64 FRED LORENZEN CAMMER CAR

[HolmanMoodyStroppeGang]

Hi guys

Many of us wish we could be at Beaver but we kind of debuted a car I have been very quiet about for a while,

Please check it out.  This car recalls the Stroppe car we had a cammer in way back when, that was too fast, then got banned after practice.  I will say one thing about this car, it has a race engine in it, like we did then, and since, and this old FORD  is F A S T.......!!




Also, the collection acquired Bat Mobile 10 and that's me getting ready to light her.  Barris authorized 10 special continuation cars and this one is fast. My kid brother drove it to the show.  He gets paid to drive this down Pacific Coast Highway?  We estimate that thousands of people wanted a picture by this car and it was a blast.  Kind of hard to keep people from touching it which we have to stay on guard for.  Has a big stout Rat in it. The original, with an FE, went for 4.2 Million a while back.   This is the latest acquisition and all I can say here is, Batmobiles are not cheap...LOL !


I will do a Biikini's and Nitro post soon.  Made a lot of noise and there were a ton of pretty ladies there. We light the fuel stuff backed in to the tanning part of a big car show by a surf beach.  So the ladies get all wound up and that is fun.

We fired the Beaver Hunter,,,,on 95% nitro. John Force got his license to drive fuel cars in Beaver Hunter 2.   We may acquire the Beaver Hunter, who knows, maybe bring it to Beaver some day.  That would be hilarious...darn thing went way over 200 MPH in 65

One picture is of Don Long, Tommy IVO and me last Saturday at a chassis shop.   IVO is just the kindest, funniest, coolest guy.   The plan is to show him the big shop soon.  Awesome man, go to his website, it is awesome.  One of his old short wheel base rails sold for $600,000 recently.  A wealthy collector grabbed it, then donated it to a museum for the write off.  IVO has a lot of cool things to share about Cammers on Nitro that he raced.   For another day.

Good luck from all of us to everybody at Beaver.  Hope the records fall and of course, please have a safe and fun race

Thanks now,

Tom

Busy

[BruceS]

Tom,
Great shots, thanks for posting!  Btw TV Tom Ivo's book is really entertaining too.  That '64 Galaxie Lorenzen car looks like an excellent resto. 

Growing up in SoCal, I remember the yellow Helms Bakery trucks (behind you in the Batmobile) that used to deliver fresh bread and pastries to our neighborhoods back in the 50's and 60's.  When those panel trucks would get a zillion miles on them Helms would sell them off; my cousin bought a worn-out '56 Chevy panel truck from them, put new paint and a new engine in and drove it another zillion miles!

Bruce

[jayb]

For a few years before he passed away I would talk occasionally with Earl Wade. He was following my SOHC builds on the FE Forum (before I started this web site), and would give me some engine advice on the builds.  Anyway, one day we were talking about the old days, and Earl told me that in late spring 1964 Fred Lorenzen's Galaxie with the SOHC went to Daytona for some practice testing, and ran well over 180 MPH (I think Earl said 187?).  Apparently it was several MPH faster than any other car had ever run there, including the hemi cars that were dominating NASCAR that year.  Unfortunately, the powers at NASCAR were so unnerved by the speed that they banned the SOHC for the remainder of the season, so Lorenzen's cammer Galaxie never got a chance to run. 

My own personal take on this is that NASCAR held in their hands a golden age of engine development, and squashed it by effectively eliminating the SOHC from any NASCAR competition.  Chrysler was threatening a DOHC hemi if NASCAR let the Ford run, and if I recall Oldsmobile also had a DOHC engine running in prototype form.  Probably Ford would have had to go to a gear drive DOHC version of the FE to stay competitive, and of course per NASCAR rules they would have been required to build production car versions.  Can you imagine the flight from pushrods to overhead cams starting in the mid 1960s?  Think of the gold in the junkyards in the mid 1970s.  I have always hated NASCAR for that decision...

