Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Finally it is race day, and there were pre- race festivities going on, and surprisingly there were many local race fans wandering around in the garage area. Previously we had armed guards keeping an eye out for us, but now anybody and everybody was allowed in there! How do you figure? Ward and I stuck pretty close to our racer to make sure nobody messed with it, and shortly some of the “cousins” of the homeowners where we lived came by to see us, and we discovered where our spark plugs had disappeared to, these people had them hanging around their necks on pieces of string like a necklace, and I spotted Wards stopwatches around another ones neck. After we got over the shock of seeing this, we also noticed that our missing jeans and Simpson shirts were also being worn by these characters, even little Agraspina, who obviously had a pair of Jim’s jeans on because Jim had at least a 38 waist, and Agraspina probably weighed about 115 pounds soaking wet, and she had strung a piece of rope through the belt loops, and drew the waist up tight and tied a knot in it, like a bag of potatoes. Some other young girls were attired in the same fashion. Seeing all of this, Jim and I didn’t and couldn’t get mad, because it was so funny seeing this, and they were all so proud of the way they looked. They had absolutely no remorse for ripping off our belongings.

These spectators were cleared from the garage area and before the cars were lined up for the race, a meeting was called, and it was explained to us all that as soon as the race was over we were to get into our garages, and close the steel doors, and remain there until told different by some one in charge, a USAC person I suppose, although this was not made clear.

They got the race started, and 26 cars took the green flag. On lap two Larry Cannon spun off he track and didn’t get going again, Rick Muther’s turbine failed on lap eight, Bentley Warren crashed on lap nine, Mike Mosley’s turbo- Ford dropped a valve on the same lap, and on and on. Eighteen cars finished the race, but only five were on the lead lap. Al Unser won, followed by Lloyd Ruby, and Joe Leonard. Simpson ended up thirteenth, about four laps down. All of the drivers got back to the garage as they were told to do at the meeting except one, and of course that was Simpson. He and our “Beagle” were somewhere out on the track. I don’t remember why he never came in as told, but he showed up later, after we had been told that the doors could be opened.
Larry

[Pick]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I wish one of you airplane types would tell me how many people can fit in a 707! (more humor)

It'd hold roughly 120 in two-class configuration or roughly 170 in single-class. (I had to look it up 'cause I was curious too)

I will try to constrain myself, but having been in auto racing for almost 50 years, we mechanics were always trying to pull something over on the tech people, and most of these schemes were pretty funny, not like now in NASCAR where they see no humor in such antics, and fine a crew chief $10,000.00 for a lot less than we did.
Larry

Would that be like putting a wedge in the pop-off valve? (so it wouldn't pop off) Or making a plug that fit behind the seat to press against the fuel cell bladder to reduce fuel capacity while USAC was checking? (to be removed once USAC checked) Those are the easy ones that popped into my head as I was reading.

Reading this stuff is GREAT! I look forward to the updates!

