Thread: car stories

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How about a complete book?

A coming of age tale about three pals growing up in a small coastal town in Southern California.
Circa mid-50's to the 60's.

A few early days adventures, getting into hot rods and drag racing along with some old timey tech stuff.



Part 1
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/s...t=Doofus+Whiny


Menu for the remaining parts.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/s...archid=2722828

Originally Posted by HOSS429

i did that also but they would break pretty quick so i got to putting 4 x 4 blocks between my rear end and the frame in order to get the high in the rear look .. but then always one side or the other of the wood would bounce out and i would be crooked ..could`nt afford air shocks at the time

I used to put a 2x2 through the rear shackles of my FREE '56 Chev because the springs were shot and the car sagged. I always liked a small Rake on my cars. The year was '75 and I was just a youngster of 31 years old.

I posted this three or four years ago.....It's along the same line as my previous
post. Love the stories......

DT

There's only one thing worse than a BS'er and that's an old BS'er and since i'm 64 years and still here, I guess I qualify so no claims about anything I've done, this is just a picture of a Friday night I remember at Bushes Restaurant in Tacoma Wa.
The only reason I bring it up is that so much of what happened then happens now also and because I've read a couple of articles on the site that bring back memories of cars that used to race the strip.
Nothing's changed in 40 years except the cars.
Over the years, the restaurant has been a drive in, then a Pizza hut and then some kind of a family Buffet.
I drove my Olds thru there the other day and the memories just flooded in.

There was a covered parking area where kids would pull in with their rides and car hops that would actually come out and take your order.
Most of the street racing took place on 6th ave right in front of the place. Then every one could see. No way to save face if you lost. Everybody knew everyone else.

Lot's of burnouts and races and lot's of arguments and fist fights.
Most of the kids were pretty smart though.
There were a group that would stake out the strip and signal with hand held spots when the cops were not around and one kid from the technical school even had a receiver in his car so he could hear when the cops were dispatched to the restaurent

The big guns in 66 were the 427 vetts, with 390, 425 and 435 hp and the 413 dodges with cross ram induction. Also, the 426 hemi cornet was big but not too many around. There were some serious contenders with 396's but only the ones that came in the 350 and 375 hp versions.
Lot's of single and dual quad 409s on the strip and they ranked with the 442s and the tri powered GTOs
Most 396s were 325hp. No way to tell unless you opened the hood.
There were the 406 and 427 Fords which were feared and
there were a few 360 hp tri powered 389 GTO's that were very quick but most were the 335 hp single 4bbl.
There were the Olds 442s that fit somewhere between the tri powered GTO and the 350 horse, 396.

Then dodge came out with the 383. Lot's of those showed up the
Chargers in 67
Buick had a Skylark with a 400 cid that was in the same boat with the 396, 325 horse Chevs.

A few foreign and exotics started to show up on the scene like the
E jag and Sunbeam Tigers but not very many. There were no imports, no Datsons, Mazdas or such. The VWs were flooding the scene and there were lot's of chicks driving them. (you never saw a guy driving one)
All and all, the competition was fierce and there was lot's of mods happening.
Many of the kids would prep for weekend runs by removing the entire back seat and spare and running a quarter tank of fuel. The guys with the faster cars didn't bother.
Many of the street racers would run slicks even though the cops would ticket them.
No one had Mag's or Steel wheels. Most were baby moons and chrome rims or stock with after market hubcaps.
Paint was the big deal and lot's of lacquer and metal flake jobs were to be seen.
This was also the advent of the 8 track stereo players. Only the rich kids had them and everyone else had a mono system with a large rear deck speaker. There were only two rock stations in the area to listen too and that was it, unless you liked country.

I payed 3245.00 for my brand new 66 GTO off the showroom in the Fall of 65 and a 66, 427 vette could be had for 6800.00 but I thought there wasn't that much money in the whole world. Minimum wage was 1.25 per hour and gas was between 19 cents and 22 cents a gallon. All the racers ran Chevron white pump with 108 octane (I think)
It was expensive and ran as much as 29 cents a gallon.

There were no police radar units then. The cops had to catch you in the act.
Most of the time it was a cat and mouse game so the kids would take the races over the bridge and out of the city limits.

