Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[bluffman]

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

I was anxious to get to Willow Springs, Stu had told me that he had raced an Austin Healey Bug Eye Sprite back in Missouri, and he got a little experience at Phoenix, and Holtville, but I had some concern as to how he was going to handle his Lola at “Willow”. This road course could be treacherous for an experienced driver, let alone a novice. I told him to just cruise around for a few laps, and get the lay of the land, then come in and I would check the car over. I had been looking over at the other Formula Ford team, I didn’t want to interfere with their testing. The rule with the track rental was that only one car could run at a time. I had no idea who they were, they were there when we arrived, and were pitted about as far from us as possible. When Stu came in, I glanced over there and one of the crew pointed to his car, then the track, so I gave him a thumbs up, and motioned them on. They fired up, then the driver drove past us, and as he went by, the guy gave me a wave. I thought that was rather strange, it made me wonder if he knew me. He got up to speed right away, so out of curiosity, I began timing his laps, just for a reference point for when Stu went back out. He ran ten laps, and came back into his pit, then one of his guys gave me a signal to go back out. Stu was vibrating, he could hardly wait to get out there, and get going. I told him to go, but take it easy, and get some heat in the tires before getting too racy. I reckon he must have thought the tires were warm enough, because the first time by, he was on the gas. I looked at Sandy, and put my hand over my eyes, and shook my head, as if to say, “Oh, No! The way the course was layed out, the car would go out of sight for a bit, then appear again, as it went uphill, then disappear again until the track went downhill, the appear again, through a left hand turn, and down the straightaway to a big sweeping turn that led down the front chute. Well, he had completed one lap at least, but he really had it wound up as he went by, and I had doubts that he would survive lap two. I let him make five laps, then signaled him to come in. He was making me nervous, so I wanted to have a talk with him. The other Ford was going back out, so I gave Sandy my stop watches, and clipboard, telling her to write down their lap times while I was reading Stu “the riot act.” I told him that he was going too fast, too soon, but he said that he was not even pushing it. I asked him how he knew that, and he said, “well, I haven’t crashed yet!” I tried to explain to him, that is not how it is done, but I don’t think he understood a word I was saying. He said that as soon as that other Ford came in, he wanted to go back out. Stu was having a ball, and wanted to go play some more. He hadn’t got out of the car when he came in, he was raring to go. I was a few feet away from the car, talking to Sandy about the lap times, and Stu must have been looking in his mirrors and saw the other Ford pull in. He fired the engine, and went blasting out of the pit. I was not a happy camper, and when he came by, I shook my fist at him, but I doubt that he saw me. As he went around the race course, I could hear the tires squeeling in some of the turns, and this was not a good sign. Usually, when you heard a squeeling tire, it ended with a thud when the car hit a wall or something. He kept doing this, and I looked down towards the other Ford pit, and they had stopped working on their car to watch Stu. I let this go on for six or so laps, then gave him the sign to come in. This time, he climbed out of the car, laughing, and dancing around, and telling me how much fun he was having. He had brought his wife and kids with him, and he took off to tell his wife all about his fun experience, they were a little bit away from the pit, in the shade of a building. I was comparing lap times with Sandy, and Stu was real close in lap times with the other Ford. I could hardly believe this, and was discussing it with Sandy, then I noticed the driver of the other Ford walking our way, and as he got closer, I recognized him, it was Dennis Firestone, who I had met at the Ontario Speedway. He was a real hot shoe in Fords, and had been there looking for an Indy car ride. We talked for a couple of minutes, and I noticed that he kept looking at our Lola, then he asked who my hot shoe driver was, and I said, “He’s a stock broker from Scottsdale, trying to learn how to drive one of these things.”

Larry

[MRE]

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

Larry,boy that brings back memories.I won my first two regional races at Holtville aerodrome in my bp Corvette in 74.That place made Willow Springs look like an oasis! In the years to come we raced national events up and down the west coast and we always watched the fords race. The battles that Firestone and Lobenberg and the rest had were some of the best racing around.Back in the day. Mike Meek

[bluffman]

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

I figured that Stu had enough fun for one day, and besides I wanted to look the car over, he had run Ol’ Lola pretty hard, so I needed to make sure everything was still intact. I put a fresh set of tires on, because the others had been through a couple of heat cycles, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would drive even harder the next day. I put the battery on charge, then we all went to our hotel for a big steak dinner before turning in for the night.

