Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry... You wrote in one of your earlier posts, something to the effect that if you wrote "all" of your memories, it'd be a book...

Tell you what.. This SHOULD be a book!!!!!!!!

We may not be able to afford to put your writings on paper for you, but I give you my word, myself and my compatroits will keep your words alive as long as we're alive!

I have an agreement with someone (Cobra) that if I pass, he keeps this thing alive through his means..

This thread, and a few others, push me to make the arrangements more "formal" so it can, if necessary, happen in an orderly manner!

Keep it comin Larry.. we're all gonna be on the edges of our seats till the 18th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Wayne

[kiwiracefan]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Totally wayne, i agree i cant wait for the next installment too, just a side note, Feb 2 2008 at the Skope classic Race meeting there will be a Can-Am revival, with Classic Can-Am car competing, also there will be the F5000 revival class too, these beasts are amazing, guys driving these old cars to the limit.

This car is a Begg F5000, this was the 18th and last Begg F5000 car built, the Begg's were built in a small town called Dipton at the bottom of the South Island here in NZ, the local track, Teretonga park is the southern most permanent race track in the world. This particular car was one of 20 such F5000's at this particular classic/historic meeting.
A little OT i know, but considering Bluffman's amazing story, i though id share, a little about another not so well know NZ car builder (the main one though is definately McLaren)

this is the McLaren M23 F1 car that was driven to a win in South Africa by former F1 World Champ Denny Hulme

[gp70442]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Fantastic stories from the inside Larry. If you needed further encouragement to keep it coming, this is it.

Thanks for taking the time to share with all of us. Wayne is right, you should write a book.
GP

[Double ugly]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I wonder if Tom Monroe would be interested in writing Larry's autobiography? He's an ex Ford engineer, writer, race car and airplane nut. I'll ask Larry today if he's interested.
John

[Double ugly]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

We got Larry moved to his new digs today. It's close to Deer Valley airport where the Formula One racer will be hangered. He got a nice house in a quiet neighborhood. There's still a lot of packing to do but the essentials are moved.
John

[MRE]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry,the place was Nassau.They called it Nassau Speedweek.Those first winged Chaparrals,the 2E.were powerd by small block chevys.They went to the big block in 67.The first road race I went to was the 67 USRRC [United States Road Racing Championship] at Laguna Seca and I was hooked.Like when I saw my first P51! Those cars were incredible! I saw CM the first year it was at Reno.A beautiful airplane,you guys did a great job.Ellsworth told me the story about ferrying the airplane.Great storys.thanks for sharring. Mike

[wyhdah]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry, I was wondering if you would get more elaborate on the Methanol setup on BB. How much more fuel were you going to have to carry for a race and did the HP gains and intake charge temps out weight the fuel/weight penalties? What was involved in switching from gas to Methanol. I would have loved to be in on those dyno sessions with that big engine running on Methanol.

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Got moved into the house, many thanks to my good friends John and Gordon. Just got my phone, cable, and internet all set up this afternoon. Still need to move my workbenches, tool boxes, and about a zillion model airplane parts. Maybe this week end. Thanks to MRE for "Nassau". and for "wyhdah" I will get to to you on your comments on the alcohol Caper. You would have loved being there when we dyno'd with the alcohol with a good dose of nitro-methane added. I have photos of that, Full power with flames about 20 feet long out of 18 exhaust stacks. Totally awsome, and the noise was about "warp six!" Soon as I get settled in maybe Wayne can clue me in as to how to post photos, got lots of good stuff. Maybe I need to get a different scanner/ printer. I got a new one a short time ago, and without knowing it I got a HP "Photosmart" 4100 series, does great when working with pix downloaded from my camera, but there are no options for working with scanned photos that seem to do what I need. ????? Moving is a lot of work, and I am pooped, and I need to get a good nights sleep. Thanks to you all for your interest and encouragement. Larry

[wyhdah]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Man you got to admit the thought of a Nitro burning unlimited, at any percent, is a gearhead's dream.

