Race Car Stuff

I have been following this build log for some time now. The car is an awesome marrying of a ‘65 Mustang and a 2003 Mustang Cobra. The methods they have chosen are very labor intensive, and the work is phenomenal. The car is not complete yet, but it is taking shape nicely. The work is beautiful, and they have done a great job. Go have a look!!!!

According to this article:

UPS: Driving cost savings by eliminating left-hand turns

UPS is trying to eleminate left hand turns in their routes. This it not a big deal, but I wonder how that will be used in their NASCAR promotion… Especially since Dale Jarrett is going to race the trucks and his old cars are going to be used for delivery. Ever watched a Martinsville chassis Cup car try to turn right?

:-)

Cotton Owens was a good driver in the early days of NASCAR, but he is best known for being a star as a car owner during the golden days of the ’50’s, ’60’s and ’70’s. He was the owner of the car David Pearson piloted to the NASCAR Grand National championship in 1966 and more notably for putting Buddy Baker in the Daytona Charger that became the first car to break the 200 MPH barrier in a NASCAR car at Talladega.

This web site is definately something worth reading.

http://www.cottonowens.com

In my recent links column, you will find a link to the ebay aution of the car that accomplished this.

My friend Dale is going to start down the path of building a Locost 7. For those of you who don’t know what a Locost is, they are basically inexpensive, homebuilt Lotus Super Seven replicas. I am sure I am going to link often to Dale’s site during this process. I know Dale’s personality well enough that for him to complete the project without losing interest, he has to use the KISS principle. So he is going to build a simple basica car, with the possibility of upgrading it as he goes along.

Dale is not building it with any racing rules in mind, but I am sure he intends to take the car to some autocrosses and track schools.

Here is the link to his build log. I am sure you will see updates here as well.

http://everysky.com/category/hobbies/cars/locost/

I was looking through my web stats on this site, and I happened to notice that several people had found this site by searching for Sonny Hutchins. This seemed sort of strange to me. I happen to have spent most of my life as a fan of Sonny Hutchins, but he has been out of racing for about 15 years, and I am sure that many of today’s NASCAR fans are not familiar with him.

Anyway after my own web searches were done, I found that Sonny had passed away this past Monday. This was very sad to hear, but it brought back many fond memories of going to Langley Speedway and seeing him, Ray Hedrick, and Butch Lindley battling along with other occasional guests of Morgan Shepard, Darrel Waltrip, Geoff Bodine, and others. Sonny was the bad guy, the aggressive driver, while Ray Hendrick and Butch Lindley were the ones wearing white hats. Some of their battles were literally amazing.

Sonny was usually the guy with Emanuel Zervakis’ name across the back of his car at that time. In the earlier years I remember him driving a Modified when Langley was a dirt track. At that time the Wood Brothers fielded his car. This was my first time at a racetrack, and Sonny was the winner that day.

Sonny ran in the big leagues of NASCAR (called Grand National at the time) for Emanuel and Junie Donlavey. I think he got a couple of second place finishes for Junie, and they did very well at the Daytona about 1965 or so. He was known as a dirty racer. He was called this by the likes of Darrel Waltrip, Ned Jarrett, and even the driver most know for being a “dirty driver” Dale Earnhardt. The current “Mister Excitement”, Jimmy Spencer says he learned everything he knows from Sonny Hutchins.

I met him personally after several races at Langley. He just didn’t look like the typical aggressive racecar driver. He wore very thick glasses and just seemed like the guy running the family restaurant down at the corner, which was his life away from the racetrack. He was always low key, with nice words for my Mother as she asked him things about the car that seemed to surprise him coming from a woman fan. But he took time, without giving out secrets.

Some of his battles were well known for their continuation after the race. Usually Sonny had been…. shall we say aggressive on the track and there was a dispute that continued after the track. The racing world was a different place back then. Tony Stewart’s actions of a few years ago that got him probation, fines, and mandatory anger management, would not have even been noticed in the paddock on a typical Saturday night after a race at Southside Speedway. There were no media consultants, very little television coverage, but there were plenty of people in the grandstands that were very loyal to their drivers.

There are many others articles that those web searches are going to find about Sonny Hutchins that are going to have many more details of his career, but none of those will give justice to the many nights I saw him and Butch Lindley leaning on each other lap after lap. There is something about the skill of the guys from that era that just doesn’t translate into racing today with wind tunnels, data collection software, and in car video. It was a magic time that will only exist in the memories of people from that era. Sonny was one of the highlights I am glad to be able to remember. So I really want to celebrate his life through my memories, I just wish I could flush my memories into a video clip of a few laps from one of the Hampton Chevrolet races at Langley. Everyone reading this would appreciate it.

