In between race cars is a place where some guys are not happy to be. After shutting down his XF/PP (flathead-powered production pickup) Bonneville truck from the last couple years and handing borrowed parts, including the actual vehicle, back to their owners, my friend Jake could only stare at next year’s Crosley chassis project and wish it had come along better. Cracking 4130 tubing and slow progress with other fabrication are among the reasons it will never be ready this year, and with the season’s first SCTA date coming up mid-May, he had the Jones to run bad.
Enter a particular 1953 Ford Mainline business coupe that Jake had hauled out of the desert a few years ago and once used as a driver. A neat, funky old car and still flathead-powered, it was an easy task for him to slip in the built flattie from the old truck in a weekend and a few days later he was in front of my shop revving the engine and doing little burnouts. Sounded pretty good for an old boat anchor.
“El Mirage, dude! We’re going!” In the coupe, I couldn’t believe it. However, after a few strong runs at the local 1/8-mile dragstrip the next Sunday, banging through the gears on the original three-on-the-tree, the car seemed reliable enough. There was only the small matter of the broken window glass and the lack of a fuel cell, fire system, and rollcage. You don’t bring a car to the dry lake, even to run double-digits, without first satisfying the safety-obsessed rulebook.
The Wednesday night before the race weekend I dropped in to see how things were going. Three days to go, and the coupe still looked like a normal car! The main hoop for the cage had been formed, for a start, anyhow, but was cut too short. I was directed to a pile of 1 ¾-inch, 0.120-wall steel tubing, and got busy on the bender. Soon I had a new part made, then used a torch and hole saw to cut through the floor to where we could bracket out from the frame to meet the hoop. After handling a few other details I had to scoot, but made a promise to show up Friday morning.
It took me half of Friday at my place to line an old aircraft seat, built for cushions which are not allowed in the rules, with a formed aluminum shell so as to have a decent place for the driver to sit. If this was the kind-of time things were going to take, there was no way we were going to make it.
The outlook improved when I got to Jake’s around noon. No less than three additional guys were there, cutting, welding, twisting in screws, and running lines. I set up the seating position using the tallest person as a dummy, squeezing around someone else who was doing the window glass and running back-and-forth between that shop and mine to fabricate parts. We worked all afternoon, by late evening we were cutting the last tubes for the cage, and around 2 a.m. everyone crawled into whatever convenient corner to get some sleep for the night.
Saturday morning, while racing had already begun up at the dry lake, I was building head restraint wings for the cage, then moving on to fire-bottle brackets. Sections of ¼-inch steel plate were fitted to the floor in lieu of a scattershield as the clock ticked on. Everybody there was busy with something and at times growled a bit at the next guy who got in his way. The plastic gasoline can split and dribbled fuel into the trunk, the car’s own fuel lines leaked…the usual screw ups. Some guy showed up with a cold 12-pack around noon and all pressed onward.
At mid-afternoon we were finally ready to go, until I remembered there needed to be a toe strap on the gas pedal. The world’s fastest-fabricated strap was on there in minutes while a truck-and-trailer were pulled to the door.
We pulled into El Mirage just as the sun set and the car passed tech inspection with a couple warnings about “next time.” After dinner and a few more beers, the mattresses and cots came out and some slept on the desert floor while others chose seats in the pickup trucks. I woke up to laughter in the morning when somebody’s pit bull terrier took a flying jump onto my air mattress, then I hit up the track catering truck for a burrito while others did the last-minute stuff. When the car came to the line with Jake’s brother ready to do his rookie run and the car’s very first pass, I was standing there finishing breakfast.
Dressed in his helmet, sock, gloves, suit, boots, with arm restraints and window net, the new-guy Chad revved it through first gear then pushed the long clunky column lever up-and-over to second. The three-main-bearing flathead crank spun past four grand, then, at about 80 mph out of a hoped-for 115, POP, and the engine stumbled. He pulled to the side, blowing his run, and the old Ford was towed to the pits.
No one could figure out the problem immediately, but it looked like we were done for the day. A couple of us headed down the track to satisfy the club requirement for “patrol duty” where we got word on the phone that the camshaft had evidently broken—the intake was off and the last few lifters sat doing nothing when the crank was turned.
Down at least one very expensive camshaft, we all packed into the trucks again at the end of racing for the three-hour ride home. It had been a marathon session from Friday morning until Sunday night. Jake figured the whole car had been built in the five days preceding the event, plus two additional to put the engine in.
The next meet is soon and hopefully there will be money coming for a new cam and who-knows what else. We’re a long way from the record (around 130) but feel it’s within reach. The Ford will race on, meanwhile it’s my job to get somewhere on the little Crosley chassis. That flathead V8 is still supposed to go in there next year.
