August 2003 DTA Newsletter
Dick Baty joined the DTA in 1994. Dick has been in several car clubs beginning with the Chevruns of Denver and the Nomad Club. He served as a staff member of the Nomad Club for several years.
Like many of the early hot rodders, Dick has his head jam-packed with memories of the good, and not so good, old days. One of his current favorite runs is the annual California Hot Rod Reunion. This was originally intended to be a one time meet, but everyone had way too much fun to let it die. This was about 12 years ago. Each year since that time it gets resurrected. Dick attended his first one nine years ago. Probably a bad decision…. he was hooked instantly. He’s been to three since then. This is a three day meet which is held every f all in Bakersfield , California . Dick no longer races but is into some serious spectating.
Dick did some drag racing as well as roundy-round racing during his heyday. Note he hasn’t mentioned anything concerning street racing. Dick did admit he has been known to do a mite bit of racing on private roads when no one was nearby. Dick did most of his drag racing at Continental Divide Raceways (CDR) near Castle Rock and at the Julesburg, Colorado Drag Strip.
Dick got into drag racing with a ’35 Chev coupe with a chopped top. It was a high-boy (no fenders or running boards). It was classed as D altered. Power came from a 292 inch fuel injected GMC 6 cylinder mill with lots of goodies inside. It was a runner for sure and consistently turned 12 second ET’s (elapsed time) at 104 mph. These were very good times and speeds for the earlier days of drag racing at our horsepower robbing mile high altitude. Dick acquired a ’27 Model “T” roadster. Since it was considerably lighter than the ’35 Chev, he pulled the running gear out of the Che v and put it in the lighter “T”. It too ran in D altered. But it didn’t seem to make much difference since it ran about the same speeds and ET’s as the heavier Chev coupe had.
Dick relates a story when some of us old geezers raced (illegally it seems to me) on sections of Valley Highway (now I-25) before it was opened to the public. One night a local ’40 Ford sedan lined up against a ’47 Chev coupe from California . The ’40 had a “guard rail racing stripe” down the right side from a previous close call when he temporarily lost it. The starter was to use a flashlight to start the races. He was to point the beam towards each car to get a head nod signifying they were ready. Then wait a few seconds before whipping the beam of the flashlight straight up to start the race. Well, the flagman followed the procedures and got the affirmative nods from the two contestants. They brought up the rpms on their hot engines. Seconds later the flashlight beam disappeared up into the night sky. The two racers dumped their clutches and their cars lurched forward with their tires breaking loose as they left the start line. Trouble was, no one had noticed a Mr. George Udogwu. nearby. You ask who is he? Never heard of him? Seems he was several feet behind the two cars…… and in a bone white Ford which had dual spot lights!!! One of which quickly became bright red the instant the two racers dumped their clutches! The ’47 Chev from California got off his gas, pulled over to the shoulder, and stopped….. like all law abiding people do. But not the ’40 Ford from Colorado …..he kept the pedal to the metal and flat disappeared into the night..… and Dick said he means it when he says he disappeared!!! Dick has never seen either the car or driver since he left the start line! The California Chev car received a detailed and long citation from the Courtesy Patrolman (later they became the Colorado Highway Patrol or CHP). At the time, I didn’t ask Dick if there was any further drag racing that night after the patrolman left with a lighter citation book. But further questioning of other guys have found they did return for more racing that same night! They trickled in and raced again a couple hours later!
Dick also did some roundy-round racing. He ran a modified race car Friday nights at the Colorado Speedway in Colorado Springs and Sundays at the old Englewood Speedway in Englewood using his old fuel injected 292” GMC drag engine. One night he had the race car on a flat bed trailer and was towing it to Colorado Springs to race. He felt a lurch and looked in a rear view mirror to see his race car was about half way off the back of the trailer! He somehow got the rig stopped without loosing the car! The race car straps hadn’t been tightened enough to keep it from bouncing. It bounced around on our rough Colorado roads until it was teetering half way off the back of the trailer. The only thing that kept the car from disappearing off the trailer was it had become high centered on the rear edge of the trailer. However, there was a strange thing…. when the two rear wheels hit the road they instantly started turning even though the car had been left in gear. This caused the engine to turn over very fast. The only thing that happened was it ingested the red rags stuffed in to the injection horns. Dick said they must have gone clear through the engine and out the exhaust ports because he never found any piece or shred of them in the engine!
