Bonneville Speedweek 2007

Were back and feeling good !!!!!. The week we spent in Wendover UT was great!!!! And we came back with a record. Official record: 12-Aug-07 Old Crow Speed Shop V4 BGL 104.365 mph
Do we plan to go faster next time? Of course !!!

A big highlight of the week was hanging out with the Tom Beatty Bellytank
This was the car that inspired the look of the Old Crow.
Looks like Father and son huh?

As you can see in the picture below, our 50 yr. old unopened bottle
of Old Crow bourbon has been opened, consumed, and filled with Bonneville salt.
It will now have have a new home in our shrine to the gods of speed.


But the celebration didn't stop there, oh no.
In true conquering hero fashion, I gotta get a tattoo.
Master tattoo artist Zulu lays out Coop's old Crow

A fitting end to a fantastic week.


To see more pics of our Bonneville week visit Coop's album: Photos here.

And for the best Tattoo artist around, visit: http://www.zulutattoo.com/

Bonneville bound

After fixing all the bugs were ready to hit the salt. If you make it out to Bonneville this year, stop by and say hello.

That's Racing

Well,... After fixing the broken drive shaft in the blower, and rebuilding the waterpump and adjusting all the valves, the old banger decides to blow a head gasket.
No time to locate another one and swap it out before El Mirage today. So there goes our last test run before Bonneville. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to wing it.

Vintage Trailer rally

There is an obscure event that happens every year here in Southern cal.
It's called the Vintage Vacations trailer rally, and I try to make it every year.
It's a great way to spend a day in Orange County, Newport Beach to be exact, which is kinda of the Beverly Hills of Orange County, and normally I would'nt spend much time there, but they do have a really nice RV park in wich to house this fine event.
It's put on every year by an old friend of mine, Craig Dorsry, you can find out more about him and the event here: www.vintage-vacations.com
Here are a few pics, and a link to my photobucket account with a bunch more pics. Enjoy.







More pics here: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bellytank/vintage%20trailers/

The ugly electric fan

If your like me, there's nothing that can ruin a period perfect automobile worse than a "stick out like a thumb" modern piece of equipment on a car that far pre-dates it's modern upgrade. Most car people have their own pet peeves when it comes to this. For some, it's disc brakes, or an alternator instead of a generator, for others it's air conditioning, but for me, it's electric fans. Uugh.

Well,... As you can imagine, when I found myself with no other option but to use and electric fan, due to an engine swap to a much larger motor, I was not very happy.
I was hoping to hide the fan in between the radiator and grill shell, but there just isn't enough room. So my only option was to put the fan on the engine side of the radiator, but in a roadster with no hood or fenders, there's really no hiding it.
So I decided rather than hiding it, I'd dress it up to fit with the time period of everything else around it. I had seen pictures in old Hot Rod magazines of a couple cars that experimented with the use of electric fans on cars in the 50's. Most looked like house fans, and that was the inspiration for the treatment of my modern plastic necessity.

The following is a pictorial. Perhaps it may inspire others to hide their ugly moderness, and keep me delusional as to the decade I'm living in. LoL. Enjoy.

Cut away as much plastic possibly, that is not absolutely necessary.

Find yourself an old table fan with the right diamater screen.

Spray anything showing with old timey wrinkle paint.

Cut off the finger guard of an old 40's or 50's fan, and attach it over your electric fan.

And voila, modern cooling that's easier on the eyes.

Grand national roadster show

Here is a sneak peek at the display Lucky and I put together for the roadster show.
I will post again later with more comprehensive coverage.

The finished product

Well,... the aluminum head fairing has been engine turned, and the paint is applied, and she's lookin good.
My friend Ruben Haute is a designer for Lucky Brand clothing,
but before he did that, he used to paint cars. I called him up and he
came over with some One Shot paint and brushes, and knocked out the logo
and name on the Bellytank.
It came out perfect, and very Old Timey. Here are the pics:

Coop's Old Crow

Thanks to Coop for painting up a logo for the Bellytank.
I really think it captures all the elements of this car.


