Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[bluffman]

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

I think Sandy and I left soon after the race, to go back home to Phoenix, to let my wrist heal, and take it easy for a while. I am trying to put together the next chapter, I've got a lot of dated photos that I need to put in sequence to jog my memory of when and how things happened. Late 76, and 1977 was a busy time, and some things overlapped, but I will get it straightened out in a couple of days.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Oh, by the way, that request to the White house got a response. A couple of days before Spike’s crash, one of the USAC guys came to our garage with what he thought might be important. They had a mailroom in the USAC office where we could pick up mail, but this letter addressed to me with “White House, Washington DC” on the upper left corner on the envelope, got their attention, so it was hand delivered. There was a nice letter enclosed thanking me for the offer, but none of the Ford family was free to participate in being an honorary crewmember. I don’t recall the exact words, but it was something like that. I believe that I gave that letter to my brother Ron, along with some other memorabilia when I was pretty sick a few years ago. Another thing related to that incident was that we had noticed some men in suits, and dark glasses wandering around in the garage area at one point, they didn’t fit in, until I received the letter, then it dawned on us that they were checking out who this nut was that had called the White House.

Needless to say, our plan to take it easy for a while back home in Phoenix didn’t last long, I needed something to keep me busy. I told Sandy that maybe I should give Stu Bradbury a call, and see if he had any plans to run the Lola Ford again. He got all excited, and said that he would check and see what races were scheduled, and there was a “National” SCCA meet coming up in Pueblo, Colorado. I told him that he didn’t have a license to run a “National” event, to which he said that that wasn’t a problem, he could take care of that. Knowing Stu, I planned ahead, having two extra noses made in our mold with the blisters for his big feet, spare wheels and tires, etc. I think the race was in early July, and when we got to Pueblo the locals there mentioned that they were having record high temperatures. This didn’t bother me, hell, I had spend day after day at Bonneville when it was 123 degrees. Sandy didn’t deal with the heat real good, she “wilted” somewhat, even though we lived in Phoenix. At home she could always find a way to escape the heat in some place with air conditioning. I had no doubt that she would handle it, she was a real “soldier”, and would do what needed to be done.

We got to the track, unloaded Ol’Lola, went through tech inspection, and Stu had somehow got his license situation taken care of, and when the track was open for practice, off he went. As before, I hoped that he would take it easy for a few laps, but his “easy” wasn’t the same as mine, he was driving way over his head, but somehow managed to bring it back in one piece. It was obvious that he had gone off course a couple of times though, because there was some “rash” on the car.

They made Stu start at the back of the pack for the race, because nobody there had seen him race, and the SCCA officials weren’t all that sure of his “credentials”. When they threw the “green” for the start of the race, as the field came by, I could see Stu passing cars like a man possessed. I forget how many cars started the race, buy in three or four laps, he was mid-pack, and moving up. Shortly, he was in the top ten, and something told me that things were about to go wrong. Yep, the next lap he was late coming off the turn, and then he came blasting into the pits, without a nose on the car. We grabbed one of the spares, and put it on, then he went flying back out. It wasn’t very many laps later that he came in again, the nose was busted, but still on, and we put the other spare back on. He didn’t seem quite so anxious to go back out as before, and I looked at him, and his face was bright red, the heat was really getting him. He took off again though, and after he left the pits, I checked the busted nose over, and told Sandy that we might as well patch it up, just in case. We taped it together, and pop riveted some pieces of aluminum in a couple of places to make it rigid, the sat back and waited. Sure enough a few laps later, he came in again, with no nose. We put the patched up nose on, and he went off yet again. There were only a few laps left in the race, and he was still running at the end, but several laps down. After coming into the pit, he wasn’t getting out of the car, so I went over to see what the problem was, and he was really red, so I took his helmet off, and he was sort of in a daze. I yelled at Sandy to bring some water over, lots of it, and I dumped it on his head, knowing we had to get him cooled off as quick as possible. Some crew members from other cars saw that I had a bad situation going on, and brought more water, then pulled him out of the car, and drug him over to a shaded area, and got the top of his driving suit pulled down, and poured more water on him. Once we got him cooled down, he started coming around, getting his senses back, and pretty soon, he was normal, whatever that is. He had not said anything through all of this, but the first words he uttered was, “Boy, that was fun”!

