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THE V8-60 DRAGSTER OF THE 1950s
by Mat Hurwitz
I
have great memories of my V8-60 powered "slingshot" style
dragster. I built it with a partner and fellow Tyrod named Ed Cowell,
an expert welder and machinist. The dimensions of the car
were
developed around my skinny body. Unfortunately for him, Ed
found
he could not squeeze into the seat so I did all the driving.
Here
is a photo taken at the Sanford, ME dragstrip in
1955. I am
the skinny kid pushing the car. It was eventually painted red
after we saw the car would go fast.
The
engine came out of a midget racecar driven, before his crippling
accident, by Carroll Sleeper, one of my Tyrods Club buddies.
He
sold me the mill, with a full race camshaft, a pair of 10:1 compression
ratio heads, and a dual carb manifold running Stromberg 97s.
The
stock ignition was fixed at maximum advance.
We ran a tiny,
lightweight Crosley rear end modified with hydraulic brakes.
We
used Mopar wheel cylinders mounted on the outside of the backing plates
to actuate the mechanical brakes; crude but they worked if adjusted
precisely and were applied gently. The tiny axels never broke. The
large diameter rear wheels and tires were from a stock car
racer.
The front axel and little wheels were from one of Carroll’s midget
racers.
The car was built on the concept of high
power-to-weight ratio. The super light frame was a simple
tapered
ladder of 2.5” Diameter X .025” wall CRS. An early test under power was
all we needed before loading the machine onto the home made trailer for
its maiden run at Sanford, ME.
Alas, the frame bent at the
engine mounts on the way up to Sanford--the trailer was unsprung and
road shocks caused the failure. We returned home and fixed
the
frame with hastily jury-rigged triangulated struts of half inch
electrical conduit. Off we went again to Sanford. We had kept the car a
top secret so it created quite a stir when we arrived. Nobody
had
thought of going small.
The car failed tech inspection when
Mudd Sharigan of the rival Nomads Club, using a woodworker’s egg beater
hand drill, drilled a hole in our roll bar and rejected it owing to the
thin wall. We accused him of favoring the three cars running
under the Nomads Club banner and of being chicken to race us.
We
fired up in the pits; the little engine, with its 90 degree conduit
sweeps for its 6 exhaust pipes, sounded bigger than its tiny
size. Mudd did not take the bait and sent us home without
allowing even a test run.
We towed the car home and replaced
the skimpy roll bar with one fabricated from 3 inch schedule 80 cast
iron pipe. We showed up the next week hoping Mudd would try
to
drill a hole in the monstrous roll bar. Mudd never challenged that
kludge
The dragster, with its aluminum body, weighed just
under 700#. I think it made around 150 hp according to
Carroll. That was a good PTW ratio for those days in New
England.
Driving
the car consisted of revving the engine to max rpm and stepping off the
clutch pedal, starting in 2nd gear with a clutchless speed shift to 3rd
when acceleration faded. Seat of the pants. Nothing
fancy.
The
car pulled a 12" wheelie at launch and went 1/4 the way down the track
before the front end descended slowly to the pavement. I
figured
that was an engineering triumph because it put 100% of the weight on
the rear wheels. Seems funny today.
There was no
cooling system. The block was filled with water and we never
overheated as long as the interval between runs was long enough. We
sometimes changed the water when turnaround times grew short near the
end of the day. We ran 120 octane aviation
gasoline. Later
in the car’s career we ran 50% methanol. Finally, when the OHV engines
appeared at the drag races, we went to 100% methanol dyed red to look
like gasoline. Tech inspection never caught us.
We turned
low 10 second ETs at 110 mph. Believe it or not those were
good
times in the early 50s before the OHV engines came along. I won many
trophies with that car including a Top Eliminator at Charleston, RI in
1956. That prize sits on my cocktail table. The car never
broke
down. It ran consistently...run after run. The
original
engine build lasted the life of the car. Those were the days
of
low bucks racing.
The car was retired to its final resting
place between my grandfather's chicken coops. It remained
there
until the property was sold after the old folks died. There
the
car lay abandoned to whatever its final fate would be.
I
took the rubber gripped midget steering wheel to hang in my
barn.
I gave that wheel to Carroll when he attended a Tyrods meeting at my
house...his face lit up when I took it down off the wall and handed it
to him. RIP Carroll, you were a prince.
I sold the
engine to a rich kid in Newton and installed it in his MG TD at my
Mat’s Good Gulf gas station/repair shop He paid me
$300
installed and I sold his engine for $500 installed in a customer’s
MG The kid’s car was driven to Boulder, CO where he went to
college. I was amazed it made it there considering it was
highly
modified and was set up with tight valve clearances and loose bearing
and piston clearances to reduce friction [a trick that would never be
used on modern engines].
In my dotage the 60 year old
memories of that car are sweet. My son Sam races Pro Stock
and
Pro Street motorcycles at many drag strips and he runs top speeds at
Loring, ME where he holds the record [212 mph] on his street legal
turbocharged MPS/BG-1340cc 350 hp Hayabusa scooter. He is
amused
by my stories of low tech budget drag racing 1950s style.
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