Early NASCAR Race Action
Moderator: Team
Re: Early NASCAR Race Action
Cool. Can you imagine putting some of today's top NASCAR youngsters in those vehicles and telling them to race. The oldtime "safety features" would be enough to scare them off if not the car's handling characteristics. Remember when it was not uncommon to see someone hit it "out of the park" (overall the wall) and they were going somewhat faster than the cars in the video too.enigma57 wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Eb3Sf6Kf1I
That's a good point, nitro2......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9_8-blYo7o&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVE8H1Jd ... re=related
Even when we high school kids were building up early to mid-50s cars, we never gave that stuff a lot of thought except that we hoped we'd be thrown clear if the car rolled and / or caught fire.
Regarding the mid-1950s cars, we never had them up to the speeds the NASCAR guys were running in this video from early 1960. I have had some of the mid-'50s road cars I built in the '60s and '70s...... A DeSoto hemi powered '55 Ford, a big block powered '55 Chevy and a Pontiac powered '56 Chevy...... Up in the mid 130's out on the road a few times, though.
The only high speed mishap was with the '55 Ford back in the summer of '66. The week before I left for boot camp that June, several car loads of friends and myself decided to see if we could catch up to a fellow in his new 'Vette who passed us going pretty darn fast. We were out on I-35 driving back from the drags down in San Antonio. We weren't geared to run with the 'Vette on top end and he toyed with us until we were topped out and then walked away from us. So we kept going a bit further just to see which of my buddies' cars had the better top end.
By then, everyone had dropped back except for myself and my buddy John who was running a '57 Chevy. We were wheel to wheel after cresting a hill and just starting down the back side when the rear glass got sucked out of my '55 Ford. What a rush! It was like all of a sudden the wind blew into the car like a tornado, coming through all the holes in the firewall and transmission tunnel where I had pop-riveted sheet metal patches after swapping in the DeSoto engine and Dodge transmission and it sucked out dirt, dust, old homework papers and things I didn't even know were in there. Couldn't see very well with all that stuff flying around. Kept my cool and held her straight until we got slowed down enough to pull over to the side of the road. John pulled up and said by his tach (our speedos were long since buried), he calculated that we were doing about 135 to 138 when my rear glass let go. Probably saved my engine, as the little hemi wasn't running a big cam and really stiff springs like John's 365 horse 327 and she was pretty close to floating the valves. Glad the couple making out in the back seat didn't get sucked out along with the glass. That was a pretty wild ride!
Best regards,
Harry
P.S. >>>> Here's some old footage from Darlington in 1956. Look closely and you can spot Smokey Yunick wrenching on some cars there......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EehuwA7l ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyPvYOF ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIGqBPZJ ... re=related
More from the 1950s......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3oBzUik ... re=related
And the 1960s......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuwT9ry6 ... re=related