Vintage Front Engine Dragster with a Six!

I bumped into Wayne and this cool front engine dragster at the Nostalgia Drags here in AZ at Speedworld. Always on the lookout for something different, I couldn’t help but notice the the six cylinder, a not-so-obvious choice for an engine, let alone in a vintage dragster.

Travelling into Arizona from Alamogordo, NM for the drags, here’s some info about Wayne’s digger:

I decided to build an inline car because I raced my Flathead car with the Denver Flathead Inline guys and saw there weren’t many “Late inline” dragsters and when there were, they all ran Chevys… so I thought about the best engineered inline and came up with the Ford. (12 port head and very Strong bottom end).

• Chassis: 1968 Race Car Engineering (Woody Gilmore) 182″ wheelbase.
• Engine: 1975 Ford 300 cu in, bored .030 with Weisco flat top forged pistons with zero deck clearance.
• Crankshaft: is out of an F-650 which is steel.
• Rods: Crower H- beam.
• Cam and lifters: Crower (flat tappet)
• Head: From a 240 cu in Ford (much smaller chamber than a 300) that I ported and put in Chev. 1.94 and 1.60 stainless valves and added some BBChev. Crower roller rockers.
• Injection: Hilborn which came off a 351 Winsdor. Modified, by me to work on the six.
• Exhust: zoomies I made and are 1 3/4 X 18″ long.
• Ignition: Vertex Magneto with rare earth magnets
• Transmission: Powerglide with 1.82 ratio gears and 3000 stall converter and trans brake.
• Rear: Chrysler 8 3/4 with 3.91 gears with 11 1/2 X 31″ tires.
• Weight: 1190 lb. without fuel and driver.

Cars best time was 9.34 @ 134.

I couldn’t run under 10 sec. this weekend at Speedworld because the Chassis certification had expired in Nov. 08.

Unfortunately, I did a dumb thing… when I built the car, I never took any pics, not until it was done. Looking back, I bought the chassis out of New Brunswick Canada in 2004 and had to replace the right top rail as they had bashed it out to fit a Big Block Chevy. After that, I ended up rebuilding everything on the chassis.

I don’t have any history on the car but through other Std. 1320 members we have pinned it down to a 1968 or 69. I found evidence of old Chrysler mounts and I’m sure it was high gear only with a double disc clutch. That Chrysler rear axle appears to be original.

I’m strictly into nostalgia cars and don’t like the looks of a RED.

Thanks for the info Wayne! The six looks great and a 9.34 ain’t slow! Good luck with future races…

Got a front engine dragster? Whether you know the history or not, let us know!

Jungle Jim vs. Joe Jacono, Nostalgia Funny Car Match race

Story Submitted by John C. Hill or MoparMagic

Jungle Jim vs. Joe Jacono, April 1972

Those of you who are drag race fans, especially from the 60’s and 70’s probably fondly remember certain races. Maybe you remember a national event, or a local “class racing” show, or the “Coca Cola Calvacade of Stars”, or even a booked in Funny Car match race.

For me, one of my most memorable experiences was a nostalgia funny car match race between “Jungle Jim” Lieberman and Joe Jacono and his “Brief Encounter”.

Now let me set the stage for you as to why this particular race was so memorable to me… My family lived in New Castle, Delaware and my brother and I loved cars and drag racing. Now lucky for us, our grandmother had a farm in Conowingo, Maryland and to get there, we had to travel down Theodore Road near Rising Sun, which is the road that Cecil County Dragway is on! We literally had to travel by the “Traction Capitol of the World” every weekend when we were growing up visiting our grandmother’s farm.

On a cold April day in 1972 my cousin called and asked if my brother and I wanted to go see a Funny Car match race between “Jungle Jim” and “Brief Encounter”. Those were two of our most favorite cars. Joe Jacono was a local Delaware racer, and Jungle Jim lived north of us just across the DE/PA border. Plus, we knew there were going to be a lot of very fast cars showing up to race between funny car rounds.

Now my cousin was a paraplegic and had a hand controlled early 70’s Cadillac. The Cecil County crew allowed us to park right along the fence on the top end so he could see. I was 13 years old and I brought my little camera to the shots you see here. I didn’t develop the film until May 1972, but when I did I was pleased with how well they came out for a young teenage photographer.

This photo of the Joe Jacono driven “Brief Encounter” Cuda looks especially rough because I actually kept that photo in my wallet for 30 years before finally putting it in a scrap book. I have heard rumors that this car was previously owned and raced by “Big John Mazmanian” out on the west coast. I recently wrote an e-mail to Joe and asked if this was true. I’ll keep you informed of his answer. I remember building the Revell model of Jungle Jim’s car not long after seeing this race. Those were the days! (Joe Jacono website with fantastic early drag racing photos: (www.joejacono.com)

As I remember it… Jungle Jim won. His car was a much more professional ride, and he was tops in the early to mid-70s until his untimely death in a car crash in PA on September 9th, 1977.

