple of years.

No matter what happened to Harold and Jelly at the race track they stayed friends. In November 1975 Norman had heart surgery, I went up the weekend before Christmas, he could not drive yet so I was driving him around and we went to Jelly's Christmas part at his shop and Harold was playing bar tender. Jay started driving the 24 after Harold, the last NCRA show at Enid was the same weekend as the Western World at Phoenix and Jelly took his car there for Larry Dickson to drive, I guess he put in a bigger engine and change to alcohol, I asked how they did and all he said was that it would not run when it should and he said that he owed a favor why he went to the Western World. Jay Woodside, Norman and Jerry Wilson had it all worked out that they would put Jerry's engine in the 117 for Jay to drive at Enid. I don't know how they were going to get Jay in the car he was about 6' 4" and Gene See who drove the 117 was about 5'6". The ford v-8 that was in Mike's 71 broke while they were testing it and they had to put Jerry's engine in to the 71 and Mike finished in the top 10at Enid

Ray

I messed up. I was checking my NCRA yearbook and found out that at the final race in 1975 at Enid Jelly did have his car there and Harold drove it and finished 3rd. Terry Doss drove Pat's 13 and finished 2nd in his heat and 15th in the feature. I guess Jelly took his car to the Western World a different weekend for Larry Dickson. With Harold in the 24 I guess that is why Jay needed a different ride. The brain is getting old.

I have lost my 1977 NCRA yearbook (the 1976 season) and would like to buy one if anybody has one that they would like to sell. Will pay any reasonable amount.

Ray

Really nice article in Flat Out Mag on the NCRA "The Super Series", by Bob Mays, it is the first of 3 parts, really nice read and some good pics with the 76 car with Leep and Grady Wade and Emmitt Hahn and others, looking foward to the next installment. good stuff.

JD,

Would this be in the November issue of Flatout Magazine? Who is on the cover?

Mike

Mike, It is the latest Flat Out Magazine, I guess it is Nov or Dec.? , not sure Flat Out is published every other month, so I guess if they do like other mags then they date a month ahead.

On the Cover is Chad Boat in his Midget sponsored by his Dad Billy Boat it is # 30 on the nose. Like I said just got it in the mail last Wed. and it is a really good read about the NCRA Super Mods and great thing is that it will be a 3 part deal.

Brian26, Give me a call, was cleaning out a shed and came across some nerf bars for your Nance Sprinter that you might could use.

JD,

Thanks for the information. I called and ordered the magazine today.

Mike