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Pick, Yeah, those things and much more! The best one I did for fuel capacity was 82 gallons, and got by with it. The best for car weigh in after qualifying was 90 pounds. When they went to turbo chargers there were lots of things that we got by with. Drove the USAC tech guys nuts. Of course nitrous oxide was fun to figure out how to hide also. One year I did a thing with turbos for 4 cars for qualiying, and three dodged the bullet, but one got caught and was sent packing. There was a rule that you had to run whatever decals were on the car, and the easiest one was STP. We would put a can of it in the refrigerator, and when we had to show the inspector that we were putting it in, we would just put a funnel in the oil tank, open the can and turn it upside down in this funnel, and then distract the guy for a little while, then pitch the still full can of STP in a trash barrel. We didn't want to actually put that stuff in the engine, because it was a bear to clean the engine during an overhaul. It was worth the effort because every chief mechanic that qualifyed and made the race got $500.00 from STP. That was such a simple thing to pull off, I don't know why USAC never caught on. Your wedge in the pop- off valve was too easy for them to catch, but there was a thing we did with a dime that worked real good.
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I was sure glad that the “Indy de Rafaela” was over with, and was looking forward to leaving Argentina, and going home. This should be a simple thing to do, just get on an airplane, and fly to Miami, then catch another bird to California. There should not be any drama involved in this. Wrong again! Everybody was rounded up and loaded on big busses, and we were to be taken to an airport for our flight home. These busses were traveling down this big divided highway, much like our freeways here at home, and I thought the plan was to go to Buenos Aries , and board our flight to Miami. Surprise! The busses turned off the highway, and proceeded down a narrow road, and I spotted some military vehicles, and noticed some of those guys with machine guns here and there. Oh boy, what have we gotten ourselves into now? After a while we came to an airstrip, yes, an airstrip, not an airport, there was no tower or anything like that, just an airstrip with a 707 setting on it. There seemed to be an urgency to get us on that aircraft, and as we were boarded USAC was checking off names to make sure everyone was accounted for. My seat was only a few rows behind the USAC big guns, and one of them asked me where my driver was, Simpson was unaccounted for. I told them that I had no idea where he was. There was a lot of chattering going on up front where the pilots and some local officials were, and some USAC guys. It was apparent that the pilots wanted to get airborne right away, and I was asked again where Simpson was. I told them that Simpson was a big boy and could get himself home, and to go without him. This did not set well, and panic seemed to set in. About that time, a taxi drove up, and it was Simpson, and he had a lady with him. He told them that he was taking her with him, and those guys up there freaked out. There was a lot of argueing going on, but they convinced Simpson that he was going, but his friend definitely was not. That done, they closed the door, and the engines were started. The 707 was on a taxiway perpendicular to the runway, and they started rolling, picking up speed, and turned onto the runway and went to full power for take- off. Larry, “Boom Boom” Cannon was sitting just behind me but in a window seat, and he had a stopwatch in his hand. He told me later that his intent was to see how many seconds it was when we lifted off until we cleared the fence at the end of the runway. He said that the runway looked really short, and he was curious, and he was right, he said it was three seconds by his watch. It turned out that his premonition was about right, because after we were airborne we were told that we only had enough fuel to get to Lima, Peru. (short runway- light fuel load) When we got to Lima, we were told that we could not get off the aircraft, they were going to refuel, and get us back in the air as soon as possible. This was not a fun deal!

There had been a “rat” among us that had called some driver’s wives and told them about their spouse’s antics in Argentina regarding women. There were three that I know of, but maybe more that met the flight in Miami with divorce papers in hand. What a way to end our Argentina experience!
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

It was good to be back home, but there was nothing to do, we were waiting for our car to arrive from Argentina, and it seems like it was 10 days to two weeks before it showed up. Ours, like most of the other cars had been stripped of decals, and other things, like the rear view mirrors, and anything else that could easily be removed one way or another. The souvenir hunters had a merry old time after we left. Of course my “Beagle” decal was now in the hands of one of those scavengers. We needed our car since it was the only one Simpson had, and the Phoenix race was not very far off, and we had to return Grant King’s Offy, and repair the one of ours that had blown up. Part of the deal that Simpson had made with Grant was that the Offy we had borrowed would be “freshened up“, and shipped to Grant in Indianapolis.

After we had picked up the car and took it to the Simpson shop, Ward and I took the engine out right away, and then things were changed, Simpson said to ship it to Grant just the way it was, no “freshening up” was going to be done. This was not the right thing to do, and I had a feeling that this was going to come back and haunt us, well maybe not us all, but Simpson for sure.

USAC had imposed a hefty fine on Simpson for his antics in Argentina, and this was going to cause another problem for us to deal with, Bill was very irate regarding this fine, he felt that he was not being treated fairly. When Ward and I arrived at Phoenix for the race USAC would not let us in the gate with the car. We were informed that Simpson had to pay the fine before he could race again. My memory of the sequence of events relating to this is pretty fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure that Ward and I left and returned the car to Simpson’s shop in Torrance, California, I don’t recall running the Phoenix race. I do remember Grant King calling, mad as hell about his Offy not being freshened up as agreed. I do remember this part, because shortly thereafter Grant called me and asked if I would be interested in going to work for him at Grant King Racing in Indianapolis as his “engine man”. This sounded like a cool thing to do, although I had never worked on an Offy, I had seen them torn down when I would visit the shop where Ward worked after the Mickey Thompson Bonneville caper, and way back in 1964 a friend, Skip Hedrick had taken me to meet Danny Oakes, and old timer who had some Offys, and he spent some time with me, showing, and telling me how those things were put together. Grant had not mentioned anything about experience, just that he needed an engine man, but that old feeling came upon me that I could pull this off. It was just another engine, and I was not intimidated by the name, Offy. So, off to Indy I go, and when I arrived Grant showed me to my “engine room”, and informed me that not only would I be building three Offys, he also had a Chevy Championship Dirt Car engine for me to build, and a Sesco midget engine as well. Oh boy, what had I gotten myself into now!
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

