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Fred Tucker drove this 100" dirt champ in the 80's.

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

This car started out as the 1980 Jack Rich coil over car. It was probably the most prettest 100" car that I ever saw. Pat bought this car through J&A Automotive as they were the local JR dealer. We took it to John McDades house and he assemblied it there. It was painted Pearl White with Burgundy trim and was sponsored by Nichols Casing Co. and of course Suchy's Automotive. Dale Reed was the original driver. We had alot of problems getting it to work so B&T put torsion on the rear first and after a while B&T put torsion on the front, Mike Peters drove it a couple of times at the big Tulsa fairgrounds track with John Ewell finishing the last 4-5 races of 1980. We had ordered a new JR 4-bar for 1981 and sold this car to Fred.

That photo has been on the site since the beginning or at last the very early days when J.D. Porter sent me an envelope full of photos and that was one of them. It always bug me that out of all the thousands of visitors since 2000 no one identified the car. It's not the kind of car that should have been forgotten.

I believe from the user id it may have been Fred himself. I have sent an e-mail to him. I believe we may have narrowed down that Fred was the last person who had the blue #55 sedan that was owned by Kenny Riffel and driven by Frankie Lies and Roy Bryant.

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

That's a good deal, did not know who the guy was , I probably got some other photos of the car, he just came to Lawton that night and I took some pics of him, don't remember to much about him.

Did he race very long?

I thought the car was a Barnett chassis with the back braces only going about 3/4 up the cage, I know Bert Woodring had a Jack Rich 100" car back in the Champ Dirt and Super Modified days of the 80's out of OKC and his went all the way up to the top of the cage and was a one piece design with the roll cage, other pics on Warren's site like Bob Waller from Tulsa as well as Danny Shouse from OKC in the Corvette Center car has the same style cage on it as Mr. Tucker's car and Waller and Shouse's car were Barnett frames ,Jerry Barnett and Bob Ewell built them down in front of the Devil's Bowl Speedway in Dallas, But it makes sense now could have been something Barnett copied off of Jack Rich as both were out in Phoenix,Arizona building cars and Barnett left Stanton to do hi s own deal in Dallas and that could be where Barnett came up with the design.

The car that Burt had was our last JR car we ran it in '83'84&some in '85 it was a newer design. All of the '80-'81 JR had the shorter down bars Tommy Estes,Charles Jarvis&Mike Huges all had the earlier JR 4-bars in '82 JR started building the newer style cage.

That's interesting , I can tell you this Bert Woodring definately tested that JR car a bunch , landed it in the trees on the back stretch at Tulsa Speedway in the late 80's one Sat. night as well as just about knocked every Bumper and Nerf bar boss on the car off at one time or another , Bert put that frame through it paces. The shorter design is exactly like Barnett did his cars in the early to mid 80's.

Yes your right Burt did test it out alot but that chassis was stout Howard the Duck crashed it bad at the '83 USAC/NCRA race and we took it over to B&T and did a major rework, ran it a couple more times then took it to J&A for more rework, in the end that frame had gained 60# in bracing etc. which is part of the reason Burt was able to survive all of that testing. This car has some of my fondest racing memories. When we got this car it was the same cage design as the '82 JR cars but ever thing else was differant when we were done it was a duplicate to the '82 JR car but it was alot stiffer with all of that added bracing. We let Howard the Duck go in the middle of '84 and hired Shorty to drive it and he won the first time in it. Shorty ran about 20 races the last 1/2 of '84 winning about 1/2 and running in the top 5 the rest of the time. MP also drove it a couple of times when Shorty was out of town and won a couple of races it it. In '85 we started the season with this car then switched over to the Gambler car which most people don't realize was built alot off the imput from this JR car.

You mean the Gambler was built at CK Spurlocks shop with the JR car in mind?

The very first Gambler champ car we had used alot of the tube heights&motor heights,angles and pick-up points that where off our JR car, one thing that was neat was they were able to achieve the same chassis stiffness with alot less weight. They were also far ahead in clutch design and this car had the first hydraulic ram clutch set-up. The same front motor plate would work in either car, back in those days most builders had differant front and rear plates. As far as I know this first Gambler was a kind off special breed as it had x braces like the JR car instead of v braces like there later champ cars. I can tell you this it was light 1430# wet with no fuel. Our JR car was 1520# wet with  no fuel. We were fast right out of the box set-up's were almost idenical as with the JR car. I don't have the exact figures but I'm sure Shorty does but this car won something like 30 out of 40 times it touched the track. We would run those 50 lap NCRA's and Shorty was so fresh he could run another 50 laps. In my opioion the JR car was better on the rough rutty tracks, the Gambler was faster on dry slicks & they were even on the tacky tracks. The second Gambler car had a better record but that is another story.

