Ques about NASCAR wing cars

[Brock Samson]

 I actully have that book, just pulled it off the shelf..  I guess it's more fun to ask you guys then it is to try to remember... 
I guess  C.R.S. rears it's ugly head yet again,..
Ok..  it's goin in the "library"..   

[CornDogsCharger]

This topic sure has become even more interesting!!  In the picture below, I always seemed to think the fender looked handmade.  Not so much because of the wheel opening, but mostly because of the area down low where it ties into the nose cone.  To me, the side of the car looks much to have been sectioned into a lower profile car.  Looks like #5 took a wild ride at Daytona. 

Justin
"CornDog"

[Aero426]

This topic sure has become even more interesting!!  In the picture below, I always seemed to think the fender looked handmade.  Not so much because of the wheel opening, but mostly because of the area down low where it ties into the nose cone.  To me, the side of the car looks much to have been sectioned into a lower profile car.  Looks like #5 took a wild ride at Daytona. 

Justin
"CornDog"

The photo of Baker's car appearing sectioned is more of the way it was originally posted online.   When it was posted in the original web editor, if you click and drag the corner of the photo to make it larger or smaller, it did not proportionally adjust the photo.  Consequently you can inadvertently adjust the profile of the car so it looks thicker or thinner.   

[Johnny Daytona]

In 69 the car that Richard Brickhouse won the Talladega race was a 63 or 64 Chassis That had a body put on it.

With full factory support, running a six year old chassis in 1969 doesn't make sense.   Not to mention the evolutionary changes along the way.   Where did you get this information from?

Ok you called me out on this one. I was thinking crazy. It wasn't the 69 Talladega Race that was won with a 63  frame. . It was the 73 spring race won by Dick Brooks driving the Crawford brothers Plymonth. that was a re skinned 63 model.  And my sources are my old time friend Pete Hamilton, Who also drove that car in 73. I will call Jim Crawford and comfirm it if needed. 69 was the strike race that had a host of different cars in it from some USAC contenders.  To even some grand American mustangs to fill out the field.  I had crossed stories told to me by another driver involved in that race. Don Schisler better known to Dukes Of Hazard fanatics as a member of the General Lee building team for the first year in Atlanta. His description of the morphedite he drove was stuck on my brain.
  And as for those evolutionary changes taking place...  After going through my files and digging the notes that  Larry Rathgab gave to my brother On chassis set up for supper speedways. And reviewing the calculations of roll rates required with what sized bars.  The roll centers and the suggested suspension heights. How he lists It as Working on all b body cars. Then it was easy to see how it worked.  As far as I know the earth has the same amount of gravity now as it did in 63. Rules of Physics and geometry are the same for the most part. And even today Every nextell cup chassis is still based off of a 64 Malibu frame with 64 Chevy truck trailing arms.  once you get it right. evolution  slows down.  And that is evolutionary.    everything in good fun John

[BROCK]

Doug brings up a good point about proportions & pictures.  That picture sure looks good though

The front fender is definately massaged; looks almost as good as Bobby Isaacs K&K car at Bonneville

Below is from Car and Driver May 1968 (still pertinent to the topic if a little earlier in the game)


an excerpt from Deadline for Daytona
...When rookie Butch Hartman parked his relatively stock Charger next to Ray Fox's special, factory-backed Charger
in the garage area, Fox put up a great fuss to get it moved.  Why?  Because Hartman's car stood in bold contrast
to exactly how much chopping and slicing had gone into making the factory cars more streamlined.  Richard Petty
somehow managed to qualify his Plymouth Road Runner 5 MPH faster than any other Chrysler product and a lot of
people attributed it to a rough finish black top that had been painted on the car.  But when a magazine photographer
mamged to sneak a picture of the strange baffling and quasi-belly pans in the Plymouth's engine compartment, one
of the Petty crew demanded his film.

The 68 Charger mentioned above may have been a 2 by 2 car with nothing else changed.  Who knows.
One thing is certain, no matter which camp you're in, even Ford or Chevy, it is alterations made to our hero's cars
that were part of their success & will continue to fascinate us for many years to come

[Brock Samson]

check out the #6 car's side quarter from the bottom of the door to the rear tire, sure looks rolled and wider to me,.. or is it flared?

Chargers stock chargers have a definate crease that one lacks...

I'm a huge fan of the Daytona race cars not so much the Superbirds... 