The time had come for me to begin taking a turbo Offy apart, and make it appear that I knew what I was doing. I marked pieces as I removed them, and wrote notes that I could refer to later if needed. Compared to the Indy Ford 4 cam V-8 engines that I had done, the Offy was much more simple, since it was a 4 cylinder dual overhead cam engine, so right off, there were only about half of the parts. The camshafts, cups, valves, and all of that were configured much the same as the Ford. Way back in 1964 Danny Oakes had shown me how to remove the block from the crankcase, and told me that the crankcase had to be heated with a torch to remove the crankshaft, and main bearing webs. Although it had been seven years since Oakes had explained all of this, my memory served me well, but at the time I had no expectations of ever using this information. When I was with Charley Hayes in 1966 with the Can- Am car, I had to overhaul the Hewland transaxles not only for our car, but I also “race programmed” several for other teams. They had to be heated with a torch to take them apart and re- assemble them, and it was difficult to tell when they were at the right temperature, and by trial and error I had discovered that while heating them up if I spit on them and the spit sat there and sizzled, it was not hot enough, when it was at the right temperature the spit would bounce off. This “high tech” procedure worked well on the Offy as well. Grant had all of the information regarding clearances, torque specifications, cam timing, valve clearance, and anything else that I needed, so all of the bases were covered. This was going to be a lot more simple than I had expected. I’m not saying that it was easy, just not as complicated as I had thought it would be. As the Offys were cooling during re- assembly of crankcases and such, I found time to work on building the Chevy for the Dirt Car now and then. Grant didn’t really agree with me on the way that I wanted to build this engine, but I explained to him that what I had in mind would be best for how this engine would be used. He said that since I was his engine man, I could do it my way, and he would see to it that I got the parts that I needed. Grant was good in that way, if one of his team wanted to try something, he would let them give it a shot.

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Grant mostly built “sprint cars” and “championship dirt cars” for customers, and raced one of each himself, as “shop cars”, and hired drivers for them. He had worked for several teams at the Indy 500, and decided to design and build his own Indy car. I don’t recall when he built the first one, but it must have been sometime in late 1969, and it was raced at Indianapolis in 1970, driven by Art Pollard as #10, and qualified 6th but dropped out on lap 28, due to a broken piston, and was driven by Greg Weld later that year as #41. It was also raced in Rafaela in February 1971, and was qualified in 5th place by Roger McCluskey, and finished in 4th place there, as #41. That is when I was hired by Grant, ol’ number 41 was a tired piece, and the chassis and engine would have to be rebuilt for the 1971 Indy 500. It needs to be pointed out that Grant had no “big time sponsor“, or a “sugar daddy”, he was doing this mostly on his own nickel. There was, I think, four of us working for him on the payroll, and he would joke occasionally that he was the only one there that was unemployed! He was building some sprint, and dirt car stuff though while the 41 car was being renewed, so there was some money coming in, and there was never any problem with paychecks. Grants house was built on a hill, and what might be called a basement was actually at ground level at the rear of the house, and this is where I lived while I worked for him. It was like a lower floor to the house, and in no way looked like a basement, it was finished inside just like the other level of the house. My “home” was quite comfy except for one thing, there was a bathroom there, but no shower. Well, this wasn’t a problem really, because down the hill about 30 yards or so is where the race shop was, and Grant had a shower built in the bathroom there. After work, I would shower, then wheel up to my quarters to get to bed. Grant and I worked long hours, both of us were of the opinion that sleep time was not productive, so we limited it to 5 or 6 hours a night. Of course since we both had a competitive nature, there were times that we had to try to outdo each other. We always tried to be in the shop at 8:00, when the other guys came to work, and go through to around 1 or 2 AM. Sometimes Grant’s wife, Doris would fix lunch in the kitchen in the shop, so we wouldn’t miss any “productive” time, but sometimes we would go out for a quick lunch. At dinner time we would usually go to a cafeteria down the road a piece just before their closing time, because there were never any other customers there by then, so we didn’t need to stand in a line, and also they had free pies at that time of night. They made sure to get us fed very quick, because the workers there wanted to go home. This all worked out pretty well, because we didn’t lose too much time away from work. We had a lot to do and not much time to get things done, so all of this was just fine, and I was having a ball.
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

By working all of those long hours, I got all three Offys done, and some work completed on the Chevy, and Grant and the guys got #41 rebuilt, and I also had finished the transaxle for that car, and also a spare transaxle ready to go. One of the Offys was also installed and all plumbed up, so it was about 99 percent ready to go racing. It was nice to have the car ready ahead of schedule, and the long workdays had been worth the effort. Now we could relax a bit, and I could casually work on the Chevy, and Grant could do some building on customer cars that had been ordered.