Fast forward some years. Dick now is the owner of a very nice original ’55 Chev Nomad station wagon. It still had the original in-line six cylinder 235” engine in it along with a Power Glide automatic transmission. He and his wife, Anne, along with several other members of the Nomad Club, were caravanning on I-70 on their way to Memphis for the Chevy Nomad Nationals. Joe Umphenour, another DTA member, was part of the bunch in his ’56 Nomad with a 265” V8 Chev engine and a standard transmission. The bunch were somewhere in Missouri and making good time when Dick heard a loud and ominous clunk. The engine promptly ceased pulling or even running.… it just died….dead! Very odd since the in-line six engine had been running better than Dick could ever remember. Which has never been a good sign to a gearhead! As most old time hot rodders know, when an engine begins running better than ever for no apparent reason, it’s always a really bad omen of things to come. Dick coasted over to the side of the highway and slowed to a stop. The guys in the caravan who were ahead of Anne and Dick soon missed them and turned around and came looking for them. Meantime, Dick had popped the distributor cap off and his wife, Anne, hit the starter to turn over the engine. The distributor rotor did not budge. Oh-oh… this is really, really bad. The problem lay inside the engine. The stock fiber timing gear had shed most of it’s teeth. A fairly common malady for that period since most stock timing gears were fiber.
After some discussion it was decided to tow it to the next rest stop to get it off the highway and then decide what to do. As to be expected no one had a tow strap or chain.. Dick did have some light weight rope. The rope was looped several times between his Nomad and another Nomad. This should prevent it from being cut in two providing it wasn’t jerked due to sudden acceleration or braking. They slowly towed Dick several miles to a rest stop and pulled in. They decided to pull it to the show and fix it there. They would miss too much of the show if they fixed it at the rest stop.
Okay, but the didn’t have either a tow strap or chain. Then someone noticed a chain secured to a post concreted into the ground. The chain was used to close the rest stop access road during construction and/or maintenance. Dick rummaged around his tool box and came up with a hacksaw.. with a very well worn blade. A new problem surfaced. There was considerable traffic coming into the rest stop which made it way too busy to use the hacksaw and not be seen. Dick removed the worn blade and wrapped a red rag around it. The group stood around the pole talking, shielding whose turn it was to saw on the end chain link! Talk about slow going! The chain must have been about as hard as the hacksaw blade and probably had more and better teeth too. Eventually they got it cut and the chain was free. They pulled Joe’s Nomad in front of Dick’s and hooked the chain between the two. Oh, did I forget to mention, the chain lacked a tadbit of being ten feet long? By the time the ends were looped around the “towee” and the “towwer”, the two wagons were getting pretty chummy with each other…. very, very chummy! Like less than five feet apart!!!!
Down the road they went with Joe towing somewhere around Mach 3…... or at least that’s the way it felt to Dick and Anne!. Dick said he was nearly a basket case when they finally pulled into Memphis some 400 miles later! Joe hadn’t let any grass grow as he towed Dick. Dick said he smelled his overheated brakes almost all of the way. Dick said they hadn’t even thought about removing the driveshaft! The Power Glide transmission never gave him one bit of trouble as long as he ran it in subsequent years. Try that on today’s automatic transmissions.
At the Nationals they found a local who lent them his two car garage to replace the timing gear. Dick said it was sticky and almost unbearably hot in the garage, but they managed to get the timing gears changed. To get to it they had to remove the oil pan, the timing cover, the crankshaft pulley, the radiator, all rocker arms, pushrods, and lifters. Then they were confronted with removing the press-on fiber gear. These are a very tight fit. Since a puller wasn’t available, a tire iron was jammed between the front cam lobe and the block while they hammered on a chisel to split the old timing gear. Then they had to beat a new on e back on! They got it done somehow in all that heat and humidity. Amazingly, it didn’t give a hint of trouble all the way home… probably too scared to! Dick said he didn’t even think about breaking the lobe on the cam at the time they were hammering and prying!
Dick still has that Nomad even though he’s gone through quite a number of hot rods since then. One I’ve always liked was his light blue ’35 “sad windowed” Chev coupe. It had a big V8 with excellent performance. It went down the road a few years back. Like all of his cars, it was immaculate and well constructed. For those who wonder what a “sad window” Chev coupe is……. look at the rear window….. it’s oval shaped window has a flat side along the bottom. So the window looks like a down-turned mouth from the rear..… thus it’s called “sad window”.
The Nomad now has a somewhat more powerful engine than the original 235” six cylinder engine. It now has a slightly larger, and healthier, 500 cubic inch V8 with various goodies! He keeps busy these days building a ’41 Chev coupe. It’s already my color..… black. He’s got a hopped up 292” six cylinder Chev engine about ready for the engine compartment. It’s to be backed up by a four speed Muncie transmission and an 8” Ford rear end. The interior compliments the car and the red rolled job is flawless. Dick has put a rack & pinion f ront end under it along with some suspension changes. It’s nearly done and will be a great rod.
Wonder how long before he gets bit by the big engine bug for it????