Larry

[bluffman]

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

After the wild and crazy week-end at Pueblo with Stu, Sandy and I were sure glad to get back home in Phoenix. There were no more races for Stu to run for a while, so I parked the car at his house, not even doing any repairs or anything. As far as I knew or cared, Ol’ Lola might sit like that forever.

I decided that we needed some time to recuperate from our Pueblo trip, and Sandy was all for that, the heat and experience there had taken it’s toll on her. We could see the Scottsdale airport from our kitchen window, and now and then an interesting airplane would fly over, and land there, so we would go out to see Ralph Payne, Gary Levitz, and Gordon Cole. They would give us the low down on any “war bird” activity in the area. Ralph told us that we should go to Falcon Field, in Mesa and look around, there were some B-17’s there that had been converted to “fire bombers” ,and they were training crews. This was a lot of fun, they would load up with water, and make practice drops on the west side of the runway, and also up north at “Red Mountain”, that was visible from the airport. Sandy had never had much interest in aviation, but soon, she was “bitten by the bug”, and really liked going on excursions to airports. I had always been an airplane nut, and told her about the various war birds that I was familiar with. I had built many model airplanes since I was a kid, so I could tell her enough to peak her curiosity. If she got too technical, I would have Ralph answer her questions. We were having a good time with the airplane thing, and Ralph said that we should go to Chino, California sometime. It just so happened that Sandy’s sister, Sharon lived in Chino, and her mother lived a short way from there in Upland. Hmm, this got my attention, there was an Indy car ace at Ontario on September 5th , so we could kill two or three birds with one stone, we would visit family, go to the Chino Airport, and also go to the Ontario Speedway. Such a deal! Who could ask for more?

Needless to say, Chino was a blast, Sandy got to visit family, and Ontario was going to be fun. We met with friends at the track, but I wasn’t really looking for a job, just wanted enjoy the “going ons”. During practice, an old friend, Bob Harkey spotted me, and said that he was having a problem getting up to speed, then asked if I would see what I could do. He was driving the “Spirit of America” #63 car that McCoy had ran at the Indy 500, and Jerry Karl had driven at Michigan in July. Karl’s name was still on the car as driver. This car was an “Atlanta”, a copy of a McClaren, that was not a very competitive car, maybe a bad “copy”. Harkey had been around a while, driving Champ Dirt Cars, Indy Cars, and others. He was one of those racers who could usually climb in an unknown car, and put it in the show. If the car would run half way good, he could carry it the rest of the way. Bob also had Stearman, and a T-6 that he did some kind of skywriting with. Interesting enough, he also had a permit to own a “Thompson sub-machine gun”. We did everything possible to get up to speed to qualify for the race, but came up short, and missed the 33 car field. Sandy found something to do though, she would help score the Bill Puterbaugh car during the race, and her score chart didn’t match the USAC chart. The team protested, and Sandy was right, giving him a 7th place finish instead of 8th. She was pretty proud of that.

We had a great time in California, but headed back to Phoenix, to see what we could find to do over the winter.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Whew! I'm glad that the site is up and running. I assume that photos can be posted as before, My next posts have a lot of photos that kind of tell the story. Without these hundreds of photos that have somehow survived, I would have not been able to maintain any kind of continuity to my story. Thankfully Sandy dated almost all of them, with comments on the back.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

There wasn’t much happening in Phoenix that I wanted to get involved in, so Sandy and I did some sight seeing, she had not been to Sedona, Payson, and other tourist attractions in Arizona. We also went to Davis-Monthan in Tuscon, where the Air Force “bone yard”, and the Pima Air Museum was located. Much to my surprise there was a B-47 there in the museum, so I got a chance to show Sandy what I had spent my time in the Air Force working on. Of course, I took the opportunity to tell her some “war stories” about my experiences massaging those “swept wing beauties“ , keeping them on flying status during the “Cold War”. She thought it was a pretty airplane, and I told her, “you should see one in the air”.

