Very Talented Car Builders!

Here's two great guys I have known most of my life........long time and very talented hot rod and custom car builders. Top left and b&w photo is Big Bad Bob Kostyniuk, and lower left is Volker Lehmann. We all attend the Church of the Golden Arches(you figure it out) every Sunday at 10am(with many more in attendance)....if us old timers can get up by that time...LOL. The B&W photo clearly shows a 1961 license place....Wow, Bob and Volkker look better now that they did way back then!.....it's just because we all refuse to grow up. Thanks for posing for the great pictures with your beautiful Chevys.....see you on Sunday! To the right of Bobs car you can see a bit of Ron Limbrick's '39 Ford and to the right of Volkkers car you can see some of Allan Yahn's '33 Ford. ....click to enlarge.

Our First Motorhome!

Here's a couple of shot's of a '55 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery. The photo on the left is the one I owned in the late '60's and the right photo is how it would have appeared in a magazine or brochure ad. Some guys call it a 2-door station wagon. The station wagon however, looked exactly the same but had windows all the way down to the back.
It was in pretty bad shape since it was used by an east end grocery store called Workers Co-op for about 13 years before I bought it for 50 bucks. My dad and I did all the body work where he taught auto body & welding in the '60's, and Mr. Trevisan, the painter at Kam Motors did the Corvette Yellow paint job. It ended up having a 301ci chevy V8(a 283 bored out to the limit) with a 3 in the tree transmission.
It was mainly built to tow our stock car to and from Riverview Raceways, but ended up as our motor home of sorts. We camped in its tight quarters for a couple of years before we bought our first trailer. My wife wouldn't sleep in it at first, because it was all black inside and she thought it might feel the same as sleeping in a coffin. Well...off to the Canadian Tire store to buy a couple of packages of those big flower power daisies. We stuck them all over the inside and she sewed up some flowery curtains(I hated those damn things) to create an inside feminine environment and I relented. At least you couldn't see the daisy stuff from the outside....I added some Superior Mags later and a couple of chrome reverse rims. We sure had a ton of fun with this car until I sold it to my friend Larry. In later years my son Darren also owned a '57 Chevy Sedan Delivery. Click photos to enlarge

Destroying Pontiacs

Yes, we always blamed the jalopy jockeys for destroying all those 32-34 Fords, but in the late '60's we destroyed many 50's Chevys and Pontiacs. One of the ways to win hobby stock races in the 60's was to find an old car that had more cubic inches than the other. The rules were that you had to run a 6 cylinder engine. '55 and '56 Pontiacs had 261 cubic in engines factory stock and Chevrolets of the same years had 235 cubic inches. Another little trick was to add solid lifters that were factory stock in '49 and '50 Chevrolets....which would also give you another little edge. Consequently, when my first car was built, it had to be a Pontiac, and I also had a set of solid lifters on my dad's work bench from my first car, the '49 Chevy. In the first year(1967) we destroyed 2 '56 Pontiacs both 2-door cars and in 1968 with a fresh engine our team did fantastic, with quite a few wins in the early part of the season and were actually leading in points with almost 200 cars racing. Ending up 3rd overall in points for 1968 one more old Pontiac bit the dust when I got T-boned only 3 races before the end of the season. This last car we did was in incredible condition and actually drove it home before we started ripping it apart and adding a roll cage etc.
The first picture was taken in 1968 with myself in the drivers seat with my pit crew, welders and builders, George Tergie and Clay Macgowan leaning on the fender. I have been life long friends with these great guys who helped me a ton on these cars. We sure had great fun in those days. We were all only married about a year with our wives up in the grandstand at Riverview Raceways cheering us on. The second picture is of yours truly after the first race I ever raced in 1967. The b&w picture proves that were did collect the checkered flag occasionally and the last one was taking our car to the first race of 1968. Another super guy Dave Lovis who was also on our pit crew went on to try racing himself later on. These really weren't considered jalopies in 1967, but inspired as we were by those great guys that raced at the CLE locally back in the '50's, I knew we had to try it ourselves.....It was very exciting!! Click pics to enlarge