We wanted to get to the track early, so that we could get some laps in before it got too hot, but we had stopped for breakfast, and Stu already had his drivers uniform on, he was, “ ready to go”. After we arrived at the track, I installed the battery, then checked the tire pressures, and fired the engine to get it warmed up, and told Stu that Lola was “ready and waiting.” He was in the car in a flash, and I told him to get some heat in the tires before pushing too hard, knowing that he most likely wouldn’t. Off he went, shifting through the gears, and I told Sandy that I sure hoped he would “cool it” for a few laps. She said, “ you should know better than that!” I didn’t hear any tires squeeling which made me think that maybe he had listened for once, and when he came down the hill, and around the left hand turn he was not on the gas too hard. Then he came off the turn onto the front straightaway, and when he went by us, he was flat out, heading for turn one like a bat out of hell, then we heard the tires chirping a little bit, but not too bad. The next lap though, the tires were squeeling pretty good for the first two turns, but not the rest of the way around. He had scared himself, I guessed, so maybe he was going to ease up a little bit. Wrong again, the next two laps the tires were squeeling again, and the next lap, they weren’t squeeling, they were “screaming for mercy”! Then it got real quiet out there, and he was late coming into view, I guessed that he must have crashed. I spotted him coming down the hill, going pretty slow, and when he came in, the nose cone was missing. He had gone off the course, and out in the dirt. Stu climbed out, and was looking the car over for damage, then asked me if I would put the spare nose on, so he could go back out. I told him, “no, I want to see if there was anything broken or bent before you go back out.” I couldn’t see anything that would be a problem, so I put the new nose on, and let him go out again. I was sure that he would find a way to tear the car up worse than just the nose, then we could load up and go back home. He made six laps, punishing the tires, like before, then when he was coming down the hill, he was going real slow, and when he came into the pits, he went right by Sandy and I and drove up towards the building where his wife was sitting. We took off up in that direction, and when we got near, I saw that he had a water hose in his hand, squirting water into the air scoop to the carburetor, and asked him what the hell he was doing. He said that the engine was hot, and he was cooling it down. I went berserk, yanked the hose out of his hand, and rattled off a few expletives, gee, I didn’t think I knew that many four letter words! I had just increased my vocabulary!

I removed the spark plugs and cranked the engine over, water squirted out of some of the cylinders, then I put the plugs back in, and I was going to start the engine, but he had said that it was hot, so I thought I should make sure that the cooling system was full of water first. The Lola had two radiators, one on each side in the rear, just ahead of the drive axles, and when I started putting water in, those radiators looked like a sprinkler system. They looked like they had been blasted with a shotgun, Stu had gone off course, and there must have been gravel there. I was right, he could and did find a way to tear the car up worse than before!

Larry

[bluffman]

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

During the drive from Willow Springs back home to Phoenix, Sandy and I wondered if Bradbury would want to continue trying to race his Lola. I was hoping that he would throw in the towel, and park it forever, and then we could move on to something else to do. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be, Stu asked me if I would order new radiators, and anything else that I needed to get it ready to race again. The car wasn’t good for anything the way it was, so I figured that I would at least repair it, then maybe he would be able to sell it. This would keep me occupied, while I looked for other opportunities, and it would keep some cash coming in.

By the time I got the Lola back in running order, we were into 1976, a lot had come and gone since my surgery, recovering, moving to Phoenix, doing the Owens/ Dockery thing, building “T” radiators, and then getting involved with Stuart Bradbury. It was suddenly that time of year when I got itchy feet to migrate East, thinking about Indianapolis, and the 500. Maybe an opportunity would present itself, and Sandy and I would head in that direction.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Fortunately Sandy and I never left for Indianapolis, there was an Indy car race in Phoenix, on March 14th, and we went there, instead. My brother Ron had a done a “Spirit of Indianapolis” promotion with Grant King at Indy in 1975, Sheldon Kinser was the driver. This was a sponsorship thing that Ron had come up with, and copyrighted, where fans, or whoever could have their name on the race car for a nominal fee.