Following up, looks like I was wrong! After contacting Joe Jacono, here’s what he told me:

Yo John…
A few facts.
The Brief Encounter car was John Mazmanians old car.
The match race with Jungle and me was on April 9th 1972, and I won three straight.
Hopes this clears up the mystery.
Joe…
Attached is a clipping from my scrap book.

From the April issue of National Dragster

April 9, 1972

The grand opening race for the 1972 season at Cecil County was a grand affair indeed as a large turnout of fans were on hand to witness an upset match race win by Joe Jacono and the “Brief Encounter” Barracuda who defeated favorite “Jungle Jim” Liberman and his Hemi-powered Camaro three straight. In the first round, Jacono and his mount, the former “Big John” Mazmanian Barracuda streaked to a 7.05 at 211mph, while Liberman encountered trouble and was held to an 8.94 and a slowing 114mph. In the second round, Liberman returned bent on revenge and unloaded a tremendous 6.68 at 218mph. Unfortunately for the Chevy hero, the “Brief Encounter” Cuda was at the finish line first with a slower but still winning time of 6.84 210.28. Nevertheless Liberman was the new owner of both ends of the Cecil County track record. In the third and final round Liberman’s bad luck continued as he pitched a rod out of the motor, letting Jacono single with a fine 6.81 at 218 mph for the stunning three straight win.

Thanks Joe for “setting me straight” on the race and the fact that you won all 3 rounds. I can’t say I mind being set straight knowing that you won them all. That makes me as happy today as I was 36 years ago! No wonder I kept that photo in my wallet all those years….and hey, I just put it back in to stay. It’s been good luck for me!

I have included some photos of another Camaro Funny Car that appears to be the Santmeyer and Fenner car (forgive me if I’m wrong). There are also some unidentified Junior Fueler and Top Gas front engine rails, along with a strong looking altered with the appropriate name of “Poverty Stricken”! Needless to say at age 13 I was amazed, and forever became a drag racing fan! This is one race that I will never forget.

Over My Shoulder… Making Hot Rod Art

Please enjoy your brief, but meaningful and entertaining, look “over the shoulder” of painter Tom Fritz as he makes what I think is my favorite piece of Hot Rod Art to date (and he’s got alot to like!).

Over My Shoulder… Making Hot Rod Art
Written By Tom Fritz
(Car and Motorcycle fine art)

One of the side benefits of working at my art is that I’ve been blessed with the development of an extended family of very close friends, a rich variety of both men and women who support me in my self-inflicted torture. And as sit here in front of yet another blank canvas trying to figure out the combination of what I am and what the world needs, I’m reminded of all the conversations in which I’ve been asked, how hard is it to make my art, or how long it takes me to make it — in which they try to get a handle on how I put a painting together.

These questions invariably come up at shows and in order to portray the illusion of credibility in a compressed time frame, I use convenient phrases like “it really isn’t so hard.” But honestly, it really IS hard work. After all, evolving an image and style can take a long time and can be, at times, a hellish nightmare.

So, I figured I’d allow you to sit and watch over my shoulder for the first time ever in a published format as I weld together a story of image, paint, color, and technique, and hopefully do so with a forceful result. I’ve never done this before, and the one thing I don’t want to do is give you all a step-by-step, here’s-how-I-mix-this-color art lesson. I’ll leave that to the television artists.

To begin, I’d been scouring events earlier this year looking for an example of a front engine dragster typical of those I remember from my youth. I REALLY want to put something together with one of those.

Remember I mentioned that my process could be painful? How painful can it be to put an image together? Well, it seems to be ingrained in the motor sports arts that every painting has to “be of someone or something” – that every painting has to contain specific history and other incidental baggage, which is something that I really don’t care to drag along. When I was young, the thing that really kicked me in the zipper about the whole wang dang doodle was simply this: metal making noise. To this day, it remains the prime visceral element that I respond to and the main thing I try to accomplish in my work. I’m presenting a time capsule that contains the same raw, core experience I remember and digested as a kid. In fact, I think this is still the thing that sucks us all through the turnstile. After all, I can’t believe we just go to the races to enhance our memories of who was driving what, when, and where so we can go hot-dogging at the bench races.

The point for me, then, is to find a middle ground between form, content and story telling that I feel comfortable with. I’m trying to put on canvas something intangible, invisible, and something that exercises my observational sensitivities and aesthetic taste. And I want to create an exciting image no one has ever seen before – an image with a point-of-view no trackside photographer could have snapped.

Can you now understand why it’s pretty easy for us artists to work from a photo taken by someone else? I understand this, because lets face it – starving can become a nuisance. But besides surface-level copyright infringement, there are even bigger issues for me.

First, I’m an artist. I need to create. I don’t want to just color an old photograph. Sure, I use the old pics for reference, whether it be historical tidbits, a “jumping off” place, or for inspiration… but not as the basis of my image. Photographs record detail. My job is to take elements from a photo, and from them make a subjective, aesthetic statement to evoke a particular emotion or mood. Besides, the old photos (which in the motor sport realm are mostly “snaps”) hold visual traps that most artists unwittingly fall into, unknowingly painting in distortions and compositional weaknesses inherent in the image.

