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storm-king.storm-king
Since no one else is jumping right in I guess I will; and take the heat for not having pics ready immediately to post this evening.
I’m building a period perfect ’66 Dart stretched nose doorslammer funnycar, like Landy’s or Charlie Allens cars of that era. It was a period that only lasted from late ’65 through ’66, because by ’67, they were mostly all flip tops (although some still had oppening doors!).
But I loved those two years, it was like the ultimate form of gassers, run what ya brung, no limits; because the NHRA wasn’t involved, it was match racing at outlaw tracks. It was the greatest, IMO.
So my Dart has factory floors, unlike Landy and Allens cars, which both had 3X2 frames under them. I just stretched the front with new rails, left the factory stuff behind the firewall. It’s got a straight axle, moved forward 10 inches; with an overall stretch of 12 inches, and the motor is pushed back just six inches. Allens car had the mill all the way into the windshield, mines just into the cowl a little.
I left the rear wheels where they were, just like Charlie Allen did, Landy later moved his WAAAY forward, almost into the door.
I’m not running a hemi, at least not a late hemi. My plan is to run a max wedge with a blower, but it might have to start with Hilborns. I’m running a torque flite, no transbrake, no nothing but a line lock.
I’ve got a Mallory tach drive magneto, building our own headers. Found some original ANSEN aluminum wheels on eBay for the rear, looking yet for some narrow 15’s for the front. I’m doing all new tooling for the stretched nose; as well as for the doors, trunk and hood. The only thing modern is that rather than fiberglass I’m doing all of it in carbon fiber because that’s what I do, build trick stuff in carbon. It won’t be seen once it’s painted anyway.
One other thing I like about this era is it was just before the prolific use of decals. Cars had the companies supporting them hand lettered on them, and I like that. If I have a decal on the car it will be the “Eastern Drag News” logo. All else hand lettered like the old days. Get those fingers loosened up, Dino!
I’ll get some pics up here this week, and tell some more about what we’re doing with this car, and the next one in line we’re doing.
anonymous
Hi,
What a great project you have going. Can’t wait to see some pics of the car. I enjoyed watching Landy and Allen back then. Those guys put on good shows. You are so correct about those years, it was great match racing then.
Andy Panessa
hvy70ssWow!
Of all the nostalgia racing that’s going on these days, that car will have to be the most unique out there. You’ll have to go on tour with it!! Maple Grove has an event called “Geezers at the ‘Grove”, great place to showcase it. You’re right about hand lettering….kind of a lost art. It’ll be nice to see again!
This nostalgia thing is HUGE!!
Bob
bobby-s
Nostalgia is alive and strong for sure. With the cars that are already out there and the one’s being done it is only gona get better. With the short season for the racers on the east coast it is tough to get enough dates to have FULL Nostalgia events. The west coast has that advantage 12 months of racing. Being involved with NETO the questions are asked what and where does NETO race. Not doing a sales pitch for us but just to up-date for some of the forum members. The classes are Compitation: 7:00 to 9:75 index with .25 increments and the tree is a .400 PRO tree. The next class is Nostalgia: 10:00 and up index dial you ET per round, .500 sportsman tree. Vehicle has to be 1974 and older (front engine dragsters only).
Funny Car bodies ’74 & older style. You run in the class that you vehicles ET’s.
Usually have about 14 races a season includes Geezers @ The Grove, E-town Nostalgioa Funny Car reunion, and the Nostalgia events at Beaver Springs/York combo event and now Numida.
NETO has their own points system for racers and an annual awards banquet. NETO also has a Nostalgia Harley Davidson class’s, one is 9:50 ET.
Eather click on the link on the Dover main page or contact Tony Feil NETO president, (yep from Competation Engines) TonyFeil@aol.com. We have cars that do not fall into any NHRA or IHRA classes correctly but pass tech inspection and now have some place to race “What YA Brung” 😀 Will be at Lebanon Valley this weekend (oct4th) for our annual John Parks Memorial race (reschuled from last week rainout).
