Hard to see

[bob duffer]

Sometimes i wonder what people are thinking when they build a car. How much visibility is really in this car ?

[Joe in Canada]

They have a dash cam with a large screen TV  built in the dash you would hope.

[Guest]

Not sure, but I believe that is the same car I saw in Don Garlit's museum in Ocala, Fl several years ago. It was very difficult to see inside of the car from the outside too.

[1937hd45]

That is why the driver has his head out above the top of the car. Big Al  was powered by an Allison WWII Aircraft engine. Rules are rules, smart racers get around them. Bob

[bob duffer]

That is why the driver has his head out above the top of the car. Big Al  was powered by an Allison WWII Aircraft engine. Rules are rules, smart racers get around them. Bob

I didn't even notice that till you pointed it out.

[jpage]

When we have our local car show we get a good number of rods that have the chopped look. They always complain when I ask them to back into a spot because they can't see out the rear window. It may look cool but is a car you can't see out of safe to be on the road? Many times they get mad and leave!

[Guest]

I didn't even notice that till you pointed it out.

 

Me neither.

[Ed Luddy]

When we have our local car show we get a good number of rods that have the chopped look. They always complain when I ask them to back into a spot because they can't see out the rear window. It may look cool but is a car you can't see out of safe to be on the road? Many times they get mad and leave!

 Tell them to go buy a $100 back up camera if they give you any grief, Sheesh!  If the guys that slap most of those rat rods together had any original thoughts it would be refreshing!

[Paul Dobbin]

I'm well over the go fast stage of life, but still wonder WHY?

If you want to go fast in a quarter mile, why put 12 cylinders in a 80 year old body?,

If you want to set a speed record at the Salt Flats, why not use a newer high tech car.

Same goes for all the guys who built 60's cars to go fast and lose every stoplight drag to 4 cylinder rice rockets.

Makes no sense to me.

[Guest]

Look, even though this is the General Forum, and we don't talk about modified cars. This particular car is a car built for the drag strip. That's the reason for the chopped top. Back in the day it was built when hot rodding and drag racing got started that was the way cars were built, with little money and lots of ambition and bravery for those who drove. This particular car probably has more total visibility than a modern day Funny Car . Those cars that were built this way with aircraft engines ( this one has a Allison V-12 right out of a P-38 Lightning ) are rare because not long after this car was built NHRA banned such engines. They weren't particularly fast, but they were exciting to hear and watch.

Edited February 15, 2016 by helfen (see edit history)

[Guest]

Road Rebel Dan Haggerty Gone at 73

 

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  1934 Ford Hot Rod - First In Fiberglass
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1934 Ford Hot Rod - First In FiberglassWritten by Dave Wallace Jr. on May 27, 2014 Contributors: Petersen Publishing Co. Archives, Roy Robinson, Don HaleThe Original Flopper Was a '34 Ford Hot Rod

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Hearing John Force talk about his "ol ' hot rod" makes us wonder whether the mighty Force appreciates the close connection between his 21st-century flopper and a chopped '34 Ford built by a young hot rodder half a century earlier. Actually, Jim Lytle built his hot rod twice, using the same frame and powertrain. The only difference was its second body—and what a difference that body was destined to make, eventually. Working alone in his garage, Jim invented the one-piece, lift-off, fiberglass body in late 1963. Nobody seemed to notice until Lincoln-Mercury unleashed the controversial fleet of '66 Comet Calientes usually credited, erroneously, as the first fiberglass floppers.

Lytle 's two-stage project dates back to 1961, when a San Antonio buddy 's dad mentioned that the local airport had a couple of WWII-era Allison war bird engines. One turned out to be the rare, left-rotating Model 113 that briefly found favor with dragster racers and fans in the '50s, before NHRA outlawed aircraft motors. Offered a complete P-38 powerplant—for which GM charged the government $16,500 in 1940 dollars—for 100 bucks, the kid dropped plans to install a hot Buick V8 in his chopped sedan and determined, instead, to drop in the Allison V12.

He got it running just in time for AHRA 's '62 Nationals near Dallas. Geezers who were at Green Valley that weekend will remember the loud, all-steel sedan that filled up with death smoke mid-track, frying its single-disc truck clutch en route to a laughable 77-mph top speed. Undeterred, Jim studied the two- and three-disc systems bolted behind aircraft engines by the Arfons brothers and mentor Lee Pendleton. Then he went them all one better by building what 's believed to be drag racing 's first four-disc clutch, encased in a 14-inch-diameter torque tube that also contained the flywheel, throwout bearing, and pinion gear. The new combination ultimately rewarded its builder with a 10.56-second, 147-mph Lions Drag Strip timeslip in September 1963. Later that same day, a chance encounter with a pit vendor convinced him to park the world 's fastest sedan.

2/12 The original Big Al was the all-steel ’34 Ford whose hood and suicide doors were repeatedly bent by incoming air at 140-plus. In August 1963, Jim Lytle used this chopped body to make the five-piece mold for a fiberglass replacement.

"At those speeds, the volume of air compressed inside the body was tearing it up," Jim recalled in a 2006 interview. "I lost the hood once, and the right door came open twice, at about 145. I got tired of fixing it. I 've always hated doing bodywork. I felt that the car had just about reached its potential, anyway."

Noticing a display of Fibercraft fenders in the pits, Jim asked owner Fred Karow whether it was possible to create an entire '34 sedan out of fiberglass. Fred assured him that it was, offering to sell the cocky kid materials at cost and answer any questions. "I retired the steel car that same night so I could make a mold out of it," Jim said. "I really had no choice; a draftsman making 120 bucks a week couldn 't afford to buy another '34, even at 1963 prices. Besides, the top was already chopped [6 inches]. I decided later to cut the other 6 inches so I could lower wind resistance and pop my head out the roof, where I could see."

3/12 Readers lucky enough to have seen and heard this car most likely remember the tire-frying configuration that second-owner Ray Alley toured up and down the West Coast. Ray renamed Big Al the P-51, extended its rollbar, installed 24 full-length header tubes, and, eventually, applied lettering to Jim Lytle’s blue paint.

Five months of labor and $750 later, Big Al II clocked 10.03 at 150.75, first time out. One week later, the timeslip improved to 9.62/158.45. The next Saturday, Jim thundered to a 9.31 at 163.00—easily the quickest and fastest times for any full-fendered, gas-burning vehicle. Having made a total of nine runs, all at Lions, on three consecutive weekends in July 1964, he shocked the crowd again by announcing that his baby was for sale. Before he could load up that evening, Ray Alley offered $2,000 cash—the same amount invested in the car and trailer. "I 'm really not a racer," Jim later explained. "I design 'em, build 'em, keep 'em for a year, then sell 'em to build something new."

Big Al 's new owner jazzed things up with 24 individual, full-length header pipes and a new name, P-51, for lucrative West Coast exhibition tours in 1965– '66, then resold the car and trailer to L.A. actor-stuntman Tex Collins for $4,000. Collins repainted the body candy red, re-lettered it Tex 's Twister, and ran the car locally for kicks before swapping Lytle 's bulletproof powertrain into a new '68 Mustang flopper. The '34 frame had been cut up for some other project by the time Lytle bought back his body for $500 in 1968, not long before Tex was murdered. Twenty years later, Jim personally repaired and repainted the fiberglass in Don Garlits ' shop, mounting it to a '27 Dodge frame that happened to share a '34 Ford 's wheelbase. Since 1988, Big Al II has been a popular attraction in Garlits ' Ocala, Florida, museum.

7/12 A draftsman by trade, Jim drew up his own plans for a steel, torque-tube drive unit directly connecting the V12 to a ’57 Pontiac housing, sans U-joints, and containing drag racing’s first four-disc clutch. The 1⁄4-inch-thick housing also served as a scattershield.

Jim Lytle lived long enough to bask in belated credit for his contribution to motorsports history. Of particular satisfaction was an August 1989 meeting in the Dearborn office of another drag-racing pioneer, Fran Hernandez. Fran had risen to the top of Ford 's Experimental division by January 1964, when Big Al II debuted at the Winternationals car show. Jim knew that factory bigwigs with Ford 's Custom-Car Caravan were seen examining the brand-new body, elevated above the chassis and revealing a wing-nut mounting system. Twenty-five years later, Jim was still hoping one of them would cop to copying his concept. "I never expected Mr. Hernandez to recognize my name, but he took the call immediately, and invited me to schedule a visit. In his office, Fran admitted that those guys noticed Big Al at the L.A. show, and liked the idea. He also said that a year later, they came under heavy pressure from upper management to build something to counter all the attention that Chrysler 's '65 altered-wheelbase cars were getting."

Jim 's friends have said that these admissions seemed to dissolve, finally, the giant chip on the shoulder of a guy who 'd often complained in person and in print about being overlooked by history. He needn 't have worried. Before Jim Lytle left us in December 2011, at age 75, he left us undeniable evidence of his role in Funny Car evolution. In rescuing and restoring Big Al II, he was preserving his own legacy, along with one historic hunk of fiberglass

[Alex D.]

I'm well over the go fast stage of life, but still wonder WHY?

If you want to go fast in a quarter mile, why put 12 cylinders in a 80 year old body?,

If you want to set a speed record at the Salt Flats, why not use a newer high tech car.

Same goes for all the guys who built 60's cars to go fast and lose every stoplight drag to 4 cylinder rice rockets.

Makes no sense to me.

It's not about how fast you go.

It's about how you go fast.

[JACK M]

When we have our local car show we get a good number of rods that have the chopped look. They always complain when I ask them to back into a spot because they can't see out the rear window. It may look cool but is a car you can't see out of safe to be on the road? Many times they get mad and leave!

 

I have a chopped car and I go to shows.

If the guys that back you in would do more than swing there hands around it would make it easier to back in.

I also race stock cars that don't allow rear view mirrors. When I pit up I have a guy that points right or left while he stands in front of me. with that help I can hit the slot every time.

I was at a show recently and this guy just spun his hands around while he was backing me in and was getting frustrated with me because I didn't know what he meant.

 I stopped and hailed him to my window and told him to simply point the direction he wanted me to go. Then I backed right in. He came and thanked me and told me he had just not though about it from the other side of the windshields point of view.

Have you ever watched how they back up the dragsters after warming the tires by burning out across the start line? Not with mirrors.

[1937hd45]

helfel, Thank you for taking the time to post all the above info on Big Al, history gets lost if it isn't shared with young members. Bob