CLUNKBUCKET

Full Race Jalopy

Mike Bumbeck — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:50:32 +0000

The American Heritage Dictionary defines jalopy as a word used to describe an old, dilapidated motor vehicle – especially an automobile. The origin of the word itself is hazy. The Ultimate Hot Rod Dictionary goes further, suggesting the word may have come into being as a result of many dilapidated automobiles sent to the Mexican city of Jalapa. The second definition of the word is the very automobile seen here. Any rough, oftentimes crudely constructed early-vintage automobile used in circle track operations during the ’40s and ’50s. Once driven by Benny Hofer, this is not just any jalopy, but a genuine 1940 two-door Ford coupe full race jalopy.

The famous jalopy now belongs to Dennis Gerdes, who picked up the car from a barn in Indiana by way of New York state. The previous owner had restified the racer as a tribute to Benny Hofer. When Dennis took delivery of the jalopy, the flathead Ford V8 was running on three-and-a-half cylinders despite a relatively recent refresh. A fuel cell flush and a fresh Stromberg 97 were the first steps in figuring things out, but the flathead was still not up to snuff. A compression check checked out, but that very same squeeze was pushing past two blown head gaskets and into the cooling channels – wrecking all sorts of havoc. A new set of gaskets, some aviation gasket sealant, a retorque, a set of points and the flathead runs and sounds like a race-prepped flat-knocker should.

After getting the jalopy running right again, Dennis rolled down to the March Meet at Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield to show off and have some fun. Dennis was hanging out at the swap meet with the jalopy when none other than Ed Iskenderian himself took a liking to the Ford coupe. Dennis started up the flathead for Isky, who by ear thought that it may be an Isky cam bumping around the poppets. Maybe not. Either way the Camfather liked what he heard.

“The Camfather would like to give you a sticker to put on your car”, said Isky as he handed Dennis one of his famous stickers for the hardtop.

Dennis plans on keeping the jalopy and rolling it down to events as they happen. The number 50 livery is a faithful reproduction applied by the previous owner to bring the car back to as-raced by Benny Hofer condition. Actually racing the full-race jalopy in the modern world would require some major safety upgrades to the stick-welded and bent as it went in roll cage, among many other things. Dennis is hunting around for a new set of tires anyway, and might just get the full race jalopy back out on the roundy-round where it belongs. Plan B is to take the jalopy down to El Mirage and make a big circle track of his own.

More on Benny Hofer, and thanks to the Ultimate Hot Rod Dictionary for helping to sort out this jalopy business. While this car was raced back east, the California Jalopy Association has west coast jalopy goodness.

Bakersfield As Barometer

Jim McCraw — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:01:28 +0000

The motor homes across from the pits stretched out side-by-side a quarter-mile long and four rows deep, all the way back to the fence. On the deeper, wider pit side, there were hundreds of megabuck transporters and motor homes and trailers and a quadrillion dollars’ worth of vintage race cars, hot rods and customs. Orange groves, grape arbors and oil wells surround this hallowed, historic Kern County property, now littered with the entourages of 575 racing teams and those who came to urge them on. Nobody here was crying the blues. Everybody here was having fun. This was Famoso Raceway. This was The March Meet, 2010, and it was spectacular. Recession? What recession?

The March Meet, a professional drag race of one kind or another since 1959, is the second major event held in Southern California each winter, only a few weeks after the NHRA Winternationals at Pomona, and the first vintage drag race of the year.

This is a wholly different kind of drag race, a drag race for people who really want to be there, not because of contracts or TV or sponsor obligations, but because drag racing is America’s family motorsport. Most of these spectators wouldn’t be caught dead at an NHRA event, because it is too formal, too slick, too regimented, and too expensive. This is drag racing the way it used to be, dirty, loud and fast, to borrow a phrase.

Whatever you call it, Bakersfield, the Smokers race, Famoso, The Patch, or The March Meet, this thing has been a late-winter institution for more than half a century.

Here, the funny car bodies date from the Sixties, even though they look brand new and most of them are. Here, the funny cars are built and painted to look like famous funny cars of old, “tribute” cars for retired or deceased teams deserving of tribute. Here, the fuel dragsters have their engines out there where they once belonged, in front of the driver, in chassis that are miles shorter than the NHRA rear-engined cars. The Fuel Altered cars that show up for Bakersfield are the same ones that we’ve been seeing at the drags for 40 years, freshened and ready for a new season.

