Introduce Yourself

[Dynoroom]

Hi-
My name is Don Sanderson. My partner, Cliff and I have decided to build a roadster for the '09 meet at Bonneville. We are "G-Cubed", which stands for "Gear Grinding Grandads". We are both 70 and figured it's about time! We have been talking about this for the 50 years of our friendship. Cliff is the real "motorhead", having been a Super Stock drag racer in his younger years. In our younger years, we spent many hours head to head under one hood or another, keeping the family wreck running, or swapping a tranny or rear end for more speed.

Still in all, we are new at this kind of racing, so we will be asking a lot of questions in the next year. We are planning on a C/GR class, '27 T with an sbc 350. The first year will be for learning, just fast enough not to embarras ourselves and slow enough to not go through the traps backwards.

So, thanks in advance for all of the help you are all going to give us!

Welcome guys, you'll have a great time, even if you choose one of the toughest classes out there.
Just a heads up since you said you'd be asking questions. The rule book says 1928 to 1938 in the Fuel/Gas roadster class.

[Seldom Seen Slim]

Don and Cliff, welcome to landracing.com's forum.  I'm Seldom Seen Slim, the head handlebar holder (the guy that owns the site and rides herd on this gang of wild racers).

I'm glad you've found us, and want to make sure you feel free to ask questions and tell stories.

Regards,

Jon

[Kat]

Hi everyone 

Since have been reading this forum even before we left for Bonneville I thought I should register.
I am the wife of McRat.  Even though I live my life ¼ mile at a time on the drag strip, I think for the time being I will stick to being the chase vehicle and trying to keep McRat out of trouble

[fredvance]

Kat and McRat, cool.

[jfr757]

I’m Jack Rogers.  In one way or another I have owned or driven motorized things for a long time, starting with a go-kart I made from a washing machine engine, some angle iron and soap box derby wheels.  I drove it on the street until my dad put a stop to that after too many calls from the police.  Later, when racing karts became available a guy in Evansville started manufacturing them.  He made a one-off all aluminum kart with disc brakes, a “live” rear axle and a 5.8 cu in engine that would do about 12000 rpm  (a factory “works” kart) that I drove for two seasons and in the finals at Mansfield Ohio in 1960.

After that, I got into drag racing with a couple of Corvettes.. This was quickly followed by college,  and short periods of employment by Goodyear, Boeing, and the Army (Vietnam)

After that, I started work in Commercial Real Estate, found my lovely and approving wife and started a family.  Today my daytime job is still doing Commercial Real Estate.  This has lasted about 30 years.


At night and on weekends, I am back chasing cars..  A couple of deTomaso Panteras, are being rebuilt along with a couple of other cars with the help of a local racer and mechanic.  I had an exposure to big money racing with a friend of mine who sold to a number of the racing teams, and decided that I wanted no part of that.  I always wanted to go to Bonneville and the Baja races as a participant.  Recently, when the Doll-Fox-Christophersen Camaro became available, I was able to buy it.  It had not been raced since 2004.  We took it apart, bought some replacement parts, put it back together, checked it on the dyno and headed for Bonneville last week.  What an incredible car originally built by some really incredible guys. 

Met “Seldom Seen Slim” as I was waiting in line for my record qualification run.  I just found this site.  I know I’ll be reading it for years to come.

[Seldom Seen Slim]

Thanks, Jack, and welcome to the group.  We look forward to seeing you and your car and your reports/build diaries here -- for years to come.

This is your car, right?  I'm looking at it in a thumbnail -- hope I found the correct one.

[jfr757]

Yup, that's IT!

Jack Rogers

[Flyboy]

Hi everyone-- I'm Bill Scherer.  I'm a professional photographer and love the Salt Flats and the people it attracts--


I love the people, excitement, danger and beauty of the salts-- To me, it's God's country.

I was a Navy brat and always wanted to fly Navy jets but didn't quite have the eyesite. Lived on Ford Island as a kid and spent two years in Italy.
After college went into the Army as a 2nd Lt so I could fly in Vietnam but never made it overseas except to parachute into Korea and Turkey. I got my first motocycle, a Honda 350. Sold it a year later. I got in over 250 jumps with the 82nd Airborne Divsion.

