The Viper engines are built about ten minutes from my house here in
Oceanside by Caldwell Development of Vista California. John Caldwell is a
life long friend of mine and also built the engine for Newman's TR-6 when he
won the Nat'l at Atlanta. In fact becuase of John that is the reason that
I gave Newman the special camshafts. Caldwell also was my Director of the
engine department and responsible for all the engines at NPTI for the Nissan
Prototypes wherein we won Sebring overall so many times and with a couple of
1,2 finishes. David Brabham is the younger brother of Geoff Brabham who won
the IMSA drivers cha,mpionship for Nissan ( and yours truly) in 89,90,91 &
92. Very nice guys. FAST too.
Small Triumph Sebring story. When building the cars for the 1963 attack at
Sebring, I had 31 gal fuel tanks made up and then installed them in the
trunks of the cars. At the first filling I found that they were oversize by
almost 1½ gals. No time to take out and change etc etc.....soooooooo, I
bought a bunch of plastic 8 ounce bottles, screwed the lids on tight and
dumped them into the tank until the proper volume was found. Went through
tech inspection easy and right on the money. Later on we found that the
gasoline had melted the plastic and I was back to the original size. Good
thing they never checked them after the event. Amazingly none of the
drivers noticed the knocking around in the tank when on low fuel. I heard it
instantly but " whatchagoingtodo". We went three hours with each car before
refueling. ( could have made it without the extra but ......) Finished the
event 1,2,4.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ted Schumacher <tedtsimx@q1.net>
To: <fot@autox.team.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 7:12 PM
Subject: sebring update
> vintage info first. 24 cars from england came over - jags, camaros,
> mustangs, 1 tr3, alpines, tigers, 1 tvr, etc. they are having a great
> time. they are not used to a course or facility this big (notr the temp
> cmpared to being at home in the uk). hsr had thier first practice
> session latge this afternoon. not a huge turnout of cars but certainly
> the ususaly hsr variety - porsche 935's to mini's. gt qualifying had
> the viper and corvette factory cars going at it. since viper won the
> daytona 24 hour, corvette (read gm) is in full force. the 3 factory
> vipers and 2 factory corvettes all qualified within a 1.2 second
> "blanket". the big cars finished teh day with teh panoz on top, besting
> audi by .009 of second. bmw was third and anothe panoz was 4th. teh
> panoz cars are front engine with the driver almost siting over the rear
> axle - actually a mid-engine with driver in teh rear. robert yates -
> nascar, ford, dale jarret car - is the engine builder. spolke with some
> friends at cadillac engineering. the car is down on speed but not power.
> the emphasis is on chassis adjustments. last year butch leitzinger told
> me the riley and scot car had enough power but they were playing with
> aerodynamics. should be a good race. ted
> --
> Ted Schumacher
> TS Imported Automotive
> 404 Basinger Rd.
> Pandora, Ohio, USA 45877
> Ph. 800/543-6648 USA/Canada FAX 419/384-3272 24 hour
> Ph. 419/384-3022 - tech./general information
> Web page http://www.tsimportedautomotive.com
> New-Used-Rebuilt-NOS-Performance British car parts.
> 200 - 300 parts cars in our British-only salvage yard.
>
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