The smart and flush got here on Thursday so they could butt their megabuck motorhomes up against the fence, fire up the satellite dish, fire up the barbecue, break out the table and chairs, and wait for the jousting to begin on Friday. The rest of us trickled in behind them, some from as far away as Sweden, England and Germany, until the grandstands were absolutely packed. That’s the kind of pull the March Meet has for some of those who inhabit the lunatic fringe.

The March Meet would be a roaring success as a car show and swap meet even if none of the race cars ever spun a tire. The quality and finish of the vintage race cars, the hot rods, the kustoms and the rat rods (please don’t call us that; we prefer ‘traditional hot rods’) was as good as the machinery we saw the previous weekend at the famous Autorama indoor show in Detroit. And the cars in the car show were DRIVEN in here, not trailered.

We were reminded of Fahrenheit 451. If you want to talk about the history of drag racing or hotrodding in Southern California while you’re here, you just walk up to someone and ask them about their race car, hot rod, or kustom, and the details will come tumbling out faster than you can absorb them. Walk up to Art Chrisman and ask him about his dragster’s 50-year history. He won here at the first Bakersfield race in 1959, and he comes back every year with that same car. There are dozens of racers here who have been racing since 1959, many of them now old, wizened, bent or crippled, but still drag racers to their cores, and full of lore and stories.

Grab funny car pros like Gary Densham, Ron Capps, or Cruz Pedregon, all here racing vintage funny cars, and ask them. They’re not busy; they’re just here bullshitting with their pals in the relaxed, aromatic pit area. And their pals include 14-time funny car world champion and 1984 Bakersfield champion John Force, who is here acting as Grand Marshal. Put a microphone in front of this guy, and he will spew enthusiasm as far as San Diego. It would be the same if you approached a gasser guy, an altered addict, or a doorslammer denizen. They are all here because they love this.

The 52nd edition of the Bakersfield race was littered with historical ironies. Because of cold temperatures, qualifying and racing slopped over into the next day each day, forcing the final rounds into Monday for the first time ever. So, a great many people called in sick and stayed to watch the history happen.

In those finals, Champion Speed Shop nostalgia fuel dragster pilot Adam Sorokin beat Howard Haight, a racer certifiably older than dirt itself, 5.76/241.61 to 5.93/246.23.

The poetry comes in the fact that Adam Sorokin was conceived at this race, where his late father, Mike Sorokin, won in 1966. Sorokin senior was killed in a dragster clutch explosion in 1967, an event which led to the invention of the slider clutch, a whole list of safety standards for race cars and the establishment of the Sorokin Foundation. Sorokin cried at the trophy presentation.
In Funny Car, veteran Gary Densham faced former nostalgia funny car ET and Top Speed recordholder Leah Pruett-LeDuc, he in the Teacher’s Pet ’69 Camaro, she in the Plueger & Gyger ’72 Mustang, on Monday. She laid down a 5.81/242.65 pass to defeat Densham’s 5.98/236.34 to become the first woman ever to win a major title at Bakersfield.

If the success of the 2010 Bakersfield event, the packed pits, the elbow-to-elbow grandstands and the long lines for food and drink, can be taken as an omen, then the United States is in better shape then they’re telling us. Long may it wave.

Jim McCraw is a former editor of Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and Super Stock, and a veteran automotive freelancer for such titles as Car and Driver, Road & Track, AutoWeek, Penthouse, The New York Times, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. He is an avid racing fan, high-performance car freak, seeker of nutballs and nutball cars, and lover of fast motorcycles who lives in Dearborn, Michigan. If he comes back as a car, he wants to be a 1968 Ford Mustang 428 Cobra Jet lightweight.

Javelin AMX proudly wears 1978

Mike Bumbeck — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:23:09 +0000

Pedro Ramirez bought this yellow 1968 Javelin in 1978. Over thirty years later the AMX rolls as a time capsule of how a car owner would mod out a pony car ten years after it rolled off the assembly line. While the engine and mechanicals have been gone through a few times over the years, the car remains largely as it was purchased from a co-worker in late seventies. Pedro first saw the Javelin while working for Manuel’s Auto Body in Bakersfield, California. The car was driven into work everyday by one of the painters at the shop, and Pedro had his eye trained on the louver-backed four-speed Javelin from day one.