Got disolutioned with the Army so I went to Hollywood to become a star. There I became an actor/writer and appeared in movies, TV shows, dinner theater. Sold my first screenplay. Made it to the Reno Air Races for the first time and fell in love with speed. Went to film school where I fell in love with the camera.  Sold real estate in Bevery Hills in between acting jobs. Met my wife, had two babies, then said goodby to tinseltown where I moved to Santa Cruz. Bought my first and only airplane, a Cessna T-210 and started taking pictures of the finest golf courses in the country as no one else was doing it at the time. Shooing a golf course or resort hotel at 100 feet off the ground is very exciting especially when you are going 80 mph. Got myself an FBI clearance and can now fly over ball games, super bowl and other restricted areas. Because of my screenwriting talents I became an aviaition writer for some of the top aviation magazines.

One day a friend told me he was going to Bonneville to race his BMW and asked if I wanted to come along. I had always heard of Bonneville and the excitement it brought so I eagerly signed on. BWM Europe said they would pay my gas so we flew out there in my plane. I tried to land on the salts but started to get a "white out" and opted to land at Wendover. The year was 2005 at BUB and we had brought along the new BMW 1200 R or S shipped straight from Germany. It went 147 miles an hour-- which I thought was a fantastic "earth shattering" speed. Little did I know. I told my friend I thought I would like to try going fast but I didn't own a bike. I told him that my dream had always been to race a P-51 at Reno but I didn't have a million dollars. Maybe going fast on a motorcycle might fill that void at a fraction of the cost. I love flying but there is no sense of speed. Maybe a motocycle might be the answer. Eight months later my friend called me and told me a new bike had just come out that might be able to go fast and break a record. It was called the  Kawasaki ZX-14. I immediately rushed down to my dealer to take a look. He had just gotten his first one in. I looked at it and got scared. My heart started pumping. The 2006 BUB event was only four months away and I didn't own a motorcyle, didn't even have a motorcycle license and hadn't been on a motorcycle in 35 years... to be cont.

[Low Sodium]

Hi, I'm Willi Boelcke. Live in Southern California (Santa Barbara to be specific) and have been racing at Bonneville and El Mirage since 1989. Member of Gear Grinders, SCTA, BNI.
Presently own 3 LSR vehicles, a 1950 Buick Super Riviera 2-door Hardtop which ran 114 on the Dry Lake, back in '91 and is now driven (almost) daily on the California freeways. Next is Larry Monreal's "Old Volks Home of San Berdoo" green '67 Karmann Ghia, formerly the "World's Fastest Volkswagen" which I restored last year. This amazing car ran on the salt & lakes for over 30 years and still has almost a dozen records in the book.
My current "ride" is #426, called "Low Sodium", a 1927 Ford "T" rear engined modified roadster, originally built By Fabian Valdez. It was the first car to set a record after they revived the rear engined class and currently holds five, 4 in Bonneville and 1 on the Dry Lake - we upped the D/G record at Speed Week '08 to 208.114mph powered by a little 5-liter Chevrolet V8. It's an old style Hot Rod, free of electronics, with a mechanical fuel pump sending the go juice to a carburetor. Good times!

[John Noonan]

Looks good and welcome to the site..

J

[speedwagen]

Garry King here,

 I've been working on a G/GCC car for a couple of years, but have decided to switch tracks and make it into a Rear Engine Modified Roadster. I'm chewing on the Vintage section of the rule book. These pages were free of finger prints until recently.

 I have a lot of thoughts and questions running in my head. Any comments or advice on this type of build would be greatly appreciated.

Here are a couple of links to the history of this endeavor

http://speedwagen.blogspot.com/
http://carmelsaltcar.blogspot.com/

Just say NO to SLOW, Garry

[Salty Nuts]

Greetings all. My name is Ken Hagan and I've been lurking around this site for some time so I finally joined up!
As far back as I can remember, I have aways been a fan of anything with a throttle and even more so the safe use of it.

I was bitten by landracing when I was 10 years old on a camping trip to El Mirage with my Father and Uncle, whom both held records at El Mirage and Bonneville thru the 60's and early 70's. Al Teague and his roadster just blew my mind!
I started turning wrenches before I was able to drive "legally" in the early 80's and that turned into a career in the shop at the dealership level. Always tweaking and tuning my street cars was something I couldn't stay away from.
In 2005 I was able to "retire" from the dealership world and then became a full time farmer working for myself growing walnuts (hence the name) and stone fruits.

Now having a little time on the side to play with my 65 Mustang (Open road course/ Track Day car) I cant help but begin to scratch my itch for more than just camping at El Mirage and hopefully make it to Bonneville also.

I purchased a partially complete roadster project that I hope to get it out to be inspected by next year sometime.

[octane]

Hi folks!

My name is Lars. I am a Danish Dane who lives in Denmark.

The Salt got me!

