Assembled and ready to put it in the car. This is Bobby getting her set in place. Note the Stahl Cool Can. Remember when you could put ice in these cans to cool the fuel before it went to carburetor? Also note the chrome work in the engine compartment. We even chromed the wheel wells. Since we had taken out the rear motor mounts we no longer had to use fender well headers. That was all that was offered for a ’55-’57 Chevy at the time. We were able to make a small indention in the frame and machine the corner off the steering box and a set of headers for a ’67-’69 Camaro fit perfectly. This was way cool for the time!

Johnny Young convinced us to take the car to the OSU at Okmulgee car show. Here is the car loaded on a trailer that Curt Dixon had built for us. I had been looking for something to pull the car with and I told my Dad about this old ¾ ton Suburban Carryall I had found and wanted to know what he thought about it. He secretly went over and bought it and gave it to me for my birthday. That’s me in the center, Paul on the left, and Steve Crain who was building a Duster to run in F/G on the right.

We headed out to Okmulgee to our first car show and won Best Competition Vehicle. Note the blue Plexiglas hood scoop that we had found. It was like the scoop Jenkins was running at the time except it didn’t have the small opening along the front of the scoop so we drilled holes in ours so it would perform like his.

We’re getting close to ready to go racing now. It seemed like we were constantly chasing the new ideas that were coming out and we hadn’t even been to a race yet. Cragar comes out with their new Super Trick spun aluminum wheels. We had to have them. Hood scoops are now scoops with openings in the front. We had to have one. We now think the 10.0” slicks are not going to be big enough. We need 11.0” tires like the other guys are running. Now that requires work to the rear fenderwells so back to Johnny’s shop.

We’re ready to go to our first race. We decide we want to go to the NHRA Division 4 race at Greater Southwest International Raceway located midway between Dallas and Ft. Worth. It was held August 17-18, 1974. We left after we all got off work on Friday and got in line with the other cars and slept in the truck and outside on the ground. It was so exciting. Waking up at dawn and looking around and all you see are race cars. We went through tech inspection, went to the scales to make sure we were on weight and got the call for the first round of qualifying. We felt like we had as nice of a car as anybody there. I was driving and during the burnout I could see some of the other Modified Production guys watching us. I staged the car. We were using a Borg-Warner 4-speed behind a Hays Borg & Beck clutch, 30 lb steel Hays flywheel all inside of a Lakewood bellhousing (yes…chrome). The bulb goes green, I let out the clutch and the acceleration kinda startled me but I pulled second gear and I think I’m flying. When I hit third gear the motor starts to sputter but I stay in it, hit fourth and she’s still sputtering but I think I have set a new world record. At the time the record was about a 10.50 for D/MP. I get my time slip and I have run a 12.10. I can’t believe it. Everyone says the car just fell on its face when I hit third gear. We weigh and go back to the pits. We start it up and the motor sounds like shit. We pull the plugs and they’re wet and smell like antifreeze. We decide we have blown a head gasket. Being drag racers we jump on the motor and start pulling her apart. We have parts scattered all over the place. When we pull the first head, sure enough we had blown a head gasket. When it blew it blew between #5 and #7 cylinder and right in between the “steam holes” and it cut the deck of the block. There was no fixing that at the track.