For the 1976 season Ron had got together with Carl Gehlhausen, whose son, Spike was going to be the driver. Now, the “Spirit of Indiana” car would be the #19 Spike Gehlhausen driven racer. Spike had ran several Indy car races in “75”, but was not old enough to enter the Indianapolis 500 that year. The Indy 500 rule was that you had to be 21 years old. Oddly enough they waived that rule in 1976 for Spike, and let him enter, making him the youngest “legal” driver for the Indianapolis 500. There was one driver who had ran Indy previously before he was 21, Troy Ruttman, he had lied about his age, using his cousin’s ID, and got by with it. I suspect there might have been others, but if so, it was never revealed as far as I know. Troy won the 500 in 1952.

As things worked out, I was hired by Gehlhausen, and after the Phoenix race, Sandy and I headed East already on a race team. They took the car to Indianapolis, and we had to get it ready for a race in Trenton, New Jersey on May 2nd, a 200 mile race. This car was a “Kingfish”, and they had bought a McClaren that we would run at Indy, so there was a lot of work to do.

Spike qualified 17th, for the Trenton race, and was running pretty good, until a pit stop, he came in too fast, and slid into the pit wall, knocking the left front wing off. There was not anything I could do to fix the wing, so the crew did the tire change, and refueled the car, and sent him back out. I don’t know why, but he was running as fast without the wing as he had been running with it. He finished in 14th place, which wasn’t too bad considering the pit problem. Sandy and I had gone to Trenton in Gehlhausen’s motor home, and somewhere along the way, I decided that I wanted to drive it, so I took over. I don’t remember what I taped, or wired onto the brake petal, but I was cruising along, having a wonderful time, motoring along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, over the speed limit, of course. Then I noticed a flashing red light in my rear view mirror, I had been busted! Luckily, this trooper didn’t look inside and spot my “hand brake”, that would have created a serious problem for sure. He gave me a speeding ticket, and told me to obey the Pennsylvania speed laws, and left, looking for other culprits.

Ron didn’t go with us to Trenton, he stayed in Indy, tending to the “Spirit of Indiana” McClaren, turbo- Offy. It was unusual to have a race so close to the opening of the track at Indianapolis, which is why they had bought the second car. When we got back to Indy, Ron had a strange tale to tell, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Stewart had flown into Indianapolis, and came to the “Speedway”.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Ron got a phone call from Charlie Thompson, who was a superintendent or something like that for the Indianapolis Speedway, wanting to know if the “Spirit of Indiana” car was available for a photo-op. Larry McCoy had a car named “The Spirit of America”, and he was also contacted. Fortunately both cars were available, but they had no idea what was going on. All hell was about to cut loose, Ronald Reagan, who was campaigning for the Republican nomination for President, and his group of secret service agents appeared, followed by Jimmy Stewart, who was probably endorsing Reagan, since they were both Hollywood actors. The “Pace Car” people had also been alerted, and probably Goodyear, as well. Ron had done a beautiful poster for his “Spirit of Indiana” deal, and had one rolled up in a “shipping tube”, I guess that’s what it was called, and had placed it inside the cockpit of the car. Reagan came over to look at the car, and Ron reached in to take this “tube” out of the car. This spooked the secret agents, they had no idea what Ron was pulling out of the car, to them it could have been a bazooka or something, who knows? I seem to recall seeing a photo of Reagan sitting in the car, but I’m not 100% sure. Of course McCoy’s “Spirit of America” got the same attention, no doubt Reagan’s publicity man was loving all of this. I’m sure Jimmy Stewart was enjoying this opportunity to see the race cars also.

The “Pace Car” that year was a Turbo-Charged Buick V-6, and it had lots of “get-up, and go. I think Reagan, and Stewart both drove one of these Buicks, and at some point an experienced driver took them for some “hot laps”. Ron says that sometime during this, the Buick spun out. I would bet that this ended the rides around the Speedway, imagine what the secret service guys thought about this caper!

