Thread: 57 Chevy Cruizer

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? ? ? ? This is why I enjoy reading here , sooner or later you can get the hang of it .

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

Jim--- If I do it, you wanna come up and help when it's scale day????

Sure! What's 12 or 13 hundred miles between friends? Seriously, that would be fun if I could somehow get there. Are you planning on putting it through some twisties or some kind of gymkhana course?

My old (asphault) Sportsman Camaro weighed 3100 pounds (by rule mandate). I never had access to scales, so chassis tuning was done by "seat of the pants". Same with the dirt car that followed. I always loved the old test & tune days... I had other race cars after that, including a four-coil Limited Late Model, but none were as forgiving to changing track conditions as those old leaf-spring cars.

Tell ya Jim, my first real racing experience started at age 8 in karts....I guess twisty windies are still my first love. There is a track south of here about 170 miles that has open track at least one day every weekend, sure would be fun to go down there and play a time or ten!!!!! I was fortunate enough to sneak out on to a couple of the tracks when I worked for Charlie and make a few laps, had a blast. I have an acquaintance down in Omaha that is an SCCA tech guy, might get in a session with him before I start on the chassis and frame...

The Camaro is way kewl, my first circle burner ride on dirt was in a '56 Chevy owned by a body shop in Sioux Falls. Really liked racing them, then got into sprints for way too many years and finally one last fling in a late model. Racing was so much fun then, heck if you went in with a couple other guys you could race out of your own back pocket....Now a really first rate late model would kill $100K to put together with a few spares, and at least double that for a season's racing......

One of these years (not this one) we're going to make it back down to Florida for that crazy two weeks when all the Outlaw late model and sprints come out to play.... Think it's mostly all at Volusia (sp?) now, but it sure would be a fun February vacation---think it goes on for like 9 days now?????

Here ya' go, Dave. Tickets available...https://dirtcar.ticketforce.com/

Wish I could go this year Roger, just too much else going on right now....

My first racing experience was in karts, too, Dave, but I was 13 and the kart we had was a real dog... I drove my first stock car race late in the 1969 season at Indianapolis Raceway Park. My first stock car was also a '56 Chevy. I co-owned it with a college buddy and we were sponsored by my brother-in-law's welding shop. (Sponsorship consisted of free welding and the use of his pickup truck to tow it on Friday nights.) It truly was a shoestring budget. I think we had about $700 total invested in the car and had a good season with it in 1970; absolutely impossible now days. I got out of stock car racing in 2004 after going broke for the 3rd time. Now I just race my Electrathon cars; money hasn't ruined that segement of the sport... yet.

I've always wanted to try a Sprint Car, but never had the opportunity. Not likely now that I'm almost 64, either, but I'd jump in a stock car again in a heartbeat if all I had to do was drive it. I'm too old and selfish with my time to spend 5 nights a week working on the car so I could drive it one night. Also too broke to finance a race car now that I'm retired. Oh well, I'll have those memories for the rest of my days.

Speed Weeks here are the two weeks preceeding the Daytona 500. New Smyrna Speedway (asphalt - 27 miles away) runs Late Models and Nascar style Modifieds for 9 nights in a row. They usually have the TBARA Sprints a couple nights during that, too. Volusia Speedway (dirt - 55 miles away) also runs those 9 nights with a mixture of WOO Late Models and the DIRT Northeast Modifieds. They also have Sprints on the card a couple nights. If you're ever coming down for it, be sure and let me know. We have a spare bedroom, or if you're coming in a motor home we can hook it up in the driveway...

I'll definitely be going again. We used to go down there and hook up with Lyle's brother (one of my car owners when I drove) and go hang out. Been to New Smyrna a number of times, along with Volusia, East Bay, and a couple others I can no longer remember the name of!!! (dang CRS). Lyle's brother Dave died quite unexpectedly last summer from a heart attack while he was up here visiting.....

As for the '56 I drove, it was a 2 door hardtop. As the owner had a body shop and used the car for advertising, the body was always in great condition and parts replaced or fixed when it got beat up, Lord kinows how many really nice cars we went through, but back then you could buy a really nice '56 that maybe even ran for $100.00 or less.... Wish I had back all the nice cars and pieces that I wounded!!!!

I'm like you, I'd get back in a late model at the drop of a hat---but I wouldn't do much more then hot lap a sprinter.

Dave---for the discount on tubing ordewrs ----I always order a lot of ss for brake and fuel lines--sometimes the extra discount from the extra footage will be more than the cost so its like FREE ( or almost free) The last time I bought more than 400 ft, I cleaned out the warehouse of some earlier date tubing
(I insist on USA) on there shelves(shelf life applies on aero space type stuff) and the prices became only a small fraction of the less than 200ft scale

Originally Posted by jerry clayton

Dave---for the discount on tubing ordewrs ----I always order a lot of ss for brake and fuel lines--sometimes the extra discount from the extra footage will be more than the cost so its like FREE ( or almost free) The last time I bought more than 400 ft, I cleaned out the warehouse of some earlier date tubing
(I insist on USA) on there shelves(shelf life applies on aero space type stuff) and the prices became only a small fraction of the less than 200ft scale

Can't hardly beat free!!!!! LOL---Think I'll get enough moly for 2 complete cars, then a friend of mine wants 100' also. Discount should be substantial!!! These guys handle sheet metal and aluminum too, so I'll probably put a bunch of that on the same order and hopefully it comes out that the tubing is free for the '57. Last time I did this, we ordered 1,000' in 3 different sizes--discount was dang near $1.00 a foot!!!! That's substantial to a poor old broke crippled dude like me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So we're just talking here,right??.So Dave you are going to set down and Tig weld this CM frame which atleast doubles the amount of time to build and is less accepting for use on the street over a MS frame.Right??.

yeah-- that's how you do moly

Originally Posted by 1gary

So we're just talking here,right??.So Dave you are going to set down and Tig weld this CM frame which atleast doubles the amount of time to build and is less accepting for use on the street over a MS frame.Right??.

What do you mean by "...less accepting"? Just curious.

Originally Posted by rspears

What do you mean by "...less accepting"? Just curious.

I was kind of wondering about that myself Roger---less accepting- like the car body will reject moly tubing or what????

It takes a bit more time to fit the joints tight enough for tig welding, but I do that on DOM tubing and it gets migged most of the time....

It's been my experience that the extra time spent welding with a tig is negated by the increase in strength and reduction in weight gained by using moly... My original criteria for this car once the plan changed from building a gasser is to have 2500 lbs or less weight and 500 hp/torque at the wheels when it's ready to cruise. I'm not going to get that done cutting corners or pinching pennies....

Oh come on Dave.You know what I am talking about with CM being a harder material used on the street.How about not turning this into a debate??.

Chromoly ?you'd have to go to 1 5/8 to get the right wall thicknes I don't know the weight differance between the two with out doing some checking.