A group of people showed up with a cake, and all I could think of was “what now?” I can’t remember if it was Grant’s birthday or what, but it was some kind of celebration, and they had brought some food along with the cake. This was a pretty cool deal, and we were all enjoying the occasion. Then some wise ass informed Grant that it was 23 days until the Indy Speedway opened, and why don’t you build another car? What! I think this person was joking, but Grant looked over at me with a strange look on his face, and smiled and shrugged his shoulders, as if he was asking for a response from me, and I smiled at him and shrugged my shoulders, and sort of nodded my head as if to say, “why not?” Grant was loving this, and he was certainly not the type to turn down a challenge, even if it was done jokingly. Hell, I was nuts too, and I said, “why not” loud and clear! The race was on, we were going to give it our best to build a car from scratch in 23 days, and run it in the 500. There were some people that filed “false” entries, and we would “borrow” one of those, and it would be #45. This all had to have USAC’s blessing, but Grant handled that somehow. There were several volunteers that would come to Grants and do work just to get garage and pit passes, and some of them were pretty good machinists and what not. They all had regular jobs, one of them was a police officer, but I can’t recall what the others did. We had an Offy, and a transaxle that I had done as spares, and Grant had a spare radiator, and several other spare components, that would help the process, but we would be out of luck if one of the cars had a mishap in practice and qualifying, because of the lack of these spare parts. My biggest concern was that now I would need to keep two cars running with only three engines, and the Offys were bad about breaking pistons. I remember a two car team that blew five Offys in one day. Some of them only lasted for five or ten laps. We were really rolling the dice engine wise. Maybe we would need to some kind of divine intervention to pull off this caper, or some very good luck. (I am going to try to post some photos of our progress) Larry

[wyhdah]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Nice pants in that first pic Larry . Are those pictures of the second cars progress and is that the primary or first car in the background?

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

wyhdah, Grant had a small secondary sponsor, CHESS KING , a clothing company that I think was trying to be a "trend setter" and they made a lot of wild clothes. They gave us lots of these, and the crew was supposed to wear them. I wish I could find the Indy qualifying photos with the whole team dressed in these pants that I am wearing in that photo, not a pretty sight! I don't think that company lasted very long. The car in that photo was the old 41 car, and I was finishing up installing the rebuilt transaxle. The other photos are of the new car. In the second photo, the man standing there dressed in white, and wearing what I called a train engineer's hat, was called "Tex", and was a frequent visitor. I had known him for some time, and there was something about his accent that didn't sound like Texas. One day I asked him where he was from, and he proudly said," Louisiana", and I couldn't contain myself, and started laughing, and told him that he should be called "Louise" instead of "Tex", and from then on, I would call him "Louise", and one day he told me that I was the only SOB in the world that could call him that, and not get their butt kicked! I knew him for many years, and always called him "Louise", and he would grin and make a fist and shake it at me, and we would both laugh. In the photo showing me leaning over, and the decals on the back of my chair are visible, note the NASCAR decal. It said "support racing, join NASCAR", and the USAC people didn't approve of this and told me to remove it. Of course I didn't, and the more they told me to get it off of there, the more determined I was that it was going to stay where it was, and they finally gave up. The man on the right with the bib on is Grant King.
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

One thing that may save us engine wise was that I had spoken to my old friend Jim Ward before going to Grants, and he told me that when he was doing those Offys for that deal with Champion after the Bonneville fiasco was that they had a problem breaking pistons, and had a German company called Mahle make them pistons and they had less problems. Jim gave me a name and phone number to call and try to get some of those pistons. So, I called Wolfgang Schuster in Stuttgart, Germany, or maybe I should say that I tried to call, but it wasn’t that easy, the secretaries or whoever answered the phones over there spoke no English! It took some doing, but I finally got Wolfgang on the phone, and thankfully, he spoke English. He said it would be no problem, he just happened to have some in stock, and he would gladly ship them to us. Mahle was not very well known in 1970, but now, in the 21st Century they make pistons for all kinds of race engines. We must have bought at least 36 to allow for overhauls during practice , qualifying, and the Indy race. I was sure hoping that Jim was right.

