Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[bluffman]

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

Sandy and I made a banzai trip to Oakwood, Illinois, where Cannon’s home and race shop was, actually the race shop was the garage attached to his house, but it was adequate, no worse than the garages at the Indy Speedway. I needed to freshen up an engine for Michigan, so time was of the essence, but we were used to that. Sandy had the hardest job, not only helping me take the engine apart, but also drive from Oakwood to Indianapolis for parts. I forget how far it was, but Sandy was hell on wheels when she was on a mission. There were a couple of days when she would need to do this trip twice, but to her it was not a big deal. Of course she would help me assemble the engine as well, she really enjoyed that part.

We got our act together in plenty of time, and left beautiful Oakwood, towing the Wildcat in a trailer behind Cannon’s motor home. It wasn’t a bad trip, except for Boomer’s singing. He was quite a character, always seemed to be happy, and was one of those people that could remember jokes. We arrived in Jackson, Michigan in good time, got the car unloaded, through tech inspection, and were ready when the track opened for practice. Boomer got up to speed right away, the engine was strong, and the car was handling pretty good. We made a few minor adjustments to the wings, but nothing major. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, was the mode we were in. He qualified 9th quick, which was real good, considering the competition. The race was a 150 miler, which took less than an hour to run. Cannon was running in the top ten all day, and on about lap 60 of 75, everybody ahead of him were getting low on fuel, and we were the only one that had enough to finish the race due to a pit stop we made out of sequence. He had the race won, just had to hang on for a few more laps. He was in 4th place, and the three ahead of him would either run out of fuel, or make a “splash and go” which would put them a lap down on Cannon. When Boomer passed Wally Dallenbach, who was in third place at the time, he got so excited that he lost his concentration, and spun out! This was more than Johncock, Rutherford, and Dallenbach could have hoped for. Johncock and Dallenbach came in for a splash of fuel during the yellow flag for Cannon’s spin, but Rutherford chose to stay out, hoping the yellow flag would last a few laps, allowing him to win the race. Rutherford’s gamble didn’t pay off, he ran out of fuel, and Johncock passed him for the win. Boomer had restarted after the spin, and finished 12th. Close, buy no cigar”!” Johncock and his chief mechanic came over and thanked Cannon for spinning, rubbing salt into the wound. Needless to say, boomer was really embarrassed, and frustrated, and all of us crewmembers were in shock! Larry

[bluffman]

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

There was still one race to go, Phoenix, on October 29th, a 150 lap race on the PIR mile track. I had about four and a half weeks to get the car ready to go to Phoenix, plenty of time to freshen up the engine, and go through the transaxle. Of course the chassis set-up had to be changed as well, going from a high-banked two mile track to a basically flat-track one mile track. Springs, shocks, anti-roll bars, wings, and a zillion other things would need to be changed, checked or rebuilt.

Boomer had found us a place to live, but Sandy and I didn’t spend much time there, just to shower and sleep, we didn’t want to do any cooking, so we ate all of our meals out. There were not many choices of restaurants in Oakwood, and Danville was too far to drive, so we mostly ate at a truck-stop nearby. Now, we all know about truck-stop food, there are many stories regarding these places, most of which are not good. Naturally, everybody in town knew each other, and we got some strange looks after a couple of days. They were used to people coming and going on there way to somewhere else, not coming in two or three times a day for several days. One waitress was pretty friendly, and asked us why we kept coming there. We told her that we were there working on Larry Cannon’s race car, and the word spread quickly, so now we were accepted into the community, Cannon was a local hero. Very often when we would order our meal, the waitresses would tell us that we didn’t want that, it was not any good on that day, or time, depending on which cook was on duty. It finally got to the point that I would just tell them to bring me something to eat, but Sandy was more particular about what she ate, so she would do a big song and dance about what was good, and what was not. She usually ended up with the same thing that I got anyway.

