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).