[Aero426]

Below is from Car and Driver May 1968 (still pertinent to the topic if a little earlier in the game)


an excerpt from Deadline for Daytona
...When rookie Butch Hartman parked his relatively stock Charger next to Ray Fox's special, factory-backed Charger
in the garage area, Fox put up a great fuss to get it moved.  Why?  Because Hartman's car stood in bold contrast
to exactly how much chopping and slicing had gone into making the factory cars more streamlined.  Richard Petty
somehow managed to qualify his Plymouth Road Runner 5 MPH faster than any other Chrysler product and a lot of
people attributed it to a rough finish black top that had been painted on the car.  But when a magazine photographer
mamged to sneak a picture of the strange baffling and quasi-belly pans in the Plymouth's engine compartment, one
of the Petty crew demanded his film.

The 68 Charger mentioned above may have been a 2 by 2 car with nothing else changed.  Who knows.
One thing is certain, no matter which camp you're in, even Ford or Chevy, it is alterations made to our hero's cars
that were part of their success & will continue to fascinate us for many years to come

Butch and Dick Hartman would have gotten an education when they went south.   This was before they became a powerhouse team in USAC stock car racing.   In '68 they bought a brand new Charger from Nichels.  Eventually they figured out those body mods.   Their third gen Chargers were pretty cheated up.

There were only TWO of the 2 x 2 cars, a Dodge and a Plymouth.  They were developed to run the July 1968 Firecracker 400.   Bobby Isaac had one and I "believe" the Plymouth was the Mario Rossi's entered #22. Per George Wallace of Chrysler Engineering , Petty for sure did not have an 2 x 2 car.   His Daytona cars for '68 WERE tricked out though.    Rathgeb and John Pointer have said that the 68 Petty cars for Daytona did not conform the the engineering suggestions and for the Feb race. Pettys car was the only one able to qualify close to the Fords, several MPH faster than any other Mopar.

The upshot of the 2 x 2 program was that Chrysler got caught and were told to raise the cars.  They were allowed to run that race and were told not to bring them back.    The Isaac car became the mule Daytona at the proving grounds.      No word on the Plymouth's fate for sure.   Chrysler put a lot of time and $$$ into the 2 x 2 program only to not be able to use it.

Another thing Chrysler was lobbying for at this time was a reinforced wheel.   It had a cover as part of the wheel with a small opening in the center to access the five lugs.  No photos have been found, but it is similar to what was used on CART Indy cars in the early 1990's.    Chrysler negotiated hard for this as a "safety" device.  The reality was it was an aerodynamic aid with a proven benefit.  NASCAR did not buy it.

[Aero426]

check out the #6 car's side quarter from the bottom of the door to the rear tire, sure looks rolled and wider to me,.. or is it flared?

Chargers stock chargers have a definate crease that one lacks...

It probably has been massaged out wider.   The templates were not what they are today.   The lack of the crease could simply be that it's got some mud hiding it.   In the late 1980's. Robert Gee, the metal man on Isaac's K & K cars was quoted as saying, "There ain't nothing I can't make with pop rivets and bondo."

[hemigeno]

Doug,

I had read elsewhere that there were a total of three 2x2 '68 Chargers built - no mention made of any Plymouths, but that doesn't mean there were none.  One of the Chargers was the Isaac car you mentioned, and another was the #6 Cotton Owens car driven by Al Unser which finished 4th that day.  Not sure who had the 3rd car (or if there really was one), but this author reported three Chargers.  The same author said that the Isaac car was the one used for as the on-track mule car for testing Daytona parts - but you probably have much better information/resources than I.

[Aero426]

Doug,

I had read elsewhere that there were a total of three 2x2 '68 Chargers built - no mention made of any Plymouths, but that doesn't mean there were none.  One of the Chargers was the Isaac car you mentioned, and another was the #6 Cotton Owens car driven by Al Unser which finished 4th that day.  Not sure who had the 3rd car (or if there really was one), but this author reported three Chargers.  The same author said that the Isaac car was the one used for as the on-track mule car for testing Daytona parts - but you probably have much better information/resources than I.

The Unser car (chassis 046) that finished fourth was in the February Daytona race.  The x2 cars did not exist at that time and only ran the July race.  The Isaac car became the Daytona mule at the PG.   The Unser car 046 (non x2 car)  did go to the PG and became a Charger 500 development car.

[hemigeno]

Gotcha...  I hadn't checked the results for the July race to confirm what I had read.  I also should have logged where I read that at (but I'm pretty sure it was an Anthony Young book).

[moparstuart]

 check this car out        http://www.mopardealer.com/petty3.htm

[pettybird]

Very cool--why didn't they media blast the chassis???

Very, very cool to see how the chassis and body mount.

[CornDogsCharger]

I love seeing photos like the ones on the Petty '72 Charger site.  I like to see how the vintage stock cars were build and how much of them are actually stock.  To me it even appears the floor is somewhat stock too.  It even has the little diagonal grooves in the floor.  What do everyone think?