I needed a couple of tools, and Boomer said that there was an auto parts store in Danville, so Sandy and I went there, and they had the usual rack up on the wall behind the counter, with tools hanging on it. I pointed to a hammer there, and told the guy working there that I wanted one of those. He said, “we don’t use hammers like that around here”, and refused to sell me one. I also needed a dial indicator, and I saw one in a glass case that would fill my need, but this guy said, “naw, ya’all don’t want one of them”. I told Sandy, “let’s get the hell out of here, this guy is nuts”. She could pick up what I needed on her next trip to Indianapolis. I had been all over the world, and I had never experienced anything quite like this. I would sure be glad to get on the road to Phoenix. Larry

[bluffman]

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

“Boom Boom”, came up with a plan to raise some sponsorship money, similar to my brother Ron’s “Spirit of Indiana”, but instead of putting names on the car, the donor would get a T- shirt that had printed on it, “That’s My Race Car”, and some kind of “certificate”. His theory was that when a fan saw the racer go by, he would tell anybody nearby, “That’s My Race Car”. Hmm, I don’ know how much he raised with this scheme, but I always got my pay check, and there was money to buy Offy parts. The car didn’t have this painted on it at Michigan, and it wasn’t on it when I left Oakwood to go to Phoenix, but when it arrived at PIR for the race, in big red letters, painted on the side, was “That’s My Race Car”. Cannon gave Sandy and I each a couple of the T-shirts to wear, with that printed on them, and the rest of the crew was also outfitted with them, this was our “race uniform”. Not quite as fancy as other team uniforms, but still attracted some attention, like, Huh?

Boomer was having a rough time getting up to speed, the DGS was running fine, but we just couldn’t get him comfortable in the car. He said that it was pushing, (under steer) and we would make an adjustment, then he would say that it was loose, (over steer), so we made another change, and he said , “now, it’s doing both.” We tried everything except, maybe putting his helmet on backwards. He climbed out of the car, and I had the guys jack it up, and when Boomer was out of sight, I told them to put it back down, and sent one of them looking for Boomer, and told him to try it out again. He came in, and said that it was much better now. He qualified 20th, but got going better as the race went on, and finished 9th. The 1977 Indy car season was over, and Cannon said that he didn’t know what he was going to do for the next year. He and his guys loaded up, and headed back to Oakwood. I say “his guys”, because the crew were all friends and neighbors, I was the only paid person on the crew. “What a way to go big time Indy car racing!”

Larry

[wyhdah]

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

Nice looking piece Larry. The funds might have been scarce but the car doesn't look like it.

[bluffman]

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

wyhdah, It looks even better in my next post after I had more time to massage it. Yep, I went back to Oakwood! A sucker for punishment I guess.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Shortly after the Phoenix race, I started looking for something to do, it never took me long to get bored, and Sandy suggested that I give Stu Bradbury a call. We were curious as to what he might have done with his Lola, wondering if it was still sitting on the trailer where I had left it after the Pueblo caper. I called Stu at his office, and asked him what he had been up to, and he said, “not much, except wondering if I was ever going to fix his race car.” I told him that he must be kidding, and he said that he wasn’t, the Lola was sitting where I had left it. This was a Friday, so Stu invited us to his house the following day for a barbeque, and we would talk things over. When Sandy and I arrived, I looked around, and didn’t see the car, but I noticed a pile of something sitting in the back corner of his yard. He had just thrown a tarp over the rig, and ignored it. I told Stu that I wanted to take a look at it, but he said that we would do that later, first he wanted to hear about what I had been doing while we were enjoying a nice steak, with all of the fixings. During our dinner Stu asked me if I would be interested in opening a race car shop, and I told him that I would have to think that over. This sounded kind of interesting, but I had a problem to look into before committing to something like that.

I had been having some blood sugar problems since my abdominal surgery, and it was getting much worse as time went by. I went to a doctor to see if he could figure out what was causing this problem. He ordered a “glucose tolerance test” to see how I reacted to that, and things did not go well. I think this was a four hour test, and during this my blood sugar would go very high, then go extremely low, almost to the point that I was passing out, then go high again, then low. I would go from being “hypoglycemic” to “hyperglycemic”, back and forth. Something about the pancreas producing more insulin to solve one problem, and the liver producing more glycogen, but at any rate this insulin/ glycogen must be in balance. If this balance is not maintained, a shortage of one causes the organs to shut down and the other causes nerve, and brain damage. I had a yo-yo effect going on, and my doctor was going to put me on insulin. This was on a Friday, and Sandy and I had planned to go to California to visit over the week-end, so I told the doc that we would wait until we got back, then decide what to do. I just didn’t feel right about this insulin deal, something told me that this may not be the thing to do.

