Homebuilt Mid-Engine Sports Racer

[Neil]

While my wife and I were waiting to get her car serviced at Holmes Tuttle Ford here in Tucson I had a look in their showroom and discovered GT40 P/1061 sitting there. I took a few pictures and looked up its history. I was surprised to find that it was the same car that I had sat in back in 1967 or so at the Ford dealer in Charlottesville where I was living at the time. It was also Bib Stillwell's car that my friend John Horsman had told me about restoring some time ago. I'll have to ask him about it next week. It's for sale... $4.1M.

 

[Neil]

Two more.

 

[Randy V]

Wow - quite a find right there!

 

[Rod Brace]

So you you are buying it correct. ;-)

 

[Neil]

Rod- You are correct, Sir.

 

[Lee]

Hey Neil out of curiosity there is a member in Manta Registry who I am sure that you know Rex Svoboda?
I could not find much info on his car other than it was powered by Buick stage3 V-6 no other info listed ?

Your Mirage is killer by the way, was the door set up you have an option ?? mine are 2 piece

 

[Neil]

Hello Lee.

Yes, I know Rex, he ran his "McLaren M6B" replica at Bonneville a few years ago and did 200 mph. He also competes in the Nevada open road event "Silver State Classic". I did ask him about what rear uprights he used and he said that he had fabricated them. I don't remember much more about his car but I'll post a few photos for you.

No, the doors on my car were not an option. I decided that if I needed to exit the car quickly (on fire, etc) the stock two-piece door arrangement was too complicated so I bonded both upper and lower doors together.

 

[Lee]

Hello Lee.

Yes, I know Rex, he ran his "McLaren M6B" replica at Bonneville a few years ago and did 200 mph. He also competes in the Nevada open road event "Silver State Classic". I did ask him about what rear uprights he used and he said that he had fabricated them. I don't remember much more about his car but I'll post a few photos for you.

No, the doors on my car were not an option. I decided that if I needed to exit the car quickly (on fire, etc) the stock two-piece door arrangement was too complicated so I bonded both upper and lower doors together.

do you remember if was the engine was mounted longitudinal or transverse?

in case of fire that makes sense!!

 

[Neil]

Lee, Rex mounted his V6 Buick engine in the conventional longitudinal position. I don't remember what transaxle he used. Notice that Rex added some rear fins for stability at high speed.

 

[Neil]

I have put more work into my shift linkage than I should have but I want to get it right. I replaced the mild steel tubing that I used for my shift rod with ground & polished Rockwell 60C and it really improved the back & forth motion- far smoother and easier. I was pleased with those results but the shaft rotation in the Thomson linear ball bearings was not as good as I wanted. Fore & aft motion allowed the ball bearings to roll in their tracks but shaft rotation resulted in the ball bearings skidding across the surface of the shaft instead of rolling. My mistake. I pulled those bearings & housings out and made plain bearings from some UHMW polyethylene and the feel was not bad. However...
Just by accident I found that Thomson also makes Flouroplastic- lined plain bearings in housings that are the same size as their ball bushings. I ordered some and tried them on the G & P shaft- perfecto! Now I'm replacing the ball bushings with the plain bearings. I'm not finished yet but this looks like the best solution so far.
The shaft and bearing ID are very precision so they allow only +/- 0.5 degrees of misalignment. I installed the bearing housings as close to alignment as I could and then loosened the screws holding the bearing housings to allow them to "float" just a little to make the bearings "self- aligning".

 

[Brian Kissel]

Nice job Neil. Have used those lined bearings for years with great success. After the last couple of disappointing outings, I hope this will be the year for you.

Regards Brian

 

[Neil]

Thanks, Brian. I made another small improvement to my shift linkage. The end of the shift rod has a 1/2" 6061-T6 right angle piece that functions to rotate the transaxle shaft and push it in & out. I used an aircraft counterbore to make a 3/4" hole for the 0.750" shift rod. It turned out the hole was bored about 0.020" oversize so I used some 1/4-28 set screws to secure it to the shaft. This worked OK but I thought that I could reduce the chance of rocking back and forth when shifting by adding a second thickness to it. By bolting the two pieces together with a 5/16-24 Ti bolt, the two pieces are held rigidly together. So far so good...

 

[AlleyAuthor]

Another Chapter... I have tried to buy the book but so far no luck.

The files that have been attached by 19Shelby65GT350 have been shared and copied in violation of US copyright law. I am the author of the Gasoline Alley book. Please REMOVE these files ASAP.

 

[AlleyAuthor]

Another Chapter... I have tried to buy the book but so far no luck.

Very cool. I was searching around the internet and stumble upon your pic. I have exchanged a couple emails with John Sabel. He is still into cars. I hope I will hear from Dick Morel. By chance do you have any pictures of this car ? The book is called Gasoline Alley. I have a bunch of pages scanned that pertained to my car and Jim Sutter. I will try to attach them. It is Really Cool stuff.

The files that have been attached by 19Shelby65GT350 have been shared and copied in violation of US copyright law. I am the author of the Gasoline Alley book. Please REMOVE these files ASAP.

 

[Randy V]

The files that have been attached by 19Shelby65GT350 have been shared and copied in violation of US copyright law. I am the author of the Gasoline Alley book. Please REMOVE these files ASAP.

These files have been temporarily removed from sight until -
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Please accept our apologies. This is an open form with tens of thousands of posts - many of which have photos and files attached. It is difficult to review each and every one of them.
Thank you for your compliance and assistance..

 

[Neil]

The files that have been attached by 19Shelby65GT350 have been shared and copied in violation of US copyright law. I am the author of the Gasoline Alley book. Please REMOVE these files ASAP.

I have not posted any of those files and I don't know what you're talking about

 

[Neil]

Today I created a video and posted it on YouTube:

Learning "Movie Maker" took a while and my narration is kind of flat but ... it is what it is.

 

[Randy V]

Great video Neil! Have you thought of running it on a Chassis Dyno before you haul all the way to the salt again?

 

[Neil]

Thank you. I do plan to do that when things get back to normal. However, I'm tempted to take it out for a Banzai run down AZ 86- but I (probably) won't.

 

[Neil]

Speed Week started running this morning on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. "Speed Demon", a streamliner, ran 380 mph on their first tune-up run! The salt is reasonably hard and dry so we may see a 400+ mph run before the end of this event. You can find the streaming track announcer broadcast at:

https://www.meridix.com/event/169850