I all happened so quickly.
I 'got in contact with this guy on a internet forum, called Rocky
who was planning to run an INDIAN powered
Land Speed Record Streamliner named the DREAMCATCHER:
CLICK
..at the BUB Speed Trails


Turns out he knows a guy here in Denmark that deals in
Indian parts, that happens to be a friend of a friend of mine
and one of the guys on his team is a friend of another
friend of mine here in Denmark. Talk about a small world!

Sort of, off hand, I tell Rocky that if he needs any help
to get his machine ready on the flats, I'd be happy to help
and WOW; he guy invites me to join the team !??!!!

It surely ain't every day that I get invited to
come join a team of guys with a dream
of setting a Land Speed Record in an Indian engined stream-liner
..is it?!

Off cause I tried to get it out of my head,
but I wasn't really sucessful with that.
So it all happened SO fast;
a few days of thinking and .... f-it...I'm going;
got a few days off work,
bougth a ticket from Copenhagen to Chicago
and on to Salt Lake City, jumped in a rental car
and drove to Bonneville Salt Flats
...PHEW whambamthankyoumam!

A bunch of guys from all over the United States of Motorcycling
drove to the flats and a bike-builder, Chris, flew in from the UK
all to help Rocky's dream come through.

Here they are: (yours truely 'arrowed' and Rocky in the front)



Let me tell you; from the bottom of my heart;
those guys are THE coolest guys
you can possible imagine. Period.

One of the guys (standing (shirt-less) next to me) named 'Krusty'
opened his house in nearby Wendover
and let everyone stay in his house and in his backyard
drinking his coffee, using his bathroom
generally mess up the place for the entire period and
WHAT a guy!

Within 5 minutes of arriving I was put to work,
fixing the wiring and the parachute release mechanism
and all the other stuff.

It was a pleasure and an honour working with these guys.
Imagine 10-12 guys working at the same time, on and around the bike,
and no one ever raised their voice, complained, made any fuss,
...no sir; everyone just got down to business;
getting this thing ready, working from dusk till dawn
for 4 days straight


The camp:




Looks like the guys are taking a rest:




Rocky (on the left) working the engine:




Bonnevile IS a magical place:




Yours truly trying hard to pretend it'sall about him:



Stuff to fix:




WHAT a contraption




Lyle who was supposed to pilot
the darn thing tryes it out for size.
He's got a LOT of balls !!!...to want to do that.




Krusty working on the engine




Well, wel, well; we didn't pass tech-inspection but everyone took that in great style;
there's next year...right?!

Hell; I never had so much fun with my clothes on before.
A magical place, and working with a bunch
of the coolest guys that I had never meet before in my life.


 I even got to ride an INDIAN with foot clutch,
ignition timing in the left handle, and jockey-shift,
at full speed across the Bonneville Salt Flats (outside the tracks)

Stuff that dreams are made of.

My head is still trying to get in this whole thing!

.....and wooops: rigth after I got home the voices in my head (couldn't help it)
told me to buy a frame and an Indian engine.
Unless something goes really wrong, you'll see me on that thing next year on the Salt.
Ye'Sir!
It's not like "..I want to go there next year.."
nope: I have to!!!!!

Here it is in first mock-up form:



Probably run it in the BUB 500 A-PBF class.
I hope I get the rules straight:
500 = 500cc ( wasn't there some rule regarding side-valve engines cc (running in a 'lower' class) ) ..can't seam to find it.
A = this frame is a "Special Construction"
( it's a brand new frame that sort of mates two different Indian frame types)
P = Pushrod / B = supercharged (yep; I do like superchargers) / F = Fuel
as to run with some sort of methanol-mx to keep the engine cool.


I have about 10 bikes (oops: make that eleven) from a BSA pre-unit Cafe Racer that's almost ready,



over a 1979 six-cylinder Honda CBX 1000




to a Supercharged 1977 Honda GL1000 Goldwing (60" Magnacharger + Weber carb)



...all of which I have rebuild myself.




...can't wait to post silly questions.
Thanks for having me!

[Freud]

Lars, welcome to this site.

Do your friends have any parts for 4 cyl Indians?

I have a friend that restores them and I know he would be interested in

contacting them if they do have some.

It sure would be a smoother ride if your salt bike had some rear suspension.

FREUD

[Roadsters.com]

Hi folks! My name is Lars. I am a Danish Dane who lives in Denmark.

Welcome. You're a lucky guy, off to a great start. That's one of the nicest bikes I've seen here. Love the tank.

Dave
http://www.roadsters.com/