Tag: bonneville

238 MPH Vintage Ford Model A Engine Explained – Part 1 – Greg Quirin @YouTube

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In part one of this video segment, Pete Aardema will explain the development of his 93-year-old Ford Model A engine that is officially in the books as the fastest Ford Model A on the planet with a record speed set at Bonneville in August of 2012 at 238.598 mph. Remarkably a top speed of 240 MPH was measured on the back up run. Several years ago, Pete and Kevin modified this 1929 Model A engine and made special cylinder heads with dual overhead cams and achieved a land speed record of 238.598 MPH at Bonneville. This was all done in a blown gas streamliner in the vintage four-cylinder classification which is designated for pre-1935 four-cylinder engines up to 220 cubic inches in displacement. In part two of this video, Pete and Kevin will disassemble the engine and you will see how this one-of-a-kind masterpiece was constructed.

Find of the Day: This Model A-based belly tanker looks the part; now it’s time to make it walk the walk as well – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings

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It’s hard not to see a race car built from a belly tank and get the itch to take it out for a high-speed pass or two at Bonneville or El Mirage; it’s what they’ve always been designed and built to do, after all.

This belly tanker based on a late 1920s Ford Model A for sale on Hemmings.com, however, is a little different, featuring a replica fiberglass tank and fairly stock Model A components that probably wouldn’t make for blistering speeds on the salt flats or dry lakes. But that’s not to say it couldn’t be made into a serious racer or, with some lights and mirrors, a fun little cruiser. From the seller’s description:

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Save the Salt presses Utah legislature for key funding for Bonneville restoration program – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings

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In federal and even state budgets, $1 million isn’t really that much — maybe enough to pave a couple miles of road — but when a state needs to cut as much as $2 billion from its budget, every dollar becomes imperiled, which is why representatives from the Save the Salt Coalition have started to urge Utah lawmakers to keep in the state’s budget the $1 million they previously set aside for a program designed to restore the Bonneville Salt Flats with more than 1 million tons of reclaimed salt per year.

“We’re optimistic (the funds) will stay there,” said Stu Gosswein, the senior director of federal government affairs for the Specialty Equipment Market Association. “We just wanted to take the opportunity to reinforce that we have this Restore Bonneville program.”

The program, estimated to cost $50 million over 10 years, will essentially pick up where a previous five-year pilot salt replenishment program left off when it ended in 2002. According to a fact sheet about the Restore Bonneville program that Gosswein shared, the pilot program transferred an average of 1.2 million tons of salt to the racing surface of the Bonneville Salt Flats per year via a brine solution, leading to a thicker salt crust and “improved” brine aquifer beneath the crust.

Intrepid Potash, the nearby mining company with a Bureau of Land Management lease to mine the salt flats, continued that pilot program voluntarily from 2005 to 2012, returning about 380,000 tons of salt per year. The BLM then mandated Intrepid to continue replenishment in 2012, after which the company started to return almost 600,000 tons of salt per year

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Where Cars Try to Hit Mach 1, the Salt of the Earth Is Crumbling – Paul Stenquist @NewYorkTimes

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Where Cars Try to Hit Mach 1, the Salt of the Earth Is Crumbling

The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah have hosted speed chasers for decades, but the course is distressed. An advocacy group has a plan, but not the money.

Credit…Pete Farnsworth Collection

Not even 30 years after Karl Benz built what is said to be the first automobile, Teddy Tetzlaff climbed into a Blitzen Benz racecar and blasted across the snow-white surface of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, clocking in at 142.8 miles per hour and setting an unofficial land-speed record.

This 1914 effort certainly generated publicity for Tetzlaff, a California-born racer, and the German automaker, Benz & Cie, that built his car, but the locale was most likely a mere footnote at the time.

The automotive legacy of the salt flats wasn’t cemented until 1935, when Malcolm Campbell rode his Blue Bird past 300 m.p.h. and into the record books: Bonneville was extremely well suited to high-speed driving

Where Cars Try to Hit Mach 1, the Salt of the Earth Is Crumbling

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Related – Debate over future of Bonneville Salt Flats

S.C.T.A. Bonneville National Speed Trials – 1949-1968 Collector’s Set

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As a hot rodder, Bonneville is the ultimate destination. For the past seven decades, it’s been known to push man and machine to their limit. Legends are born out on the salt, and now the golden years of Bonneville racing have been compiled into an unbelievable two-book set.

Order from The Rodder’s Journal library here

Bonneville racers push for $50 million to restore salt flats – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings

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Convinced that a salt restoration program conducted in conjunction with the mining company that has removed millions of tons of salt from the Bonneville salt flats will return the unique landscape to its former glory, leaders from the Bonneville land-speed racing community have asked the state of Utah to chip in $5 million toward a $50 million fund for the program.

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1951 Bonneville National Speed Trials

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Some great 1951 Bonneville footage from Mac’s Motor City Garage

1932 Ford High Boy Roadster; Metallic Blue, “Miller Automotive Chino”

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I keep seeing pictures of this lovely 32 High Boy, finally I found some more detail on the Sports Car Digest website coverage of the Auctions America California 2013 auction report:

Lot # 759 1932 Ford High Boy Roadster; S/N AB5055556; Metallic Blue, ‘Miller Automotive Chino’/Grey Naugahyde; No top; Original, modified for competition or performance, 3 condition; Hammered Sold at $48,000 plus commission of 10.00%; Final Price $52,800. No Reserve – 221 flathead, Offenhauser heads, Offenhauser intake with three 97s, Harman-Collins magneto, alternator, quick change axle, steel wheels with hubcaps and trim rings, 5.50×16 front, 10.50×16 rear tires – A sweet old thing clocked at 142.97 mph at Bonneville in 1954. Tired, dull old paint, chipped frame, dirty engine. I love it. – This may be the coolest car in Auctions America’s Burbank auction. It just reeks of early hot rodding days in southern California and on the salt flats. Its condition, while aged and neglected, is sound and complete. For a moderate price someone bought a resurrection project that will bring a real historic high boy back to life. Will it be worth it financially? Probably not, but a concours trophy or two, a run at Bonneville Speed Week and a few mornings’ admiration and accolades at Cars & Coffee will flesh out the financial cost with ample psychic income. It represents full value for money at this price.

The Speed Week that Wasn’t

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Unfortunately Bonneville Speed Week was a bust this year for racers. The heavy rains last week washed away any chance of racing because there was no way the salt could dry quick enough. We were there to take in Speed Week and photograph Johnson’s Hot Rod Shop and the ’53 Studebaker they built for Paul and Betty Gilliam, the Johnson’s partners on the Stupidbaker Racing Team.