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DryLakes Hall of Fame Landspeed Historians Sports Fans
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SOCIETY OF LANDSPEED RACING HISTORIANS Newsletter #31. Websites
posting the newsletter are:
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President's Corner: By Jim Miller.
The last couple of weeks I've been trying to put some
of my toys on the road since the city doesn't like
them in the back yard. One in particular is a '40's-50's creation that gets me to thinking what how lucky
the World is to have land speed racers on the planet. The
story starts in the mid to late '30. At that time
you could go out and get some junker Model-A for $25 and turn it into a real Gow Job with a little imagination. At that time if you wanted parts for your car you would go down to Valley Boulevard near
old Legion Ascot and scrounge the wrecking yards for
parts. They were full of Fords, Chevy's and tons
of cars you've probably never heard of that were just ripe
for the picking. A Jowett oil pump, a Franklin
steering box, a Chrysler front axle, a Star chassis, the list is long. Some things you couldn't buy so you
did the next best thing, you acquire new skills and made
them yourself. Some guys didn't have a lot of
skills and some did and soon everybody was trading ideas
and skills. They call that networking today.
Look at Bob Rufi for example, he needed some welding done
on his land speed car chassis so he traded
his woodworking skills for it. Soon it was off to WWII
and then back to civilization with newly acquired
skills and a zillion ideas on how to make a car go
faster. This dare to be different story continues with
a trip to Colorado Auto Salvage in Santa Monica to acquire
a chassis for a new breed of rod called a
sports car. Two doner Studie chassis were soon cloned
together with the back half flopped like an
underslung. All this is happening at the same time as Stu
Hilborn's car is being rebuilt in the front yard
after its crash and a second project called a streamliner,
later known as a lakester was in the works
under a tarp slung off the side of the house. There were
no speed parts for the Pontiac 6 engine that
was to power the racer so it's off to night school at
Santa Monica City College courtesy of the GI Bill to
take pattern making and get the materials for free. The
racer got finished and a cover on Hot Rod so
then it was back to the sporty car. The engine picked for it was another flathead 6 this time from a
Studebaker. Hey, anybody could build a Ford flattie.
This time no pattern making school, it was all
done in the garage mentality. Grab some pine blocks, put
a router bit in the drill press and you're
making patterns and coreboxes. There has to be something sicko about a land speed racer who takes
his newly cast head and a spare engine block and saws them
into little pieces to check for core shifts.
It's early '53 now and the chassis, all aluminum body,
engine etc. are almost finished when this English-
man called Donald Healey unleashes his new production
sports car. It's as if some industrial spy had
taken this homebuilt in the works for five years design
and given it to the Brits to produce. The car
was sold in disgust but the engine wasn't part of the
deal. Meanwhile cars took a little backseat for a
couple of years as our racer was outfitting the first Bell
500 copters with rockets and machine guns for
Frank Pachmayer. Before you know it the old hobby bug hit
again and hot rod Gyrocopters were on
tap. Two were made and talks with Naval Air through Jimmy
Doolittle were underway when a testing
accident ended the deal. It was time to rejoin the car
world so after driving by the same car lot for
weeks on end with one saying buy me a stop was finally
made. The dealer sadly explained that the car
was almost new but there was something wrong with it and
nobody would but it. That something turned
out to be a blown engine. A deal was made and the
Austin-Healey BN1 was bought for $500. Needless
to say it was Payback time and the car would morph into a
kick-ass hot rod/custom. That's where I come
into the story. It was my job to disassemble the
low-mileage two year old car. Not just take it apart to
drop in the still on the bench Studie with the home-made
head but to strip it down completely, every last
nut and bolt. Sand all traces of paint from he body.
Build it hot rod style. Get rid of all that metric stuff.