Can't help but reminisce as I spent many an evening parked in my first car, a
black 56 Olds 98.
Not quite the same as my 88 but close enough for me to be transported back a few years. All this before American Graffiti.
Now you know what happens to old racers. Pretty sad huh?

Dogtag,

Sounds like Tacoma wasn't all that much different than where I grew up.....just larger. My home town, population 325 in summer (beach town), was small, and the big town where I went to HS was all of about 2000 people. Most of the farm boys had new cars, while the rest of us had older ones. Got my first one in 1962 when I was 16, a 56 Ford Crown Vic (292 V8). Only had it three years but it seemed like a lifetime. It was well known all over 3 counties and parts of Deleware, too. Easily recognizable in red and white. Couldn't get away with nothing. As soon as someone saw the car doing something goofy, someone would get my dad on the phone so when I got home, I heard about it.

My HS friends mostly drove Pontiacs, which were a favorite then especially the 63 Catalina's and 64 GTO's. One friend had 61 Chrysler 300G and another had a Corvette. In fact he had a new one every year (guess he made good money farming ) Another friend had Nash Rambler wagon that he always bragged about how the thing was like a bedroom with the seat folded down. In 61 came the XKE and one of the town's doctors had one and later he bought a new Avanti in 63. Both were in the shop more than on the road. Loved both of them, but the Ford served me well.

Outside of the movie theater or the drive in, there were limited options for fun on any given night, especially Saturdays. You had your choice of riding circles around the local Tastee Freeze to see who was there; or you could over to Flatland Road for the late night illegal drags or over to Millington Road for the other edition of the illegal drags and the occassional game of chicken. In small towns everybody knew who had the fastest cars, and nobody ever lost any money cause you just didn't bet against those guys.

The closest big town was Dover (now home of the Monster Mile) but back then it was pretty dead, too. Other than that it was Baltimore, 90 miles away, and just too strange for country folk. So mostly we hung at the Tastee Freeze, checked out all the cars and the chicks, scored a bottle of rum or sloe gin at the nearby liquor store, and then attempted to score with one of the local girls.

Not real exiting, but I learn alot had some fun along the way and it kept me out of jail and the morgue.

after a few uneventfull years it`s summer of 72 and i`m sitting around the local junkyard .. i know everybody that works there .. there is a little 65 mustang that is sitting under a tree .. white with blue racing stripes going over the hood & top .. it has a blowed up motor so i dont give it much attention although it did dissappear pretty quick.. the mechanic at the yard ask me if i would like to earn a few bucks turning wrenches and i jumped at the chance to learn how to work on things and make money as well .. the first job i had was to take a 392 hemi out of a wrecked 57 plymouth and put it in a good body that had a bad motor .. after a couple weeks effort and much coaching from the mechanic i got it going .. the cars sat for several years as the owner just neglected or refused to come get it .. it was finally sent to the crusher ..i didnt have a car nor a drivers liscense then but that was no problem as there was`nt hardly any law around then and the ones that did stay in the area were friends of my older brothers and or were hot rodders them selves so i drove whatever would crank and run at the junkyard to and fro work everyday . usually a 68 T5 ford 302 with a 4 speed ( looked just like a mustang ) much later found out it was an export only mustang .. ..made enuff money to eventually buy a 64 ford ( 250 bucks ) .. 390 six pack with a 4 speed .. i drove it to school for 2 years .. even in 1972-3-4 a 64 ford was an old car

another job i had at the junkyard was to put a 455 in a buick electra .. a 70 stage 1 GSX came in .. it was wrecked in the front but not so hard it could`nt be fixed but it got stripped anyway .. hot rods were not a good thing to fix those days.. anyway i put the motor in the electra and it was perfect but the customer did not like it .. because of the rumpity lick the motor hit while idling he said it was missing .. we could not convince him it was just the big stage 1 cam talking so i had to put in a totally stock cam before he would pay up ..also a wierd looking little red white and blue rambler came in ( rebel ) .. not hurt at all .. just a broke trans .. but it was stripped and the motor and trans went to the junk pile and the car went straight to the crushers row as the yard owner said nuthin would ever be sold off of it

just so you know .. american muscle car marathon on speedvision now ..

