The LA Racing Story
By my late teens I had moved on (?) to sports cars and joined the local Custom Car club the "Yorkshire Street Freaks" (what a name!) - within this club there were some hard-core drag racers - Paul Stern, Martin Cowell and the late Dave Grady As a direct consequence of being in this club - in 1976, clutching my "Hot Car" discount admission ticket (little did I know how much that "discount" would cost me over the next 20 odd years!) I was bundled into the back of a 440 Dodge Challenger and taken to Santa Pod to see some "real cars" - I was hooked - and what follows is my roller coaster affair with drag racing............
After hanging around the tracks and doing a bit of crewing I took the plunge around 1982 and bought an injected small block altered - whilst preparing for my first race and trying to sort out the fuel injection system - I had a "big time" fire, very serious - almost burnt the house down - not a very good start!
After rebuilding the house (fortunately I lived on my own) - undeterred (but broke), I then raced my Jensen Healey street car in the brackets at York - this is when I realised (as everyone does) how something that seems quick on the street is embarrassingly slow on the strip! Something a lot quicker had to be found - preferably with a V8!
I
then decided the way forward was to go "Heads Up" racing and
was on the lookout for a 7second(ish) supercharged Altered/FC. In 1990
I tracked down the car I wanted (blown BBC funny car) in the States,
I went over to see it at the racetrack, only to be told by the guy selling
it that I could not afford it (I had the money in my pocket) - talk
about a lost sale! - I was then introduced through a mutual friend to
Gary Christensen who I visited to talk to about running blown big block
Chevys -
Unfortunately after our first disastrous outing Clive and myself parted
company - I then made what I regard as the biggest mistake of my life
- I enrolled at the Drag Racing School in Florida in an effort
We
then continued as funds would allow, to run at Long Marston and Santa
Pod, The car was soon sold locally then went on its travels - on to Malta then back to the UK into the hands of two of our crew, Chris and Clayton - it's now fitted with a blown small block and runs with the Supercharged Outlaws.
By 1997 I could stand it no longer - it's amazing how much money you can save when you don't race for a few years (but it is never enough). So I put out a few feelers and although I nearly bought Barry Sheavill's old car (the one Doug Bond raced in 2002), I went for a little known US car that seemed to have all the right elements - buying this car was a story in itself! ............
How To (or not to) Buy A Racecar From The USA
After making the decision to resume racing I had to find a suitable racecar! - as I had imported the Rodeck from California some 7 years earlier with no problems I looked to the USA again as the source for a competitive car. One thing you must have if you are considering importing anything is to have a good reliable, honest, local contact. I was very fortunate in having a good friend in California - Jim Scott - I met Jim by sheer coincidence at Santa Pod when we were racing the Rodeck and he was on his Honeymoon! (a true racer) - Jim has raced everything in his time and was a National Event winner and NHRA World Champion in Pro Comp (the forerunner of Top Alcohol) so he new what it was all about. So Jim was recruited to look out for a suitable TAD (5 sec. screw blower car). After a few months I received news from the US of a car that fitted the bill.
To cut a very long story short when Tony and myself arrived in California not all the car was there but our man was on his way - sure enough he arrived with the rolling chassis on a (short) borrowed flat back trailer - an unfortunate set of circumstances had ensued - our man's dad had borrowed his "Dually" pickup to go into the mountains for the weekend and got snowed in! - so the 5th wheel enclosed trailer that the car usually lived in could not be used for transport - and to cap it all one of the cylinder heads was also in the pickup! - by this time all thoughts of seeing it run at the track were "out the window" and the best had to be made from the situation we now found ourselves in - another problem was that the bellhousing was at McKinney's on the other side of the country and despite having been sent weeks earlier for re-cert, they still hadn't got around to it - after lots of frantic phone calls that week, we were promised it would arrive the next day - needless to say it didn't - so the car was assembled sans bellhousing and fired up - it looks very scary seeing that clutch fly around with no cover! - I am amazed not one of Jim's neighbours complained (he lives in a very nice area).
As
I said earlier, the trailer was not the best in the world - but despite
this, the combo was battering on up the freeway at 70mph with us following
in its wake - then the inevitable happened - smoke started pouring from
one of the wheels - we all pulled off the freeway to discover a wheel
bearing had totally collapsed and welded itself to the hub - then we
found out there was no jack or wheel brace! at this point our man sat
on the kerb put his head in his hands giving all the symptoms of someone
about to have a nervous breakdown - apparently the pickup/trailer combo
was not his and should have been returned to the owner 500 miles away
the previous day! - then someone stopped by our stricken scene to say
that there was a trailer shop on the next street -
The car then shared its uneventful containerised journey to the UK with an E-Type (not mine!).
Despite our constant flirtation with disaster there were heroes as always, who managed to keep us out of the asylum -
Jim Scott Roy Miersch Krister Johanson (Gary Burgin Ent) Mel (California Shipping)
If anyone out there in Cyberland has any good photographs or video action of any of the cars please contact us. |