Building a Bonneville car

[Carolina_Mountain_Mustangs]

I was going through files and came across some prints of a couple cars I worked on. Our local Blue Ridge Community College use to be a fun place to go learn. I signed up for some night courses in Auto Restoration to learn how to do the upholstery. I had known the instructor from back in high school and he knew that I had built cars before so he let me get involved in the building of a Bonneville Salt Flats car. The school had an instructor in the Automotive Mechanics that held several records at Bonneville and he talked them into building a car. It was a front wheel drive rear wheel steer with around a 250 C.I. GM engine that was sort of a hybrid. He got some free parts from some of his friends in NASCAR and the school backed him in the effort. I wish I could remember how long the car was but it was long. It was loosely based on a 23 T-Bucket body that we hand laid up the nose, back and cover panels for the drivers compartment. You stack foam blocks up and glue them and then start to sculpt the body you want. I was given the job of doing some of the fabrication and working with the hand laid fiberglass and making it smooth. It only took about 6 months to build the car from scratch. Nothing was a standard. The frame was welded up by the welding class. The front drive was a custom made reverse drive with quick change gears. All the cooling system was hand made by students. The instructor built the engine and it had programmable fuel injection. The rear steer was fabricated from the twin I beams out of a Ford van welded together with solid wedges to set the chamber. Most of the higher speed cars are front wheel drive rear steer. It can be stable with the right setting put into it.

Anyway we got the car finished two days before they had to leave for the trials so not even a shake down run. The welding shop also built a custom trailer and the body shop sprayed the yellow paint on the body and blue on the chassis. I can't find a picture of the assembled car. We have one member in the forum that runs in the ECTA East Coast Timing Association so he knows how strict they are on the construction, safety equipment and how the car is put together. The car passed tech without any issues. When you take a car for the first time you have to run the short course I believe 3 times with no issues at ever increasing speeds to be able to move over to the long track. On the third run everything went fine and he took it over 120mph but when he turned to go off the track he spun in some loose salt. You can see how little tread is on the Goodyear racing tires made for the speed trials. They would not let him run again, one chance and that is it until next year. So when he got back the school got into a big fuss and fired him and they actually cut the car up and sold it for scrap. It made all of us sick that had worked so hard to put it together. They said they could not sell it too many liabilities. That is why there is dust on the car I took the pictures the day before they cut it up.

I picked fiberglass out of my body for a month and I bet I went through 4 gallons of bondo and piles of sandpaper. Lots of cheese grater work before sanding.

The last couple of pictures is of a 1950 Ford Business coupe I had at the school to work on during that time I put in a 4.6 liter Ford engine and AOD out of a highway patrol car. Life changed and family got sick and it all got put away.

Just some past history as life goes on. Now to sort through more old papers and toss.

David