In a message dated 01/10/2000 6:34:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
mdthom@radiks.net writes:
<< Hey Doug
I love that racecar! That's the look of the 50's. It must have been fun! It
looks like it had been modified from an oval track car?
How quick and how fast?
Dave
>>
Dave,
The car was built by a local racer named Corky Hurst in the early 50's.
Initially it had a Bantam body and the nose was made from an aircraft drop
tank. Al Hubbard (step-brother of Jerry Light, founder of Vic Hubbard Speed
Shop in Hayward, CA) ran the thing as a coupe until about 1953 when he
removed the body and replaced it with the nose shown in the picture. Corky
hammered out the replacement nose with a couple of rocks by the way it looked.
Hubbard ran the car for a couple of years at the Lodi, CA Kingdon Drag
strip, collecting many Top Eliminator wins over local (Oakland, CA) hero Al
"Dago" Palimedes (pardon the pun, Dave) in his beautiful DeSoto powered fuel
Hemi. Palimedes, along with Berkeley, CA metal smith Gordon Vann, was also
the creator of the RedHead Streamliner owned my Hammond, Mc Grath, & Whipp
from Redding, CA, Harding Machine, and now Jim Lattin & Elmo Gillette.
Hubbard had a pretty potent 3/8 X 3/8 Flatty, regularly posting times
between 120 & 140. There were no ET clocks in those days, but I would imagine
that anything the 10's was cause for celebration.
The rear suspension had the Ford "buggy spring" mounted forward of the
differential, making the rear of the car "hike up" when leaving the line. The
frame rails were nothing more (or less) than 4" aluminum channels, and the
wheelbase was about 100". The roll bar was a 1" hoop made from water pipe
that was attached by 1/4" thick straps butt-welded to the pipe and bolted to
the aluminum channels. No diagonal braces at all and the roll bar came about
to the drivers shoulders, serving more to support the back of the drivers
seat and the fuel yank than anything else.
It had a center-steering with a big 4-spoke Bell 17" steering wheel, thus
my penchant for putting the same wheel in my 27 T track roadster. Brakes were
1940 Ford hydraulics on the rear. The engine was carburated and fed by
pressirizing the 2-gallon tank aft of the driver with a sprint/midget hand
pressure pump.
In 1954 a couple of locals named the Scott Bros. built the first
"Slingshot" dragster in the Bay Area and using a lesser Flatty promptly
trailered Hubbard at their first Kingdon outing.
It didn't take long for the two teams to join forces and become the Scott
Bros. & Hubbard Fuel Dragster. Their moment in the sun came in 1955 when they
came very close to beating the legendary Calvin Rice in the JE Riley Const.
Co., Nellie Taylor engined Flatty Fuel Dragster at the 3-day Memorial Day
Meet at Pomona, CA.
When Scott Bros. & Hubbard joined forces, the old-style Corky Hurst rail
became obsolete surplus and a certain young high school senior bought it for
between $50 & $100.
As it turned out, I never made a full pass in the car. During my freshman
year at Cal Poly I took it to San Luis Obispo powered by my gas 3/8 X 1/4
Flatty. Before the first race of the year at nearby Santa Maria, CA there
was a fall meet at Kingdon, so I towed home to run with my fellow Hayward
Head Hunters.
The morning of the meet I was out on the return road doing a little
"testing & tuning" by running the thing up tight in second gear. When I
depressed the clutch to shift into high the Auburn cast-iron pressure plate
blew and sawed the whole bell-housing off of the 59-A block. Luckily, I had
placed the scatter-shield in place but hadn't bolted it down. It took the
force of the explosion and my only injury was a change of laundry.
During the tow from the Bay Area to Kingdon I had also burned a piston in
my 1949 Ford flathead six, so it was a disasterous trip. The dragster stayed
at home when I returned to college that night, and by the time I got the
bell-housing repaired the next summer I'd started building my own slingshot,
the inspiration for my present 120" Dragmaster Dart replica.
I ended up selling the old dragster to Bick Beith, founder of Wheel
Centre Co., later ET Wheels. Dick was a high school friend and Bonneville
racer in the early 60's.
Hope you get a kick out of all this rambling............Ardun Doug in CA
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