Sorry to take so much time but with a place to bring your car and have fun like Pat Hennaberry and The Mad Frenchman do to name a few I wanted to pass the word.
Bobby S.
34gasser-65awb
Something like this?
Attachments:
dinoI Have a passion for the Hand Lettering Back then .We used to call it ‘California Style”…Then as some of the teams came east and set up shop (Jungle Jim and others) the ‘jersey boys'(sign artists) picked up on it like Glen ,Mr.J (Who did some of Jungles cars) and others , it became known as Jersey Style Lettering. I still have tons of photos for lettering referance of Drag Cars . One of the neat ones of this style is Randy Walls Super Nova yellow car (Theres a shot In our photo section) The West coast gassers of that time and ’65-’67-S/SX (first funny cars) are really good too ….Real Lettering Artists…Airbrush blends AND real Gold Leaf! My favorite was ‘Sir’ Nat Quick with his fantastic fueler cowls. My renditions of this style on nostalgia cars can be seen in “Art Show”. The worst thing I see lately is having some vinyl sign-guy nerd with no talent botch up a nice Vintage Drag Car restoration or period car with dopy ‘fonts’. “Didn’t have it then!”
storm-king
I was waitin’ for that one! O.K., once again I’ve failed miserably at trying to post a pic. Which one of you guys want me to send you a couple of the Dart just to get it up here?
Dino, for the first time since 1964 this car will not be called a “Storm King”. Even my turbo funny bike was under the “Storm King Motorsports” banner. I wanted this to be something different, we never ran a blown car, or in any class that didn’t have “STOCK ” at the end of it. Super Stock or Pro Stock was all we ever did.
So..the Dart will be called “The Crusader”, and have a knight in Crusader armor with a bloody sword on a stallion crushing the muslim mosics and hordes underfoot. Can it get more politicaly incorrect? But if you close your eyes, you could see that car running back then. Candy striped, all hand lettered; all Dino, all the time.
I’ve got just a few more things to get finish welded, and a couple more hard parts to get in house in order to do that, but it’s getting closer.
dinoStorm Sent these ‘Under Construction’ shots of the Dart…wanna see that roadster too !
Attachments:
storm-king
Dino, Thanks so much for posting those for me! I am a dunce when it comes to posting pictures for the most part.
So, top image was the car earlier this year. Originally bought this Dart as a slant six race car for my wife, and we got busy with other stuff. Later we really got interested in the nostalgia race programs, and I saw a good number of altered wheelbase ’65 factory clones/replicas, and a good number of early flip tops out there, and wanted something different. I loved that short period of time; as I’ve mentioned, with cars that had stretched noses but were still door slammers. So that’s where we are going. We chopped the factory rails off at the firewall, the frame rails are tied in front to rear and latitudinally; along with additional cross members. We pushed the motor back about six inches. It really doesn’t look like we stretched the frame as much as we did until you hang the factory fenders back on it.
Doug Dutra, aka “Dr. Dodge” lent me a pretty nice set of original ’66 Dart fenders. I like them much more than the earlier ones ( and besides, those are the ones on Landy’s and Charlie Allen’s cars!) and we’ve just got the first part of the tooling done to build these in stretched, altered, or stock whelbase configuration. We’ll be able to build these in fiberglass or carbon fiber.
We’ve got a 400 block mocked up in there but my intent is to use either a 426 max wedge or early hemi. Not a monster cube motor; I might add, but 426 CI. I may have to begin with Hilborns, but I’d like to run a 6:71 on it. I always liked the way those blown gas cars “lurch” coming up to the line, and of course if we get really nuts and pour the can to it, nothing smells a good as nitro!
We are going to use a pie crust profile slick, not sure who’s yet, but I’ll never put more than 12″ of rubber back there; I’m going to start with 10″. I hope to have it ready to roll out for the Chrysler Classic in Bowling Green in April, whether it’s running or not, I’d like to have everything else done.
