Bonneville Speedweek 2011 new motor

Well after a solid few months of work from myself, Max jr. and sr. at H and H Antique, and Logan Davis and Chuck at their new shop "Vintage Performance Automotive", I am happy to report that the new banger is finally together and running in the Bellytank. All test fired and broken in, she's ready to hit the salt. We loaded her in the trailer yesterday and we head out on Wed. Were still running 3 of Clives new Stromberg 97's and the Gemsa overhead cam head, but everything underneath is brand new..... Stronger, lighter etc.
Were hoping for speeds in the 160 + range. Wish us luck !!
Here's a short video:

Bonneville Speedweek 2010. "4 banger carnage"

It was not a good Speedweek for the old Henry Ford 4 cyl. The Banger Gods were not shining their blessings down upon us. We'll not all of us anyway.
The Old Crow took off like a rocket on her first run and hit 165 mph at the first mile, but it appears the stock cast iron bellhousing couldn't take the torque and decided to desecrate instead. We tried to fix it, but the shrapnel took out too many parts. Here's a pic:


The So-What racing team had it worse than us. Also on their very first run, and not even to the 1 mile, this happened:


Yes, that is,.. or was... A Winfield head. Bummer huh?

Speaking if heads,.. The Vaughan Quick & Easy team didn't have much luck keeping their head together either:

Let's hope they brought a spare, I hear the motor is fine.

I also heard that the R2 racing team of Richard Reed has 2 rods hanging out the side of their block, but I couldn't find them to take a picture. Anybody got one?

Well. That's all the news that fit to print.

The old crow in the Sacramento Antique Auto museum. I get her back in a couple weeks and then it's a mad thrash to get ready for Bonneville

Mobile photo

Old Crow

Bonneville Speedweek 2009

It was a wonderful year. My buddy Ryan popped his Salt cherry and wrote a wonderful blog about it. Here is a link, check it out:

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=5827

The Redbull air races San Diego 2009

Thanks to Red Bull, I got the VIP treatment this year at the San Diego air races, and I must say, it was one of the most fantastic racing events I have ever been to, (Next to Bonneville of course.)

 The weather was fantastic, the planes were in your face, and the red bull was flowing.  Good times.   I highly recommend this event to anyone.  Try and make it out sometime.  Enjoy the pics.

 

Pinewood Derby for grownups

   A few of us Car Guys have started a once a month Pinewood Derby event at our local bar, the Bigfoot Lodge. It's the last Tues. of every month if anybody in the Los Angeles area is interested. 21 and older of course.

Check out the pics taken by photographer Ken Scott: http://www.kenscottphoto.com/Derby/ 

Here is the latest bonneville project. It's basically a 1930's Indy car but we will be running it in the VOT class. Stands for "vintage oval track"

At Stinkers in silverlake

Happy at pattys

Mobile photo

I drove a 1955 isetta today. A lot fun and turns more heads than a pink testarossa. But nooo power

Speedweek 2008. We did it again.

What a fantastic year. The salt was in perfect condition and our new motor ran fantastic.
Please follow the link below to see the full story written by my friend Kiwi Kevin:

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=289292

Old Crow goes to Bonneville again

Well.... While the Old Crow Bellytank was on Vacation in Amsterdam, I started building a new Model B 4 banger for the 2008 Speedweek at the Bonneville salt flats. This time a flathead, instead if the overhead cam conversion we ran last year. But this isn't your average banger,..... I decided to try running a reverse induction cam. So instead of the intake sharing two siamese ports, each combustion chamber has it's own port. In theory it should pack a little bit more fuel in than the stock configuration. We'll see how she runs on the salt.
The engine machine work was done by H and H Flatheads.
I went out to El Mirage last week to do a few test runs, and she was running great, until the C4 transmission ripped out all six of the ring gear bolts from the back of the crank. Not good. But Max at H and H came through and fixed the crank in 2 days. She's back in the car with a new 1940 Ford side shift trans, and were ready to go. I'll give you all an update after we get back from Bonnevile. Wish us luck.

The Tommy Hilfiger experience

At the end of October, as world finals came to an end, we were feeling a little down after having killed a piston and missing our chance at the blown fuel record.



As we were collecting or equipment and getting ready for the long drive home, we were suddenly faced with an entirely different option.



A location scout by the name of Todd knopke approached us to let us know that Tommy Hilfiger really like our car and would like to know if we would be interested in staying an extra week to be a part of the photo shoot for their upcoming Spring Summer line. That's Todd on the left.


Hmmmmmm.. That one really threw me for a loop. After some discussion with my pit crew (aka Fiance and friends) it was decided that it sounded like fun and that we were in.



As we discussed the shoot more with the company it turned out that they were still looking for 2 more vehicles of similar appearance, so I let them know that I had one more old race car back at the shop. Bill Burke's original racecar:



and that we could build them another car from an old tank I had hanging from the ceiling.



They liked that idea, so I flew home and my buddy Logan Davis slapped a rolling lakester together in 2 days, and our friend Jerry shot the paint. The color has picked by the art department, not me. haha
And we headed back out to Bonneville with the 2 extra cars.





The 3 day photo shoot went great.




I got to drive the Crow while they shot some video. Here is the You tube:



Here is some of the finished product. Keep an eye out for billboards and magazine ads






While I was there, they asked if I would be interested in bringing the car out to Amsterdam for their runway show. Sounds good to me, I said.
But first we had get all this stuff back home.

On the way home from Bonneville Drew and I stopped by the "old sign graveyard"




and then shot machine guns at the local shooting range.

I think the oversized grin on Drews face pretty much says it all. hahaha

I was excited about the Amsterdam offer, and proposed that Myself, my fiance Carol and my friend Drew be flown over to help with the logistics.
However, shipping a car over to Europe is no easy task as I soon learned over the following few months. By the time we had finished all the details on negotiations with the rental of the car, it was too late to ship out of Los Angeles, so instead the car had to be trucked to New York and put on a container there and shipped to Antwerp, Belgium. Shipping out of New York shaves off about a month of travel time across the ocean.
But once we knew the car was safely in it's container and on the open ocean, the three of us hopped on a Swiss air flight to Amsterdam.

Here is the view from our hotel room



Luckily I had a friend in Belgium.

Hans, seen here in the photo is a vintage motorcycle collector and he helped me get the car from the shipping company in Antwerp.





We transfer it to the Hilfiger showroom in Amsterdam. About a three hour drive.



Once we arrived at the Hilfiger showroom, the front window of the building had to be removed and a crane helped pickup the car from the trailer and hoisted it into the showroom where it will live for the next month. It was quite a production.








We were in Amsterdam for 2 weeks and had a nice time except for the freezing wind and rain that greeted us everyday. (Note to self,..don't go to Europe in the winter)
We drank loads of Belgium beer and met some great people. As illustrated in the following pictures.






All in all it was an wonderfully interesting experience and all thanks to the crazy world of Hot rodding, land speed racing and the fashion industry.

To view more pics of our adventure, follow this link:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bellytank/hilfiger%20story/