Kind of like a 98 Stealth I have and a 2000 Maxim I measured tube heights , offsets ,pickup points and all were the same , not even and 1/8" difference, thought that was pretty wild, Although the Stealth was a Non Down Tube and the Maxim was a Downtube and both were within 9lbs. of each other with the Maxim weighing the 9lbs. more, I would have liked to have weighed that Frame you have Brian that you got from me, would like to have known what it weighed back then bare, total car wet with driver at SFS back in the early 90's was 1650lbs.

Don't think it would have been light at all. the tubing has a rather thick wall, sometimes wonder if it was DOM(late model tubing). In those days 4130 at retail was around 6-7 dollars a foot. If it was McClelland who built it I'm sure the customer was trying to get the best deal he could and I'm sure McClelland did too.

I talked to Mike last winter about the car at the Chili Bowl , it was 4130 tubing and .120 thick , that is why I would have liked to have weighed it, it seemed to weigh a ton when I would go get it blasted and painted as I remember, also found out the car had a mate built by it as McClelland built 2 and both were for Bob McCutcheon up in Tulsa and he had 2 cars and then eventually sold one of them and not sure how Larry C. wound up with it. Mike said he built them with the thicker tubing as McCutcheon wanted them that way, said the Gary Tapp crash into the pit area at Tulsa made him want a safer car according to Mike and was also told the other car built was junked at Caney Ks. show and never fixed and is probably scrap now.

.120 seems right. So Court Grandstaff never owned this car?

Tapp was in a 410 sprinter when he went out the last time wasn't he? I do know that Tapps last wreck was after you bought this car. The night we came through from Kansas they were still running Champ dirt cars and Ewell was looking over your purchase. This was Sept.'87.

Just going off of what Mike told me , Carter just told me that Court use to own it, that could not be right,You just can't tell without knowing for sure, Heck don't remember when Tapp got hurt, just remember he went into the pit area off of 3 at Tulsa Speedway , but Mike just told me that McCutchen had the cars built with thicker tubing because of the accident to Tapp, He may have mistaken another accident and got his accidents mixed up or ?, I am not sure,but he said it caused the request for thicker tubing.

Well the tubing is .120. It struck me odd it to be so thick but then it makes sense. Nothing a little horsepower and scrappy driving couldn't overcome. Seems to me the Gambler frames of the time were 180# and they were probably .095 wall(?). I would guess within a few pounds of 220 on this frame. Hard to say as every time I loaded it I always raised one end before the other. Bare frame didn't strike me much different than that aluminum sprinter without an engine Nance had that one time. If you'll recall we were lifting the front end and he was watching us like a mother hawk!lol

Of course I had already made him a little concerned when I took pictures all over his shop.

Gary was in a 410 sprint car when he was hurt so badly, but Gary also crashed some 100" cars pretty good. I know ORA and NCRA used to have a .120 cage rule in 100" cars in '70's and early '80's. That 1st Gambler we had weighed 162# bare frame it was thin every where but the cage which was .095 but the lower rails and uprights were .065 and the top rail from cage forward was .083. The '82 JR car weighed 165# it was alot like the Gambler thin every where. Emmitt really busted his ass in this car at OKC and it held up well frame wise. The '83 JR car weighed a little more when we started with it but it was goofy and moved around alot which led to all of the extra bracing it wound up at 225# in final bare form.

Did Matt Mercer run a Gambler in the Champ Dirt cars in the 80's and it was suppose to be a trick light weight deal back then , just heard that at one time, wondered if it was so who wound up with that car?, I know the one Billy Turner had in 87-88 went to Gene Whitaker in OKC and ran it several years and then Jack Claxton bought the car and Tommy Holder ran that Gambler till the end of the 100" cars at OKC and now I believe it is in Fairview,Ok. resting at Paul Martens shop,lol.

The color and the final resting place for Turner's car seem right. No 2x4 found in the radiator tray though!LOL

Hey those 2 x 4's make a good addition to those Radiator trays , soaks up the water from the Radiator overflow on those ol 100" cars ,LOL

That Nance frame was titanium not aluminium. That frame is alive and well and restored in Wichita.

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes