One great road trip...............to El Mirage

[1FATGMC]

Man I had a great trip a week or so ago.  My sister's daughter was getting married in Bend, OR on June 2nd and they were racing at El Mirage the following weekend, so I decide to do both.  The following is pretty long winded and I don't expect too many of you to make it to the end, but here goes......

Thankfully I check the wheel bearings on the teardrop even though I had greased them 10,000 miles ago.  One was rusted up and not turning by hand.  Fixed that and got on the road with 1FATGMC and the FATTEAR late on a Tuesday night before the 2nd.  I went up to Price, UT and slept at a truck stop and it was cold.  The next day I went on into Salt Lake City to visit with Bill Jones who has been involved with different cars on the salt.  I spent 6 hours with him and it wasn't enough.  He builds motor, ports heads, o-rings blocks, etc..  He has a Super Flow he bought in '79 that is number 201 and uses it on the heads he flows.  He has also made a very sophisticate flow bench for flowing mechanical fuel injection.  He can machine about anything and has tons of tooling he has made.  I'll look forward to going back there if he will have me.

I left his place in heavy afternoon traffic and got into mid Idaho that night and slept at a nice Walmart   .

The next day I headed into Nampa and spent some time and had lunch with Nick and Ken Smith of Hot Rod Works.  Ken use to post on here and they run a neat roadster on the salt.  Another good visit.  Then I drove on over to Bend and got there just before dark.

The next two days were taken up with my nieces wedding.  I'm really glad I made it there for that.  She is a mid-wife with a new practice and has a great husband that does smaller contracting jobs.

Sunday afternoon it was a nice drive down to Redding, CA (the scenery was great about the whole trip) to Harv's house.  He is building a lakester also and I have the build on my site.  The next day he took me to see 4 different cars being built for the salt.  One of the neatest is this new comp coupe being built by Denton Hollifield.



Another picture here:

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner/bville-cars-1/204-2006.html

That took care of Monday.  Tuesday I headed south to Chico and visited John Beck's shop that is in a building with Davidson (sorry, don't know the first name).  The building is one of the nicest rod shops I've ever seen.  They sell parts and build cars.  John has built all kinds of record holding motors for cars and boats in a lot of different racing venues.  He has a dyno room and machine shop a lot of people would kill for.  From his place I motored down to San Jose and went to Mike Ackatiff's shop where he has his 340+ mph motorcycle streamliner that held the top speed record for one day last summer.  He is making changes and this might be the first 400 mph motorcycle. The story and liner are here:

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner/bvillecar/bonneville-Index.html

He then took me over to Jack Costella's place where he is working on his new motorcycle streamline that he hopes runs in the high 300's when done.  He built this streamliner...............



and 2 others that hold numerous records.  Jack is always a pleasure to talk to because he is a very original thinker and doesn't hold much back.  Then we had dinner and went and saw a 2 engine bike under construction next to Mike's that hope to break the speed record for a naked bike at b'ville.  Then it was off to the next Walmart  parking lot about 100 miles south of San Jose.

Wed. I drove into Santa Barbara and went to Seth Hammon's business to see his new lakester under construction.  Seth wasn't there, but Lee Gustafson was there working on their record holding modified roadster.....



.......... and he showed me the new underconstruction lakester that I feel will have the top lakester speed at some point in the future.  It is an awesome car.  Lee took me to lunch and I hit the road about 2 for Mike LeFever's place in LA.  Lee said "are you going there today"?  I said it is only about 100 miles, so 1-2 hours should get me there.  He looked at me like I was crazy and I found out why when I got into LA traffic about 45 minutes later and I was still a long ways from where I needed to be.  The worst traffic I ever saw in my life.  Phoenix is nothing now!!  I was going to be late to Mike's place, but thought at least I'll know where it is and will just sit there for a couple hours with the hope of the traffic going down.  I got there about 5:15 and he was working late.  Now John Beck who was so kind to spend time with me a day or so earlier is know for his fuel motors with big roots type blowers.  Mike's specialty is big HP turbo motors like the one in the Kugal car (first door slammer over 300).  He also has a dyno and a nice shop and all different kinds of engines under construction.  I was surprise with the number of Viper motors he had there.  He also took time out from working to give me ideas for the turbo motor I want to build for my truck.  Good ideas, thanks Mike and also thanks to John I think we are a little wiser about where we should be headed with the blower motor in Hooley's Stude.

