Track length

[kustombrad]

I have a question, but I don't want to sound ignorant asking it. I've heard many times over the years how the long track was 11-12 total miles long and now it's only 7-8. What's out past the 8 for the last 4 miles? Thanks...

[hotrod]

Very thing salt tapering into deep mud that will mire a car to its frame.
The salt sits on top of a gumbo alkali mud. If thoroughly dry you can drive on it, but if you break through or if it is not completely dry, it is like peanut butter.

[dw230]

Skip Hedrick drove out there at WoS last year when his parachutes failed. Took two days to get the car back to the pits. So much mud in the wheel wells tat the tires did not rotate.

DW

[Bob Drury]

  That's still better than when Tom Burkland  found a half buried 55 gallon drum which was enough to nearly destroy the 411 Streamliner about ten years ago.  I don't recall how fast He was still going, but Tom has quietly been lurking the last few days so maybe He can pipe up later.  Unfortunately the Barrel won by TKO after the 5th mile.

[GH]

Bob, didn't a bunch of people have to pull their streamliner out of the mud by hand?

[Wester]

Two separate events, not the same year.  The rim of the rusted out barrel caused the narrow track car to roll and required a total rebuild of the car.  The barrel marked the end of good salt in 1983.

The excursion into the "crusties" after an exit speed 450 mph run required close to twenty people working by hand and using the "Jaws of Life" to lift the back of the car.  A with the winch on the transport trailer and with a 4X8 piece of composition board, that broke in half lengthwise when the weight of the car first got on it but doubled, it held the weight under the jaws.  Once the car was on the trailer, Ed VanScoy hooked his Jeep onto the front, dropped the pressure in his tires to 15# and with the Jeep pulling the Burkland's Dodge van the liner was towed to solid salt after about a ten minute pull.  Long after dark.

[Wester]

In the thirties they were running on around fourteen miles of good salt.

[streamliner]

From May 1946, legend Ab Jenkins talking about "The American Meteor" jet/rocket car designed by Alex Tremulis: