(Editor’s Note: Here’s a story from Speed Week 2013 that illustrates what we’ll be seeing lots of out on the salt next week and that’s forward thinking and creativity. I nearly fell over when I saw this car. So cool!) I am trying to post some of the cool, weird, and otherwise interesting stuff that I have run into while trolling the expansive pits here at Bonneville Speed Week. As a first timer here at the event, I have been blown away by the sheer creative genius shown by the racers, crew chiefs, and builders that have created all of these unique machines. Without going too far overboard, SCTA Bonneville Speed Week has done a lot to restore my belief in humanity and I don’t say that to be a smart ass.
This place is a living testament to the creative abilities of the human mind. From design to construction virtually all of these vehicles started as nothing and they ended up as some of the fastest race cars on Earth. The beauty of LSR in this process is that the options to chasing speed are virtually limitless and this type of competition will never become a large scale spec form of racing. So that brings us to the photos below.
I did a poor job of gathering details as I was on the way to shoot another car feature here on the salt, but this team is running a hard core Lakester powered by a BMT headed, sheet metal intake equipped, fuel injected Hemi…sort of. Using the stock Hemi block, the guys have put a steel plate in place of one cylinder head. It is totally awesome. The intake which seems to be oddly missing four runners kind of floats in the air and the whole thing is just wrong enough to be right. We’re going to get you more info on this car tomorrow, but for now, revel in these photos for a while.
Here’s the dirt on the car as provided by BS reader Walter –
This is the new Steinegger & Eshenbaugh lakester out of Phoenix. The car was finished days before Speed Week. These boys already have two world records in a nitro-burning, Chrysler-powered old school roadster (one set with an early hemi on 7 cylinders). They put a 4 cylinder Toyota on nitro in the roadster last year at Bonneville.
More on the team and the cars at https://www.facebook.com/groups/226079377467992/
This is Bonneville!
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE PHOTOS OF A HALF-A-HEMI!
Sorry lads – but that’s not half a Hemi literally.
That would be either a He or a Mi……
But why they still have the MSD spark plugs put on the plate on the “dead” side of the engine?
The loudest car on the mud at ElMirage on a full load. Thats saying something!
Must use a custom flat plane crank??
Details, Lohnes, details!!!!
My next-door neighbor had friends with a lakester/stream-liner powered by a 2-cycinder blown/injected Hemi on a high percentage of Nitromethane. The attached photo was taken at El Mirage dry-lake bed in 2003. I was taken a back with they fired this little 2-banger up as it had huevos; more specifically, 2 of them! The day we ran the car there was a fire caused by a blower belt expanding and we trailered early in the day.