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On a Friday night in August in 1975 Bill Humphriy and I meet Mike, Norman and the rest of the gang at Dewey. They had dropped the modified class and we had to run with the Supers. Larry Coleman was driving the 17 that night and Sunday afternoon in Fayettville AR. Norman wanted to try and get James Warren into the top 10 in the modifieds at Tulsa. The evening started bad when the engine in Gene's locked up in the heat races. It only got worse in the feature, Larry was in a wreck, he blew a tire and tore a nerf bar off. Mike flipped, but did not do very much damage. All of the cars came back on the wrecker and we had to get the ready to race the next night. We went straight to Bill's shop and pulled Gene's engine. We could not find any cause for it to lock up, no holes in the block, no metal in the oil filter. Finally some one noticed that the bolt that held the starter ring to the fly wheel broke, the head of it wedged between the flywheel and block. Since Norman ran crowerglide clutches this was enough to lock the engine up. I was the first one there the next morning and got the 71 and 17 unloaded. We got every thing straighted out on those two and put the engine back in the 117. Norman got to thinking that each car had the same equipment, maybe we should check the flywheel on Mike's car. Sure enough it had two broken fly wheel bolts. we pulled the engine and replaced all the bolts. We got to the Tulsa speedway and did not expect much after the previous night. Man we were wrong. JamesWarren won his heat in the17, Gene won the next heat with a record time. Mike ran 3rd in his heat, so he made the feature but not the trophy dash. James won the dash over Gene with a record time. James took the lead in the feature on the fifth lap, Gene passed him on the last lap for the win and Mike took third on the last lap. Boy were we happy a 1,2,3 finish. The next day in Fayetteville Mike won the 50 lap feature Running with the supers. I remember Shane spinning out in turn one and landing in some blackberry bushs, more about that day later.

Ray

Bkcr,

I never knew that you guys had so much trouble with those Fords, of course any of those 3 cars was run hard! I know that the flywheel was an issue because of the deal with Curtis & Jarvis, I don't remember Wilson or Bodine saying they had alot of problems but I can assure you a 6 cyl. chevy. was like playing with a bomb at the Big Tulsa Track.

MP was good back then and I always thought alot of Davey Moore. I wonder what happened to him? In about '79 or '80 he walked into the old mans shop and told us who he was (we already knew) and told us he had broken down in his car and wanted to know if we could help him out, I don't remember exactly what was wrong (fuel pump I think) but we fixed him up he didn't have much money on him and couldn't pay the bill so Pat loaned him $50.00 to make sure he got home. Probably a month later we were at 81 SPDY and he came up and gave the old man cash money and thanked him. That's more then I could say for some people he helped.

I've been forunate in my years of racing I've had alot "TONS" of help from to many people to name in here. One of these days I might post there names here.

My good friend Stan Constant emailed me Sunday says things are slow at the lake, I just might go fishing with him next week, he is and always has been a thrill to be around racing or fishing and sometimes just having coffee!!!!

Jim, know about that inventory, did mine over Holidays fortuntly most of it was close.

Brian, Will get around to another wing valve story shortly!!!

When Norman passed away about 3 years ago. David Moore called Norman's widow and had a real nice conversation with her. I thought that was great, when David quit driving for Norman there were some hurt feelings. David has his own auto repair shop in Wichita.

Ray

"tossed all his pictures & trophies!"

When I was working on the website on a daily basis, I don't know if I can count the number of e-mails about photos being trashed after someone passed away, divorces, fire, or floods etc.

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

Found this from Danley Clow's site some time ago. Imagine being a young man , having a girlfriend like her, who's dad owns a car like this!

This may have been posted before.

Mike Monatoboy added color to this familiar advertisement-

Brian,

I need you to email this poster to me, Jerry would like it with the color!!

I might be wrong but I think the Cate's car was sold to Jeff Sikes at a later date, and it was the car he drove until buying DP's car, if my memory serve's me right Darrell Tuttle was the mechanic on this car.