Later, Spike Gehlhausen took Sandy and I for a few “hot laps”, following the groove that the Indy cars ran, and I must say, it was pretty scary. When he stood on the gas, that turbo started screaming, and that Buick really shoved you back in the seat. Spike came blasting off of turn four, then down the front straightaway, and it looked like we were going down a “blind” alley, you don’t see turn one until you’re almost there. Then he went down low, near the white line, and drifted up towards the short chute, within inches of the wall, then down towards the white line through turn two, and drifted up a little, then down the back straight. Pretty much the same in turn three, and up to the wall in the short chute, then drift up close to the wall coming off of turn four. I think someone said that we were running 138 miles an hour down the straightaways, but much slower in the turns, of course. I tried to imagine what it was like going a hundred miles an hour faster, like the Indy cars, but it was too mind boggling. After Spike pulled in, and Sandy and I got out of the car, we started telling each other about our experience, and it dawned on us that we had just been driven around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway by a 20 year old kid, who had very few laps around there, only his “Rookie Test”, and a few practice laps in the “Spirit of Indiana” McClaren M-16 turbo charged Offy. Needless to say we were pretty impressed.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

We had another rather strange experience that I need to mention, since it has to do with politicians. This happened before the Reagan, Stewart thing, and I should have written this first, but sometimes I get ahead of myself.

The McClaren was finished a couple of weeks or so before we took the Kingfish to Trenton, and we took it to a car show in Evansville, Indiana, to promote Ron’s “Spirit of Indiana” program. He had made up some real nice “hand outs” that explained the sponsorship deal, that we passed out. There were a lot of people there that showed some interest in signing up, among them a group of Republicans who were in town for a convention. As the evening went on, several of these guys imbibed into a bit too much of the “spirits” that were available. One approached me with a plan, he was really “tanked”, and he suggested that I should call President Gerald Ford, and invite him to be an honorary member of our crew for the Indy 500. Of course I was thinking that this dude was a lot drunker than I had first thought, but he gave me a phone number to call in Washington, DC. Sandy had been passing out “hand outs” and didn’t notice my conversation with this man, so I told her about it, and she really got a laugh over that. She said that I should call that number and see what happens, and I said, “what if Ford answers?” She really cracked up then, and said that it was about 2 AM in Washington, and the President sure wasn’t going to answer a phone at that hour, and she said something about me being “chicken” to call that number. Well, I would show her, I ain’t no “chicken”, so I found a phone and called that number, and to my surprise, a lady answered, and she said “White House” or something like that, and I about fell out of my chair. She asked why I had called that number, and I told her what that drunk had suggested, and she said that I should call back the next morning when the staff was in. I hung up the phone, and went over to tell Sandy what had happened, and she asked me why I was shaking, then I told her that I had called that phone number, and some lady at the White House answered, and told me to call back.

Larry

[Flyer57]

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

Folks I have been away for awhile since my new job has me worn out most nights but I decided to chime in here.
Sandy helped me when I got divorced. She and I had a couple of very long talks about life and such. I told Larry once that I needed to go for a couple of hours and he said take the rest of the day off. this was July and guess when Reno is.
I have lunch with Larry from time to time and having known him for twenty years now, Being there in 88,and having gone to the memorial for Sandy, I just wanted to tell you all who unfortunately may never meet this man and unfortunately will never meet Sandy. You are reading something that Hollywood could never invent. I helped Larry build BMB in my little way, and after that helped and watched him do things that . . . Well. . . You are reading about a man who is beyond any man I have known. And you are reading him telling his story. I can tell you this, You are reading history. I was only there for the short time of BMB and have had lunch with Larry recently, and been to the hanger where this great man is still loving the work of building a racing machine.
This is not the History Channel although you may see it there some day. You are seeing first hand. I am copying it all and will be giving it to Shane or Brad when we get together again.
All of you need to feel the truth of what you are reading.
I wondered into this saga by my curiosity and Larry took me in. Now 20 years later I called him the other week and said Gordon was late but I was there at the airport cafe and he got in his truck and was there in less than 30 minutes and we just sat and talked until everyone else showed up.
This is a living legend you are reading. He won't say it but AJ would, and so would a host of Indy and Air Race legends.
Steve Hinton is one of the most respected warbird people out there and when I saw him in Goodyear AZ last summer the first question was how's Larry doing? Of course having had lunch with him a couple of weeks earlier he was glad to here this guy who has been in a wheelchair since the fifties was still working on race planes.
If you ever get the chance to see Steve ask him about Larry. You may get a story you didn't read here.
I'm babbling here but I can't say enough about Larry. I said it way back in this thread. But is bears saying again. Here is a man who needed to get a Racer built that would run in the gold at Reno and he had a year or so to do it. He of course hired car guys he knew but when kids who knew nothing walked in all he asked of us was that we come here and work and do what we were told and he took three kids in, Kids, I was 30 But Shane and Brad were in their teens, and all of us are better for him and Sandy having been part of our upbringing. You all have been drawn in by his story. Think about actually having been in is company. Having had him yell at you. (It was a very calm yelling but you knew you were being yelled at) Having had him coach you. ("Here is what I mean") Having been there when Sandy was chronicling all this in pictures. And let me tell you, Sandy took A LOT of pictures. She always had the latest set of 6 or 7 envelopes of the latest rolls out on the table at lunch. and there were many candid shots.
1987 was truely the greatest year of my life and I owe it to a guy who only asked, what can you do?
Smokey and so many others are gone. Others have told their story in other ways but remember you are reading the first draft. This is straight from the horses mouth and unedited. This is the whole story.
having been there for the short time I was there. I will quote Walter Cronkite. "And that's the way it is."("was").

[ebutner]

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

Rodger, thanks, I do get it and appreciate the history being told here. Larry you ARE the history of so many aspcets of racing and to have it told to us by you makes it that much better. You had your hand in lots of racing history. Glad to hear you still do is good. Thanks for sharing.

Eric

[Race 22 mech]

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

Larry,

I would like to say thanks for the time you are putting into this. You sharing this is beyond words.

Will you please reserve a copy of the book for me.

Chip Woods

[bluffman]

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

When we arrived back to Indy from the car show, I got enough nerve up to call that phone number again, and a lady answered again, and mentioned the White House. This was a different person than I had spoken to before, but after I gave her my name, she said there was a memo that I had called. She asked me what she could do for me, and I explained that the guy had gave me this number to call to see if President Ford would be interested in being an honorary member of our race team for the Indianapolis 500. She asked what the date was for the race, so I told her, and she said that his schedule was full during that time, but she would check to see if one of his children might be interested. She asked me for my address, so that someone could send a response to my request. Of course, I figured that was the end of this caper, and I would not hear anything more from the White House. Oh, well, we had to go to Trenton for the race, anyway, so I just forgot all about it.

Now, I will get back to the speeding ticket on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but I just had to put that stuff about Ron, Reagan, Stewart, Pace Cars, and the White House in, a little out of sequence, but a part of the story. At the first opportunity, I let someone else do the driving of the motor home, I didn’t want to risk getting another ticket.

We had a lot of work to do at the Speedway, the McClaren had not been run yet, and Spike had to complete his Rookie Test, so that we could get him up to speed for qualifying. I don’t recall any problems, or drama during the Rookie Test, I think Spike clicked off the laps needed, then got the required sticker on the car to go out and practice. The “hot dogs” were running speeds up around 185 to 186 mile an hour laps, but there were a bunch of drivers struggling to get much over 180. The weather was a problem that year, lots of rain, so the track was closed for practice now and then.

Spike was doing pretty good, considering he had never raced at Indy before, and the track could be rather intimidating, especially to a rookie, with all of the tradition, and history regarding the “Indianapolis Motor Speedway”. They had been running this race since 1911, and there was a lot of drama connected to this place, hundreds had tried to win here, but only the best had succeeded.