We managed to get the new car finished in plenty of time, and when the track opened the cars were ready for the USAC tech inspection. George Follmer was to drive the #41 car and Larry Dickson was going to run the new #45. I don’t recall that we had any big problems during practice, but after a certain number of laps that Grant had decided on, an engine would be removed, and the spare would be installed, and the used engine would be brought to the shop, and I would disassemble it and check the pistons for cracks, replace connecting rod bearings, and valve springs, and several other things. I had to jump on this immediately, because there was time to waste. Doing a shuffle with two cars and only three engines was going to keep me hopping. If I only had to do the top end and rod bearings, I could pretty well keep up, but if I had to remove the crankshaft and replace the main bearings, the best I could do was 19 hours for a turn around. Needless to say, I never got to spend much time at the track. I had to replace some pistons once in a while because of cracks, but at least we weren’t blowing engines.

Both cars made the race, but qualifying didn’t go very well, Follmer qualified 29th and Dickson 26th. A strange thing happened after qualifying, Follmer took the whole crew out for a nice dinner, the only time this ever happened in all of my years at Indy. George was a real gentleman, and he drove for Grant several more races that year. After qualifying and before the race, I went through both engines to freshen them up, I put new Mahle pistons in both, hoping that they would make it for 500 miles. This was not to be though, Dickson dropped out after 33 laps with a broken piston, and Follmer was running good up to lap 147, then the engine blew up, big time. It really exploded. The attrition rate was horrible, only 12 cars were running at the end of 500 miles. Seven crashed, four Fords, and four Offys blew up, and there were several gearboxes that failed, and other miscellaneous problems caused the others to drop out. Al Unser won, followed by Peter Revson, and A.J. Foyt. All in all, it wasn’t a good day for us, and many others, but that’s racing.
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

After Indy, we did not race at the Milwaukee on June 6th, because Andy Granatelli rented our entire race team, Indy cars, Champ Dirt car, and all. We became the STP “B team”, due to the problems they were having with the McNamara cars. At Indy Andretti and Krisiloff were the two Granatelli STP cars, and one of them spun into the inside of the track, and the other one came around the next lap, and crashed into the other car, putting both STP cars out of the race. I’m not sure which driver did what, I have heard it both ways. Regardless of who did what, they were almost out of race cars, so Andy made a deal with Grant, and Krisiloff became our driver. Of course I had some Offys to build, so I was busy, and brother Dale had to repaint our cars, and replace our #41 and #45 to Granitelli’s numbers, #45 became #20, and #41 became #40. Mario Andretti ‘s #5 McNamara was the STP Oil Treatment car, Krisiloff’s #20 Kingfish was the STP Gas Treatment car, and Dickson’s #40 Kingfish was STP Keep- Kool Treatment car, so Andy had all his bases covered “STP wise”. The next race was the Pennsylvania 500, July 3rd at Pocono, and we were there with one car, #20 with Steve Krisiloff driving. He qualified 20th, but finished 10th, out of 33 starters. Andretti finished 4th, so at least Andy had two cars in the top 10. The next race would be back at Milwaukee on August 15th , and we would have both cars there.
Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

My last post may have been a bit confusing, but these were confusing times. Many car owners and drivers banded together against USAC to take control of Indy car racing. This group called themselves “Championship Auto Race Teams”, CART. USAC would continue to run the “Indianapolis 500”, the Championship Dirt Cars, Sprint cars, and Midgets under their banner.