Every day the painter came to work in the AMX, Pedro told himself that he we wanted that four-speed. He loved the four-speed. Had to have that four-speed. The problem was that the car was owned by the painter’s wife. She had no desire to part with the Javelin. This didn’t stop Pedro from reminding the co-worker of his daily obsession with the AMX. One of those days 32 years ago, the Javelin rolled into Manuel’s, and the co-worker told Pedro that his wife wanted to sell the Javelin. He asked if Pedro wanted to buy it. The answer to the question was “Yes, finally!”

Pedro has held onto the AMC since that day. The Javelin now has a 401 AMC V8 mill in place of the original 343, but still packs the original four-speed transmission. Everything else on the car is as was in 1978 with the exception of a few engine mods added and subtracted along the way. A 750 Holley carburetor here. A bumpstick or two there. A hotter spark and some headers on top of that. Some upgrades made more horsepower. A few made less. With thirty something years of ownership Pedro couldn’t just leave the engine alone.

“Come on! 33 years! You have plenty of years to play with it”, said Pedro.

The Javelin had been sitting for about 15 to 19 years up to the point Pedro drove it out to Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield for the March Meet. The layer of seventies on top of the yellow and black paint scheme looked perfect among the sheen of surrounding street and hot rods. When we saw the car on a rainy Saturday down in the Grove at Famoso it was covered in a layer of plastic – not to protect the paint job from the raindrops, but to keep that same rain from removing a dusty patina nearly twenty years of sitting and thirty plus years of proud ownership in the making. Change isn’t always good.

March Meet Trades in Time

Mike Bumbeck — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:09:03 +0000

Walking on the hallowed patch ground that is Famoso Raceway it becomes easy to see why the March Meet is now in its 52nd year. People like this stuff. In our case a rekindled interest in drag racing and hot rodding started again around 15 years ago with a wiff of nitromethane and a flashback to the Coca-Cola Funny Car Cavalcade of Stars tossing up fiberglass down a seventies-soaked New England Dragway. Move the pointer to 2010, and the anachronism that is vintage drag racing is still largely intact. Freeze time around 1978, add a few thousand gallons of nitromethane, and never forget the associated junk and iconography. The first stop at every March Meet is always the swap meet at the top end of the race track. Exposure to all this goofball stuff started as a kid seeing a Funny Car supercharger bouncing on fire down the grass in front of the grandstands, liberated from its hemi thanks to the horrors of nitro. This of course led to launching the Mongoose and Snake Hot Wheels down what seemed like five miles of orange plastic track. And though we occasionally used to race down an actual drag strip with a ‘67 Plymouth Barracuda later in life, it was all the stuff that came before moved moved us in that direction in the first place. The exquisite junk that is still with us all.

For LIVE video coverage of March Meet drag racing action head to BANGShift.com

No recalls for 1982 Toyota Starlet!

Mike Bumbeck — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:19:55 +0000

It might need a few new valve springs. The input shaft bearing in the transmission is whining a little. There’s a wobble or two here or there. One of the camshaft lobes may be in trouble. Clunks? Plenty. We’re really hoping the clutch cable doesn’t finally give out either. The good news is that even with 230-plus thousand miles on the original 4K-C engine – there are no recalls for the 1982 Toyota Starlet! We drove the Starlet down to Toyota Santa Monica in hopes for a new old stock replacement shift knob or some other eighties-era Toyota gem, but were told that the Starlet was free of any recalls by virtue of age and durability. A quick search over at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database confirmed that the Starlet was recall free. There is no entry whatsoever for the 1982 Toyota Starlet. Not to worry. We can personally assure the NHTSA that the Starlet is mostly trouble-free, and that the 50 or so horsepower from the mighty 1300cc peanut grinder engine under the hood presents no possibility of unintended acceleration.

Bring the Amber Lamps!

