My dad and his brother built drag cars in the late 50's. Then in the early
70's when I got old enough I worked in his garage along with another employee
about my age. We found an old 1957 Chevy body and bought it, then we bought a
junked 350 V8, and so on. We managed to build a running car from junked or
scrounged parts. It became a 350 V8, 4-speed, 4.11 rear end gears, headers,
FI heads, mechanical lifter cam, 3x2 intake. The inside was completely gutted
and some of the outside, so it was pretty light. Our shop was open Saturday
mornings until noon, then when we officially quit work we would pull our car
into the shop and work on it. We had been telling my dad that the rear end
needed traction bars. So we were working on it on a Sat. afternoon and my dad
got into it and took off down the road in front of the shop. This was a
narrow 2-lane road that went immediately through a group of houses. In front
of the shop the tires left a pair of long dashed lines on the pavement,
proving that we did indeed need traction bars. The justice of the peace lived
1 block down from the shop and would usually sit on his front porch. He
didn't say a word when my dad went by at wide open throttle.
> An old friend used to run his Lotus Formula Junior through the neighborhood
to fine tune it prior to a race. Only one neighbor consistently had fits.
|