Five years later in '62 my high school buddy painted it
metalic blue lacquer. What a car! It has over
60,000 miles on her when it went through another rebuild
starting in the mid-'80's. It never really got
finished again due to bad health and finally death in
'97. It's sat for ten years now and if I'm lucky it
will be a driver in two more days. Some of the car's
features are: Cylinder head with eight water
outlets on top that looks like something off an Offy,
tubular intake manifold with three carbs with
balance tubes, pancake carb scoops, two into one exhaust
manifold, eight quart oil pan with internal
baffles, three speed transmission with top mounted shift
mechanism, double overdrive units giving nine
foreward speeds, the nose of the car has been reworked to
look Italian and has horizontal grill bars, side
vents in front fenders with inserts that match grill,
windshield posts made from Model-A wishbones,
scratch built dashboard with recessed panel filled with
eight Stewart-Warner gages, tuck and roll
interior, roll-up windows, chrome side trim, '49 Chevy
tailights, messaged deck lid with internal hinges
and latch. Yeah, it's a real hot rod built from the mind
of a pre-war lakes racer that said if I can dream
it, I can build it.
1) Brian Taylor is writing the history
of British drag racing and will be published by Haynes
Publishing
in 2009 under the title Crazy Horses – British
Drag Racing’s Heritage. The Foreword of the book
will be
written by none other than Don Garlits and the book
will be available all over the world. Please read
Brian's blog about his progress at:
http://www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk/crazy_horses/blog_01.html.
The following American drag racers either raced/tuned
cars/bikes at the Dragfests or Santa Pod Raceway.
If you have their email addresses, home addresses,
phone numbers, etc could you please send them to me
at
nitromaniac@blueyonder.co.uk I'II forward
them to Brian Taylor. Or send them directly to Brian at
brian@petrolhead.vianw.co.uk, Thanks, John
Hutchinson, Gateshead, England (Al Ekstrand, Al Segrini,
Bill Jenkins, Bill Schultz, Bill Woods, Buddy Cortines, Danny Johnson, Don Hyland, Don Prudhomme, Doug Church, Kim LaHaie, K. S. Pittman, Larry Arnold, "Ohio" George Montgomery, Raymond Beadle, Tom Christansen, Tom Hoover) Readers: If anyone has an email address that they would like to share with
John Hutchinson or Brian Taylor, please send them a
response. It should be a fascinating book to read.
2) Gone Racin’ to the Arias Piston Company,
Story by Richard Parks, photographs by Roger Rohrdanz
Arias Piston Company is located in Gardena, California, and has a long and well-known reputation for
quality and performance. We met with Fred Blanchard, who
is the sales manager for Nick Arias Jr Racing
Components, a separate research and development firm next
door to the piston manufacturing plant.
Fred is very outgoing and loves to talk about all the new
engines and racing components that Nick Arias
Jr and he are working on. He showed us around the shop and
pointed to the work they are doing. The tour
was fast and informative and we marveled at all the
research. We finally met the man behind the name,
Nick Arias Jr, as he was busy putting together a new
engine. "A lot of the technology was done a long time
ago," said Nick. "The internal combustion engine has seen
a lot of new changes, but the concept is quite
old." He then showed us some of his adaptations, and we
struggled to keep up with him. Arias has a solid
reputation in the speed performance industry for his
innovative ideas and creativity. Not all of his ideas
become big sellers as he admits, because the racing world
is constantly creating new and better ways to
enhance performance and by the time a block or parts make
it to market, someone else has come up with
a better way. But you can see that the competition to
excel keeps both Nick and Fred enthusiastic for
what they do. Nick calls himself a redesigner, and gets
his ideas from the requests that his friends and
clients bring to him. Shelf after shelf held engine parts
that he has created to solve performance problems.
Arias designed a hemispherical head to fit a Chevy
block and in doing so brought the hemispherical
performance to the Chevy racer, allowing them to compete
successfully with the famous Hemi Chrysler
engines. It is for this loyalty to the Chevy block that
they call Arias "Mr Chevrolet," although he never
did get the Detroit Automaker to back his ideas. The new
540 c.i. Arias Hemispherical-Chevy crate engine
can be purchased in parts or as a finished engine and is
comparable to other high performance crate
engines in price. The engine uses a World Products block,
Arias raised port manifold, Arias pistons, dual
quad carburetors, Arias hemispherical cylinder heads,
Milodon pan, Herbert cam, and Iskenderian lifters.