We spent Christmas and New years in California with her family, and when we got back to Phoenix, I got a phone call from a doctor who had bought a Formula Ford, and wanted to become a racer. Oh, no, not another sporty car deal! He told me that he had been to the “Bob Bondurant School of Driving”, and was a friend of Indy 500 winner Bobby Unser. I figured that if he was a friend of Bobby, he might be worth helping out. We arranged a meeting at a restaurant, and after having lunch, he wanted us to follow him to his house, where the Ford was sitting. It’s a good thing he said, ”follow”, because I would have never found his home. It was up on one of the mountains in Phoenix, in the “high rent” district, up a winding road. Sandy was sure impressed by his house, and the view from up there. The house was fine, I reckoned, but I was more interested in seeing what he had bought that he wanted to race. Judging by what I had seen so far, I expected to see a brand spanking new Lola, Crossley, Merlin or something. Wrong again, he had bought an older Titan, I think that’s what it was. There were some battle scars, and it showed some wear, but all in all, it wasn’t too bad. I kind of think that Bobby U had convinced him to buy an older car to start with, so that if he changed his mind about racing, he wouldn’t be out a lot of bucks.

So now I was working for Dr. Bob Lumsden, a hand surgeon, a real nice guy, but it didn’t make much sense to me why someone like him would risk his career by driving a race car. I knew of some other doctors that raced, so I guess it wasn’t a big deal. I told him that I would have to tear it down, and do some considerable work to make sure that it was race ready, wheel bearings, drive axles, brakes, and on and on. The engine had some miles on it, so I would rebuild it also, and of course drift into the gray area, rule-wise. He said to do whatever I felt necessary, so we hooked the trailer onto our vehicle, and Sandy and I headed for home, dragging one of those sporty cars behind us, chuckling a little, wondering what kind of drama we had gotten ourselves into, yet again.

The engine cover on the car was ugly, as far as I was concerned, so I went to Clint Brawner’s shop, knowing that he had a mold for the Indy McClaren engine cover. Yep, just like the one we removed from Spike Gelhausen’s car at Indy to get him up to speed. If it was trimmed correctly, it would fit onto the Titan very nice. All in all, the car looked pretty good when we were done with it, and the engine sounded real strong, maybe a bit too strong for the SCCA tech inspectors, but I would figure a way to BS my way through that. That was part of the fun in racing, working in that fuzzy gray area, tempting the tech scrutineers.

Larry

Photo of the car after doing my thing.

[bluffman]

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

A couple of other pictures, one a rear view of the Titan with the McClaren tail, and the other that Lumsden had given me, I suppose to show me that he indeed did know Bob Bondurant.

[bluffman]

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

The Lumsden #74 was ready for the upcoming ASRA (Arizona Sports Racing Association) race at Phoenix International Speedway, on the road course, so Bob would get his first chance to try his hand at racing. He had learned quite a lot at the Bondurant School, and didn’t look too bad. He had to run at the back of the pack in the first session, since he was a “new” driver, and he was being watched by observers to decide if he had a clue what he was doing. He passed muster, and was allowed to run in the race, but unlike Stu, he cooled it, and didn’t make any mistakes, so we finished the day with the car still intact, and he had enjoyed his first outing.

We ran another race, but I can’t recall if it was at PIR again, or maybe Willow Springs. It must have been Willow though, because it was out of town, and he had a “girlfriend” with him. His wife had been at the first race in Phoenix, and I doubt that he would risk having this girlfriend along that close to home. Anyway, we survived that caper, and the next race was at Riverside International Speedway, in California, May 28, 1977.