I left Mike's a little after 7 and headed on down to the next Walmart in San Diego.  Got there in pretty good time and Shush (my dog) and I went to sleep only to be waken up at 1:30 and being told by security that we weren't welcome at Walmart's in San Diego.  And here I had bought a gallon of water earlier in the evening for 64 cents   .  See if I buy anymore water at Walmart   .  I move 100 feet to another parking lot and went back to sleep.

So now it is Thursday morning and I'm to meet up with Jack Dolan for my San Diego tour.  Jack has been involved with all aspects of racing at B'ville for years.  He has run record holding bikes and cars there and put on different meets there, some on private time.  He has also been involved in other racing in the San Diego area putting on 1/16 and 1/8 mile drags on city property to get the street racers off the streets.  We started with breakfast with Dan Hostetler (hope that is spelled right).  Dan is the guy who had 2 32 Fords just alike with real looking flames on the side.  He drives one and races the other and at first flat towed the second to b'ville with the first.  His idea was to take the race one and modify it each year so that it would morph into a streamliner.  I got to see the latest rendition and it is now a streamliner.  How have pictures of it on my site one of these days.  Dan has a flathead in the living room mounted on a stand and a color TV from 1959 with get this, a remote!!  He also has many things from the 50's till now in big collages on the walls. Really neat and hard to describe.  His bed?? Never saw one like it and I'll have to let him explain it to you.  Dan is really a fascinating person to be around.  He digitizes the shape of his car each year to record the diminishing frontal area all by hand and It would take too long to explain the process here, but ask me if you remember.  Truely amazing!!

From Dan's we went to Crower's new plant where they now have all their manufacturing under one roof instead of 6.  Jack is friends with Terry Novak (hope I got that right) who is Bruce Crower's son-in-law and he took us on a tour of the plant.  I can't tell you how impressed I was.  There is brand new CNC machine centers next to probably 50-75 year old lathes and mills that have been modified for certain operations.  Thousands of roller lifters, cranks, rods, etc..  I always wondered how the rod journals are machined on a crank and now I know.  What an amazing operation they have there.  From the plant we went out into the country to Bruce Crower's ranch/house.  We thought we were lost as the area has changed so much since the last time Jack was there.  We would stop and start and finally made it there with no wrong turns.  The cell phone rang that Jack got from his wife, but neither he nor I could figure out how to work it so no calls got through.  I don't know how old Bruce is, older than me, but he is still a dyno and working a new projects in a shop that has everything you could need to build anything including a dyno.  He explained his lates project he is inventing/working on and gave us a tour of some of what he has there.  A neat time, and thanks Terry and Bruce.

Then Jack drove me by the ex-Navy boot camp where I went through boot camp in the 60's.  All gone and housing now.  After a drive by we went to the AutoPower facility.  Their specialty is roll cages for all types of cars.  Another impressive facility.  They were loading thery 5 second front engine dragster to go racing.  This is also home to the Nolan White record holding streamliner.  

Now it was late in the day and we got something to eat and headed the the SDRC (San Diego Roadster Club) meeting that was being held that night.  A great bunch of guys and gals.  It was my first SCTA club meeting and I enjoyed it a lot.  Thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

The next morning (Fri.) we headed up north of San Diego to Jim Lattin's  (new SCTA president) house to go through his private museum of motorcycles, race cars and other really neat stuff.  Another amazing stop, thanks Jack and Jim.  

Next it was further north to Kent Riches' AirTech business in Vista, CA.  Kent makes all kind of motorcyle body work for old and new bikes.  He also has made the bodies for different streamliners at b'ville such as the Ack Attack body and many others.  He was getting a couple bikes ready for El Mirage and we had lunch with him and his cousin who flew in to ride at El Mirage.  Kent I'll have to show you what "hot" Mexican food really is like someday!!