The engine is 30" wide by 30" inches long. I got plenty of
laughter when I asked for the height. It’s a new
design, but ten engines have been sold, and Arias took two
inquiries while we were there. He ran his
fingers along the block and heads and explained more
details than I could possibly write down. He then
picked up some pistons and explained the forging process
they go through. "We have always used forged
pistons," he said. Blanchard added that the blanks that
come from the foundries are sold to all of the
pistons companies, "but it is the knowledge and experience
in processing and milling them that create
the quality, and separate us from our competitors."
Fred took us over to the Piston Company, next door.
There to meet us was Carmen, Nick’s daughter,
who was in charge of the piston business. She told us that
the company is a mid-sized manufacturing
company that is family owned and operated. Beeri Meza is
the General Manager and rose from a machine
operator to control of operations of the Piston
manufacturing department. Carmen told us that the
company has 40 employees and always has a backlog of
orders to keep them constantly busy. She
introduced me to Steve Montrelli, Domestic Piston Sales,
Fuel and Alcohol Consultant of the Piston
operations. Steve has known and worked with the Arias
family since the heyday of early drag racing. It
is the Montrelli Racing Engines that are the core of the
Arias Performance parts division. Montrelli’s
engine building experience was a key reason why Carmen
urged Montrelli to come out of retirement and
rejoin the business. Montrelli encourages racers to call
him with questions about the performance of their
cars. He has the ability to diagnose the problem over the
phone and loves that part of his job. Montrelli
has worked with and for Johnny Wright, Dale Pulde, Danny
Ongais Henry Harrison, Don Schumacher,
Gene Conway, Tom Barrett, Pat Foster and others.
The piston manufacturing plant has around 20 CNC
machines, but was empty during lunch. Photos
weren’t allowed due to the proprietary nature of the
techniques and methods that Arias Pistons employs
in making their products. Carmen mentioned that their
company is in the top 5 in performance piston
products, and perhaps in the top 3 in sales, but they take
a backseat to no one when it comes to quality.
Their quality control, inventory and tracking usage is
extraordinary. If you have the number stamped on
the piston you can call the company and they can tell you
everything about the piston and what the part
was made for and what conditions it will tolerate.
Blanchard added, "We are not a mass producer, we
are a custom shop that makes high performance parts with
the highest quality materials, with the highest
degree of knowledge and skill." Nick added that they have
a diversified market, receiving orders for
tractor pulls, mud bog racers, sand drag racers, Go-Karts,
Sprint cars, drag car, boat racing, motorcycle
(Harley-Davidson) racers and outlaw drags. "They all have
different needs and specifications and we fill
those needs. They keep us very busy," he told
us. Gone Racin’ is at
RNPARKS2@JUNO.COM
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Members: Jonathan Amo, Brett
Arena, Henry Astor, Gale Banks, Glen Barrett,
Lee Blaisdell, Warren Bullis,
Gary Carmichael, John Chambard, Jerry
Cornelison, G. Thatcher Darwin, Jack Dolan, Ugo
Fadini, Robert Falcon,
Rich Fox, Glenn Freudenberger, Don Garlits,
Bruce Geisler, Stan Goldstein, Andy Granatelli,
Walt James, Wendy
Jeffries, Ken Kelley, Mike Kelly, Bret Kepner,
Kay Kimes, Jim Lattin, Mary Ann and Jack
Lawford, Fred Lobello,
Dick Martin, Ron Martinez, Tom McIntyre, Don
McMeekin, Bob McMillian, Tom Medley, Jim Miller,
Don
Montgomery, Bob Morton, Mark Morton, Paula
Murphy, Louise Ann Noeth, David Parks, Richard
Parks, Wally
Parks (in memoriam), Eric Rickman, Willard
Ritchie, Roger Rohrdanz, Evelyn Roth,
Ed Safarik, Frank Salzberg,
Dave Seely, Charles Shaffer, Mike Stanton, David
Steele, Doug Stokes, Bob Storck, Zach Suhr, Pat
Swanson,
Al Teague, JD Tone, Jim Travis, Randy Travis and
Jack Underwood.
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