If anyone has any other questions I’d be glad to answer them.
The roadster is a long way off. I’ve been having trouble locating the guy I want to do my chassis, and I want the Dart really rolling before I take a big bite on that next project. I have the body, a ’27 ford T, and we’re putting the motor in the passenger area and the driver in the cowl. This will be a car similar to the Speed Sport roadster. I don’t want to call it a clone, replica, or tribute because it will be my car that’s just built similarly. That’s another old drag car I’ve always loved, never seen anywhere but in Big Daddy’s museum, but just want it. George cerny also had a simialr car. The Speed Sport car is generally recognized as the first drag car to ever use fiberglass. We like that since that’s what we do for a living too. I will run either an early hemi like the original, or a blown small block in it. Probably be mid year next year before we really get going on the chassis.
34gasser-65awb
Thanx for getting the pics up! Looks like you had a real solid car to start with, makes the process go much more smoothly. Sure does feel “funny” to see it with the rear in the stock position. You are sure that you don’t want to move it maybe even 3-4 inches like Allen’s car was? His wheelwells were only stretched, not moved entirely. I don’t have a Dart so I don’t know, but wouldn’t you have to move some metal around to get a 30″ tire in there anyway? Those darts were SMALL cars……..
Go with the 392!!!!!! There was a good number of doorslammer Mopars (and other makes!) that ran 392s instead of the 426 Elephant. I think they were mostly fuel-burners though. Alcohol is close enough these days; makes noise and watery-eyes in the pits.
storm-king
I thought aboout stretching them a bit and moving them forward, but just didn’t want to make the effort. The factory rear frame rails had already been moved inboard (for whatever reason, the car ran a /6!) and already has “tubs” in it. This car was originally modified by some Tennessee ridge runner, and the wheel tubs are actually made from an old hot water heater! They aren’t nice. But then when I thought about ripping them out and doing a real nice set I got to thinking about how many of these old cars were, including the one we had back then, and they, for the most part, weren’t nicely done either. So I decided to leave it alone; warts and all. This era funny car
was not built like the gassers back then, some of which were real jewels. These cars were thrown together quickly to go out and make money matchracing; so that’s how I’m doing this one. I know many of those old cars ran 392’s, a good number also ran max wedges. It’ll probably have both of them in it at some time or another.
I’ve looked and looked at Allen’s car actually, and still can’t decide if the rear are really moved forward or not. I think they may be, but the more I look at it the less I’m sure. I don’t have any early ariticles right near by to verify.
howie
Hey Gary,
Found you have posted this project. Do you have a motor yet? Hey you could run that 354 that we found. Have you ever tried to turn it over? As soon as I get back I will start a thread with my 65 as I was building it to head east and have some match racing fun with you and the dart.
storm-king
You know what, that 354 turned out to be a 331! We finally got around to running the numbers and sure enough it’s a 331. So, a 331 is what the original Speed Sport roadster ran, with six or eight Stromberg’s as I remember. So I’ll build the new chassis so it will take averything from a 318 up to a 392. I’ve also now got three running /6’s, and want to get onto building a couple of open wheel, lightweight street roadsters as well. The difference between here and our shop in Tulsa is that I’ve got a great group of people working for me that really know how to get stuff out fast and done well. We’ve been covering a lotof ground on our projects in between building these other paying jobs.
howie
Ok gary, I am back and starting on the afx conversion. I have the car stripped and ready to take the k frame off for the front end conversion. Got your fenders done yet?
storm-king-2
Howdie Howie
2nd fender is ready to tool, has been for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately I seem to have developed an allergic reaction to the resin. I have a few mods to make on the first fender tool before making the first part. The doors are all prepped and ready to tool next. The big trick will be the hood. Probably do a 2 piece, with front & rear sections. I kept trying to get Gary to scoot the rears up, if only by lengthening the wheel wells. He just doesn’t want to run the bigger tires. It ought to be pretty light, you know what our carbon is like.
Bill