I don’t remember which day of practice it was, but Spike lost control in turn one, spun, then hit the wall in the short chute, and ended up in turn two. Now we had some serious work to do to get the car fixed, and get him up to speed. Most of the damage was the right side suspension, and radiator. The nose cone, and front wing was hurt, but not too bad. Luckily, McClaren parts were easy to come by, so we didn’t need to make parts, just buy them, and bolt them on. Spike wasn’t hurt at all, and I was hoping that his mishap wouldn’t “spook him.”

Larry

Photos added, I have a 15 photo sequence, but I’m too lazy to edit them. These 7 pretty well tell the story.

[bluffman]

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

After Spike’s crash, repairs had to be completed as quick as possible , we had to get him back out for practice, and get him up to speed to qualify. While others on the crew were replacing suspension components, right side radiator, and any other damage, my chore was to repair the small damage to the nose, and front wings. I had it sitting on top of a trash barrel, just outside the garage door. An old friend came driving through “Gasoline Alley” in a Ford station wagon to deliver some parts further up the way, and yelled “hello” and waved as he passed by. I waved back, then went back to work repairing the nose. Little did I know, I was about to have another “incident”. Ol’ Johnny stopped at the far end of “Gasoline Alley”, put the Ford shift lever in park, left the engine running, and climbed out to deliver his parts. I was having a good old time fixing the damaged nose, when I heard a clicking noise that was getting louder, and closer. I looked up, and here came that Ford wagon, like a bat out of hell, headed straight for me. My reaction was to put my left hand out as if to stop it I guess, but luckily what I did was the only thing that kept me from being crushed against the side of the garage door opening. When the wagon hit my outstretched hand, it knocked me and my wheelchair over backwards, and about ten feet inside, before it hit the garage, and our transport truck. I remember the impact, and letting out a yell, but it must have knocked me out for a few moments, because the next thing I knew there were several people standing over me asking if I was O.K. I didn’t know what to answer, I mean, you know, I had just been hit by a two and a half ton vehicle going 25 to 30 miles an hour, and knocked several feet, and was laying on the floor inside of the garage. One thing that I knew for sure was that my left wrist and hand was hurting real bad. Dr. Bruce White, the USAC medical director came and checked me over, and said that my wrist was probably fractured, and told me that I should go and get x-rays. I told him that I would go after the track closed, I had to get the nosecone fixed. He said that at least, I should let him put a splint on it, to which I agreed. It was a nuisance trying to work with the splint on, but I got the repairs done, and after the track closed Sandy took me to the Vets hospital to get x-rays. This turned into a real fiasco, the doctor came in with the x-rays, and said that my hand was not broken. I told him that it wasn’t my hand that was hurt, it was my wrist, and I told him that I wanted to see the x-ray. Yep, they had indeed x-rayed my hand, and not my wrist. I said something disrespectable to him, and he got pretty ticked off, but he had another x-ray done, and lo and behold, the wrist was fractured. The doc calmed down a little, realizing the mistake, and had a cast put on. By this time I was getting pretty sore all over, I had taken a hard hit, and the pain was beginning to set in. Sandy drove us to our apartment so we could get some sleep, we still had quite a bit of work to do on the race car, and I wanted to get to the track early the next morning. Sandy gave me one of those “looks”, but knew that it wouldn’t do any good to say anything, I would be back to work as if nothing had happened.

Dr. White stopped by, and was pleased that I had a cast on my wrist, then told me to take it easy, so that it could heal. It didn’t take me long to blow this deal, the cast came down to my knuckles, around the palm of my hand, with just my thumb sticking out. Just wheeling around the garage had broken the part that covered the palm of my hand after a couple of hours. I had Sandy go to a drug store and get an “ACE” bandage, and while she was gone, I removed the cast. When she returned, I had her wrap it real tight, and it was much easier to work this way. I never considered the possibility that Dr. White would come by and check on me, but in the late afternoon, I heard a voice behind me muttering something to Sandy. I turned around to see what was going on, there was the doc, not very happy. “We made a deal”, he would splint it before I left the track each day, and I would leave it on as long as possible the following day, and he would apply another splint before I went home. This routine would continue through raceday.

