› Forums › Forums › SPEED SHOPS from Dover’s past › THUNDER SPEED, formerly harry’s Speed Shop, Beacon,N.Y.
Harry Harrison was the owner, and worked the timing shack at Dover for a few years. I also worked the shack, mostly with harry, when I wasn’t racing. Harry started out in a small store just off Main St, in Beacon. He was the first guy to help me out with parts, and discounts on parts. He then bought the old Grand Union building on Main St. The name was changed to “Thunder Speed”. The front of the store was the Speed Shop, and the back section was for building engines, chassis, and eventually, circle track cars. There were other guys that Harry helped out, but I only remember2 guys. A guy whose car said “Mr Duster”, I think his name was bill Blacknall, or maybe Hicks. He still lives in Beacon, and races motorcycles, and Sylvester Jones, who everyone called “Juggy”. He had a dark green 71, I think, Z-28 Camaro. If anyone out there remembers these guys, or has any pics from the 70s, get in touch with me , Dino, or Brian. ……Mikey:lol:
….purple?[dino]
I knew Blacknall, Mr. Duster indeed. Mr. Mouth comes to mind.
I don’t know if you were around there when Rick Green ran the shop for Harry. He was confined to a wheel chair, Mopar guy with a ’71 Satalite 9 pax wagon with a 426 street wedge in it. Bobby Dyer ran a ’69 four speed Road Runner, hung around there too. Also George Allen, a blind guy, ran a ’68 Coronet.
A couple of other whose names escape me at the moment.
Good times. Rick now owns a camera repair shop in Daytona Beech, Green’s Camera Tech.
I knew George Allen very well, new him before he went blind. Good guy, had a very nice and fast 66 Chevelle at the time. I also new Ricky Green very well. He also had a white Baracuda, can’t remember the year, but it was a 383, pretty quick. Rick was a pretty good guy, glad to know he’s doing OK. My parents house was only 2 blocks away from the old Grand Union building. Wish I knew whatever happened to Harry. I never new that you worked or hung out there. ….Mikey 😆
P.S. Yes, Mr Duster had a big mouth, but I shut him up a few times when we “street raced”.
Rick’s Baracuda was actually a 340. I never saw it, just remember him telling me about it, and racing some guy with a Chevelle down the Beacon flats wide open only to come around a corner and find a bunch of fire trucks blocking the road putting out a forest fire.
I knew George’s wife, Ronnie, before they married. Dad and I met here and I think at the time, George was in jail for something. Met him sometime later. He was an amazing guy. He is also the second friend of mine I lost due to an abcessed tooth infection.
we used to mess with him so much, we’d pour him a cup of coffee and give it surface tension because we knew how he descretely used a finger wrapped over the edge of the cup to know how far he could tip it and not spill. He used to cuss us!
I’ll never forget the first night I met those loon’s. Rickk invited me over to watch them, and I thought, “yeah, you just want to get me over here to do the work”. When I got there, Rick was hanging over the fender swapping heads on his wagon, Bobby was rolling around practicing wheelies with Rick’s chair, and Goerge was over taking his engine apart with his seeing eye dog at his side. What an amazing bunch of guys!
Rick’s business has been succsessful, although a few years ago he came in one morning and found his wife dead on the floor. No one told me if it was a heart attack, stoke, annurism, or what. I just know she was gone. Mary was good people; the best…
Rick, for some reason, won’t communicate with me at all, and I have no idea why. That’s life.
Are you sure that “Cuda” was a 340? And yes George was pretty amazing for a blind guy. He assembled the BBC for his Chevelle while blind, actually drove the car some on Kent street, behind Beacon High School with his wife telling him which way to steer etc. I can’t remember who wound up with that car. Maybe Jimmy Secor. He’s on here, but never posts, and won’t respond to PMs. Did you ever meet Eric Coster, or Wayne Tabone? A friend of mine who still races circle dirt tracks worked for Harry for a while and built one of, if not the first “Thunder Built” stock car chassis, Robbie Green, no relation to Ricky. Coster’s family had some money, and had bought Simonecs(sp) Engine building business, and run it into bankruptcy. He then got hooked up with Harry for a while. Tabone, he was some piece of work. I don’t think I ever met anyone as full of themselves as he was, and that’s all I’ll say about that jerk. ……………Mikey 😆
No, I never met those guys that I can remember.
Pretty sure about the 340 though. I had a ’69 B-5 blue 383 Dart back then. Everyone always told me how bad they handled. I always thought it just handled: like my 383 Dart. It just was what it was. The tail did like to get loose at times.