Hi David,
Welcome to this fun group. I had forgotten about your PS racing experience until I read info in this and the Joe Pappas threads! I have some really fond memories of Ronnie. Your brother Ronnie and his original racing partner Buddy Martin were very nice and gracious fellows. In 1980 I got a wild hair to move to North Carolina and bring my Hemi Colt to do some Pro Stock and B/FX racing. Being a young guy (23 years old) from Utah, I didn’t realize how much racing there really was in the South. NC had *one* NHRA sanctioned drag strip, yet after I arrived there I found that every little town seemed to have an 1/8th mile drag strip close by, just as I had hoped.
As part of my trip to NC, I stopped at the Rod Shop in Ohio to resolve some dry sump oil pan issues as I prepared to attend the IHRA Winternationals, and I enjoyed a couple of days there just getting to know Jim Thompson and Bruce Meihls. Then I proceeded to Lenoir, NC to drop off some of my belongings at Clyde Hodges shop before heading down to SC.
I’ll never forget the excitement of the day as I entered the pits at Darlington with my recently purchased (used) D600 transporter truck and my Hemi Colt inside. I knew that I really didn’t have the motor I needed to race in IHRA PS as I still had my 406 Hemi in it, but hoped to get some quick experience and maybe do some local match racing.
My first task was to find a parking spot in the pits, and I finally found a spot next to Carlton Phillips and Ricky Smith (who I met the night before at Clyde’s shop). I was quite surprised to see another Hemi Colt in the pits across the paved lane, one painted brown with El Toro painted on the side.
As I unloaded the car, I realized that I really needed some help, as it was going to be kind of rough dong this as a one man band. A couple of local teens were hanging around, so I enlisted their help with some of the more mundane things such as making sure the tires were in the water for burnouts, etc. I made my way over to tech inspection, and the car passed without any problems. Since PS qualifying would not be for a few hours, I decided to wander around and see who was in attendance. One of my first stops was at the S&M pit, and I boldly walked up to Buddy and introduced myself. He treated me like a long-time friend, and called Ronnie over a few minutes later to introduce us. As with Buddy, Ronnie treated me like a long lost buddy, even though I had one of those “Western” accents. They both were surprised that I had traveled to NC alone, and didn’t really have anyone for support. They both expressed that if I needed anything I should let them know as they were more than willing to lend any assistance needed. At the time it seemed weird that they were so willing to “take me under their wing” but I later realized that I probably had the deer in the headlights look being at my first national event, alone, and also having just moved to a new place to live and race. Good Lord, what was I thinking?<laughing at myself>
When PS qualifying was called, I went out and made a pretty good run, considering I really didn’t have enough cubic inches to do the job. However, my 8.70 at 159 paled when you saw that most of them were running in the low 8’s. I returned to the pits and removed about 200 lbs of ballast carried for NHRA racing, and returned for a second qualifying pass later that day. The car felt better, and some jetting changes had cleaned up the mixture. However, as I got to the top of third gear and pulled the Lenco shift lever, it didn’t shift and I had to shut it down as the tach was climbing well past the 9200 rpm shift point.
Ronnie came over and asked what kind of problem I was having, and offered to help check to see what was wrong with the trans. We played around with it for a few minutes and decided nothing was broken as far as gears or such, but he thought that I may have broken one of the shift forks or the roller plate they work with. He offered to get his crew to help tear it apart if I wanted to take it out, but I could already see that I wasn’t’ going to qualify as the bump spot was down in the 8.40’s already after only two sessions. Ronnie tried to talk me into staying, but I decided to head back to Clyde’s shop to tear the trans apart (never even had one apart before this!) and see if I could fix it. So ended my Winternationals experience.
BTW, if you go to the
www.hemicolt.com web site, there is a picture of me at Darlington.
Quote:
THANKS FRITO! I'LL TRY TO THROW SOME STORIES IN AS THEY FIT THE SUBJECT MATTER.SO MANY GREAT STORIES WITH BIG BROTHER THAT I WOULDN'T KNOW WHERE TO START! BUT I'LL COME UP WITH SOME. DAVID.
