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The 91 ran good when when it wanted to. I think it has a mind of its own. Wichita Falls was a short track with good banking. It was a hoot to drive on. I misted the setup for the short track. About the time the power ban was coming on it was time to turn. Needless to say the car was ahead of me. Thanks to all the racers and family for coming out. Looking foward to Ada Okla in two weeks.

That car looked good for sure. We all had gremlins last night. Apparrently those gremlins carry a Knockoff hammer!LOL

Brian thanks again for helping with the race. It was a blast.

Trammel, You might try posting on Hoseheads and see if someone would know, I thought Tommy Sanders was the first Shop Mgr. at Gambler back in the early 80's, then went out on the road with the WoO in the mid 80's doing R & D for Gambler , I know I contacted what I thought was Gambler number about 4 yrs. ago and it is Gambler Trikes now which they got out of Race Car building and now build Bikes , the guy who I talked to sent me some old Setup sheets for a Gambler Sprint Car I had and sold.

Here is another one to try KSE Steering Gears they are right there around Hendersonville, Tn. which is where Gambler Chassis Co. wasa at back then and they might be able to get you in contact with someone who worked at Gambler back then. Hope this helps.

JD i am hot on the trail. So far I have found out that Gambler Motocycles has been bought out by a company in Las Vegus named Badboys Toys. I found KSE Stearing Gears in Hendersonvill Tenn and sent them s e mail. Mabey they will respond. So far I have found connections with Gambler in Hendersonvill Kingsport and Gallgtin Tenn hopefully something will turn up.

Sounds like your in the right area , keep digging ,someone will get you info.

Went to see Mr Gene Irons Tuesday about the tune up on the 91 car. It was great talking to him about the times when he had the car on the track. He told me why the car was hard to start in Whichita falls. The plugs need to be replaced. I pulled the plugs they seemed to look fine. Pulling the plugs was a ordial in itself. First the heads sit below the top frame rail. There is no way to get a plug wrench in to pull them. I ended upmaking a puller out of a old plug socket. I had to cut the socket with a die grinder two times to get it shout enoughf to use a wrench on top and still have room to get the socket and plug out. Thats what racing is all about to me,scratching your head standing back and solving the problem. Anyway the Mopar 91 car will be at ADA sat night with new plugs. Mr Irons says it will really run with this change.

I was wondering if I could get input from readers and put togrther a list of owners and drivers of Gambler cars? Some have been posted, surley there is a lot more.

I thought Gambler was more into the Sprint Car Chassis than the 100" deal, other than Shane Carson, Billy Turner had a Gambler that comes to mind in the Pre 1990's era. Did Steve Caruthers have a Gambler 100" or was it a Nance or did he have both?

I know there were others just cannot remember them.

Bruce Jennings comes to mind.

I know there was a market here, Tulsa and OKC had dealers. JD and I went to Tulsa one time to the Gambler dealer, they had a fresh 100" frame weighing 180# for $2,200 I think.

That was something that Car & Fleet was a Gambler dealer and yet most in Tulsa was running J & J stuff back then. I remember Aaron Lemmons telling me one time back when he was a front runner in the later stages of the 100" chassis that they are all just pieces of tubing you just have to get them to work for you and you can you can call it anything you want to.

It is amazing the things you talk about .JD someone needs to write a book of the stories and knowledge you have. I want to meet with you sometime. Who was Car&Fleet? Also wondering did Gambler have a catalog showing the parts? I knew this would work by posting questions on here. I AM ON A MISSION Thanks again

Trammel, Car & Fleet is still in existence , it is actually a car parts store that Jim Stewart owns and he just has a race parts business that is with the parts store in Tulsa and I think it is on Peoria Street in SW Tulsa , Jim has 2 sons who race Shane and Darren both are very good shoes and Jim raced back when the 100" Supers/Champ Dirts ran , I think he quit sometime about the early 90's before the Sprint Chassis took over in the Tulsa area, # 01 was his car number.

As for the Gambler Catalog , Yes they did have a Catalog, heck I might have one in a huge pile of Programs and old Catalogs I have , When I had that Gambler Sprint Frame about 4 yrs. ago I contacted Gambler and they guy said he still had some info on their chassis they use to build and it was on a program on his computer and he ran off about 30 pages of it and sent it to me and it had all the components measurements like rear torsion arms offsets and other parts of measurements , it was a pretty cool deal but I gave that to the guy who bought the car from me that paperwork.

If I can find that Gambler Catalog from back in the 80's you would be welcome to make copies of it.

As for stories Mr. Grace who posts on these pages has many more stories than me, he has done a whole lot more than I ever will , heck I was just a kid growing up around the races , my dad drove a wrecker out at Lawton Speedway back in the mid 60's and well it just kind of stuck with me ever since and then I figured out how to get into the pits before I turned 16 and that was get a camera and take some pics and dam glad I did as I have some unusual pics of inside the cockpits of those old Super Mods and shots of Motors with hoods off and so on and I am proud of those. Always was a fan and those guys were my heros growing up and then just got interested in the mechanical aspect of it and always wanted to work on and own one just to see if I could be competitive and try to win and so I finished College and saved me some loot and I'll be dam , proud owner of a 100" car back in 87 and have had the sickness ever since. Heck almost to scared to quit , not sure what I would do , don't have no kids so all that stuff ya do with them sports , school stuff is out for me, can't swim so the goin to the lake is out don't want to drown, Fishin would be good but when they are not biting that would give me to much time to think about why in the hell I quit racing, guess as long as I can afford it and able to do it , will stay at it.

By the way that Brian26 was my first shoe to drive for me way back then in 88, he went on to bigger and better things , I think it was girls and I guess he figured they were softer than those Diamond Firestone RR's , LOL, watched his dad and Uncle race at Lawton back in the late 60's and early 70's Gerald Meeks #26 and Carol Satterwhite in that #38 Special.

Heck me and my friend/sponsor/crew man James Lenhart talk a lot about the old days on those drive homes from the races on Saturday nights , about what and who use to drive this car or that car and guys who were kind of in and then out of the sport, those are the tough one's to remember and of course the greats of those Era's 70's/80's/90's and today.

Often think of starting another What ever happened to page and these would be the first ones on my list

Like whatever happened to the single axle trailer with the one row tire rack , they have been replaced with 53' Super Haulers of today and wonder if guys could race today without those BIG Haulers.

In those Super Haulers are lounges with all the amenities Fridge, Microwave and couch/bed for driver to rest up between races wonder what happened to the cooler full of soda's/ frosty beverages and a bologna sandwich as well as the fold up lawn chair to sit in and talk to folks who passed by.

Whatever happened to running Topless , it was done for many years before the wing came along (Sorry Mr. Jones at ARP) but kind of had to include this, I miss that and would never have to worry about banging my head on the Airfoil again.

Whatever happened to comaradere in the pit area , just friendly BS and conversation like way back when , hardly any of that anymore , with those BIG enclosed haulers of today , guys pull in to race now and no one speaks or even has a hint of a smile,sometimes outside of an air ratchet or a generator humming you can almost hear a pin drop in the pit area before a race , with dead silence, everyone seems all business,I guess they are wondering if they are going to make enough to pay the bill on the hauler and the gas bill to fill it up to get to the next show.

Those are just some of topics I would start with. J.D.

Hey JD, Andy Hillenburg drove one during his Champ Car days. Kyle Forsythe drove one in the Super Modified class of the early '90'x. The first one was a sprint car chassis converted to a 100" car with the downtubes, if I remember correctly.

That is Mike Stewart of Car and Fleet, fyi (no relation).

John Stewart

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John , your right and forgot about Kyle having that one just remember him in a older chassis that had one of those box tin hoods and my bad Jim is your dad and it is Mike Stewart. Did not realize Andy H.had a Gambler , only remember those Nance cars with the wedge hood and the lay down injector stacks which was all the rage/trick stuff back then in the Champ Dirt days.

To All,

In '85 the 1st CD Gambler we picked up shortly after the Spring Nationals at the Bowl. Gambler had it on display at that event and Tom Sanders had been talking to Shorty about running it if he could get a deal put together with The Old Man, which he did. We made a couple of trips over there to make some changes in the car to work with our motor pkg. This car was a one off car, none of the other Gamblers were built exactly like it. It was lighter in the tubing and the bracing was differant, the frame weighed 150/155 lbs. We had some issues with the dry sump system (tank under seat) and had a couple of motor problems right off the bat but finally we put the tank on the RS like the Rich Car and then we started winning alot, of all the Gamblers this car is my favorite, it is the car that we won Hutch with in '85, I don't remember the exact amount of races it won (Shorty would) out of like 42/45 races it won 32/35 and never ran worse then 3rd unless we DNF'd which we did 3 times with those oil tank problems. Even though Hutch was my favorite win with this car it might not have been it's best race, late in the year we ran an NCRA race at Tulsa we burned a piston in Hot Laps and had to change motors, in the heat Shorty was leading and we burned another piston and had to change motors again and run the B-Fea. which we won and just as Shorty took the check's it went up in smoke again, as he rolled up in the pits oil was pouring out of the breathers and the front of the motor but Shorty said it didn't blow up, what had happened was after the 2nd burned piston and all of the oil that blew out we didn't have any more air filters left so we just took the breathers off and ran the stacks with some half ass wire over them and it swallowed a rock on #3 cylinder which beat the ring land down and pressured up the crank case blowing the front seal out of the timing chain cover. I had to pull everything off the front of the motor and was able to drive the seal back in and stake the hell out of it plus alot of silicone. We had decided we would just pull the pushrods out of that cylinder and the spark plug and start the race and run a couple laps and pull in, well with all the time it took to get the seal back in I didn't have time to do that so I told Shorty F--- It were only going to run a couple laps any way. Well on the green it smoked a little but it was running good and Shorty was passing cars, big problem nobody put fuel in it cause we're only running a couple laps right!! Well about the 10th/12th lap there was a Red and we're running about 7th/8th off the back, when we get to the car FLY started pouring fuel to her and Shorty says what do you think, I told him F--- It your going to win it don't stop no matter what and by this time it had almost quit smoking at all. On the restart it took all of about 3 laps to get the lead and Shorty went on to win by a straight and lapped up to 4th, now it was slick and shiny and you didn't need a ton of power the car worked good, it had great brakes which you needed at that place and Shorty drove the hell out of it, I think it was his best drive in this car and thats stout cause that drive off the back at Hutch was awesome!! When we got home I thought the Old Man was going to kick our ass, he didn't get to make that trip because of health issues, however thats one thing you could have brought it back in a basket and he didn't care as long as you got the win!! Specially against those NCRA guys at Tulsa!! Oh and the motor we pulled the head off and cleaned up the dings in the chamber dropped another piston in it and put it back in the truck. Put a fresh motor in the car and Pat went to work fixing the other 2 motors, which leads up to another story I'll tell later.

Gamblers: We sold the black car to Rick Barksdale, and got the 2nd Gambler (Red Frame), at the end of '85 Pat's health was shaky and he told Shorty and I he was going to have to cut back but he helped us with motors and parts and alittle money but we pretty well were on our own, I started to work for Wolley at his Gambler shop, shortly after I started Greg got what would be the 3rd actual Gambler CD Frame and he would start running it some when he wasn't running his sprint car. Bill & Donnie Bishop would get the 4th frame, it did not use all of the Gambler parts, as you all know my Brother in law is quite the machinst and he built his own clutch system which used the stock GM bell housing, it was a very beautiful car and damn fast it had a premium Boyd Motor, I know Danny Shouse drove it some and maybe Larry Allen also, after this car I couldn't tell you exactly how they fell out, BJ had one, Andy had one at the start of '86 and he was the first one who actually figured out that the first car was differant then the others, Shorty would dominate the '86 NCRA season and win the USAC/NCRA race at OKC and then sell this car to Bob Prescott, then get the Silver Bullett Gambler, G&W Jeff would get one and run it at OKC as a Super Modified with Barksdale,Peters & Shorty, later I believe Charles Riney would get the G&W car and run it, seems like I remember Bobby Telford might have had one also, it may have been Andy's. I know Billy Turner had one but I'm not 100% sure that it was a new one, I think there were only 10/12 100" CD Gambler frames built. If Tommy Sanders is still alive and I think he is he would know for sure. The Gambler that Kyle Forsythe had I believe is in James Perry's barn, I know Mike Bickel has one, Paul Martins has one, and the 91 that Trammel has, the rest who knows!!!!!!!!

 

The car that went to Prescott, is that the very same car Patrick Prescott drove in the wingless division in '89?

From Mr. Lawrences site, by way of Mar-Car from Shane Carson

from the same sources, catching Pete Frazier at Hutch on the same day.

Brian,

On Prescott I would presume so, he bought the 2nd car. In these photo's the top photo is '86 and is the 2nd car, the bottom color photo is the '85 Gambler, also in the photo with PF that is in '86 also, in '85 we ran the Gilliam wheels, we didn't have Streakers until '86, also differant wings look at the paint design, differant from '85 to '86. The big difference is in '85 that car never was in a push that severe as it is behind Pete. In the color shot one of the biggest difference's between the '85 chassis and the '86 chassis is very noticeable if you pay attention, Andy was the first one to figure out what it was and imediately changed his car.