I had a little problem with the SCCA people there, they said that I couldn’t go into the pits in a wheelchair. I got pretty vocal with them, telling them that I had been chief mechanic on Can-Am, and Indy cars there, so what was the big deal with these pea-popper sporty cars? One of these guys asked me what my name was, so I told him, and he said, “sorry, Mr. Burton, we didn’t recognize you. It wasn’t over yet though, one of the tech inspectors said that he didn’t think the engine was legal, it sounded like it had a “wild” camshaft. I was about to BS him over that, when one of the guys that had confronted me about going in the pits, came over, and said something to this tech guy that I couldn’t hear, but he said that it was probably the tuned exhaust that made it sound the way it did. I figured that the rest of the day would go without any more problems. Unfortunately, that would not be the case. Lumsden went out on the track for practice, and was running some good laps, and shortly, I signaled him to come in so I could check the car over before time to qualify.

Here’s where it really goes crazy! Lumsden had sent his girlfriend on some kind of vacation trip, and his wife wasn’t going to come to Riverside, so he had his ex-wife come and spend the previous night with him in the motel. Somehow his wife had found out where we were staying, and decided that she would surprise her husband, and after we had left for the track, she showed up at the motel, and asked for a key to her husbands room, not knowing that we had all left early to go to the track. Well, the surprise was on her, upon entering the room she spotted wine glasses, and some long dark hairs in the bed.

It was time for Bob to get ready to go out for his qualifying attempt, and all of a sudden I noticed him looking off to the right from where I was, and there was fear in his eyes. I glanced in that direction, and so did Sandy, here came the wife, ex-wife, and the girlfriend! The confrontation began, and Bob was shaking like crazy, but somehow he convinced them that he had to go out and qualify, then they would “talk it over” when he came back in. He took to the track and was going like hell, but lost it coming off turn nine, and bumped the wall, losing time, but finished his attempt. Despite his brush with the wall, his speed got him in the race, but he would start way back. He had more important things to deal with than his starting position, he had three fuming women to deal with.

Sandy and I wandered off, we didn’t want any part of this mess, Lumsden was on his own to handle this situation. When the time came to get lined up for the race, we went over to the car, and asked Bob if he was going to race, and he said that he was. I got him buckled into the car, and off he went, but he had a wild look in his eyes, and I got that old feeling, that this wasn’t going to be good.

When the race started, and the pack came by us, I could see that he was passing cars like crazy, into turn one, and through the esses, up around turn six, then out of our sight. As the cars came into view again on the back straight-away, he was missing, and a full course yellow flag was thrown. He had gone off in turn 7 or 7A, and flipped several times, and landed upside down into a pond of water, the car broken in half at the cockpit, and burning from the ruptured fuel cell. The ambulance took him to a hospital, and they never brought the car back to the pit area until the race was over. The car was so broken up, that to bring it in, they had to put all of the pieces on a tarp, and haul it in that way. When they got to the pits, the wrecker lowered the tarp, and as it unfolded, all that could be seen was a pile of parts, hardly recognizable as a racecar. A friend of mine who was driving in the race, Norm Thompson ,stood beside me and looked at the pile, and said, “even God couldn’t fix that car.” I turned to him, and said, “Oh, yeah, just watch me!”



Lumsden had a broken leg, and some burns, but would be alright. He was very lucky, it could have been much worse.

Larry

Photos of the carcass after the crash.

[bluffman]

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

I had shot my mouth off about being able to rebuild this bunch of junk into a race car again, but after getting it back to Phoenix, and assessing the damage, I thought maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew. Sandy agreed, mentioning that perhaps Norm had been right, and I might have to “eat crow” on this one. We pulled the engine, transaxle, steering rack, and other parts that might be salvageable, then I started looking the frame over, and doing some daydreaming about how it might be possible to repair it. I started explaining to Sandy, how if I did this and that, and then did another thing, I was sure that it would work. She got a big laugh over all of this stuff I was telling her, and suggested that I sleep on it, and re-think this another day.