This ever happen to anybody?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPZtspRAm0&feature=channel_page

That is Debbie Cates, Raymond's daughter.The car had a sign painted on it "Deb's Doll' That car was new in 1968 with Al Lemons driving. I had heard that it was Built by Dennie Moore using Edmond's blue prints, I also heard that it was a real Edmond's, who knows? In 1969 that was the car that Leep won the Tulsa championship with. It had a 289 inch Ford engine. They had a Walker car with a chevy for the Ok City and 81 championships. Harold and Raymond always argued about which one was the fastest. Raymond said the ford was and Harold said that the chevy was. It didn't really matter, Harold won almost everything in 1969. I think that Jeff Sikes wound up with the Moore car and Charlie Wells with the Walker. Melvin Jernigan bought the ford engine from Raymond and used it in 2 or 3 cars. Ray Crawford won a feature at Tulsa driving for Melvin with the ford engine.

Ray

Ray,

I believe your right about Jeff having this car. However I was wrong in my earlier post about this being the car he drove until he bought the Parson car, he traded this car the duece into Dale on Dale's personal house car but he was injured in the Jelly car that Leep drove for Madden in '73, I remember he came over to the old man at Lawton at the spring NCRA race looking for a QC gear, the Jelly car had a 4.11 R/P and as low a gear he could get then was 7.12, most of us were running 7.59's to 8.00's at Lawton in those days, I can remember Moss running 8.26&8.42 there alot on the heavy tracks. Anyway Jeff was hurt in the Jelly he had bought it from Shane's brother Scott painted it white and #99, when he crashed this car I believe it broke his leg and beat him up pretty good, he bought the Parson car and lost his life in it the next week when he crashed bad in turn 1&2, a few people bad mouthed Parson after this crash but when Dale got the car back it wasn't hurt bad at all, needed a shock tower on the front fixed and a new front axle and a shock & radius rods, might have needed a nerf bar but we might have just fixed the one on the car. The Ford Duece was either a True Edmunds or a very good copy, I almost bought this car from Dale but this is about the time we built the Parson car that I was going to race that the old man and I argued over.

Here's what causes the commotion about the Cates #2 builders identity. This comes from Don Edmunds own website.

http://www.donedmunds.com/fullsize/supermodified/index.htm

I still Have a copy of the "Harold Leep" story and Jerry Wilson talks about this car. He said that he, Bobby and Ricky Walker took care of this car at Wichita during the 1969 season and that Bobby's father built it. You can see Jerry's name is on the side of the car. The ford above looks more like a real Edmonds. On the Edmonds site the Isacc cars are listed as Edmonds, I always thought they were Walkers. This is why bench racing is so much fun.

Ray

Don't mean to jump the gun, but was the wing valve one of those deals where you stick something out in clear sight to keep people busy trying to figure if you are bending the rules, so you can really bend them somewhere else without them paying attention?

RR,

Back in those days we could still work around the box some. We were forced to work in those GREY area's if you wanted to run up front everynight, Ofixco,Hillenberg,Nance,Shaver,Carbone,Schiender,J&J,Stanton,Barrnett,Ewell,Stone,Louis Boyd,Sweat,Nix,Klein etc. These are just part of the teams we considered the enemy, they all had people working 24hrs a day to get an advantage. We had a Rich car there weren't many around and the ones that were weren't the same as ours, no it didn't have a trick light frame after we had cut it up who knows how many times and changed it the frame had went from 160# to 205#, overall though the car was fairly light coming in at 1605# with dry sump motor and 10gal fuel. We had awesome engines especially the BB/SS motors Pat built them we had several people doing work for us but nobody really new what cams and head pkg's we were using, we had a brake pkg like nobody else, we had 2-3 people building our wings, Pat had me working 26 hrs a day on nothing but that car, we had the best you could get in tires, the rest of the crew where busting there butt's and we had Carson. I would have to say Carson/Suchy was one of the best ever all OKC open wheel racing teams.

Now that wing valve wasn't smoke it worked but wasn't hooked to anything but the lines going to the wing cylinder, honestly we were so differant on our pkg. that if anybody copied us it would have messed them up!!! I remember once Ernie Edsion's dad came over and asked Pat what gear we had at OKC and Pat told him a 6.18 which is what we had in with the BB/SS pkg. so they put in the same gear with there Boyd 9/16's stroke motor and it layed the crank out in about 2 laps. Another time Carbone called and asked me if we were really running 9000 RPM because we had won a Feature and somebody told him our tach was setting on that and it was!!!