When we got back home, I called the doctor’s office, and they told me to come right in, Dr. Grigg wanted to see me right away. He said that it was a good thing that we had not done the insulin thing after consulting with some other doctors, it possibly could have been fatal. He thought that I should try a special diet, hopefully that would stop the yo-yo effect, eating five or six small meals a day. I went to see the dietician that he recommended, who had it all figured out. First I needed to buy a scale to carefully measure certain amounts of this and that, for each of the five or six meals a day, which meant that I would either be measuring stuff or eating the entire day, no time for anything else. Besides that, where did Sandy fit into this program, how would she plan meals for herself? I knew right away that this program was not going to work, I would figure out my own way of dealing with this situation.

I called Stu to discuss the race shop idea, and he wanted Sandy and I to meet him for lunch. During our conversation, my blood sugar problem came up, and Stu asked what was being done about it. I told him that the doctors that I had been seeing didn’t know what to do. He said that could get me into the Barnard Research Center at Washington University, in St.Louis, Missouri. His wife’s family had connections there, the Ralston Purina company were apparently big donors there. The arrangements were made for me to go there and get examined.

About this time, Larry Cannon called, saying that he would like for me to get his car ready for the Indianapolis 500, he was going to skip the other races and concentrate on Indy. This meant that Sandy and I would have to go back to Oakwood, and the truck stop food. We talked it over, and since we were going to St. Louis anyway, we would be real close to Oakwood, and Indy. Such a deal! How could we pass this up? There would be plenty of time to get the car ready after doing our thing at Washington University.

After getting examined at the hospital, they admitted me for some tests, and I had my records from Dr, Grigg with me, so they had the results of tests done in Phoenix to look over. They really ran me through the mill, test after test, many examinations, lots of different doctors checking me out. This was also a “teaching hospital” and I was an unusual patient, so they would bring groups of 5 or 6 medical students in to check me over. The results of the tests were not consistent with the expected results, so they came up with another plan. They put me in an intensive care ward, then put an IV in my left arm so that they could get blood samples much easier. I was given lots of different things to eat or drink, and they would take samples pretty often. My blood sugar would go from a “normal” 110 or so, up to over 300, then go as low as 25 to 30. I remember one occasion where I was at about 30, and I was still conscious, but groggy, and the doctor was asking me to do simple math problems, not expecting to get much out of this, but I was able to give the right answers, and he turned to Sandy, and said that he could hardly believe I was responding. Her reply was, “it doesn’t surprise me.” Their next plan was to take blood every 15 minutes for 72 Hours, while having me eat or drink stuff. At least they didn’t need to stick a needle in me each time, they just got what they wanted from the IV in my arm. I don’t know how they did things when I was sleeping, and I didn’t really care. After they got finished with this ordeal, the main doctor that tended to me said that there wasn’t anything they could do for me, I had an erratic pancreas, or something like that probably due to some trauma related to my abdominal surgery. He gave me a list of foods that I should not consume, and told me to go home and experiment with different things to try to keep my levels in a more normal range. I told him that I wasn’t going home, and he asked me where I was going, and I said that I was going to Indianapolis to run a car in the Indianapolis 500. He got a stunned look on his face, and said to be careful. I asked him how low on blood was I, did I need some put back in, he kind of grinned, and said that I would be alright, just take it easy for a few days. Sandy and I loaded up, then hit the road to Oakwood, and “That’s My Race Car”.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Boomer had rented Sandy and I a nice apartment in Oakwood that was a little farther away from the “shop”, but there were some better places to eat nearby. We would still go to the truck-stop on occasions, just for old times sake, I reckon. We got settled in, and then started getting the program going, there was lots of work to get organized, building two DGS Offys, rebuilding the transaxle, hubs, brakes, and on and on. Preparing a car for the 500 was almost like building a new car. Some of Cannon’s friends would come by and help when they could They were a bunch of good guys, fun to be around, and had worked on sprint cars, and were pretty good mechanics.

We “got er’ done”, and were at the Indy Speedway when they opened up for practice. Cannon was still doing the “That’s My Race Car” deal, but only had that painted on the front of the rear wing. He left space for another sponsor if one showed up, and did get a small sponsorship from Anhieser-Busch Natural Light Beer. He “sold “ the rear wing side-plate area to them. Everything was going pretty good, Boomer was getting up to speed without much drama, just small changes in wing angles, and tweaks to the chassis. The engine was running great, several drivers told me that they wished they had it, Cannon was motoring right by them down the straight-aways. His corner speeds were not too bad, but he was losing some time there, not quite in the fast groove. I think getting up close to the wall in the short chutes spooked him, but that was where the bravest of the brave ran, and that was the fast way around the “Brickyard”.