man i knew there was something better to do

lets meet a friend of mine from forever ago .. Roy.. roy drove a 55 chevy with the awesome 283 power pack motor -quadrobog 4 barrell carb and 4 on the floor ( and usually a 1/5th under the seat ).. . he would race anything that had a motor and most always lost .. if he ever did beat something " you break or miss a couple gears " he would never give you a rematch so he always was the one who beat you ..he was the guy who gave me my first beer and i v`e been indebted ever since ..he was several years older than us so when we didnt have a car to cruise in he would come pick us up and haul us around as long as we had a buck or two for some gas ..he worked at the junkyard and one time he did put a 390 horse 454 in his 55 but it scared him so he took it rite back out the very next day ..he eventually lost his way and got into dirt track racing and in twenty plus years of doing that i believe that a few times he has finished better than last .. i would love to build him a 55 like he had back then .. he is a guy worthy of a Chip Foose " overhauling " if there ever was one .. but then so am i .. Chip you reading this .. come get my mustang and do your thing .. just leave those ugly 24inch wheels off it .. yuck ..

this might be considered just a little bit on the stupid side , but hey i live in the south
and believe me its true that most accidents begin with the sentence of "hey yall watch this " i myself have on more than one occasion made a complete ass of myself and yes i used that very phrase myself

one night after an evening of fellowship with my christian brothers , we were
out and about scouting for new members for our bible study class and where else
do you go to find new members ? we decided the local bars , strip joints and lola's
home for un-wed mothers would be the best places to try first (this is my story and im sticking to it)
after about 12 hours of this we decided it was time to go home as the hour was late about 2:00 am ,it had been raining most of the night and as i came to a stop sign i braked to slow down and started to skid , and skid we did all the way across the intersection and into a ditch on the other side of the road , we exited the vehicle to inspect our situation and seen that we were stuck partly on a railroad track with the front wheels touching the ground and the back wheels were about 3 feet off the ground ,
after disscussing our situation we decided we could put the car in reverse and rock it back and forth tetter totter fashion and when the rear wheels touch it would help back the car off the track , sounds good
so we started rocking the car back and forth and it did work , as the wheels touched the pavement the car started to move a little at a time and then finally the car started backing
off the track , you can just imagine our laughter as our master plan started to work
so as the car started backing onto the roadway i ran around to jump back into the car
and to my surprise the door "WAS LOCKED" with the window up! like i said it was raining out that night:JEKYLHYDE
all we could do was watch the car back up the road about a hundred feet into a ditch on the other side of the road and flip over ..
we had to walk home that night in the rain , about 6 miles and my two brothers decided i was the one who had to tell mom where her new caddy was the next morning

yes mom i wont do it again , i promise!

after the great tornado outbreak of 74 lots of cars came into the junkyard .. most from car lots that had been hit .. one car that came in was a 69 440 six pack super bee with 4 speed and 4;10 dana .. it had been slammed against building and the passenger side was beat up .. i bought it for 250 bucks . the yard owner did not give but about 50 bucks for every car he ever bought from the insurance companies he dealt with .. he had a contract in which he had to buy whatever they offered .. sometimes he won big "theft recoverys": sometimes he lost big " fire jobs " .. but he always sold his employees cars we wanted for 250 bucks.. anyway i put a good fender and door on the bee and beat out the quarter panel and spraybombed the passengers side flat black .. the good side was burnt orange .. the lift off hood was black also .. i drove the crap out of that car all summer long and raced about everybody in north alabama.. i rarely won .. once i was running a buddy who had a small block camaro and he had jerry moore in his car .. he beat me about a car and a half .. jerry then took my bee and beat the camaro about two lengths .. i would just dump the clutch and floor it and go up in smoke and get beat outta the hole .. jerry would bog the motor out and then hit it in 2nd and walk away from the camaro .. i was like roy .. i rarely ever won a race but i had fun .. there will be a few more stories about jerry .. then a tragic ending to his life ..i lost several friends in those days .. all will be told about ..i have a few more rides to tell of in the bee before i eventually broke the transmission and gave it back to the yard and it was soon stripped .. it was just a beat up old car ..

