Vintage1(Dave Williams)

Mart's Real Hot Rods

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Vintage Gallery No. 1

Dave Williams' Scrapbook.
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Latest pics added at bottom of page

David Williams looked at the Clockwork Orange photo's and found himself compelled to send this shot of his 29abone. He raced it with a 305" flatty from 58-62. ran 114mph on gas and 128mph on fuel! Wow!. Later updated with a 301" Chevy, ran a best time of 10.33s.at 133.53mph. Jeez.

This is the real thing folks.

David then sent this wonderful shot. He'd just dropped this injected Chevy lump into a friends Rail Job, which he is driving.
This is in the mid 60's.Dave's got a box of old photo's somewhere. If he can find it, we can look forward to more treats like
these. I could look at pics like these all day. Go Dave!

Three more shots, accompanied by Dave's own descriptive captions.

1958: My roadster is the one on the right side at Riverside
Raceway, California in 1958, running on fuel (this is when it went 128mph)
and getting the jump on the other car. Unfortunately, the other car had a
Chrysler in it, and we were running a 305" FH so the picture was a little
different on the other end. The roadster was originally painted "Omaha
Orange", a color used on road construction equipment, etc. Also notice the
"Moon disks" on all four wheels and the smaller (1 1/2" dia.) roll bar.

1961: This picture was taken in late 1961 at the San Fernando, Cal.
drag strip. Notice the car has been repainted cherry red with a larger (1
3/4" dia.) "candy apple black" roll bar. Moon disks were replaced with mag
wheels on the front. After this photo was taken mag wheels were added to
the rear. Also in the picture is my trusty '56 Ford tow car.

1963: This is another car I was involved with from 1957 until 1968. It
belonged to a racing club I belonged to called The Trackers Racing Team.
This car went through several upgrades through the years. This picture was
taken about 1963 at the Inyokern Drag strip, Cal. The car was built
entirely by club members. The 354" Chrysler originally had 6 carburetors on
a log manifold and a '40 Cadillac transmission. The car was changed over to
injectors and a 4 speed trans as seen in this photo. The car as seen here
was painted a metallic green. Later changes included an altered wheelbase,
headers and long ram tubes on the injectors. The final color was a
beautiful metallic blue. The car was financed on dues from the members.
This brought in about $20.00 a week. I know, since I was treasurer of the
club for a long time. Do you think you could build a race car these days on
that kind of money? When the club disbanded in 1969 a club member took the
car and put a SBC in it and ran it for several more years.

Dave found this super shot of the club car engine.
The clarity on the original pic (three times bigger than this) is amazing.

This photo is Carl's Spitz's Volvo powered dragster and ran 4X class in So. Cal. It
was a B1600 engine bored .030" over with considerable rework inside.
Running the SU carbs shown in the picture it ran 105 on gas. The SU's were
replaced with two Ford 97's on a homemade manifold and this one change
bumped up the time to 115 on gas. The car went 125mph on alcohol. This
picture was taken at San Fernando around 1964.

---oOo---
Thanks for sharing these pic's with us, Dave. They're GRRRReat!
Mart.

More quality material from Dave. I've pasted in his comments where appropriate.-Mart.

First, some new shots of the roadster when still flathead powered.

This photo shows my partner and friend Dennis Ford with the roadster. I
wanted to built the SBC and put it in the roadster, but couldn't afford to run
the roadster and build the engine. Dennis bought the car from me and ran it
through the first half of the '62 season with the flathead. He ran it on
fuel most of the time and took Little Eliminator at San Fernando about
every time out.

This photo shows Dennis at speed with the roadster.

Dennis then altered the wheelbase on the car and set it up for the Chevy.

Dennis sold his interest in the car in late 1964 and another friend, Donn
Fallenbuchel bought in. Dennis needed the money to buy a service station.
Donn and I continued to race the car until 1965 when we sold it and it
disappeared. This is when I went on to sedan racing.

After I sold the roadster in 1965 (the last photo of the roadster was 1965) I got into sedan racing. The car shown is a Volvo 444 sedan that I raced in 1965 and 1966. The photo was taken at the very first Trans-Am race at Riverside Raceway, California in 1966. My racing career was cut short later in this race when two cars just ahead of me (an Austin Mini-Cooper and a Cosworth Ford) made contact in the infamous turn 9 and spun out leaving me no place to go. The car was totalled and I received some injuries to my legs and decided it was time to hang it up.

Dennis' gas station was extremely successful. About 1970 he teamed with
Paul Cox in this Chevy powered "T" fuel roadster. It was 307" injected.
Best time was 170.50 in 8.675secs. These were very good times for this type of car.

Here is another picture of the roadster as it appeared in 1958-59.

This one is of the club car again, taken in 1964.

This is a picture of me racing a FH dragster at San Fernando in 1963. This
is with the SBC and altered wheelbase, but with the hood (bonnet) and side
panels still on. Sorry Mart, but we beat the flatty.

This picture shows the "frantic" pit action surrounding the roadster with
the FH in it in 1961 at San Gabriel Raceway. Our perrenial "rival" there
were the Mc Bean Bros with their roadster. Once we broke a transmission, so
we let them borrow our tires and they went the fastest they ever had gone.
The FH didn't take much maintenance and this was really fun racing.

Two more great pics from Dave..

Here's the club car pictured in '62. The for sale sign was referring to parts not the car. This was prior to the notion of raising the front way up to get better traction.

Here's Dave's roadster (far lane) taking on and getting the drop on that hemi powered A.

Here's the same shot cleaned up a bit, i'm not too sure about this so you get both pics.

Just got these shots from Dave, see his note below. you've just gotta love the clarity of these old B&W's.

The club car in '66.

These photos were taken around 1966/67 and shows the progression the car went
through since it hit the strips in 1961. The car was started in 1957 and
all the work was done by club members who ranged in age from 15 to 18 years
old at the time. In the intervening 10 years the skill level of the members
increased and the car shows it. Notice the altered wheelbase, and chromed
straight front axle. The car was painted candy apple blue and professional
lettering was added to the trunk. There was also a cartoon on the
back of a man trying to hold onto a lawn mower with a hemi power plant. The
parachute was obtained from our friend, Jim Diest.

This last lot added 15.01.01 (look, thats the way we do the dates this side of the pond)

Amazing thing, this internet. The guy that bought the club car, Jerry Bernheimer got in touch after someone told him they'd seen an old drag coupe on a web site somewhere. Well it was his car, on my site. I put him back in touch with Dave and after a while Jerry found these shots of the car. (Plus one of the hemi engine after it ... well you'd better hjust have a look.)

Hmmm.. Messy background with lots of poles and wires...This must be Pomona! Coupe settin low with hood and injectors.

Same shot zoomed in a bit.

Got a bit of oomph that mouse. Jerry hooking up a bit harder than he expected. Mmm.. what I'd give for that grille!

No, no, just a minor surface defect.. We'll have it back running in no time.. Or not.
I think this was the hemi motor.
Thanks for the extra pics, Jerry...Mart.

--oOo--
Thanks for all the pics, Dave, who can resist opening a window into the past.
Mart.

All contents property of Martin Holden, Solihull, England.