Hi folks, for those who care for the historical roots of the
Bonneville/Hot Rod movement, I have to tell you about this.
My friend and fellow Ardun owner Gary Tefft, long-serving castings
engineer for Harley-Davidson in Milwaukee, just sent me a priceless
article by Bob Greene out of the February 1955 Hot Rod Magazine,
entitled "Trick with a Tank".
Bob Greene was one of my all-time favorites among the many good Hot Rod
writers, and here he covered the full story of the Roy Reed and LeRoy
Neumayer Ardun Lakester that got LeRoy in the Bonneville 200 MPH Club.
There are many interesting aspects to the story, such as that the belly
tank used for the body was much smaller than the more-often used P-38
tank(Jack Kelly still uses at Bonneville today), so that the Ardun heads
stuck right up out of the body. "Squirrelly handling" reputed for this
tanks is also discussed. Rear suspension was solid, front was early
Ford cross-leaf.
They ran their Ardun on 50-75% nitro, and the higher figure produced
trouble by reportedly seizing the ForgeTrue pistons for lack of enough
skirt clearance, bringing proceedings to a halt through big-end bearing
trouble, but no serious damage.
Ardun Doug King of this List has this same set of Ardun heads today.
Anyway, just a hint of the goodies in this great article, for those who
like that sort of thing. Cheers Bill
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