Random TRANSPORTATION pictures

[group911@aol.co]

[porsche930dude]

[CurtEgerer]

[CurtEgerer]

[stevej37]

I like the Pontiacs.

[CurtEgerer]

[VINMAN]

[p911dad]

[CurtEgerer]

[CurtEgerer]

[CurtEgerer]

[CurtEgerer]

[Zeke]

I made the mold for the orange piece at the rear. It covered the chute tube and was orange so they could find it on the salt after the explosive blew the chute out. In fact, I made 16 of them one of which was painted to match the car for photo ops.

So that pic is of a car ready to roll. 2 Ford 427 motors, the rear motor behind the cockpit was blown and injected. The motor in front of the driver (not Mickey most of the time) was not blown. The gas pedal consisted of two slender pedals next to each other. The object was to roll your foot one way of the other to balance the power as each side controlled the throttle of one motor.

The car prove to be undriveable and was shelved. It also raining at Bonneville that year which may have been a good thing for the driver. It was said that Mickey's son Danny reworked the car to run Ford flatheads and take that record. I don't have the time nor inclination to research that again. I had read it in a racing newspaper in the early 2000's.

I know Danny did later on run dodge 428's (enlarged to 500 CI) in that car and actually did set the piston engine record. He said the car was extremely unstable steering from lock to lock (only 5º!) to keep it straight. 448.75MPH. Thompson last ran in 2018 setting his record after a try 2 years before that.

Current record is 470.733 accomplished in 2020.

Danny was broke at the culmination of the record achieving and had to sell the car at Mecum's for a third of the 1.5M he had hoped. for. He was living day to day on Social Security as he was 67 at the time. As with all racers, he hopes today at around age 72 to go out and do it again. He's just short around 3 million to even start the project.

[asphaltgambler]

Why in the world would you run 2 different versions of the same engine in the same car at the same time?

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by asphaltgambler

Why in the world would you run 2 different versions of the same engine in the same car at the same time?

I really don't like posting here but that is a legitimate question. Now I want you to know this was in '68 so all my facts are probably a little fuzzy. However, front blower or not, the reason was height. Take the dimensions of a Ford big block and that was the size of the car ahead of the cockpit. You couldn't fit your hand between the body and the headers or valve covers.

The front motor powered the front wheels and the rear motor the rear. It was a poor design.

There wasn't even room for a high rise intake on the front engine. Understandably, I didn't get to see a lot of that part of the car. I was an outside contractor allowed in the building only long enough to see what was needed and take the AL part that was made for the rear and to to my shop to do the work. I got maybe one trial fit up before making all the duplicates.

The guys building the car were all legends in their own time: Little John Buttera, Nye Frank and Tom Jobe. I never saw any Ford engineers and in fact, I saw Mickey only once and we didn't speak. I knew Danny fairly well and did fiberglass work on his Stingray Corvette.

Mickey took the car up to 300 MPH and stepped out. By the time it was really ready, the rain closed the meet as it does every so often. By then Ford knew it was probably not viable. The 4 sponsors were Gulf, Reynolds, Goodyear and Ford.

Here it is in the swamp:

[asphaltgambler]

Interesting.....

[CurtEgerer]

[CurtEgerer]

[CurtEgerer]

[Heel n Toe]