The show WAS really busy, pretty much a non-stop walkathon and talkathon. I had a great time, and sorry I'm not posting the pics until now, but Kevin and I were pretty much shot after a dinner with Barry R and friends on Friday night, and helping Barry and Marc W break down the booth on Saturday night and get it into Barry's truck for the trip back home. Those Sideoiler garage blocks are heavy LOL!
The highlight of the show for me came right near the end, when who should show up at the booth but Ohio George Montgomery! I've spoken with George in the past, but I never thought I'd have the opportunity to meet him in person. It was simply great to have him show up at the booth to chat.
Some of you may remember the SOHC article I wrote for Hot Rod back in 2009. I was talking to a lot of people who ran those engines back in the day, and George was one of them. George didn't know me from Adam, but he gave freely of his knowledge on the engines via email; we went back and forth multiple times, and what George told me really added to the article. Unfortunately, when Hot Rod chopped the article to make it fit the magazine, they omitted the acknowledgment I had written that listed George and his speed shop as a contributor to the article. After all the help I got from George I felt terrible about that, and apologized to him via email, but the whole situation kind of sucked. So I was finally able to apologize to George in person about that, and he was very gracious about it.
George, Barry and the rest of us talked for a good 20 or 30 minutes. George was there with his son and a few other people, and his old race cars dominated the conversation. Of course George ran his famous Willys SOHC gasser in the late 1960s, and he said driving that car was a real challenge, as it tended to go back and forth from one side of the track to the other going down the quarter mile. George also pointed out that the tires and other equipment they had back then was a lot more difficult to use; the tires just couldn't hold the power that those cars were making. When you look at the pictures of those old gasser cars going sideways down the track, it sounds like that was the normal state of affairs. No wonder they were such crowd pleasers.
Before he left George gave me a souvenir, a plastic embossed two sided picture showing some of his cars, which he also autographed for me. I scanned it when I got home today, and the scan didn't come out looking great, but you'll get the idea from the pictures below:
The Mustangs are cool, alright, but that Willys is unbelievable!
I had brought a couple of my books with me to the show, so I gave one to George as thanks for the autographed picture. We talked a little about the internet forums, and George mentioned he doesn't like to go on the FE Forum anymore because of all the fighting and bickering that goes on over there. I invited him to join this forum, and I hope he logs in sometime; it would be great to have a legendary Ford racer like George contributing here.
Meeting George was a highlight, but the whole show was really excellent also. Every day the place was thronged with people, and even though the Survival Motorsports booth was kind of off in a corner there was still quite a bit of traffic. Here's a picture of the booth, with Barry and Marc sitting behind the table:
The booth was nice, but my favorite was the SCE gasket booth, with the Lawman funny car front and center:
That's a blown Boss 429 in the car; too bad it wasn't a cammer LOL!
Of course the whole convention center was filled with hot rodder eye candy, but this engine from Moran racing caught my eye. Its a completely independent design, not based on any production engine, and designed specifically for high boost turbo applications. Features of this engine included cam bearings that remove with the cam when the cam is pulled out, lifter BORES that come out of the block individually (in case a lifter gets stuck in the bore, the whole works can be replaced), and a dry sump with lines built into the oil pan, so that the pump just bolts to the oil pan. Pretty cool..
About 15% of the show was devoted to machine tools, and since CNC porting is such a big thing these days, there were a bunch of CNC machine displays. I'll confess to drooling over several of the five axis machines, including the one pictured below by Centroid:
These kinds of machines set the cylinder head on a rotary table and then the head of the machine can tilt back and forth, to get the cutter way in around curved ports. It is really quite the mechanical ballet to watch these things at work, rolling the cylinder head back and forth as the machine head tilts left and right, going up and down, to carve the port into the head. If I only had an extra $250K...
In summary, it was a great show and I'll be going back again next year for sure. I'd encourage anyone who can to attend; you won't be disappointed.