Here is a quick mock up of what were going to paint on the tank



Some people have asked where the name "Old Crow" came from, so here is the official story. On a trip to Connecticut last year to look at a Sprint car, I stopped into a local antique store, and came across this vintage bar display for Old Crow Whiskey.

Now being a bar owner, I am always looking for cool old bar stuff, and this guy really stuck out. The Old Crow has a simple yet strong aesthetic to it, similar in my opinion to the Western Exterminator man, my favorite promotional character of all time.

So naturally I had to buy him. But the thought had not crossed my mind to name a race car after the old whiskey until I was watching the History channel one night. The show was about the p-51 Mustangs of WWII, and what do I see flying through the beautiful black and white grainyness of 1940's film??? A famous P-51 Mustang called the "Old Crow" !! How cool is that.



So then it hit me, what a perfect blend of Booze, character and WWII aviation. A match made in heaven for an old Bellytank turned race car. After talking to friends about the concept, Coop had a great idea of taking the crow and giving him a Clay Smith cams feel. Clay Smith was a cam maker in the 50's and many a hot rod/race car donned the famous woodpecker logo.

I think Coop gave the Old Crow a lot more life than he originally had.
So there ya have it.

El Mirage last meet of the year

Just when I was getting started,..... the last meet til next May. Well at least I broke a hundred. 105 mph to be exact, and I know I could get a lot more out of her if I had some more test runs. Oh well. I'll have to wait til next year. Will have lot's of time to tinker and fine tune a bunch of stuff this winter.
Here's some pics of the run my buddy Primo took.

A pigs nose ?

In my never ending search for vintage garage wear, I came across some coveralls with a very peculiar slogan: "Wear like a pigs nose". I'm not quite sure what they're trying to say,..?? Do pig's noses never wear out? Does a pigs nose fit really well? Are they saying you should wear it in a certain piggy way? I don't know. But it was funny enough for my blog. Those silly Fink's

Bellytank pops cherry

Positive Ape Index

Old Picture Ala Coop

Thanks to Coop for the old timey reatment to this photo.

El MIrage test run

Here's a link to Coop's blog. Check it out.



http://positiveapeindex.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-day-at-el-mirage.html

Bonneville rained out. Damn.

Damn damn damn.

We have been thrashing for three weeks straight .... living on caffine and little sleep, and we just fired her up for the first time yesterday, got her all tuned and dialed in this morning...... we were ready to hit the salt Tuesday, then I just got the call..... Bonneville is cancelled. Damn !!.
I guess a huge thunderstorm hit last night and dumped enough rain to call the event off.

The Model B is sounding soo good too. We dailed in the boost on the blower, and she sounds real healthy. Blows a beautiful 12 inch blue flame out the header when you let off.... so nice.Well, I guess we'll run her at El Mirage on the 22nd. and look forward to next August.Here are some pics of the motor. Enjoy

Aircraft latches and you.

Aircraft surplus,.... One of the few rewards of the war effort that hot rodders have taken full advantage of in post war peacetime. When you mention the words Hot rod and aircraft surplus, a few images immediately come to mind.... probably the most popular, being the Bomber seat, a favorite of the post war lakes racers as a cheap lightweight seat for their racecars. But let's not forget, the aircraft seatbelts.... Fuel tanks and filters, ....Oxygen tanks converted for water or fuel, and of course my favorite, the Bellytank..... Years of government paid engineers windtunnel testing pollywogs, just to be taken full advantage of by hot rodders seeking land speed records. Ya gotta love it.
But one of my favorite little items I discovered at my local Burbank surplus supply center, is the aircraft latch. Obviously designed to latch a door or panel while staying flush, and not sticking out in the airstream,....exactly what I need for the door of the bellytank. Modern SCTA rules require that the latches for a door must be actuated from the outside as well as the inside, in case of an emergency.

There is a wide variety of interesting latches out there, here is a sampling:


I picked the latch that had the largest open button.


The two buttons sit flush with the skin of the body



In case your wondering how I'm gonna open the door from the inside, I still have to attach a pull tab to the inside under the "Push" button.







If you use your imagination, you can think of all sorts of uses for these latches on a hot rod.