We decided to go see Ralph Payne, and have lunch at “Meg’s Ham Bun”, a favorite diner of his, near he airport. I told Ralph about the Lumsden crash, and that I was pondering repairing the car. He said that he had leased a shop at Scottsdale Airport, where he was going to try to make a 4 seat private jet out of a Navy Pinto Jet. Mike Dillon, and Bob Lazier had both done an engine conversion to Pintos, replacing the original engine with a J-85, I think it was, that had much more power, and they called them “Super Pintos”. Ralph said that he had a lot of extra space in the shop, and I could repair the car there. How could I pass this up? Besides that, if I needed some advice on how to do something, Ralph was a good one to turn to.

After moving the remains of the car to Ralph’s shop, the first thing on my agenda was to build a frame rack. I ordered some steel “I-beams” some four inch square steel tubing for legs, and some leveling screw plates. It was a tough job, but Sandy and I managed to build a proper frame rack, eight feet long, and thirty inches wide.

I sawed the center of the wrecked frame apart, then placed the front and rear sections on the rack, and clamped them into place, working with the measurements that I had used to align the car when I first set the car up when I got it from Lumsden. The gap between the two sections, I simply connected with new tubing, welding it into place. It wasn’t long until I had the frame spliced together, and it was straight and true. That part was easy, now I had to repair or replace the suspension pieces, and engineer some modifications to update the car. I had a lot of ideas of things to do, so I did a bunch of drawings, to see if what I had in mind was feasible. For sure it was not going to look anything like a “Titan” again.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

The radiator had been in the nose, but it was smashed, so I decided to put a small radiator on each side, alongside the cockpit. There was an opportunity now to use a Lola nose , and since I had the mold for Bradbury’s nose with the blisters on it this saved me having to build something new. I got another McClaren tail from Brawner, so all I would need to make was the cowling from the nose to the tail. I made that out of aluminum, and it tied everything together. This saved a lot of work and money. I also built a “roll cage” for safety reasons, and also it stiffened up the frame in the cockpit area.

I had met a fellow, Harold Phelps, previously, and he told me about an incident that he had at the “Bisbee Hill Climb”, a race they held annually in Bisbee, Arizona, somewhere in the Tucson area. This was a race against the clock from the starting line, up a windy or curvy road to the top of the hill. There was no guardrails, just a steel cable stretched from post to post. He was making his run, and when rounding a curve, a spectator ran across the road and Harold had to swerve to miss him, and had gone under one of those cables, and luckily it didn’t decapitate him. At the time, I had told him that he should have a roll cage to make it safer. He kind of laughed, and said that he had never seen a Formula Ford with a roll cage.

When I finished the rebuild/ redesign of the Titan, I put the word out that I had a car for sale. In just a few days, I got a phone call from Dr. Marcus Engelman, a young ER doctor who wanted to begin racing. I had the car painted a dark metallic blue, and it looked pretty nice. I had Marcus come to look the car over, and he fell in love at first sight. He had got the number 29 from whoever controls that, and he had another request, he wanted, Tachy-Car-Dia painted across the cowl. He said that meant “rapid heart beat”! Who was I to question that, after all, he was a doctor, and should know that kind of stuff. The deal was made, he bought the car, and paid for my services for the upcoming ASRA race at Phoenix International.

I hadn’t asked Marcus if he had been to a driving school, or if he had even raced before, I really didn’t want to know, or care. Judging from my previous experiences I didn’t think it mattered. After his first few laps of practice, it appeared that this wasn’t his first rodeo, he was clipping the apexes of the turns, and hitting the shift points pretty well. He was a bit aggressive when passing slower cars, but I kind of liked that, having been involved in sprint cars on the dirt tracks, where a little nudge now and then was normal.
He had to start at the rear of the race, as usual, since he was a new driver, but he was passing cars right away, moving towards the front. I felt pretty good about that, this was the first time the car had been driven since the Lumsden crash. I don’t recall how many cars started the race, but he had worked his way up to fifth position, and must have really been “feeling his oats”, because he was getting more and more aggressive. A couple of laps later, he came cruising into the pits, the nose was busted, and the left side radiator was hanging by the hoses, dragging on the ground. I told him to stay in the car, we would fix it and send him back out. I hung the radiator back into place with some safety wire, while Sandy was duct-taping the nose back together. A quick look around, and I didn’t spot anything else that needed attention, so I sent him back out. He got back up to speed, but was a lap down, and was in traffic again, passing slower cars. He hit somebody again, and came in , the nose broken even more, and the fasteners that held the cowling on at the front were torn off. A little more duct tape, and he was on his way again. There were only a couple of laps left in the race, but he was still running at the end. When he came in and took his helmet off, he was smiling, then got out of the car and looked at the damage, started laughing, and pointing at the various “battle scars”, having a wonderful time. I was thinking about all of the hard work it took to get this car rebuilt, and Marcus was laughing about tearing it up, people get their kicks in different ways, or so it seems.