Mike Bumbeck — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:45:55 +0000

From the internet meme department of repairs comes this quick and E-Z tech tip for those looking to find the amber lamps. In this case the two stock amber inboard headlamps for a 1969 Citroen iD sedan proved not only near-impossible to locate, but à prix élevé for the purposes of drivable restification. The inexpensive solution comes in a can for under ten bucks. One can of Krylon Stained Glass Color spray paint in yellow can convert standard sets of clear lens fog lights or headlamps into the amber lamps in a few minutes. The task of prying the lamps or fog lights out of whatever mounts they are fused or screwed into will of course vary by vehicle. Consult your service manual or favorite forum for guidance in removal without breakage. Once the lamps are out and ready for paint, make sure the lamp surface is clean and free of grease or crud. The spray-on finish is translucent and designed for use on glass. Apply the paint in thin, even coats. Better two thin coats than one heavy one to avoid light blocking drips and puddling. Additional thin coats will bring a deeper yellow-amber to the lens. Our Citroën driving man in the field provided these photos of his own amber lamp spray paint conversion. He reports unimpaired luminosity and no breakdown in finish after nearly a year of extensive all-weather testing and actual use. With a couple hours and about ten bucks you too can bring the amber lamps.

Thanks to the SoCal Citroen Club and Andy Takakjian for the photos and tech tip.

Hydropneumatics and Design Together in Pasadena

Mike Bumbeck — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:34:36 +0000

There were more Citroëns than drivers on a Saturday morning. The task at hand was a good one. Settle into the plush appointments behind the steering wheel of a 1969 and-one-half Citroën iD21F Safari Wagon and drive. The mission was to get all cars on the move to the Pasadena Art Center College of Design for a gathering of Citroëns, and subsequent tour of the Art Center automotive design facilities. After a few tries at a recalcitrant starter button and a couple minutes of warming up for the DX21 hemi-head engine, the wagon was up on its haunches and ready to swallow the road ahead. The wagon we were driving belongs to one Andy Takakjian, who would be piloting his other DS - a 1969 and-one-half iD 19 Series B Sedan in green that would lead the way on the first leg of the safari. Destination? Pasadena.

The wagon was loaded up with gas, oil and painted wooden baguettes for maximum effect. Out on the road the four-speed on the column was easy enough to row through. The veteran four-banger under the hood was no powerhouse, but offered up smooth and locomotive-like forward motion. Push button braking was unfamiliar, but not a problem once acclimated to a hydropneumatic sensibility. The turn signal lever was right where a left hand would expect it to be. Below it is a shorter lever that activates the commanding note of the horn. The dual-tone announcement sealed the idea that this wagon is exactly what Captain Haddock would drive off the docks upon return from a sea voyage chasing villains from the orient smuggling crab tins stuffed with opium. For now we were driving, and ready to bellow Ectoplasm! or Visigoth! at any unfortunate hipster blocking the Safari’s path through Eagle Rock.

The next leg of the tour brought us closer to the Art Center and in line with yet another DS21 – this one a beauty in red from 1972, owned and operated by SoCal Citroën Club VP Paul Secord. After some coffee and conversation pertaining to the ongoing maintenance of old French automobiles, the 1972 led the way up the hill to the site of the event. It was over a few bumps and through the many off camber corners meandering up from the Rose Bowl that the hydropnematic suspension shone above that of a ordinary automobile. Speed bumps and potholes are no cause for concern. The three full-size French automobiles negotiated the curves up to the Art Center with a precision usually reserved for harshly sprung sports cars, but with a ride reminiscent of the most cushy of seventies American luxo-barges. The lush float of a 1973 Plymouth Fury and the crisp handling of a 1981 Honda Prelude forged together into a car that Captain Haddock would drive. Incroyable!

Once on the grounds passerby and students alike marveled at the modern luxury that is the DS. A couple of 2CV variants joined their more modern contemporaries, and then the entire gathering ventured into the building for a tour led up by Art Center College of Design Chair Stewart Reed. The deluxe nature of a Citroën DS Pallas came together with the design and art work of the students with a few sentences from Transportation Design department staffer and Audi VW Group Chief Designer Jae Min, who eloquently suggested that in modern automotive design, “Form does not follow function. Form is function”. This would go far to explain the near-amidships reverse mounted Maserati engine and nitrogen charged spheres under the hood of club member Fred’s beyond merely stylish Citroën SM. The picnic lunch was pretty tasty too.

Thanks to the SoCal Citroën Club and the Pasadena Art Center College of Design for making this hydropneumatic adventure possible.