Another thing. That lucky artist that went through the shoebox first snagged the most dramatic images, leaving the chaff to the rest of us. So, then I have to ask myself if I’d really want to paint something someone else already painted? (Sheesh, how many renderings of Bob McClurg’s 1972 photograph of Wild Willie Borsch in the “Winged Express” have we seen?) And then, I wonder why I’d want to paint all the leftover images that aren’t really all that great to begin with?

Therefore, I brutalize myself to come up with the hard stuff.

Enough talk. Time to squeeze out some worms of color, sharpen the brushes, and bring on the pain. Pull up a chair, kick back and join in the madness. Watch out… some say the oil paint fumes make them intoxicated (you’ll notice I don’t hold my breath while I paint).

One more thing. I’ve got my camera here, and understand I’ll have to “pull” myself out of the altered state of consciousness I fall into when I paint every so often to take a picture of the emerging image. Sort of like waking up from a dream state. Lessee how this goes…

Pah-rooz these reference photos I took…

What a mess, right? They’re black n’ white photos, there’s nobody straddling the rear axle, the throttle plates are closed, the tires are obese, and the header tips are covered. Also, there’s a lot of stuff in the background like park benches and trees. And this isn’t a “hero” car, for chrys-ache. Where’re the stands with all the people? Where’s the Christmas tree, the fire extinguisher, the tower? (Just about now, that “path to temptation” pointing to the shoebox of old photos is starting to look better and better…)

Back in the studio, I take a rare free moment between projects and put out a small quick-n-dirty thumbnail to see if I could translate the image I see in my mind into reality.

Usually I don’t take this step, opting to go direct-to-canvas instead. But this time I wanted to verify my intention to limit myself to a decidedly monochromatic, cool color scheme. In my sketch, the left front wheel protrudes beyond the image boundary, which compositionally stabilizes the subject, tying it into the frame. You can see that I have to work out issues of lighting, as I now have multiple light sources (two spectacular white plumes of burning hydrogen as well as ambient lighting) as opposed to the one light source I have in my reference photos (the sun). Some parts of the car in my sketch stand in front of my perceived light sources, some are beside a light source, and other parts are just filled, again, with ambient light. And to top it off, I have to translate how my eyeball experiences violent motion in buttery oil paint, without relying on convention (Dang! That shoebox of old photos just keeps looking better all the time…)

After preparing the canvas, I lay in my image, keeping my line work loose and broad, preventing me in being too much of a slave to my reference. Once I’ve done my sketch, I start applying my initial washes. I don’t do this tentatively; I really hunker down on that thing. These washes are laid in with thinned paint and a big brush, and the tones are lightly washed in transparently to cover the whiteness of the canvas.

Here in these detail photos, you can see some of my initial line drawing and washes, done both with pen and brush.

(click images above for a better look, and a snazzy Viva Zoom effect)

I work on the whole canvas at once. It’s pretty direct. Every stroke relates to the whole. I don’t start in the upper right and work to the lower left, after all, there’s a great joy in watching the painting come together all at once. Now here’s a look at the canvas on the easel, the morning after the first session. The painting is 42 inches wide by 21 inches high.

At this point, the painting is going together pretty smoothly. I constantly keep things moving around, making sure nothing calls attention to itself. However, something is up… look at the top of the right front tire in the progression images. Notice there is a ghosted tire that disappears, only to reappear later?

Either I’m overdosing on fumes, or this is clear and present evidence of rampant imagination not being tied down to a paint-by-number approach. Try something here. No, take it out. Wait, I liked that – bring it back. Just me peeling another layer of ass off myself as I paint. Oh, the agony…

Look how various other parts of the image evolve, how the shape of the exhaust plumes develop. Notice how I translate the spinning front wheels into paint. I try to create something authentic, not derivative, so I disregard cliché and try to find my own answers. The brush strokes become smaller in those areas I’d like your eye to pay attention to. I’m not much for painting every slot in every screw head. That level of detail just calls attention to itself. Rather I activate areas by placing small, colorful paint strokes that are tied to intelligible forms and resolve into suggestive detail in the viewer’s eye.

Check out how the decal arrangement on the side panel below the headers has progressed. These are merely color hits that “read” as decals and text (we call it “greeking” – you can’t read it, but you know it “says” something). I’ve brushed in a light colored circular element on that panel because my eye tells me it needs to be there. Also, you see incremental changes. “Tightening up” the front end and front wheel areas, and also around the rear tires.

Finally, the long chain of decision-making comes to an end, and here’s the result. How do I know when the painting is completed? When there’s nowhere to put the next stroke. It just subtly let’s me know it’s done. The actual brush-to-canvas on this one took about 40 hours.

What’ll I call it?

“Quick Sombish”

Lean it up against the wall, rest the eyeballs a bit, then on to the next one!

Another story about my friend, Tom Fritz:

Mellow Artist Paints Nostalgia and Speed at Barrett Jackson