Thread: How about some great stories??

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It was about 1960 in Dayton, Ohio. I was 18 and driving a '59 Studebaker Lark, 259 cubic inches, Carter WCFB 4-bbl, 3-spd with Hurst floor shift conversion, dual exhaust with cut-outs, Lakewood Traction Masters (anti-hop bars for leaf springs) and Bucron cheater slicks bought from the local Sohio (Standard Oil of Ohio) gas station. She was a legal G/Stock car, right on the front edge of the index. Hot Damn, let's go kill some Chevies.

It was Sunday morning and I didn't have anything else to do, so I took off for Hamilton, about 30 miles from home. Tri-City Dragway was there and I figured there would be some easy pickins. I don't remember why, but I ended up going by myself. Usually, there was always somebody who wanted to go along. Matter of fact, there was usually a gang that wanted to go along.

Anyway, I had a good time and waded through the field one by one. Just as I was skinnin' the last one for the trophy, the throwout bearing linkage broke going into 3rd gear, so I had no clutch. I went ahead and motored on through for the win, but had to do some fancy maneuvering to get back home. When I had to stop, I would go to neutral, kill the motor and coast up to the stop sign, redlight, whatever and stop. To start off, I would pull the shifter into first gear and lean on the starter. The starter would pull the car ahead and start the motor at the same time. I would run her up a little ways in first, then pull the shifter into neutral, come back on the rpm's a little until I reached an equalibrium with engine speed and car speed and slip the shifter into second gear. Same routine for third gear. I got pretty good at synchronizing gears by the time I got her home.

Left to right in the photo are me, Lanny Davis (nobody seems to know what happened to him) and Ken Thomas (NTFDAY on this forum).

Some great stories. Malkes me want to go back about 40-50 years and relive those great days again.

Originally Posted by techinspector1

It was about 1960 in Dayton, Ohio. I was 18 and driving a '59 Studebaker Lark, 259 cubic inches, Carter WCFB 4-bbl, 3-spd with Hurst floor shift conversion, dual exhaust with cut-outs, Lakewood Traction Masters (anti-hop bars for leaf springs) and Bucron cheater slicks bought from the local Sohio (Standard Oil of Ohio) gas station. She was a legal G/Stock car, right on the front edge of the index. Hot Damn, let's go kill some Chevies.

And I will tell you how the Hurst floor shifter got in the car. Back up a month or two and tech and I are out on a newly completed portion of I-70 just north of Dayton. It was a nice flat stretch and we used it for a late night drag strip until the cops would come and run us off. Earlier we'd been out cruisin' and came across a guy with a pretty hot 51-52 Chevy running a two pot six with a split manifold that he called "The Grey Ghost" and he was sure he beat the Lark. So out to our "drag strip " we went and Richard cleaned his clock, but there was also a guy that had a 57 BelAir, 283 power pack, and one thing led to another and I flagged them off. Richard was a half a car or so ahead of the guy when he attempted to slam second gear. The shift bushings hung up and the race was lost and a mighty po'd Richard to boot. After getting out and unhanging the shift linkage we headed for home. On the way Richard decided to try to slam shift second and since he was still pretty miffed he really tried to jam it and the shift lever ended up where the turn signal lever is supposed to be. When he finally got the car stopped he came climbing out with shift lever in hand and I'm laughing my a** off much to his displeasure. It was broken beyond repair and fortunately there was pretty stout screwdriver in the trunk that he used to shift the car to get it home. The next day a brand new Hurst shifter found a home.