Forgive me for indulging myself with this group, but once you hear the story
you will know why.
This past Saturday my son Andrew and I went to the Sycamore (Illinois)
Threshing Bee. This is a show with all sorts of steam powered tractors, single
cylinder popper motors, Maytag washing machine engines, Briggs & Stratons
powered everything and old gas, kerosene and diesel tractors. Even one late
'40s MF. The star of this show is a huge 250 hp horizontal compound cylinder
Corliss valved steam engine that once was used as a ammonia compressor for
refrigeration. A beautiful piece of engineering and some amazing castings were
used to build this engine.
I was listening to the head engineer give his routine speech about the Corliss
engine along with a gentlemen in an IRL shirt. I happened to be wearing an old
HSR polo shirt that has the Group 44 Jag on the chest. I nodded hello to him
and he did the same and smile once he got an eye of my shirt. A bit later we
came across this gentleman again looking at the antique cars. He asked me if I
was a Jaguar fan and of course I go into my sports car racer mode telling him
how I am building a TR4 for vintage racing, and that I plan to paint the car in
Group 44 colors just like my shirt. Which he relies, "Oh - Bob Tullius, he
drove for a race car for me". Which car I ask? "The Howmet Turbine", he says.
So here I am in the middle of a corn field with Bob McKee! We had a great
conversion about the steam show, Cam-Am and sports racers and other old school
stuff.
Bob is still has a shop in Lake Zurich Illinois doing is doing a bit of
restoration work on race cars and working on electric vehicles. He even
invited Andrew and I up to the shop.
Now the amazing item of this story is that I was at the 1968 Six Hour FIA race
at Watkins Glen and watched Mr. Tullius race one of the two Howmet Turbine cars.
Looking forward to watching the FOT crew race at the September VSCDA Road
America event.
Thanks and Thumbs Up,
Steve Benford Jr.
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