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Front Engine Dragsters / Who's car was this? Please help me with a vintage FED identification.
« on: September 03, 2018, 09:43:19 AM »
Please help us identify and locate the history of this car. We purchased the car last March. The car was located in Tuscon, AZ. This is one well-used dragster. To me, it looks to have 100's and 100's of passes on it and probably into 1000+. The car looks to be approximately 50 years old give or take a few years - likely built between 1966-1970 - just a guess. Lots of reworks and mods done over the years and it has a few repaints on it. Based upon the for sale images, the car ran a injected BBC. From the look of things, it probably ran like this for many years. The NHRA frame cert expired in 2008 so it hasn’t gone down a track in at least 10 years.
In order to be a good steward of preservation, stay on the safe side of life yet still have a little fun racing the car I’ve removed some old, added some new, and now have the car reassembled and in good racing condition. I’m committed to running the ⅛ mile and we’re running a SBC in it today - we ran an easy 6:50 ⅛ on it 3 days ago. The car came with another set of motor mounts and I can only assume it's for a vintage hemi power plant.
The roll cage looks to be an added update to meet NHRA frame cert so older pictures/video of the car would likely have a different look due to the roll bar changes. One obvious car attribute is the cockpit entry/exit handle grips welded onto the updated roll bar/cage that assist the driver in getting in and out of the car. The car is narrow. The guy I purchased it from said 3 other people had came to purchase it before me but they passed on the car because they couldn't get in it due to its narrow frame width.
In my opinion, the best identifier of the car is the front end, I’ve looked at well over 1000 FED/slingshot images online and I’ve not seen a single perfect match to the front end. To me, the front end looks to be a one-off creation.
Besides the unique front end... a few other key identifiers are the one-off and obviously hand-made butterfly steering assembly, the one-off wheelie bar assembly, the black anodized fuel tank and its location on the car, the body panels and the hand-built shorty windshield. On the underside of the top cowl are remnants of red/blue colored stickers so the car did have a brightly colored paint scheme for a time. It’s painted black today. The frame is painted today with a single-stage gray metallic and it has a dark blue original paint color underneath that. I’m guessing the blue color is the original frame painted color. There are also a few Dzus type fasteners toward the front of the engine so I’m guessing a couple of panels got lost or abandoned at some point.
To date, I have no history of who drove it, owned it, built it, etc... We sure would love to learn more about this little vintage slice of drag racing! In my opinion, when I examine it closely, the car looks to be somewhat of a one-off hand-built creation that reflects elements of more than one noted chassis builder (Gilmore, Williams, Tuttle, etc..). It's a lightweight - 610 lbs less the engine. I hesitate to call it any type of a 'cloned car' because it has some very individual identifiers. It's a very simple, even minimalistic design. All of this really has me scratching me head trying to understand exactly what we've got here. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Eric Alexander
801-836-0764
In order to be a good steward of preservation, stay on the safe side of life yet still have a little fun racing the car I’ve removed some old, added some new, and now have the car reassembled and in good racing condition. I’m committed to running the ⅛ mile and we’re running a SBC in it today - we ran an easy 6:50 ⅛ on it 3 days ago. The car came with another set of motor mounts and I can only assume it's for a vintage hemi power plant.
The roll cage looks to be an added update to meet NHRA frame cert so older pictures/video of the car would likely have a different look due to the roll bar changes. One obvious car attribute is the cockpit entry/exit handle grips welded onto the updated roll bar/cage that assist the driver in getting in and out of the car. The car is narrow. The guy I purchased it from said 3 other people had came to purchase it before me but they passed on the car because they couldn't get in it due to its narrow frame width.
In my opinion, the best identifier of the car is the front end, I’ve looked at well over 1000 FED/slingshot images online and I’ve not seen a single perfect match to the front end. To me, the front end looks to be a one-off creation.
Besides the unique front end... a few other key identifiers are the one-off and obviously hand-made butterfly steering assembly, the one-off wheelie bar assembly, the black anodized fuel tank and its location on the car, the body panels and the hand-built shorty windshield. On the underside of the top cowl are remnants of red/blue colored stickers so the car did have a brightly colored paint scheme for a time. It’s painted black today. The frame is painted today with a single-stage gray metallic and it has a dark blue original paint color underneath that. I’m guessing the blue color is the original frame painted color. There are also a few Dzus type fasteners toward the front of the engine so I’m guessing a couple of panels got lost or abandoned at some point.
To date, I have no history of who drove it, owned it, built it, etc... We sure would love to learn more about this little vintage slice of drag racing! In my opinion, when I examine it closely, the car looks to be somewhat of a one-off hand-built creation that reflects elements of more than one noted chassis builder (Gilmore, Williams, Tuttle, etc..). It's a lightweight - 610 lbs less the engine. I hesitate to call it any type of a 'cloned car' because it has some very individual identifiers. It's a very simple, even minimalistic design. All of this really has me scratching me head trying to understand exactly what we've got here. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Eric Alexander
801-836-0764