Surviving 71# K&K daytona not the salt flats car????

[THE CHARGER PUNK]

i was just looking over photos of the K&K daytona from when it broke the record on the salt flats  , and the one tim wellborn owns present day, and i dont think they are the same car, i know there was 3 K&K insurance daytonas built for issac. In the magazines wellborns car was stated as the salt flat car but after seein how the salt flat car is smoothed out with no rear window trim and the a-pillar moudlings are welded and smoothed over and painted over. so am i right and this is not the same car???-MATT

[THE CHARGER PUNK]

[THE CHARGER PUNK]

also the exhaust is different, goes from single side pipe to dual

[tan top]

  hmmm.. i thought they found a load of Bonneville salt packed under the original fuel cell & in the chassis rails,  seams etc 

[nascarxx29]

The one I know of and heard of was on loan or donated Harry Hyde relations K@K insurance or Norm K to the Talladega museum.They later restored it.As the motor and trans had not guts.I and others sent money in to help get it restored and the donaters recieved a certificate.Tim W drove it to certain events here and overseas.I dont think or heard that he owns it though.Now the # 88 blue research daytona in the Talladega museum.Wasnt the actual car it was switched with the low wing 71 test mule car.The real #88 research daytona is owned by Greg K

[Aero426]

Tim now owns the car, but it will stay at the museum at Talladega.   

I realize there are some inconsistencies with the period photos versus the car as configured now.   I've heard the stories about Roger Gibson finding the salt in the nooks and crannies, and have no reason to doubt it.  The car sat around for a long time outside before it was restored and donated (around 1977).  There are blanks to be filled in as far as what was done, and what condition it was in before it was donated.   Magazine reports of the time say it was in pretty bad shape.

[nascarxx29]

Bobby Isaac daytona


http://aerowarriors.com/bv.html


http://aerowarriors.com/wci71.html

[Ghoste]

Inconsistencies or no, it's still fantastic that the car exists.

[daytonalo]

Can anyone inform me on what the color is on those two cars parked in the museum ?

[nascarxx29]

It might be a ford color poppy red but Im not sure

[daytonalo]

Dave what about the car parked next to it and the other car I posted , what color are those cars ?

[nascarxx29]

Lighting changes things the 2 contrast of colors in orange are the EK2 tang Vitaman C color and EV2 Hemi orange

http://autocolorlibrary.com/cgi-bin/search/searchpic.pl?1970-dodge-pg01.jpg  .But my memory serves me correctly that they used a poppy red ford color #60449

http://autocolorlibrary.com/cgi-bin/search/searchpic.pl?1965-ford-pg01.jpg

[daytonalo]

Two things , what the hell is tang orange and why would the # 71 team paint it a ford color instead of r-4 ?

[Ghoste]

Tang like the orange flavored drink and Ford red because they like the color?
Hey, Sox and Martin painted all their engines Ford engine blue.

[nascarxx29]

Petty blue came to be by Richard Petty only having half a can of blue and half a can of white.

[daytonalo]

Dave do you think the daytona I posted is special order 60436 orange ?It looks lighter than hemi orange

[daytonalo]

I AGREE THAT THE CAR WELLBORN HAS IS NOT THE BONNEVILLE CAR , BESIDES THE REAR WINDOW , NOTICE THE SMOOTHED OUT DRIP RAIL ! IT WAS CUT OFF

[Aero426]

Two things , what the hell is tang orange and why would the # 71 team paint it a ford color instead of r-4 ?

The K & K team used the same colors from 65-66 forward.  Aside from there not being and R4 that far back, they would have used whatever they liked, or was available in a bright red color.   There were not any corporate orders.  I think one of the  few using a factory color would have been Nichels.   The Dave Marcis Daytona was painted in Ford colors as well.

[THE CHARGER PUNK]

so it looks 2 be that the 1 71 k&K cars that survives is not the bonneville salt flat car, they say that tims car is the last surving car, but u never know , the other 2 could be sitting around a yard or ina a garage for all we know-MATT

[daytonalo]

One more note , look at the leading edge of hood , its longer than the fender . It was probably lengthend   and they deleted the hood to nose seal .
                                                                                                          Larry

[hemigeno]

I think it's a little premature for us armchair quarterbacks to be declaring that the Wellborn car is not the Salt Flats car. 