The Joy Fund is a local Christmas charity run by the Virginian Pilot newspaper here in southeast Virginia, that gives Christmas gifts to less fortunate children. Back in the early 70’s the Joy Fund Autocross was an event put on each year by the Beach Ford Mustang Club. The club was one of the original Mustang clubs promoted by Ford back when the Mustang was introduced. The club has changed, and is currently called the Mustang Club of Tidewater, with a different dealer as their sponsor and a different mission. They don’t sponsor autocrosses anymore. Since there is still a need Tidewater Sports Car Club today holds the Joy Fund Autocross these days.

For 2005, the Joy Fund event was held this past Sunday. Again my Mother and myself decided to take our old Shelby GT350 to the event again. This is sort of a special happening since the first time we ever saw this car was when the previous owner, Lee Mathias brought it to one of the first Joy Fund events. Since then the car has seen many Joy Fund events.

The weather was beautiful for a mid November day at the Navy hovercraft-landing pad in Virginia Beach. It is one of the nicest autocross sites that exist, on a perfect day. The entry is large (especially considering there is also an event at nearby Virginia Motorsports Park), the course is fantastic, and this particular event makes you feel good by helping out some less fortunate children.

The event was fairly uneventful. It was the first time Bill Brochu had been to a local event in a while. There were very few timing problems all day long. TSCC has had the fortune of having a complete timing system designed by one of their members, Pete Widas. It has gone through revisions and is still in an infancy stage, but it is far superior to all systems commercially available. Keep an eye out for ads for an autocross timing system developed by Pete and TSCC entrants. A system this good can’t be kept a secret.

When it came to our runs, Mom is still rusty after a couple of years of not autocrossing. She plans to fix that in the future. Her runs are a little slow, but she loves every minute of autocrossing. At 66 years young, Mom can still hold her own against many autocrossers half her age, but she is used to being one of the local hotshoes. Give her a little time to get back in practice and I am sure she will be back in top form.

I too have been out of practice for some time as well. Each event I have been feeling a little better and closer to the mark, but I still feel like I was not driving like my old self. My first run, I spun the Shelby again, just like the last event. I realize this was just I not knowing this car like I used to. My second run I felt like there were brief sections of the course where I was driving properly. I also re-learned a little about driving the car. The second run was several seconds better than the first with a time of 57.997, position 3rd out of 7 in class. The third run I focused on doing what I had been doing right. I remembered this car was a great deal of work to drive well. I had spent too much time autocrossing late model Mustangs, and lightweight cars with quick steering. Early Mustangs take arm strength and fast wheel motion to be quick with the car. They are different driving cars than almost anything else you will encounter. This time I managed to make the car do what I wanted it to do. The time was 56.246 good for first in class (at this point).

There is one more run, but my daughter, Shelby arrived at the event. She is showing interest in both the Shelby and autocrossing. She is about a year and a half from a driver’s license, so I took my last run with her in the car. She loved the run and I was still a few tenths of a second faster with a 56.072, but a run with a passenger does not count, so my third run was the best. After the last two runs several people came up to me and said that run looked like the Calvin of old days. I felt like I could drive the car again. I know I still left time on the table, but there is a next time. When I was in college, this car was my daily driver. Isn’t that hard to imagine today? But I knew every little quirk about this car.

During the last heat Bill Brochu ran faster than me, relegating me to a final second place. I was still very pleased. The only disappointment of the day was the fact that Bobby Duncan had only made two of his four runs before he broke a rocker arm stud. Bobby runs a modernized 65 Mustang Fastback which I thought would be a good benchmark of how well I was doing. I was faster than Bobby, but I am sure he would have been quicker with two more runs.

It was a great day that was enhanced with the attendance of my daughters Shelby and Rachel. TSCC donated about $2565 to the Christmas Joy Fund, which will go a long way towards making Christmas better for many local kids. Thanks to everyone involved. Here are some so-so pictures I took and some great pictures by others at the event.

My pictures from the Joy Fund Event

Mike Morgan’s photos

stowaway.us photo gallery, including some excelent pictures of the Shelby

My friend Tom Stangler recently had a fuel pump fail in his 86 Mustang at a track event. He got a replacement fuel pump, but it took him several of hours lost of track time to drop the fuel tank and replace the fuel pump and reinstall the tank.

Several other cars modern fuel injected cars have the same design as a Mustang with the fuel pump installation. For whatever reason fuel pumps seem to fail somewhat often at track events. Tom came up with a simple solution that made this job a simple task. He made a simple access panel. Simple solution, but Tom did his usual clean and tidy job. Check it out:

Tom Stangler’s fuel pump replacement access panel

Ok, so everyone that reads racecarstuff.com needs to go out and get everyone they know to read this site, and those people get everyone they know, and so on, an so on….. Be sure to read all the ads, and buy all their products and I will then place my order… Until then I am just going to watch the factory tour and dream.

The new Ford GT is the single car I have been most excited about since….. well the original Ford GT 40’s were produced. I really need one of these cars. Here is a tour of the factory assembly process. This is how one of the big three US car companies convert their processes from producing hundreds of thousands of cars for the masses, to building limited production super cars. It is a great insite into that process.

The Ford GT Factory Tour I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I did.