Every hot rodder seems to do it. I know I do and now I know Art Arfons did as well. We all hang on to blown up, busted, or otherwise destroyed parts and pieces of cars that we used to ow or race, or that we still own and had to repair after their failure. The photo you see above and below this column was taken by me last week. I had the very good fortune of visiting both a large private car collection in the Akron, Ohio area as well as spending part of the afternoon in the late Art Arfons’ personal shop on Pickle Rd, also in Akron. The shop is now inhabited by Art’s son Tim and his successful turbine business (didn’t see that coming, right?!). There is a front room that has some amazingly awesome items from Art’s career like his Firestone helmet, some different models of his various cars, goggles that were worn when he set land speed records, and the pictured item, a wheel bearing that looks as though it was passed through the surface of the sun.
This is the wheel bearing that failed on Art’s car at somewhere near 600-mph during his attempt to get the land speed record in 1966. The bearing got so hot it basically welded itself together, locked the wheel up, and before anyone knew what was happening, Arfons was in a gruesome tumble across the Bonneville salt the likes of which have hardly been seen since. I am confidant in saying that he is one of a very small club of people to ever survive crashing a car at more than 500mph. That bearing had him on the edge of death and hospitalized for a lengthy period of time, and yet there it was on the shelf, displayed with the same esteem as the other items. It was amazing to hold it in my hand. It was equally as amazing that they not only found this comparatively tiny piece of the car, but that it has not been lost to history and sits quietly and unassumingly, the reminder of a day the Arfons family would (I assume) sooner forget.
What struck me as so neat about this whole thing was not the unique nature of it, but the commonality of it all. It reinforced my own personal opinion that no matter the genre of racing, the speed of the car, or the budget of the effort, all of us hot rodders are cut from the same cloth. Walk into the Tube Chassis Designz shop of my pal Jon Sandahl and you’ll see a section of a sheet metal floor hanging on the wall that was torn apart like paper by an errant driveshaft. Peek into the race shop at Custom Auto Machine and you’ll see a hunk of a busted alcohol burning hemi crankshaft lying peacefully on the ground. Hell, walk into my dad’s garage at home and you’ll see an aluminum cylinder head that looks like it was used to catch bullets at a range; in my basement resides a chunk of the completely destroyed original drive shaft from Buford T Justice. All of this junk happened and certainly didn’t make anyone immediately think, “Ohhhh, let’s save that!” at the moment their world went to shit for the day. So why do we do it?
Obviously this stuff makes for great bench racing stories. It may help remind us that no matter how “under control” we think we have everything that danger literally lurks around, under, or inches beside us. In all of the cases I spoke about above, no one knew what was about to go down and pure happenstance is the only reason that serious injuries didn’t occur. Maybe it is because failure is a common thread around hot rodding and hot rodders. Often times our best stories and/or memories are of stuff we botched up and learned from. I know that laughing about a 12 hour endurance race we competed in during college can usually bring a room to gasping tears of hilarity, but at the time the event literally made me question my will to live. Now, they are memories and stories I think about with a smile. I’m not assuming anyone in the Arfons family remembered that bleak day in 1966 with a smile, especially Art who passed away several years ago but they’ve held onto that wheel bearing for a reason.
We all have ours. What’s yours?
I still have a crank pulley spacer from a ’62 Vette that I restored in the 70’s. It shows up like a good “bad penny” every once in a while and reminds me of that moment in my youth.
Ha, I also save the things I haven’t broken yet…!
…oh wait, that’s something for another blogpost I guess… :/
out in the shop, once used as a astray, is a piece of the rear brake drum of our 65 Falcon that exploded as i hit 3rd gear at Martin Speedway in 1974. can’t remember how i kept it straight, thought i was going for a RIDE. every now and then the wife asks why i keep it around. “just because honey, just because”
Ive got a collapsed spring perch from an axle that separated itself from my Suburban alongside the end of the fire hose that blew when my buddy Sam and I were putting out a burning Hummer in Baghdad. Ive never been so glad for extra hose clamps and my Leatherman.
I have the forked end of a broken rocker arm from my 83 Suzuki GS750e,with one adjuster missing, to remind me to properly tighten all rocker arm adjusters.
The adjuster backed out dropped into the cam tunnel then tried to rap itself between the cam chanin and sprocket,breaking chain,bending valves,breaking pistons and the crank itself. The bike had about 6000 miles on it. I was at about 9000rpm.
I still have 3 factory BBC rocker arms w/holes where the pushrods came through. Missed 3rd, p.o.s. factory shifter!
I too have an ash tray, a piston that broke in a boxer. A chunk of rod came through the top of block and disappeared. I wonder who or what will find that.. and where. Some things I regret not being able to keep. I crushed a crank journal once. Never broke anything.. just crushed the crank. That was 12 something to 1. Fun day.
I used to have a big shoebox full of destroyed pistons under my workbench. Most were from dirt bikes but there were a couple that resembled hockey pucks – they had come from a 383 Chevy.
I pulled an engine for someone after they reported it had ‘mysteriously stopped running’ while going up a steep hill. The internals and block were destroyed. In the debris in the pan I found something that resembled the wingnut for the air cleaner. Pretty expensive wingnut.