[427LX]

Great build on a great car!  Yes nascar is really a screwed up mess trying to micro manage auto racing into a circus act.
Now and for  many years they run only special built nascar spec engines which have no connection to what you can buy in a showroom. Is that progress??

[Katz427]

Very nice! Thanks Tom for the pics! It is about 30 years ago now that I was at a race talking about cammers and listening to a gent that worked for Goodyear. I still remember his take on this. He felt Goodyear put the bug in Bill France's ear that the cars were too fast. At least for the time 1964- Goodyear was worried about tires holding those lap speeds. 1964 was a deadly year for auto racing and Goodyear felt the speeds were outpacing the available tire and safety technology.
I agree that Nascar has lost it's way. The "golden years" for auto racing have passed IMHO.

[Qikbbstang]

Re: "NASCAR held in their hands a golden age of engine development, and squashed it by effectively eliminating the SOHC from any NASCAR competition. "

   Sadly that decision by NASCAR put the US Auto industry decades and particularly Ford behind the remainder of the worlds car companies that have OHC'd for years. Like Jay stated other US Mfgs were ready to OHC for NASCAR racing. "Win On Sunday Sell On Monday" would have had buyers coming into showrooms and saying: I want that OHV motor in my new car. Took four decades for Ford to OHV their primary V8 motors and the remainder of the US Auto industry still is pushroding.

[cjshaker]

Doc (C5HM on the FE Forum) has repeatedly documented that the SOHC was never banned from NASCAR, but rather given a weight penalty that made it near impossible to run safely. Just to clear up that misconception.

And Tom, that engine has polished valve covers, polished timing cover, polished intake and a stock air cleaner assembly. Is that the way it was run back in '64? Because I recall you giving Doc a very hard time over him not using the correct OIL PAN on his '64. What gives?

[Katz427]

Dr. John is correct that in 1966 Ford was allowed the Sohc but with a 1 lbs. per cu/in penalty. 1964 the engine was submitted to Nascar but they refused to allow it to run. This is all 62 years ago now, the story that was related to me by a Ford engineer was that Ford purchased a hemi from Ray Nichols engineering after the 1964 Daytona 500. It was tested and produced 550 bhp. I am not sure but some HM documents show a 427 hi riser pretty damn close. Anyways this engineer did a calculation based on frontal area of the Plymouth and Galaxie and determined a 3.5 mph difference in favor of the Plymouth because of the smaller frontal area.  So if one can transcend the 62 years it seems most of the advantage was the aerodynamics and not the hemi. Dr. John may have some documentation to substantiate this , all I have is memory. As a side note to this AJ Foyt was in second place with 25 miles left when the engine had a valve break. AJ was mad and switched to a Dodge. He ran the Firecracker at Daytona but later was back in a Ford. The Charlotte paper reported he was leary of the Dodge's lack of handling at that time.

[thatdarncat]

Here is a link to the other forum and the recent discussion on Nascar Ford intermediates where C5HM posted a couple copies of letters from Ford on this subject.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/74182/message/1461541817/Not+so

The first letter references and agrees with what Katz427 cited, that the 427 SOHC was initially not allowed, them allowed in 1966, but with the weight penalty making it unpractical. The second letter  references the testing I think Jay talked with Earl Wade about, with the 180 mph top speed, and being 7 mph faster than the existing wedge 427 racecar.

I'm just glad documentation like this exists and is shared so we all can become the best educated FE fans on the internet.

[jayb]

Doc (C5HM on the FE Forum) has repeatedly documented that the SOHC was never banned from NASCAR, but rather given a weight penalty that made it near impossible to run safely. Just to clear up that misconception.

To say it was never banned is not really correct, based on what I've been told by Earl Wade and others.  The SOHC was not allowed in 1964 and 1965, regardless of what car it was in, or the vehicle weight; I don't think this was a case of NASCAR issuing a ban, but more of a non-response to Ford requests to run the engine.  But it was effectively a ban nonetheless.  It was of course legal to run an SOHC in 1966, but only in full size Galaxies, and with a weight penalty, which would have rendered the car uncompetitive.