jerry was a bad guy ,, trouble went every where he went . on more than one ocassion i was in his prescence when gun play occured and people who did him wrong ceased to exist for some reason ,, he was not nasty to people he considered friends though .. he picked me up one time in one of his more famous hot rods .. a 70 big block camaro .. he had the fastest cars around as he always had access to his uncles speed shop and their drag race hand me downs .. most of us had stock stuff eccept for maybe headers and the ocassional cam and holley carb .. jerrys motors had popup pistons -roller cams and valve gear .. and he had gears in his rear end for racing and always ran slicks and open headers ..anyway we headed off to new market to hunt for a car jerry wanted to race ..we pull in front of a home where several mike tyson looking guys were standing around .. jerry does a nice long burnout then backs up and yells ... any of you ------- sob`s want some of this .. wait rite there one of the men said .. one of then took the battery out of his car .. another took the carb form his car and they all went around behind another house .. in about 3 minutes they came pushing a beat up old chevy 2 and it finally fired off .. we went to the local 1/4 mile drag road and i had to hold several hundred dollars while they raced ..at the line we could not tell who won and both came back claiming victory ..being outnumbered 5 to 1 and equally out gunned we decided that maybe we better leave .. on our way home jerry admitted " that p.o.s out run me "!!!..

jerry serched far and wide for a good street race .. after getting a rep for not being easy to beat he sometimes had to go out of town to work up a run .. again he wanted me to go with him .. this time we went to scottsborough .. rather a long way to go for a drag race especially in some of the stuff jerry put together .. his junk was`nt much on reliability but it sure would scat while it stayed together .. he had heard of a hemi dart in scottsborough that was cleaning everyones clock so he tossed together a pretty stought 454 and we went lookng for the dart .. as usuall slicks and open headers all the way to and fro .. we found the dart pretty quickly and jerry proceeded to blow him away twice .. coming home around midnite the engine lost oil pressure and proceeded to sieze up .. we stoped luckily at a church .. i say luckily because jerry had blown all the oil out of the motor while racing the dart .. he simply and without a moments hesitation grabbed some empty oil cans from his trunk and went and drained all the oil and some gas out of the church buss and put in his camaro and away we went on towards home .. he would sell the motors out of his car lots of times for way more than they were worth because he would take people for a ride in it then strip all the go fast goodies out of it .. as i say he was`nt the most honest fellow you`d want to know but he was good to his friends ..and fun to be around .. cept when knives and bullets were also around .. i did`nt have a lot to do with that side of his life ..thankfully ...

in the era that i went to high school forced bussing " desegregation " was just beginning .. i lived in a white neighborhood but was zoned to go to an almost all black school .. at the time that was`nt going to happen .. so i drove to tenn high school .. made a host of new friends to go with the old friends from growing up in grade school .. so i was more into hanging out with my high school buddies for many years after school .. we would gather at a local small store parking lot and then decide who would ride us all to fayetteville and cruise the square .. atfer that we came back to the store and just sit and drank beer and did usual hang out stuff till time to go home .. lots of drag racing as most everyone had some kind of hot rod .. even those who had ordinary cars would get caught up in the drags .. p.j had a 64 dodge dart with the awesome slant 6 and a three on the tree trans and big Al had a 63 valiant with the same motor and a push button automatic.. both cars were deathly slow but also unbelievably equal in lack of speed .. they would get about three thirds drunk and wind up racing most every weekend ..once while racing p.j shifted into second gear so hard the he broke the shifter off the column and ran it and his hand right thru the windshield

where she stops .. nobody knows .. at least i did`nt know .. where we hang out and did crazy things at vanntown there was a 4 way crossing .. our drag strip headed down one of the roads .. super slick blacktop .. i cruise up one day in my super bee and was gunna really impress the guys with a good full blast burn out .. i lite them up in first then pull second gear without even breaking the black marks i had going .. we did drifting back before the word drifting was invented .. we just called it losing control yet not letting up .. anywho .. when i went into third as soon as the power band and the extra two carbs kicked back in at about 60 mph it snapped around on me before i could catch it .. made about three 360`s ..went into a big ditch and ended up with the rear bumper and front bumper the only car parts touching the ground .. agian no harm was done and a tractor rescued me .. one would`nt dare beat up those cars now days the way we did back then .. i was`nt nuthin for me to clean out many ditches .. as a matter of fact not less than a month ago my 351 pinto led me thru a pretty good ravine but luckily i was able to pull on out .. i guess if i had a newer car with anti lock brakes - four wheel disc - four wheel steering - and global position sensors .- auto pilot i would be less prone to lose control but it sure would take the fun out of it .. i want to drive my stuff .. not have it drive me