Thread: Any body used a gear drive before?

Tweet

Originally Posted by 41willys

Yeah dave,

That happened in a little track in Osceola Ind. back in the 70's. The track prep was negligable anyway and everybody complained about the poor starting line traction he actually shut the race down for the rest of that day and made us stay and help him clean the track with paint thinner. It is really amazing the way 90w soaks into asphalt. That and anitifreeze... been there done that too. A guy can learn a lot after 40 years of making mistakes.
John

Short version of a funny story... In my early circle burner days in a Super Modified, had never raced on an asphalt track, had an opportunity to go race at the Minnesota State Fair on a paved track. During the heat, couldn't figure out why all them guys stayed on the bottom and played follow the leader, nothing like the circle burnin' I knew on dirt!!!! Anyway, after a serious discussion with the car owner (Dad) I decided to run up top, allow the engine to rev a bit higher, and go win the thing!!! So for the feature I did...This was in the days before they had tach's or rev limiters that worked on a magneto, but the engine didn't SOUND like it was revving too high!!!!!......I went up high on the green flag, and sure enough was leading the dang thing coming down the back chute. When I got the lead after my long run on the top of the track, I moved to the bottom, twisting the snot out of the engine, and threw a rod out the side of the block (well, actually two rods out both sides and the bottom of the pan) depositing 8 quarts of DA Speed Sport racing oil right in the racing groove in front of the other 19 cars.... Well, a huge wreck was the result with cars bangin', flippin, and wall hittin'----only 8 cars were able to contiue, we barely made it out of the pits alive!!!!!!!

PS--This was an invitational race, we never got invited back!!!! Decided I just wasn't cut out for circle burnin' on asphalt.....

Last spring my brother installed a Procomp gear drive in his 396. 100 miles later I got to disassemble the engine to find the needle bearings started coming out of the idler gears and one made it through the oil pump screen and into the pump, the oil pump locked up and busted off gears on the cam, bent the dist shaft.

We have a Cloyes true roller in it now.