When we went to Pennsylvania for the 500 at Pocono, now a CART race with the Indy car, we also took the Chevy powered Championship Dirt Car with us for a 100 mile USAC race at Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Larry Dickson was to be the driver, and now the car was #40, STP Keep Kool ,sponsored, per the agreement between Grant and Granatelli. I was anxious to see how my Chevy engine would do against the normally aspirated Offys, and Ford 4 cam V-8s. I had never ran a Champ Dirt car, and had only raced on a one mile dirt track once with my brother Dale with a sprint car, at the Phoenix, AZ fairgrounds. We broke a rear axle or something in practice, and didn’t get to run that race, so my experience was rather limited. Larry Dickson was a great sprint car driver, and very good on the dirt, but he would be racing against the likes of Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Bobby and Al Unser, Johnny Rutherford and the likes. When practice started, I was sitting by the starting line with my stop watch, writing down Dickson’s lap times. As the laps went by, I heard two men behind me commenting on Dickson’s speed. I turned to see who it was, and it was A.J. Watson and George Bignotti, two of the best mechanics around, and asked them what they were talking about. One of them asked if I knew what the track record was, and I told them that I had no idea. I was informed that Dickson was running faster than the record, lap after lap! Ha, my Chevy was doing it’s thing! Larry pulled in and said that there was something not right with the steering coming off the corners. I told young Danny Jones to go down to turn four and watch to see what it looked like. We sent Dickson out again, and after a few laps, Danny came jogging back, and said that the only thing he could see wrong was that the front wheels were coming off the ground. Yeah, I reckon that would make the steering feel strange. Not only was the Chevy running strong, the rear tires were getting a good bite also. Practice was over, and now it was qualifying time, and when it came our turn to make an attempt Dickson not only had “fast time”, he also set a new track record, so we would start on the pole position for the race. Larry came coasting into the pits, and we told him he was on the pole. He was happy about that, but he said that something had broke. The engine was O.K. but after checking things over we discovered that the drive line had broken. We didn’t have a spare drive shaft, that was almost never a problem. This was a T.V. race, and it paid big bucks, and so we had to come up with something. Since we had set a new record and all that, it was decided by USAC that if we pushed the car to the starting line, and fired the engine up, then pushed it off to the side when the other cars moved out for the parade lap, we would get the T.V. money. That was some consolation, but we would rather have ran the race. I often wonder how it would have been had we not broke.

I am going to try to post some photos. I hope they come in order because I am going to describe what is going on. They are not all at Nazareth, but it is all I have of the #40 Dirt Car.
First is Dickson in a corner blasting Rutherford with dirt.
Second is Danny Jones and I working on the car.
Third is a Firestone rep, Grants wife Doris putting on a decal, and I am doing something that the photographer, Dennis Torres said he would call his “blackmail” photo. We had a deal with Champion to run their spark plugs, but I am opening an Autolite plug box. This may sound strange, but when the Chevy was cold it would not start on Champion plugs, I tried everything, and there was no way it would start. I got some Autolites, and it would fire up instantly. Once it was warmed up, it ran great on the Champions. The only answer I ever came up with was that this was due to the generous dose of nitro methane that I ran.
Fourth is at Springfield, Illinois where we qualifyed second. The young man sitting on the rear tire is Danny Jones, and just to my left is Jacky Howerton.
Fifth is Dickson slinging some mud.

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

On post 297 I wrote that the next race was at Milwaukee, that was an error on my part, all of that USAC/ CART stuff got me confused again after all this time, I reckon. The Michigan 200, at Jackson, Michigan on the 2 mile banked track was the next race, on July 18. For some unknown reason they, (CART) only started 26 cars in he race, although there were 32 cars there. Bobby Unser ran the first 200+ miles per hour lap there. Larry Dickson qualified 20th in the #40 , and Steve Krisiloff qualified 7th in the #20. Three cars crashed, and there were several blown engines, and three turbo- chargers failed. Only 11 cars finished, but my Offys held up, Dickson finished 5th, and Krisiloff 6th. That was pretty good considering how hard that track was on engines, and 7 of the 11 finishers were Offys, and only 1 Offy had piston failure.

Now, on August 15,we go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a 200 mile race, on a 1 mile flat track. This race CART only ran 25 cars although there were 31 cars there, and strangely 11 other cars “did not arrive” according to the official records. I think maybe that had something to do with the CART/ USAC spat. Krisiloff qualified 6th, only three tenths of a second slower than Andretti, and Dickson qualifyed 12th, four tenths slower. Only 13 cars finished the race, and Dickson dropped out with turbo failure on lap 140, but was listed as finishing 15th. Krisiloff pulled in on lap 17 with what the records show as an oil leak, but it was really a broken piston, and the connecting rod swung around and knocked a hole in the crankcase, which made for much more than a “leak”, it dumped out about two gallons of oil.

Next, we were off to Ontario, California, where the track was, like Indy, a two and one half mile track, and was dubbed the “California 500 to be run on September 5th. This time CART started 33 cars, like Indy, and there were 8 “back- up” cars there, but there were 13 entered, but “did not arrive” cars this time. ( Note: All of this information since the CART thing happened, isn’t because I have a very good memory, it is all from a web site I found on the internet. ) Krisiloff qualified 15th, and Dickson 26th. I will continue this caper tomorrow. It is late, and I am pooped! Larry

[champ19]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry, just a quick public thanks for this terrific writing. I know there are many gear heads here who are just eating this up. Airplanes, race cars, aluminum, and engines.
Also, please see my PM to you.
Thanks!!