I'm seriously thinking NASCAR had a rule that all cars had to run the drip mouldings that were on the car from the factory.  Reason I say that is because the vintage photos I have hanging on the wall here ALL show the Daytonas, 'Birds and 500s with their drip mouldings intact.  The Charger variants did delete the trim piece in the very back corner of the rear window, but that was more of a transition piece to the body belt moulding than part of the drip moulding.

If it would have been possible for the teams to have removed the drip rail mouldings and be NASCAR-legal, what would the advantage to having the A-pillar stainless trim for the 500's and the Daytona's?  Little, to no benefit if you ask me.  The cars would have had less drag without the driprail trim, so I can't imagine them wanting to leave it on just for style points.  There must have been a similar requirement for the back glass moulding too, as all the pictures I have (which show the back glass) show the chrome moulding/trim too.

In the Bonneville pictures, you can see that the team used (color-matched?) tape to blend the transition between the body and the window glass, and I'm sure they used every other trick in the book to smooth the airflow anywhere they could.  The fender scoops were blended in quite a bit beyond the normal oval-track configuration too.

In the restoration of the #71 Daytona, Tim Wellborn's team would have had a choice of whether to restore the car as a NASCAR Race Daytona spec'd car, or to restore it as the K&K Insurance Team's NASCAR Race Daytona as modified for Bonneville duty.  The car could not wear both trim configurations, because one is not NASCAR-legal, and the other is not as they ran the car on the salt flats.  As a result, how the car looks now does not preclude the possibility that it is the same car.

Bobby definitely made his name more as a NASCAR driver, so I think Tim's decision was correct.  IMHO, the car belongs as a NASCAR Race Daytona, but I personally think it is the Salt Flats car.  How else would the salt have gotten in the cracks and crevices that it did?

[Aero426]

To restate, the explanation I was given was that there was a long time between the Bonneville runs (1971) and the donation of the car (1977), and that there was extensive work that needed to be done to the car during the cosmetic restoration.      This was performed by the K & K team.  There was no real body work done when Tim and the Talladega Museum, and Roger Gibson got involved.  It was 90 percent mechanical.   Roger may have done some minor repair, but the basic paint work on the car is what was donated by K & K.

The K & K team had several 500's and Daytonas at any given time.   Yes, I acknowledge that the Bonneville car was much cheated up with the lack of drip rails, trim, blended scoops.  However, we don't know what happened in those six years the car sat around, or the work that was performed on it prior to donation. Nor do we don't know what they started with condition-wise.   Robert Gee the bodyman may have used some leftover NOS sheetmetal on the car.    I can't personally say the car is or isn't the B'ville car.  But if Tim or Roger says, "We found salt when we pulled the fuel cell", I have no reason not to believe them.   If Harry Lee Hyde says it's the car, I'm not going to call him a liar either. 

What is not in dispute is that the car is a real K & K raced Daytona.   The team had several milestones in that period: winning the 69 Texas 500, winning the 70 GN Championship, setting the 201 mph lap record at Talladega.    And then there was Bonneville.    Either way, it is an important car that could have participated in ANY of these events.  Of them, Bonneville was probably the least significant.    

Sentiment aside, in reality, the real purpose of the donation of the car was a HUGE tax write off for Nord Krauskopf of K & K.    His number was challenged by the IRS, and he won.  I think the amount he claimed was $175,000.  And this was in the 70's.   

[Ghoste]

I wonder what their response would be today.

[Mike DC]

$175,000 in the 1970s for a used NASCAR Daytona? 

Man, that's pretty amazing.  For that time and place I think it's a lot more amazing than the $1 million dollar Hemi'Cuda situation these days.  People couldn't give away musclecars in general at that time.  And NASCAR itself was still basically a regional redneck 'shine runner sport.  Used NASCARs were viewed as parts-donors at best. 





As for the car's history, I find it totally credible that this is the real car. 

Forget about the restoration ten years after the top-speed runs, what about just ten days later?  The salt flats car would have been put right back into NASCAR battle after those Bonneville sessions so they almost surely had to re-instate the driprails immediately. 

NASCAR racers actually did try shaving off the driprails at some point back in the day, but within a couple weeks NASCAR had noticed and outlawed it.  The A-pillar and rear window work on the Bonneville car looks like some crude bondo crap up close.  I'm sure it was temporary.   

Unless somebody produces a pic of a K&K Daytona with missing driprails that dates from months/years after the Bonneville record trip, I'm still sold on this museum car.   
 

[Moparmatty]

From the looks of these two pictures, it appears to me that the car still has it'sdrip rails.  The tops of them must have been mudded in.  Making them look like they're gone.