We're 10 Years Old! Yay!
It's ALIVE!
The debut of the restored Mondello & Matsubara Fiat...at the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield!
With Sush Matsubara's grandson Daine in the seat, Pete Eastwood, Brendan Murry and Karpo Murk fire this thing up for the crowd on Saturday afternoon. And you can see me scurrying around, ducking under the camera, taking still shots...
October 13, 2007
Oh yeah, and I hosed the main page which is why the page looks like it does. Guess I'd better practice more!
I'll have to get a back-up copy from home and fix this up...maybe I'll be forced to update, maybe?
NOBODY CAN I.D.
THIS CAR!!!
Yes Virginia, he does update the site!
Since the last car up here had been identified a while back (a disguised Keith Drum Blue Blazer), I had to come up with another head-scratcher.
When Steve Reyes was writing his Fuel Altered book (fuel altereds), he sent me a whole passel of photos to see if I could ID for him. I did really well with about 50%. This car was in the other 50%... Showed it around at the Chuy's Fuel Altered race in 2007, nope, no id. People vaguely remembered the car, but no clue on the owner - driver - anything.
I get an email this week from, you guessed it, Claude Smets, along with a couple photos... goes like this:
The "Sidecar" was the first long wheelbase (120") altered built. The chassis was built by Ronnie Scrima and myself in 1966. The rear-end was a Chevrolet housing set off to the left side so the driver set next to the pumpkin instead of on top of it typical of all other altereds at that time. The car originally was campaigned with a small block Chevy (unblown) with Hilborn injectors running 98% nitro.
The car only weighed 1050 pounds with me in it. The information you have from Bill Pratt's Draglist 7.56 ET, 186.12 mph was in the unblown configuration in 1967. The pictures you received from Steve Reyes were from the 1969 Winternationals at Pomona. This was the last time the car was run before I sold it to guy from San Francisco (Do not know where it is today).
In this configuration it had the blown Big Block (454") running on gasoline that came out of a friend of mine's Bonneville Studebaker. In this configuration it ran 7.12 ET and 206 mph.
When the car was originally constructed I worked for the late Jim Hill who started and owned Exhaust Engineering building headers. About this same period of time Ronnie Scrima had started Exhibition Engineering with the late Pat Foster. When Pat left Ronnie to go to Woody Gilmores place I became partners with Ronnie at Exhibition Engineering. As you probably already know we built the first Funny Cars for Don Prudomme and Tom McEwen sponsored by Mattel and host of other great names in Drag Racing of the era like Fred Goeski, John Mazmanian, and Joe Pisano. In addition on this same page you had the video of the newly refurbished AA/FA of Mondello & Matsubara Fiat that Ronnie and I built the chassis for in 1968.
After I left Ronnie in 1969 I went to work for Bob and Don Spar with start up of their new motorhome company Sportscoach and stayed with them until they sold the company to Coachman in 1978. After spending the next 12 years in Areospace I went back to Bob at B&M Racing as V.P. of Operations and stayed until leaving in May of 2008.
Let me know what you know!
One more thing...here at
Fuel Altered Central, we're a bit short on pics of Fuel Altereds, between
1980 and 1990...
these are mostly the later model Transformer cars (either Fuel Altered
or Funny Car),
and we need to fill that chronological hole there...so we can bring
in the newer cars.
So scan them pictures,
and e-mail 'em to us here...at the "info" link below. Thanks!
Try the new Google search engine...just type in the
name of what you're looking for!
But, things I hope you WON'T find are...
"Funnys" , "Gassers", "Camaro",
"carbs", "Super Stock"...these have all been searched
for by previous visitors.
Oh, and you guys searching for Willie Borsch...click
on that "Winged Express" button over there on the left, right
above the "West Coast Altereds" button...it'll save you some
time. all righty?
IT'S A FUEL ALTERED SITE, OKAY?
E-mail me with any comments, suggestions,
or boatloads of fuel altered pics...
alteredinfo@mysterion.net
(copy and paste this address, those email harvesters are nuts!)
Awful
Awful Fuel Altereds © 1999-2009 Jim Sorenson
all rights reserved.
Images are used by permission of copyright holders,
and may not be reproduced in any form, without express written permission.
All
text is either copyright 1999-2009, Jim Sorenson or used by permission.