The intake to the turbo-charger compressor had a “ram tube” I guess it could be called, but it looked like a “bugle”, and there was a cover that could be put on it when pushing it around, to keep dirt and stuff out of it. One of the guys put a “Natural Light” decal on it, and thought it was real “cool”. I had a problem regarding this thing, I didn’t want it on when the car was in the pit lane. I would take it off, and damn it, one of them would put it back on .

Qualifying time came up, and I had fired the engine up to get some heat in it, then shut it off until it was our turn to make an attempt. I had my hand on the throttle arm on the injectors, and gave the signal for the guys to spin it up with the starter, The engine didn’t light off as it should have, and I looked back and spotted that cover on the intake, and about the same time, I heard a squeeking noise in the engine. I was waving for them to quit cranking the starter over, but they didn’t stop right away. All we could do was pull the spark plugs out, and motor the engine over to blow all of the alcohol fuel out of the cylinders. I took that damned cover and give it a toss, raising hell. This was the absolute worse time for this to happen, the pressure of qualifying was bad enough, but to have a situation like this was a disaster. While zinging the engine over to blow out the fuel, I heard more of this squeeking sound, we had washed all of the oil off of the pistons, and cylinder walls. All we could do at this point was fire it up, and hope that there was not too much damage, and send Boomer out to qualify. He had to run a four lap qualifying attempt, an maybe we would dodge a bullet. His first lap was 193+ miles per hour, but then the engine started seizing up. We had scuffed the pistons due to the lack of oil on the cylinder walls.

We had to do an engine change to get ready for another attempt. Time was running out for qualifying, but there was plenty of time for us to run in the back-up engine, and check it over for leaks and what not. We decided to run a couple of “hot laps”, then put the car in line for another qualifying attempt. If he could get up to 193 again, we would be looking good.

The something happened that even “Hollywood” wouldn’t have put into a script. Boomer had hit the wall, and several people told me that they had been watching him, and when he went by his head was leaning down, like he was unconscious. They brought the car in, and Cannon came over, and I asked him what happened, and he said that he didn’t know. He seemed alright, and we looked the car over. It wasn’t hurt bad, we figured we could fix it and get back out for an attempt. Everything was fixed but the steering rack, it had a tight spot in it, so we tried to get it freed up, and it seemed to be O.K. Cannon said he would take it out on the track to see if it was driveable. He made a couple of laps and came in, and said that he couldn’t drive it like that, the steering was binding up. There was only a few minutes left in the last day of qualifying, so we were out of luck. His 193+ speed would have put him in the show in good shape, the slowest qualifier in the 500 ran a speed of 187.226! We were out of the race, all because of that damned cover with the beer decal on it.
I was told later that Boomer had once fallen asleep driving a sprint car, he had “narcolepsy”. One of his friends said that was why he always sang when he was driving the motor home, it kept him from falling to sleep.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

The photo showing me working on the DGS was right after the caper at Washington University, not in too bad shape considering what I had been through. The photo of the #29 car was Cliff Hucul from Canada, I helped him also during the time at the speedway with Cannon He made the race.

Larry

[Lockheed Bob]

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

Great story & with your strong looking arms I bet you could lift the engine right out of the race car, I was at Indy 1946-1950 & I saw Shorty Cantlin (I believe) lose his life in a green race car ( Bad Luck back then) Those were the days.

[bluffman]

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

I’m having a lapse in memory or something, am going through photos, clippings, input from family and friends, but nothing seems to jive. Unfortunately, most of the photos from after May 1978 to May 1979 are not dated for some reason. If I can’t figure it out by tomorrow night, I will jump ahead to Indy 79’ and fill in later. There are a lot of things coming up, Cobra, Turbine car, Las Vegas, airplanes, more Indy stuff, etc. Hang in there with me folks, I will get it straightened out one way or another.

I know for sure I was at Indy in May 1979 with Bill Englehart, so I will gather up the photos of that deal, and post that “chapter”, there were some strange happenings regarding this.

Larry

[ebutner]

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

I’m having a lapse in memory or something, am going through photos, clippings, input from family and friends, but nothing seems to jive. Unfortunately, most of the photos from after May 1978 to May 1979 are not dated for some reason. If I can’t figure it out by tomorrow night, I will jump ahead to Indy 79’ and fill in later. There are a lot of things coming up, Cobra, Turbine car, Las Vegas, airplanes, more Indy stuff, etc. Hang in there with me folks, I will get it straightened out one way or another.