The attached photo captures a point in time when I hadn’t removed Dr. White’s “splint” yet, must have been early in the day.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

We got the “Spirit of Indiana” repaired and back on the track, and after a few laps, had Spike come back in to check for leaks and all of that stuff. Everything seemed to be looking good, and Spike got up to the speed that he had run previous to the crash. No matter what we did, he was still stuck in the 179+ speed range. At one point, he said that the wind was buffeting his helmet, so I made a small aluminum “spoiler”, and pop riveted it to the left mirror. He went out again and ran the same speed, but said that the wind wasn’t buffeting his helmet anymore. ( I removed it shortly, and he didn’t mention the buffeting again)When a driver gets stuck on a speed, it is really difficult to get them past that speed, they get into a regime where it is comfortable, and a tiny bit more speed rattles them, they get out of the comfort zone. I remember a time that Gary Congden was driving for A,J. Foyt, and when he made a jump in speed, he pulled in and told A.J. that it didn’t feel good at that speed, A.J. said, “it ain’t supposed to feel good when you’re running that fast”, or something to that effect.

We tried all kinds of goofy stuff, but Spike went no faster. There were several others stuck on about the same speed, so we weren’t the only ones that were having this problem. It is unusual for that many cars to be stuck on the same speed. It could have been aerodynamics, or maybe the tires felt different in that speed range, who knows? The engine seemed to be “happy”, the plugs looked good, and the turbo boost was where it should be. A different gear ratio made no difference either.

Then we had an even greater problem, the Offy coughed up it’s guts, and we had no spare. Carl Gehlhausen went about promoting another engine. This was a tough deal this late in the game, it was almost the first day of qualifying. No matter what happened, we would have to wait for the second weekend of qualifying, but we would need to get some track time to try to get the speed up, 179 was not going to “cut the mustard”. Carl found another engine, but it would need to be taken apart and checked over, because whoever he got this engine from didn’t know it’s history. No idea how many miles were on it, and so forth. Ed Baue did all he could do to make it “race ready”, it was the last bullet in our gun.

I’m posting a photo of the car, note the engine cover extending back from the roll bar. It can be seen in some of the crash photos also. This engine cover is going to be a significant part of the “Spirit of Indiana” story.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Eddie got the engine “smoked over” and in the car, then we sent Spike out for the usual few laps before coming in for a check over. Again, everything looked good, so Spike went back out to try for more speed. Lap after lap, the speed was still in the 179 range, nothing had changed. We had changed everything but the driver, and Carl was about to fire his kid, and put someone else in the car. Cooler heads prevailed, but we still had no clue what to do. I got to thinking, man, we’ve got to do something dramatic, some big change that Spike would gain confidence in. We were all sitting back trying to think of something, then I turned to Sandy, and said that I had an idea. I had the guys remove the engine cover, and I told Spike that it was disrupting the airflow over the rear wing, and it should be much better now. He went out, and in a few laps ran over 180, not a big gain, but maybe over the hump. Then he ran a 181+, and came in, pretty happy. He was comfortable at that speed, and thought he could do even better. There was a couple of other McClarens that had been struggling like us, and a crew member of one of those cars, I forget which one, came and asked me what we did to get Spike going, and I told him to take his engine cover off, and see what happened. I wish I could remember who it was, but they got up to speed and made the race. Qualifying day came, and Spike ran an average speed of 181.710, and he was in the show, qualified 25 th.
There were ten cars that made the race in the 181+ range, the slowest at 181.100. The pole speed was 188.950, by Johnny Rutherford.

Spike had made the show, but unfortunately, on the parade lap, going down the backstretch, he radioed in that he had lost oil pressure. He never made it to the green flag for the start of the race.

Posting 2 photos, I didn’t cut brother Ron out of the picture on the left, that was the official speedway photographer. That’s him on the left with his plaid pants on. Note the engine cover off, and no splint on my left arm, I had ripped it off before the qualifying attempt.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

I messed up on the black and white photo. Here it is.

Larry