Don Carlton's "Wire Car"

Wire Car

Bob Glidden's 340 W2 Arrow

Roy Hill Arrow

Geez I must have been pretty tired when I wrote that...

I meant to ask how do you guys yank the front tires ON THOSE CARS.


Looks like you figured out what I meant.

The F.A.S.T class is one of the most interesting classes to me. I wish we had the car count up here to do that class.

Rod Shop Colt

I have a friend I met in high school whose father was a drag racer. My friend's name is Steve Christian and his father was Weldon Christian. They are responsible for me contracting the incurable disease "Drag Racing".

Weldon died a few years ago. Steve recently moved back to Tulsa after many years in California. Steve has given me access to some of the photos that he got when Weldon died.

This afternoon I’ll upload some of them, I hope you all find them interesting.

I don’t know much about this first shot other than it appears to have been taken at the old Tulsa North Dragstrip. It was also an airport. I think today its called the North Tulsa Air Park.

I know Weldon had owned a car with the “Red Ram” engine, I assume it is Weldon on the right side of the photo.

Other than the back of the photo being stamped May 3, 1959 I don’t know much about this one. It also appears to be taken at Tulsa North.

I don’t remember hearing of Weldon having a 59 Plymouth, but I am sure it had the biggest engine available at the time. What would that have been?

This is Weldon’s 63 Max Wedge. Another North Tulsa shot. You will notice it says "Tex Weldon" on the door. Weldon's mother in law did not approve of his racing so he often raced under the Tex Weldon name as to not get his name in the paper.

When this car was retired the 426 was replaced with a 383 and Steve drove it on the street. The car was later traded to a guy named Jim Nelson for a white 63 aluminum car.

I purchased the red 63 in this picture and replaced the 383 with a 440 out of a wrecked 69 R/T that had 900 miles on it. I sold the car to Darrell Sweet who worked for Don Grotheer.

Darrell sold it his brother who traded it in on a Ford Falcon (what a disgrace). No one knows what happened to the car after than. It would be fun to locate it. I have the VIN.

It’s obvious where this one was taken. I don’t know who is in the Savoy sedan in the other lane. There should be a lot of you very wise fellows (it comes with age), that should remember this track.

This is Weldon’s 64 Max Wedge Aluminum Car racing Weldon’s arch nemesis (and good friend) Burl Daniels in his Thunderbolt. Notice with wisps of smoke off the rear tires. Probably M&H or Casler recaps. Weldon could beat Burl more often than not.

Another of the 64 Car…

Weldon’s next race car was a 1966 Street Hemi. This car was a “sound deadener and undercoating delete” car. You could tap on the roof and it sounded like a tin can. Weldon was willing to go with the extra twelve pounds (I think) and get the much better looking and more aerodynamic hard top. I have yet to find any shots of this car in stock trim on the drag strip but here is a drive way shot. Last I heard this car was in Missouri.

By this time Steve was driving the car a lot of the time.

The 66 car shown was later converted to a C/G car. This was one of the most fun racecars I have ever got to be around. With the injector stacks it looked cool and it was way different from the small block Chevys that ever one else ran. It was extremely low maintenance. About all we ever had to do was change the one pill in the fuel injection. The fuel injection was completely engineered by Chrysler with Hilborn and ran great right out of the box. This was a lot easier than changing all the jets and metering rods in the two AFBs that the injection replaced.

The car was quite successful in C Gas even though it was a tank. You all know how heavy those cars were to begin with but this one had to have ballast to get it to the 3,834 to make class (I think it was 9 pounds per cubic inch).

The only other modifications was a change to the stock (for 65) 12 to one pistons and ten inch tires (had to run seven inch tires in stock).

Another thing was that the car was intimidating. If I remember correctly the small block Chevy cars would run about 112 to 115 mph on the top end. The Hemi would run around 125mph. So even if the Chevy won (and that did not happen real often), the Hemi car would be closing on them so hard and go by so fast, they would think they won by the grace of God.

This shot was taken at what was Southwest Raceway, now Tulsa Raceway Park. If the guy in the other lane was not any further ahead at this point he was toast.

Here is another shot of the C/G car.

It looks like he is running Roy Gay in a time trial.

The next car was a 67 440 GTX that was run in SS/EA. This cars claim to fame is that it beat John Hagan in his beautiful 68 Barracuda to win a Division 5 points race.

Neutral starts were banned soon after this race.


Only a pit shot of this one.

When Don Grotheer got his 68 Hemi Cuda he sold this car to Weldon. They ran it as a four speed for a while then later as an automatic. If I had a nickel for every hour I spent with a Dremel grinder “slick shifting” transmission gears and sliders I could buy one these cars at Barrett Jackson today!

I am not sure what happened to this car, but I think it may have been sold to Jim Hale.