If you've got a link to documentation that proves the SOHC was legal to run in 1964 or 1965, I'd like to see it - Jay

[Katz427]

I want to add a little side note to this if I may. A friend who was a Chrysler engineer always claimed that all of Petty's engines came directly from engineering in Detroit. He claimed he could hear them running on the dyno when he was testing.I thought this was odd,but when Petty went to Ford for 1969, a gent who worked installing dynamometers claimed he helped install a dyno at Petty's place in NC at the request of Ford Motor Company. He claimed the Petty's never had a dyno before that. The engineer left Chrysler back in 1979 and he claimed all of the small block Mopars had been built at engineering in Detroit right up until Petty switched to GM. I was at a gathering and Richard was a guest speaker. A team had just been caught 5 cu/in over the 358 limit. The host asked the now retired King to comment. Petty said he never really knew what size engine was in the car. Sometimes a 454 sometimes a 472 and a few times He thought they were in the 480 inch range. Petty then said "I just drove it"! So it was kind of hard to tell what parts were used in his engines. I had heard from another mechanic that worked around the race shops that Ray was upset that Ford accused him of a "ringer" hemi engine. HM thought it should have made more than 550 bhp. Supposedly Ray Nichols told John Holman that was a damn good horespower number for his hemi engines. I guess John was comparing it to the numbers HM was seeing with the SOHC.

[cjshaker]

Doc (C5HM on the FE Forum) has repeatedly documented that the SOHC was never banned from NASCAR, but rather given a weight penalty that made it near impossible to run safely. Just to clear up that misconception.

To say it was never banned is not really correct, based on what I've been told by Earl Wade and others.  The SOHC was not allowed in 1964 and 1965, regardless of what car it was in, or the vehicle weight; I don't think this was a case of NASCAR issuing a ban, but more of a non-response to Ford requests to run the engine.  But it was effectively a ban nonetheless.  It was of course legal to run an SOHC in 1966, but only in full size Galaxies, and with a weight penalty, which would have rendered the car uncompetitive.

If you've got a link to documentation that proves the SOHC was legal to run in 1964 or 1965, I'd like to see it - Jay

I never mentioned a year, just making the statement in general about the misconception of it being banned, but in re-reading your original post I see you were talking about the '64 season. Personally, I know nothing about the subject, but John seems to have plenty of documentation to back up what he says.

I'd still be interested in hearing about the details of this restoration, because there doesn't appear to be anything correct about the engine or engine compartment, at least from what I've seen of the many vintage pictures that John has posted, which is alot.

[Katz427]

Dr. John has some nice info on the Fe forum. Does explain some of what was a political war as well as engineering battle. Racing helped to sell cars back in the 1960's. I was born a Ford fan so I followed all of this as best I could. Over the years I have met some people who remeber different bits but it sure is nice to see the documents Dr. John has in his possesion. Unfortunately a lot of history is not researched anymore, and the people involved are all gone. I know Dr. John  gets upset by the false history, but most of the scribes writing this stuff were not even born when all this happened. Today it is just a google search / right or wrong it gets printed.

[jayb]

Here's a post over on the FE Forum that addresses the SOHC legality question.  Not sure why C5HM won't post here; he sure has got a lot of good info.  He also contradicts what Earl Wade told me a few years ago, about Lorenzen's SOHC Galaxie making test runs at Daytona in 1964 (sometime after the Daytona 500).  Earl was pretty positive about that when I talked to him, but who knows...

http://www.network54.com/Forum/74182/message/1462227051/CAMMER+in+NASCAR

[cjshaker]

Funny thing, the memory. My Dad, at 82 now, remembers things that simply didn't happen, or didn't happen the way he remembers. My wife says the same thing about me