http://www.aafo.com/hangartalk/showthre ... 320&page=1
Its from a Air Racing board I visit.... its 29 pages, and still growing.
Its starts slow, about a plane called Blind Mans Bluff, and slowly turns into a first hand account about Air Racing, Sprints, Bonneville, Indy, Drags, and just about everything else...
Heres a tease.....
"We had ten days after the Trenton crash to get the car ready to begin the Rookie Test with Dockery, and we had a lot of work to do, even more than we thought. Besides the right rear suspension, and the upright (hub carrier and casting for outer suspension arms), the brake discs, brake calipher, and drive axle, being junk, the monocoque tub had about an 8- 10 inch vertical split in it along side the cockpit. This was serious, the tub was the main structure of the car, in lieu of a frame, and also the fuel tank and body. The tub was supposedly made from 2024 aluminum, and was not considered readily weldable. Well, Gordon was a super welder, we always said that “he could weld bananas to glass”. (later in the month Andy Granatelli would borrow him to build some exhaust headers for his car, even though he had several “good” welders working for him.) Gordon got it welded up fine, but it took some time, and we didn’t know if it would be straight or banana shaped after. We strung some strings and took measurements, and it was straight. Had the tub been made from softer aluminum it probably have stretched before spitting. We “borrowed” an upright from Howard Milliken, along with a hub, drive axle, brake disc , and calipher. The rear bulkhead was also bent, and we had to pull the engine and transaxle out of the car. Gordon, Darrell, and I were all busting our butts. Gordon made new radius rods, and an upper control arm, but we had no jig to build a new lower control arm, and someone “loaned” us one. The list could go on and on, but to make this a bit more brief, the three of us worked five days and nights straight, close to 120 hours with no sleep, and very little time off to eat. We were beat, but the car was done, the engine d up, the car was painted, and you would have never known it had been crashed. In fact several people swore that we had bought another car, not repaired the wreck! But the people that mattered knew what we had accomplished! We knew that we had ten days to get it done, but you never know what may turn up during a repair like this, so we chose to do it our way. Now we had five days left that we may not have had otherwise. We locked up the garage and took a day off to rest. A funny thing that I need to bring up is that when we began this repair someone had a radio on and we heard that Ray Stevens song, “Everything is Beautiful” playing, and that became our “theme song”, as we toiled away. Some people who would be walking by or stopping to look into the garage probably thought we were lunatics, because every now and then one or all of us would start singing that song. It became a tension breaker when the going got tough. It was somehow like getting a burst of adrenalin or something. Another bit of humor should be mentioned at this time, because I am in a humorous mood after writing the above caper. Darrell had to submit a resume previously, maybe it was before the Phoenix race, I don’t know, but here’s how it went. The usual date of birth, home town, education, and all that trivial stuff, then experience, races won, championships, etc. Now we were in trouble, Darrell hadn’t raced very long, and so we had to get creative. We had a few beers, and started laughing and scratching, and coming up with all kinds of B.S. A few more beers and we started writing down races won at non- existent tracks, and championships in series that never existed, and then there was a question about hobbies and talents. I don’t remember what was put in there about hobbies, if anything, but for talent Darrell put down that he played the fiddle and sang country and western music. I don’t know who if anybody checked any of this stuff out except Bob Laycock. He was I guess you could say involved in “special events”, because he came by the garage one day and explained that he had some kind of musical event scheduled and the fiddle player couldn’t make it, and wondered if Darrell could possibly fill in. Darrell had an ace in the hole, he had cut a tendon in I think it was his left ring finger many years previously, and it had a kink in it, it would not go straight out. Darrell explained to Mr. Laycock that he sure wish he could, but he had hurt his finger, and was unable to participate. Whew, dodged another bullet, and we started singing “Everything is Beautiful”. We were well rested and the car was about as good as we could get it without running a few practice laps to determine if we had a decent set- up for the Indy track. There is yet another incident worth mentioning at this stage, it should have been in the previous post about repairing the wreck. I had it in my notes laying here, and I overlooked it. I think it was during the second day of the five day fiasco that I developed a real bad toothache, and it hurt like hell. I sure wasn’t going to take off and go to a Dentist, too much work to get done. Well, there was this old timer Barney Navarro who if any of you are old enough to remember, built speed equipment, mainly Navarro aluminum heads for the flat head