Slicing into a Sixties Charger

Mike Bumbeck — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:07:26 +0000

Most folks think of automobiles comprised of parts that are fitted together with no imperfections or miscarved lines to ruin the illusion of perfection. While this may be somewhat true of a car or truck made in the last ten years or so, it is certainly not the case of an automobile manufactured as recently as the eighties. Dip back into the sixties and things get even more agricultural. Getting a car straight at the robot-free factory circa 1969 meant people using hammers, shims, and spreaders full of molten lead. Bringing a fusty old Mopar that rolled off the assembly line fortysomething years ago back into line again after an accident involves drastic measures.

This 1969 Dodge Charger owned and maintained by Frank Kozik of the Chiselers SF needed its coke bottle curves smoothed back to jet age perfection after getting rear-ended. While some of us might be able to fashion up some sort of near facsimile of a Dodge body panel with a gallon of Bondo and a potato masher, the end result won’t look better than it did when it came from the factory. Kozik decided new rear quarter panels were the way to go. Ace custom and body man Rolfe Brittain took on the job, and let us peer into the process from the first cut. Slicing through forty years of Mopar is not a task for the ill-equipped. Check out the gallery for the beginning of the work. Head on over to Rolfe’s for the ongoing saga of getting the lead out and put back in again.

More: Rolfe James Brittain Customizing

Quad Treaded Turbo Diesel

Mike Bumbeck — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:27:56 +0000

Crippling winter snow storms serve as a reminder that when the big snow or the Russians do show up, those all-season radials on that 1984 Plymouth Voyager in the driveway are not going to cut it. A snow shovel and some road salt might get the Voyager out of the driveway, but when you wake up to sub-zero weather and see Vladimir Putin doing shirtless chin ups on the kids swing set in your backyard, there had better be something heavy-duty out in the garage. The M-973 Cargo Carrier is equipped with not one but two sets of drive treads, a Mercedes five-cylinder turbodiesel, and can carry either 17 fully equipped troops or over two tons of supplies.

One driver and a co-pilot ride up front on either side of the five-cylinder turbodiesel engine and transmission. Everyone or everything else rides aft. An articulated steering-drive system runs between the fiberglass cabs so that both sets of treads work as one. Quad-treaded turbo power and integral bilge pump gives the Hagglunds amphibious capability and a top speed of over 30 miles per hour! The M-973 is a Hagglunds-built descendant of the Volvo-built Bandvagen 202. This one sits in front of the Vermont Army National Guard Museum, evidently retired from service after Brezhnev and company never came down through Quebec after all.

More: The M-973 Small Unit Support Vehicle

Rescue Tape saves Heater Hose

Mike Bumbeck — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:17:52 +0000

Miracle liquids and magic pastes are usually sources of great skepticism for us here at Clunkbucket. While there are some things that might work, there are a lot more that don’t. When the folks from Rescue Tape handed us a roll of this promising tape-like stuff at the big SEMA Show last year, we already had a test for it in mind. One of heater bypass hoses in the Starlet had developed a small (and slow) coolant leak after twenty plus years of occasional contact with a chunk of under hood California smog equipment. We suspect the original bit of foam armor that protected the heater bypass hose from contact with the smog elbow disintegrated a few Presidents ago. This Rescue Tape is a self-fusing silicone material that forms a permanent water and air tight seal to resist everything save for an atomic bomb attack. A few wraps around the old hose and all would be well. Did it work? Why yes. It did.

Step-by-Step Rescue Tape Heater Hose Repair

As the Starlet had a fully-laden trip to Los Angeles in its near future, we decided to give the Rescue Tape a few times around the old heater hose for repairs and testing. After weeks of local use and subsequent 500-mile journey from the bay area to Los Angeles, the Rescue Tape repair is holding leak free. A bonus is that the tape is functioning as a replacement layer of plastic armor to prevent the the reed-burp-whatever-valve smog elbow making another hole in the heater hose. The heater works swell too. We can’t say is this stuff will work for every repair, but keeping a roll in the glove box of a twenty something year old Starlet probably a good idea.

Disclosure: Rescue Tape provided the roll of tape shown here to Clunkbucket. For more information or suggested uses head over to Rescue Tape.