I know for sure I was at Indy in May 1979 with Bill Englehart, so I will gather up the photos of that deal, and post that “chapter”, there were some strange happenings regarding this.

Larry

"Hang in there".. ??? Sir, we are hanging on every word... Take your time this is wonderful stuff. Thanks again for sharing all this with us.

Eric

[bluffman]

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

Here we are in early May 1979, with Billy Engelhart, who you might remember won “Turkey Night” at Ascot Speedway in the Grant King midget. This was a “Wildcat”, but a later model than Cannons. It also had a DGS Offy like was in Boomers race car. The car was owned by the Beaudoin brothers, and was without a sponsor.

When we arrived at the Indianapolis Speedway, there were no garages available for us and three other teams. When an entry is accepted for the 500, there is supposed to be a garage for each car. They put us outside “Gasoline Alley”, along the driveway into the garage area, where spectators wandered around. You can imagine how “hot” I was regarding this situation, and I was about to raise hell! Sandy and I took a “stroll” around the garage area, and noticed that there were a lot garages with golf carts, motorcycles, and other miscellaneous stuff in them. The deal was that the big guns, like Penske, Patrick, and others would submit entries for cars that didn’t exist, or were back-up cars, just to get extra garages. I went to the USAC office, and the Speedway office to complain about this problem. There was an effort made to have some of these guys move there crap out, so we could get a garage, but none of them would cooperate, after all, they were “big shots”! You know, “special people”, there’s always some of those around!

The other teams parked out there with us didn’t want to make any “waves”, and wouldn’t back me up, so I took it upon myself to do something about it. I made a sign on one of our chalk boards, and soon the word spread that all was not well at the “Racing Capitol of The World”! The TV , and other media people are always looking for a story, especially if it is controversial, and of course they came to find out what was going on. Here was something that would make their editors, and producers happy, controversy is always big news to them. I let fly with both barrels, and man, did they love it!

A representative from the Stewart Warner Company showed up, and he was all smiles, they were doing a promotional gimmick about “Shade Tree” mechanics, and had previously had T-shirts printed up to pass out. This fit right in to their deal, nothing like “free publicity”, this was better than any script they could have written. Needless to say, the crew were all given “Shade Tree Mechanics” shirts instantly, and the cameras were clicking.

The Speedway loves publicity, but not this kind, I had written on another chalkboard, Time Lost, in hours, and each hour we were out there, I would put another line on the board. A couple of the other teams had given up, and left, not wanting to tempt the “God of Speed”. It wasn’t long before we were told that they had a garage for us, and we moved into “Gasoline Alley”.

We finally got on the track, and Bill was getting up to speed, but we were struggling. I can’t recall the specifics, but I remember that we got a new rear wing to try to get more speed, and he went back out, but unfortunately he crashed real bad. I wish I could remember more about this, but I am sure that he suffered a broken leg in the crash. The car was destroyed, I think that we salvaged the engine, gearbox, and the fuel cell, but that was about all. Indy 79’ was ended, too bad, but Engelhart would return to Indianapolis later.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

I hope the attached newspaper clipping posts O.K. I hated to cut it up, but I wanted to get it on here somehow. I cut it and arranged it in two postable pieces, the only way to get it where it would be readable. (my scanner isn’t big enough to handle a clipping of this size) I have others that are “full page”, and there is no way that I can get them on this forum.

An interesting thing about this clipping is that Sandy wrote the date on the upper right corner, and this sort of took care of part of my lapse of memory. This date of May 19, 1979, and some of the text in the article fills in a gap that I needed to get things straight. I knew that brother Joe and I had at some point tried radio controlled aircraft models, I’ve been running across photos of that, but couldn’t fit this in until I read this clipping. Now I can continue somewhat in sequence.

Larry

[AAFO_WSagar]

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

Slightly fuzzy but readable Larry... is there anything I can do with the settings to make it better for you??

Looking forward to seeing you at Reno this year!!!!!!!!!!!

Wayne

[thunderstangfan]

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

one thing i have done before when the scanner doesnt work is take a picture of "whatever it is" with my digital camera and then it can be uploaded to the computer that way!
might save you from having to chop up your newspaper clippings