Larry

[bluffman]

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

Missed one photo. I'll get the hang of this sooner or later.

Larry

[AAFO_WSagar]

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

Hey Larry... with the new faster server, you're posting faster than ever!!!!

[bluffman]

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

I repaired the damage that Marcus had done, and there was another race at PIR shortly after that, an SCCA event, but Marcus was not a member of SCCA, so he couldn’t run that race. He was at the race though, as the “attending physician”, they always had one of these in case of a serious accident. This was one of those times that there was a need for an “attending physician”, a driver crashed his Austin Healy Sprite, getting upside down, and sliding across the pavement that way for quite a distance. I wasn’t there, but Marcus called me, and said to sell his racer. I asked him why he wanted to sell it, and he told me about the accident, and said that he had no idea that a person could do that to his head. Him being an ER doctor, and all of the traumas he had probably seen, this one must have been real bad.

I placed an add for a Formula Ford for sale, but didn’t give any specifics. I didn’t know what to call it, it wasn’t really a Titan any longer. I got a call from a young man, and when he asked what kind of car it was, I told him to just come and look at it, and we would go from there. When I fixed the car I moved the radiators further back, where they were not so vulnerable, and attached a “skirt” along the bottom side of the body to get some aerodynamic down force. This kids name was Dave Brezousek, and he bought the car. That’s the last time I saw it, although he contacted be later, and said that he was having a great time racing it.

Larry

This photo really shows the difference between the Lumsden Titan, and the final configuration. Also, Harold Phelps, after seeing my roll cage, had me put one on his car,a Merlin. (see photo)

Wayne, it sure works faster now, thanks.

[bluffman]

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

Hmm, what did I do wrong to get those two photos in this format?

Larry

[AAFO_WSagar]

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

Larry... don't know if you saw them or not but I had a bunch of test posts here.. You did nothing wrong, and it works again. I'll recompile the thumbs later tonight (kind of have to turn the board off when I do it) and the thumbs for those shots will show up then.

Sorry to worry you..

Wayne

[bluffman]

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

The Formula Ford thing was dead in the water, so I checked out the Indy car schedule, and saw that the California 500 was coming up on September 4th. I got hooked up with Larry “Boom Boom” Cannon, a USAC sprint car driver who I had met back at Indy in 1970,when I was there with Dockery. Boomer was like us, low budget, and running stock-block Chevys, trying to make it into the 500.

He now had a 1975 Bignotti-Wildcat with a DGS Turbo-Offy, which was probably the best “Offy” version. It had a hemi combustion chamber, and dual oil pumps. It is a rather convoluted story, but the DGS stood for : Drake-Goosen-Sparks, who were all involved in designing the Offy. Fred Offenhauser sold out to Dale Drake, etc, etc, etc. The DGS came at the wrong time, the Cosworth V-8 was beginning to take over. Cannon had no sponsor, he paid the freight himself, he had a hair salon in Danville, Illinois. Boomer made the show, qualifying 32nd out of 33, but he was in, that’s all that mattered. He ran well all day, and finished 12th, not bad at all. I would finish out the 77 season with him. Sandy and I were on the road again. There were two more races left in the season, Michigan, and Phoenix. This worked out pretty good, we would be at home for the last race.

Larry

The photo is Ontario 77