Fender Oil in a Racing Superbird?

[Aero426]

the oil fill cap on the Cotton Owens' remote tank set up would wind up under the hood, would it not?  Apparently Hartman and the engineering Daytona's dry sump tank had a different set up for location of the cap.

I believe you are correct.   The photo is only representative of the type of tank used. 

[nitrometal]

Thanks for digging up those photos Doug.  I've seen or even heard of this set-up in those cars.
Yet another mystery solved by the wealth of information on this website.  I thought I was seeing things!

[mauve66]

Here is a shot of the #5 Nichels Road Runner / Superbird from 1972.   The car has the standard Road Runner front clip on it, and above the "ich" of the Nichels fender decal, there is a removable panel to get to the oil tank.    This car also had a wiper peg and squirter that can be seen on the driver side.   It ran once or twice on dirt and spent the rest of the year on pavement as a Superbird.   Ray ran the car with leftover Mopar components out of his own pocket that season with Bobby Unser as the driver.   These were years of transition for Nichels as witnessed by the GM cars under construction in the background.

thats still not a superbird , no fender scoop and no pointed nose and the hood has a raised lump in the middle of it

[Ghoste]

He did say standard Road Runner front clip.

[mauve66]

He did say standard Road Runner front clip.

damn, i blame it on the turkey dressing dripping into my eye.....................................

[Aero426]

Below is the "rest of the story" on the Butch Hartman oil fill.     The tale is told by Don Moody who is a member of DSAC and Winged Warriors.    Don spent a year or so on the Butch Hartman crew and in fact is the man filling the dry sump system.   I will let Don take up the story below the photo...



"Yep,  That's me.  I was wearing my Scat Pack Tee shirt.  A funny story goes along with that picture.  I was told how many quarts of oil to put in that tank, and that's what I was doing.  I think it was the first race that we had the dry sump system in place, superspeedway and all.  Any way--when Butch started the engine to check everything out - this huge volume of fresh, clean oil started to bubble and burp out of the fill opening and proceeded to stream onto the floor of the garage!  So there I am watching something I know can't be right and all I could do was throw shop towels into the growing puddle of oil and act like we did that all the time. It was embarrassing to say the least !  I'm not sure what caused that to happen.  I don't think we changed the engine that day.  Maybe air in the lines ? Told me too much oil ?  Just not familiar with the system ?  I remember at some time that season Dick (Hartman) and Butch found out that Chrysler/Nichels had told them to plumb the oil cooler a certain way and later they found out that they were told to do it backwards so it was doing no cooling at all.  Dick and Butch always thought the "Factory" was trying to make them look bad in some way because they would run so well.  That's why Dick had "Independently Owned" painted on the fender.  Thanks for the scan.  I looked for my copy but I have too many boxes of magazines to go through and will have to do that later.  But that is the photo I was thinking of.  I remember how surprised I was when that issue came out.  I knew who it was, but again--no face time !

[nitrometal]

Thanks for posting up Don's story, Doug.  That was an amusing anecdote.  I've wondered if the factory teams kept the independents in the dark.

Phil