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I got rather sidetracked with the moving and all, but after the Charlie Hayes/ Brett Lunger thing ended I went home to California and was just kind of cooling it a little, wasn't really looking for another project. Racing back east was winding down, and my brother Dale also came back to Cal, and some of the other racers he had met back there also came. There was still racing going on out there when the weather closed in on the mid- west. One of these guys was Gary Congdon, towing his sprint car with a Corvette of all things. Mickey Thompson was building or rather was having Joe Huffaker build two cars of Mickey's design. Gary and Sammy Sessions had contracts to drive these cars in the 1967 Indy 500. One car was somewhat conventional, rear engine, monocoque "tub", but had some of Mickeys touch as well. The other car was a front engine, front wheel drive, four wheel steering car. The rear wheels steered in the opposite direction of the front wheels. (like a skateboard). The driver sat way, way back in the rear. Mick had also designed and built some 3- valve Chevy engines. Two intake valves and one exhaust. This was a rocker arm motor, because you could run an engine with more Cubic inch displacement than the overhead cam motors. Mickey had a strange mind, and lots of his stuff was way outside the envelope. But he had accomplished a lot in drag racing, and had set the worlds record at Bonneville at 409 MPH average two way. The first run was over 425 MPH, but on the return run one of the FOUR Pontiac engines blew itself to bits. The way the car was designed each engine drove a wheel, none connected together, so that run was with only three engines. This will give you a little insight as to what my next caper would be. I will get into that in my next post, it gets real crazy!

Larry

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry,

Check your private messages... I sent you my phone number.. I get free Long Distance, if you want to send me yours and a good time to call, I'll try to get you set up so you can post images. We gotta see some of this stuff!

Wayne
PS.... thanks again for sharing your experiences!

[ebutner]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Yes yes... Waht he said.. we NEED to see this stuff... please

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Back in those days a new design car had to be checked out and approved by USAC (United States Auto Club) before it could be entered in the Indy 500. Mickey Thompson was a real publicity hound, loved to see his name in print (when he would go to Indy, even sometimes when he was not there, maybe in Long Beach, CA, he would call the track and have himself paged over the garage area loudspeaker, over and over). Mickey being the "Mick" arranged for a press conference at Irwindale Speedway, and he would have the front wheel drive car there not only for the USAC officials, but also for all types of media folk. The "Mick" really knew how to milk these type of events for all he could get. I had became friends with Gary Congdon, and he of course had to be there to drive the "Indy car" and he stopped by and asked if I would like to go along. Of course, I said yes. We got there early and some of Mickey's guys were going to fire up the racer to get some heat in the engine for the days festivities. Gary and I were back about 30- 40 feet watching all of this. They cranked it over several times, and couldn't get it to start, not even a pop. I jokingly told Gary some smart remark like, hell, I could start that thing. A man behind me said, "If you're so smart, go over there and start it " I about fell over, it was Mickey. I had never met him, but was well aware of his exploits. Well, me being the way I am,I went over to the car and told these guys that I would start it for them. They looked at me and probably thought, "who is this nut?' I pulled all the spark plugs out, and asked if the fuel valve was turned of, and some one reached in and said "it is now". I had them crank it over a few times while I took each spark plug and looked at them and put them up to my mouth and blew them out. I put the plugs back in and told them "O.K. fire it up". They plugged in the starter, and cranked it over, and it fired up so quick that several of them jumped back like they had been shot. Much oompa, oompa, man that engine was really pickin them up and settin them down. I looked over at Mickey, and he had this strange look on his face. He came over to me and said, "be at my shop tomorrow morning". I told him that I wasn't looking for a job,I have other things to do. He said, "be there!" That's how I met the great Mickey Thompson! This was the beginning of an amazing opportunity to do a lot of fun things and learn things from "The Man". Oldsmobile had given them a new Olds Toronado (front wheel drive) and they had made a new rear axle that was steerable just like the race car. We had a ball testing this car on the streets of Long Beach. It was amazing how it handled! The freeway on ramps in Cal had posted "safe" speeds for these, and say one was posted 40 MPH, much over that a normal car would start squealing the tires. This goofy Toronado would easily make it at 60-65 MPH, and never squeal the tires! What was really impressive was the lateral "G" force when doing this. I could go on and on about the things we did with this thing, but. Oh well I will anyway, we once pulled into an Olds dealership, and asked to speak to the service manager. This old timer came out and asked what the problem was, and Congdon told him that there was something wrong with the steering, and the guy said show me what it is doing. Gary started turning the steering wheel back and forth and the old boy started watching the rear wheels turning back and forth, and stepped back, sort of scratching his head, and said "Don't worry about that, they all do that", and walked back into his office. I have to mention one more thing, several of us decided to go to lunch in the Toronado, Gary was driving again, and he pulled in pretty close to the curb, no problem. Oh yeah? After lunch, he couldn't pull away from the curb, the more he tried, the closer it got. Now try to visualize this, when he turned the steering wheel left to pull out, the rear turned to the right, putting the rear tire closer to the curb, and when he would try to back out the front tire got closer to the curb. After several of these attempts both tires were against the curb. The only way to get "unstuck" was to jack up one end and then shove it off the jack, and then repeat this on the other end. It took several of these high tech maneuvers to get ourselves out of this predicament, and by then we had drawn quite a crowd of on-lookers trying to figure out what we were doing and why. I wonder if any of those on-lookers had pondered buying a Toronado, and changed their mind? Well, enough of that, I will get us back to Irwindale Speedway, and the "press conference", on my next post, got to catch a bite of dinner, and I'll be right back. Larry

[Ken Dwelle]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

This is really great stuff Larry!