Justin
"CornDog"

[Aero426]

Very cool--why didn't they media blast the chassis???

Very, very cool to see how the chassis and body mount.

If anything not blasting the chassis preserves the provenance of the car in the layers of paint.   If there's ever a dispute or the history is called into question, a little sandpaper is all it takes.  Once you blast it off, it's just hearsay.

[pettybird]

That makes sense.  I would have media blasted a bunch of it, though, especially outside of the driver's compartment.  The page says they spent four weeks sanding, so they must have taken a good deal of it off anyway.

[Howie]

               Whatever happened to that chassis?

[moparstuart]

Here are some pics of what is suppose to be a Nichles Car from 69. The history I have is that It was raced in USAC. That it was a 69 Charger 500. I see alot of Nichles looking aspects about the car The front clip, and I see alot of major repairs and patching that is not. What concerns me is the rear shock mounts don't look right for a Nichles car. But they could have been modified over the years. Alot of years I understand. Beyond the mid eighties as a saturday night dirt tracker in Ohio.

if i had the car it would be a 500 or wing car race car    , no doubt in my mind

[Aero426]

Here are some pics of what is suppose to be a Nichles Car from 69. The history I have is that It was raced in USAC. That it was a 69 Charger 500. I see alot of Nichles looking aspects about the car The front clip, and I see alot of major repairs and patching that is not. What concerns me is the rear shock mounts don't look right for a Nichles car. But they could have been modified over the years. Alot of years I understand. Beyond the mid eighties as a saturday night dirt tracker in Ohio.

Is this the one that was reported to be Bay Darnell's car?

[Aero426]

A Nichels car at this time would have a fabricated fire wall. 

The front end looks like Nichels to me, especially the K frame and the two short bolt on bars from the firewall to the outer tubes.   

Darnell sometimes ran his car with some 500 trim, but I don't think it ever had a complete 500 package.    The two newer Chargers he built for the 1972 season were not Nichels, but were very good cars. 

[Johnny Daytona]

The bolt in bars are what I noticed and remembered of nichels cars. But the only one that I ever got to see close and often was the one that was Cotton Owens in 72 The white 09 that Pete Hamilton raced at Daytona in 73.
   It is my understanding from what Bay told me about the 72 cars is he had help from someone from Nichels while building those cars. I would think it was Chuck or Richie most likely.

[Mike DC]

Hey you guys.  Great thread. 
I know a few general things about the construction of the '60s cars.  Not really specific to a given car, just relevant to unibody cars in that era:


--  In the early/mid 1960s, the crews were still starting with asembly-line shells and welding cages into them.
By the 1970s, they were starting by building a rollcage/chassis first.  Then the skin came later in the process. 


--  The modern era of 100% current cars every year was definitely not what they were doing back then.  A Charger Dyatona might have been built a certain way when they started constructing it in 1969, but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be another bucks-down team using an older chassis with a Daytona skin on it too. 


--  The first basic body templates starting showing up in about '66 and '67.  The 1966 Daytona race was looking pretty pretty snub-nosed and that was when they drew the line.  I think it was Smokey Eunick that showed up with a homemade template to argue that his funny-looking '66 Chevelle was legit, and that started it all.   The next big thing after the blunted noses were checked was the rush to lower the cars overall.


--  The crews were fabricating a lot of the cars' midsections even before the subframe rails became fully fabricated.  For a while they were cutting the center out of a car, building the floor/cab area from scratch, and then mating it back to the subframe rails at the front & rear extremities of the chassis structure.  They still used factory floor sections a lot of the time (sheetmetal), but I don't know if it was a demand or if it was just the most practical thing to do.  It seems common to use older stuff under the cars than what the skin was, though.  (Maybe it was just easier/cheaper to get raw-material sheetmetal from a couple years before rather than hacking up a brand-new car off a dealership?  That issue probably at least played a role in the non-sponsored independent rides, if not the factory cars.) 



--  I've read that it was about 1969 or 1970 when NASCAR let the crews abandon the factory unibody rails entirely. 

I know this date sounds too early, but stay with me here:

The teams had gotten to the point where the demand for factory subframe rails was basically nothing but a formality anyway, and letting the crews switch to raw rectangular tubing for the rails was just easier to rebuild after a crash.  There were still factory subframe rails being used for years after this 1969/70 era though.  This was just when the rule itself was relaxed, not when every car switched over every inch of its metal.  And even when the teams no longer HAD to use factory rails, they still had to use a certain amount of factory dimensions, so for a while it would still have been more practical to at lleast begin with a set of assembly-line subframe rails when building the car. 

[odcics2]

 

Interesting read. We know a bit more now about old race cars!