We had B&T,J&A,Bishop and Cleveland all doing chassis work. R&J machine was building us alot of trick driveline parts and Titanium parts ever part on that car had been drilled or lightened. We were already using coating and varies other anti friction processes.

Yes, I know we went beyond the rules and bent them a little but I don't think any worse then anybody else, funny thing is I believe the few times that we were flagrantly cheated we got our butt kicked, and I don't feel like anybody that beat us no matter what I thought about them beat us because they were cheat'in bad,if you layed it all out on the table we were all pretty close and that's one of the reason's them USAC boys didn't beat us NCRA guys like step children!!!! Now that was and still is to this day PRICELESS!!!!!!

From that list of names, there is no doubt that anyone who was successful, earned every bit of it. I see two names on the list that remind me of drag racers in the 60's. Steve Carbone aka "The Mandrill" was a driver. I think he might have driven for Creitz and Greer. Seems that Bob Creitz(my 60 year old brain can't remember if it was with a C or K) was from Tulsa. Tommy Greer was a west coaster with deep pockets. He was part of Greer, Black and Prudomme, who owned the west coast strips in the 60's.

I think I have seen the Nix name in previous postings. Also from the 60's was Jimmy Nix aka "The Okie". He was a strong runner, then retired. He made a come back, in the 80's I think, then was fatally injured in a racing accident. I think the name I have seen in dirt track wa sJody Nix. Don't know if they were related or not.

RR,

Your right on both counts, Steve Carbone was a drag racing legend, he was one of the power's that set-up the Offixco racing juggernaut. Steve had an engine shop that had some of the best engine building equipment at the time, right out the side door was the Offixco race shop which housed most of there dirt track operation and right across the street to the west was a little hamburger joint (I don't remember the name) that made good burgers. Even though I didn't get along with Steve from the first time we met till the last time we spoke, I still did alot of business with him, we bought alot of new and used parts and they did some machine work for us, I think at the time they did the best block and cylinder prep. Now how do you not have respect for a guy that had won the NHRA U.S. Nationals at Indy against Don "Who" Garlits, it was an honor to have shook his hand no matter what we thought of one another!!

Jimmy Nix also was a drag racing legend, he had a machine shop and did alot of work for dirt and drag racers. He gas ported pistons for us and he did it the old fashion way drilled 13 holes around the top of the piston, he did a basket full for us, when Pat came up with some odd piston deal Jimmy or Bill Miller did them for us. Jimmy was a great guy!! RIP Jimmy

Rolan Nix is who I posted about, Rolan was in Idabel OK and built engines for Offixco (Stone) Stan Constant, Tom Mercer and others, he was one hell of a Late Model engine builder, I don't know if Rolan is still alive or if he is still in Idabel, he use to call and ck on LM tires but haven't heard from him in years.

To All,

Went to Chili Bowl last night, I hadn't planned on going but my guys at the shop have not ever been so we went, got there about 3:30 and went thru the trade show, well I didn't make it very far and ran into Shane who was in the RFP photo booth well I spent the next 3 hours there looking at old pic's, Benny Taylor was by as was my good friend Lyndon Moss. Mike Pogue and Bob Mays and I looked thru several books of photo's from old Super Modified to Champ Dirt days, I was able to see photo's of cars that I've worked on that I never knew existed. It would be fascinating to get these guys together with Mike Montoboy from Lawton, you could cover about all of the NCRA tracks with the photo's they each have. I could have stayed in that booth all night and even though I did watch a couple of races on the big screen the real rac'in was laying in that booth in memories!!!!!!

Anybody remember a George Stephens? This car is VERY much like the one I'm working on. Just curious.

Pitman arm placement is the same, both were set up for 6 cylinder at one time, even the rear wheels set back about the same at one time.

This the best picture I have of it not long after it came here. Metallic blue frame, pitman arm location, 6 cylinder setup, all the same.