Fords, and intake manifolds also. He did a lot of Bonneville speed runs also. He had , believe it or not, entered a car in the 500 at this time, with a six cylinder turbo- charged Rambler motor in it. I had known him for some time and had noticed that he had a lot of dental tools in his tool box. I told Darrell and Gordon that I was going to go over to Barneys garage for a few minutes. I get over there and tell Barney about my toothache, and he said he would take a look at it. He said that he could fix that, and told me to roll over to the rear of his car, and put my feet up on the rear tire, and kind of lay back in my chair. He came over with a flashlight and a Q-tip, and looked in my mouth and dug around with the Q- tip. He went over to his tool box and came back with a little tray with some plier looking thing, a scalpel, some other ominous utencils, and a bottle of whiskey. He told me to take a swig of whiskey, swash it around, and spit it out. Then he told me to take another drink and swallow it. He had one of his friends hold the flashlight, and he started probing around, and said he would have to do a little cutting, and away he went, it was an upper jaw tooth, and he was doing a lot of pulling and twisting, and said he would need to do some more cutting, and I did my best to say O.K. Very quickly he gave a yank, and I saw that he had my tooth in the pliers. He had me wash my mouth out with another swig of whiskey, then told me that he would need to stitch it up. He went back to his tool box, and came back with a curved needle and some thread, and finished the proceedure. He put some unknown to me what it was, gauze, or maybe a piece of shop rag in my mouth and told me to bite down on it for a while to stop the bleeding, and said that he was done, and I went back to our garage and went back to work. “Everything is Beautiful”!
Larry"
ok..... one more....
Of course Smokey’s Cameros would have to be inspected by USAC since they were going to certify any records that might be set. To qualify for the records he was going after the cars had to be pretty close to what was going to be available to potential Chevy customers. The first car he presented to them for inspection was a “ringer”, it was highly modified, front suspension A- arms made from aerodynamic tubing, and other very obvious components that really got the USAC inspectors stirred up. They declared it inappropriate, and disqualified it. This was the “show them something really illegal”, and then they would focus on that when inspecting the other cars, and they wouldn’t notice other less conspicuous mods. This was a ruse that most people I knew in racing used to some extent. It was kind of a “hide in plain sight” thing. The other cars were determined to be within the rules and allowed to be used. Smokey would take cars out to the salt and make a few passes, probably selecting gear ratios, changing springs, shocks, etc. based on input from the drivers. He would bring them back to the Texaco station and he and his crew would do what needed to be done. After a couple of days Mickey showed up to have a look at how things were going. He looked the cars over, and when Smokey was tuning an engine, he would look over Smokey’s shoulder to see what he was doing. Smokey didn’t seem to mind, he just let Mick be Mick. Mickey noticed that about an inch from the exhaust flange on the exhaust headers there was a small hole drilled in each pipe, and asked Smokey what they were for, and Smokey ignored the question. Mickey was going back to Long Beach the next day, and he got me off to the side and asked me if I knew what those holes were for. I told him that I had not even noticed them. He told me to find out about these holes and call him after he got home. Mick was real sure that this was one of Smokey’s “secrets”. A couple of days later one of the guys at Mickey’s shop called me and asked what the hell was going on up there, Mickey had them drilling holes in the headers on the “mule” motor on the dyno. They would drill holes and run the motor, and then weld them up, and drill them in another place, and on and on. No matter where they drilled the hole it made no change in the motor on the dyno. About an hour after I had received this call I heard Smokey up one of the engines, and he was leaning over, looking at each exhaust pipe, and reving the engine up, showing no mercy. I figured that if he kept this up that baby was going to blow. Shortly he shut it off, and started tinkering with the carburator. I cruised over, and looked at the engine, and spotted the holes in the pipes, and said, “Smokey, what are those holes in the headers for?” He got a big grin on his face, turned to me and said, “Mickey asked me about that, and I didn’t give him an answer.” He chuckled a little, and said, “It’s driving Mick nuts, isn’t it?” I told him yeah, he’s got the guys at the shop drilling holes all over the headers on the dyno engine, trying to find out what your secret is. He looked me in the eye, and had a real serious look on his face, and said, “Larry, I’m going to tell you but don’t ever tell Mickey.” He explained that when he reved the engine up, he would look in those holes to see if the exhaust flame was the same color in each cylinder to verify that he had the jetting in he carb right. Simple as that! I never, ever told Mickey!
Larry