From Kent's I parted with Jack and Jack thanks so much for all the trouble you went through to show me around the San Diego Area.  I really appreciated it.

I headed next out into the sticks to Russ Eyres shop where he was getting his roadster ready for El Mirage.  Russ is helping 4 "half motored" cars also right now.  They are SBC's running on 4 cylinders.  He was good enough to explain to me a couple years ago that if you go this route use just one bank and not 2 cylinders on each side.

 



Russ is another one of the guys you always pick up something new from whenever you talk to him.

FromRuss's it was back into Vista or a town near it to Bob Moreland's shop.  Bob rides my favorite motorcycle of all time....

 

....it scares the crap out of me just looking at it.  He told me that he has learned that if it starts getting off course you can't turn it, so he aborts the run.  Way over 200 on this and you have to have a lot of respect for him.  They have also just built a rear engine modified roadster at the shop powered by a Suzuki 'busa motor and it ran 167 at El Mirage later in the weekend.  We left his place for El Mirge just before dark  I was following him with the GMC and teardrop and he was driving a bus with the bike/car trailer behind.  He told me the bus was a "flat land" bus and at the first hill when we slowed down to 35 I knew why.  The worst though was yet to come.  We were down to about 10 mph going up Cahone Hill climbing out of the LA valley to the high desert.  He though his water temp was climbing and kept slowing down.  There is a truck only slow lane and we were driving on the shoulder next to that lane.  I thought for sure we were going to get run over by trucks going 40 mph faster than us and all the rest of LA that was headed to Vegas for the weekend.  At the top of the hill he tapped the temp gauge and it dropped right down.  I though that only worked in the movies.  After a stop to get food for the weekend we enter the El Mirage lake bed from the east.  It was like the moon and I never would have know where to go if I wouldn't have been following him.  I let him get ahead because of the dust and almost lost him.  Then running 50 trying to catch up with him I wondered if I was going to run over someone sleeping out there in their pup  tent    .  It was about midnight when we turned in.

Sat. was tech inspections for the cars and bikes and pretty laid back, at least for me.  I had a great time seeing bikes and cars that don't always run at b'ville and meeting people I only knew from the internet.  I hung around with the Moreland/Noonan crew as I had a stake in the food supply   .  Later in the evening Richard who is with Bob kept me up half the night telling me lies and I might of told one or two back.  We both rode bikes in Missouri and he is a neat guy to talk about the "good old days" with.  I look forward to some more of that on the salt Richard.

Sunday, race day, and my first experience on the lake bed.  I think there were about 7-8 new records in the first hour or so.  I stayed around the starting line take car and bike pictures until about 11 am when my camera decided to go into "error mode"  :cry: .  Still I got some good pictures to put on the site later.  The lake bed wasn't like I pictured it at all.  Guys complained about the dust, but I can get that where I live any windy day.  They said the surface was as good as it gets and I've been on other dry lake beds and none had the surface that El Mirage has.  I can see why it became popular way back when.  The best I can describe it is if you are old enough to remember when they oiled the dirt roads and know what a good clay/oiled road was like it seem like that to me.  I don't know what the traction is, but until it was tore up I would think it is about 80% to 90% of what pavement is.  Push vehicles and race cars would leave twin 50 foot strips of rubber off the starting line.  Unlike b'ville where you can watch a car a couple miles down off the starting line at El Mirage they disappear into the "cloud of dust" about 1/4 mile from the start.  I'm hooked and will be back and hope to drive the lakester there at some point.  It is something between the drags and b'ville.  

Everyone that wanted to got 3 runs in before they closed things down around 3:30.  I said my goodbye's and headed over to Needles for my last night in the teardrop.  Got up late the next morning and headed east on 40 to Flagstaff, made a left turn and drove the last 250 miles northeast back to my little quiet part of the world.

3200 miles and lots of smiles.  Probably the best road trip I've taken.  Thanks to all of you that made it that way and it was great making new friends,

Sum