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Well, we are back to Irwindale Speedway, the USAC big guns are there, press types are wandering in, I have a job that I was not looking for and Goodyear has pulled in with lots of tires. The purpose of the Toronado 4 wheel steer was that Mickey was going to let anyone who felt the urge could take it out on the track and get it on. Even some of the USAC guys who were old time Indy drivers. Lots of people took a turn at it when it became clear that it got around the track darned good. Many were extremely surprised how good it handled and how fast it was. Nobody knew if it was going to eat up tires or not, so Goodyear had a good supply on hand. Turned out that it was not a problem, but Goodyear put fresh ones on now and then, just to be on the safe side. Gary ran a few laps in the race car. Good fun was had by all, and Mickey got himself some good P.R. I went to the shop next day as Mickey had "ordered", and the fun began. In my previous post about cruising around Long Beach in the Toronado was at Mickey's bequest because he wanted the drivers to get comfortable with the "feel" of the 4 wheel steering. The rest of us would pile in whenever we could because it was a lot of fun, we got some thrilling rides. I hired John Redican from the Charlie Hayes caper because he was smart, a hard worker and lived only about three blocks from me. Jim Ward, an ex drag race driver, and a good engine man was hired, so that made it a crew of three doing two Indy cars. Mickey would bring in fabricators now and then to build oil tanks, and other things ,mostly drag car and Bonneville car builders. It kept us real busy, the cars could not possibly been any different , one rear engne, and the other a front engine front wheel drive. Sammy Sessions, the other driver under contract showed up and we started doing some testing. Sometimes we would have just regular Chevys in for this. Ward was busting butt trying to get the 3-valve motors up to the power we needed. Mickey had some aluminum blocks cast, and magnesium oil pans, and rocker arm covers.They weren't very good castings, they were very pourous, water and oil would seep through them. We had them epoxy impregnated, but they would still seep some. There were a lot off "war surplus" stores is the Los Angeles area at that time and Mickey found some cases of how should I say it: olive drab female sanitary napkins. These were in boxes about 3ft.X3ft.x3ft. and held a lot of these things. He bought several of these, and since the cars were monocoque through the engine bays we could pack them down in there between the weepers and tubs, and change them when they became "soiled." By the time we got to where we were doing some serious testing at Phoenix International Speedway Ward had the seeping problems solved. He had the 3-valvers turning 9300 RPM and living, and making good power. Mickey put one on the dyno, and similated running the entire Indy 500, and it survived. I don't know quite how it happened, but Sammy became the driver for the 4 wheel steer car and Gary got the rear engine car. I was responsible for getting both cars ready, but the 4 wheeler became my main focus because that's the way Mickey wanted it. Of course it was much more complicated, and unconventional and so am I , so that probably had something to do with is decision. He knew that I enjoyed a challenge and my mind was about as warped as his, I guess that's why we got along so well. Another thing was that Mick had a Cessna 210RG and nobody else wanted to fly with him. I loved it, because we would send the cars to Phoenix, and he and I would fly down and land on the drag strip that was there in those days, and park right outside the turn 2 guardwall. I guess I especially liked it because he would take off, and then climb into the rear seat and take a nap, and I would wake him up in time to land. Hey, I got something about aviation in this post! One trip from Phoenix back to Long Beach after take off he told me that we were going to have a strong head wind, so it would take a little longer than normal. I was churning along, enjoying my seat time and glancing out now and then, and something didn't seem quite right. I banked a little to the right, and wow, there was the Los Alamitos horse race track, and my house was just about a mile north of that which meant that I was real close to the Long Beach Airport. So much for Mickey's head wind info. I started yelling at Mick to wake him up, and he climbed back up front and we did a real strange "jet penetration" or something and got us down real quick. One of those hours of monotany and moments of terror that I had heard about. With that I am going to call it a night. Later.....Larry