A Gearhead's Sanford and Son

I love my two Triumphs. Always will. But I must admit that I also love anything that is shiny, has a wheel on each corner, and makes interesting noises. So, this is a story about a non-Triumph experience, and if you'd prefer not to read something like that, you can hit the Back button right now and it won't hurt my feelings.

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from my friend Doctor Dave in Woodridge. He asked if I wanted to go along on a trip to St. Louis to fetch some parts for the car he's restoring. I'm easy. Of course I wanted to go. That was yesterday. My mind is still boggled.

Doctor Dave is a friend of many many years (my wife was his third grade teacher) who now is a successful oral surgeon. Unfortunately, I led him into a somewhat misspent youth repairing my SCCA racecars, and he has done some racing and more recently restored an MGA and a Jag. But he had a life-long lust for an Indianapolis racecar. Good grief. Several months ago he called and invited me over to see his new acquisition-a 1987 March, the Emerson Fittipaldi backup car. It was beautiful, but missing a few little parts-like engine, transaxle innards, wiring, and plumbing. I reminded him that most people buy cars with engines, at least, and he reminded me that hunting this stuff down is half the fun.

About a month ago Dave called me again, and this time I had to make a Sunday afternoon run to his house to see his newer acquisition-another 1987 March with all parts, including a Cosworth DFX engine, but it was a brand new car, never assembled. From the two, he'll restore the Fittipaldi car. Did I say "with all the parts"? Uhh . . . well, not quite.

So yesterday, Dave and I headed to St. Louis to see Chuck Haines. Chuck's home is a nice middle class ranch house of maybe 2500 square feet. We greeted the dog, petted the cat, had coffee at the kitchen table, and then got down to the business of finding parts for Dave.

Chuck led us down the basement stairs to his walkout basement-and there before us we counted fifteen Indy cars. Yup, fifteen. Also several Offy engines, two Ford double overhead cam Indy engines, stacks of heads, used drivers' suits, wheels, unopened boxes, jars, cans, and more Indy stuff than I could have imagined. We salivated over the only remaining BoCar in the world, we sat in the very seat that A. J. Foyt sat in, blah blah. Unreal. Fifteen cars-which meant that he had to suspend several from the ceiling, amidst the ladies undies drying on the clothesline.

When we finished perusing the cars at the house, we went over to Chuck's warehouse. When he opened the door to the unheated space (brrrr), we were stunned to see every sort of major racecar and part known to man, all packed in nose to tail, tire to tire, with only one aisle down the middle. Want to buy a restored Bobby Rahal 1983 car? No problem-it's only $90,000. How about one of the two remaining Howmet turbine cars, freshly restored, invited to Goodwood this year (Goodwood paid the freight bill)? There were so many cars there was not room for all of them on the floor, so Chuck had removed the engines from some of them and just stood them up against the walls.

Did I say walls? How about the ceiling-hanging from the trusses were at least twenty nose sections for Can Am cars, plus maybe thirty complete wing assemblies for Indy cars. All this, plus stacks of boxes, racks, stacks of tires, even one of a very few Alfa Romeo FI engines in private hands. Want to know what kind of automatic transmission Jim Hall had in his Chaparral? Here's one under this bench.

Chuck purchased some of these cars back when they weren't worth as much as today. He purchases complete inventories from major race teams who go out of business or change sponsors or car types - hence the wheels, tires, boxes of brand new shock absorbers, turbochargers, and on and on.

Well, what would you like to buy? Here next to the Howmet is the nicely restored Roger McCluskey SugarRipe Prune Special (hey, if SugarRipe wants to sponsor my TR4, I'll gladly put their name on the side and ignore the snickering). Maybe the best buy in the place is the Can Am car still with its Busch Beer paint job, complete with extra nose and tail. Man, those babies were BIG-like maybe ten feet across. It needs a few parts, like a transaxle and engine, but it's only $19,000, so for a total of about $40,000 you could be racing a vintage Can Am car.

This stuff too rich for your blood? I lusted for the pit bicycle ridden around by Alex Zanardi ($125). Need some new jammies? Here are several pit crew uniforms made of cozy Nomex. For $50, you can buy a brand new Ford 4-cam piston owned by A. J. Foyt for $50, polish it up and put it on your coffee table next to the certificate of authenticity, right next to your "new" bent-up front wishbone, courtesy of Alex Zanardi. Speaking of coffee tables, if you want to decorate your family room in a racing motif, how about a nice Penske side pod or a Rahal nose sticking right out of the wall at your guests?

How did my friend Dave fare in his parts quest? Well, he didn't get everything he needed, but we did pack a few things into his Suburban-a complete rear wing assembly with all four elements, dry break fittings for the fuel cell so fuel won't gush out when the side gets torn off, some absolutely jewel-like small aluminum brackets, a set of "period correct" seat belts, and last but not least, a socket to fit the 2-1/2-inch center nut on the wheels. Now Dave can actually take wheels on and off.

Accompanying this article are some photos I took. I hope they reproduce well enough for you to enjoy. And, of course, I hope you enjoyed reading about this offshoot of (y)our favorite hobby. Lastly, the next time your wife complains about all the car stuff you have around the place, show her the pictures of the fifteen Indy cars in the basement . . .

By Jack Drews