Sorry to be slow in answering, but the site was down for a while this morning
I got a PM from Tom Burkland, posted last night:
Mike,This appears to be the former Hoy brothers belly tank that was frequently driven by the late Howard Johnson. Not sure if it ever recorded a 300mph time slip, but I watched Howard go 291 in it with iron Chrysler power, 6-71 blower, Vertex magneto, and plenty of fuel in the tank. The swing axle rear was common in many of the early Bonneville cars using early Ford closed driveline parts grafted onto the V-8 quick change side bells. All of this stuff seems incredibly small and fragile compared to the driveline parts of today. Was it for sale in the photos you posted? Probably a very difficult car to meet the safety rules of today with, but surely plenty of history. One of Howard's engines was transferred from this car into the B&N Motion I streamliner in 1969 after a failure left Bert Peterson with only one live player. Howard was the shop foreman at Summers Brothers at the time so everybody was buying custom drive parts from him.Tom BurklandThe car is owned by an old gentleman named Glenn Vaughn, he knew none of the information from Tom Burkland. The information passed to him when he bought the car said it had gone 347 with the blown hemi on fuel.
Glenn has a number of people interested in the car but has had no firm offers. He wants to sell it and told me it was ok to publish his contact info (that's area code 360):
He's had a long day at the swap meet today PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
and will be in church in the morning.
If I had the money and the place to put it, I would have grabbed it. IMO, it's in really good shape (not enough knowledge to make a judgement on the rear end/swing arm suspension, though). It's missing the little nose piece in the front center covering the seam, missing the cockpit canopy. The upper structure covering the engine compartment is bent/flimsy but fixable. The upper tube, each side, of the frame between the cockpit and the rear suspension has a portion cut out, which I thought at first was done to put the flat Corvair engine in, but it may have been there all along for header clearance. Anyway it didn't seem to sag.
It's really a neat old race car, especially at the asking price. I'd sure like to see it be restored or ($$$$) raced again.
More from Tom Burkland on the subject:
Mike,
The attached photo is actually one of the ones you referenced from the landracing old photo thread. If I had remebered that last night I could have forwarded you to the two posts on page 73 of that thread. If the vintage Firestone Bonneville tires are in decent shape, the four of them may well be worth the asking price. The rear axle will likely have a very high ratio, but the V-8 change gears are readily available in large ranges of ratios. The parachute single cannister and very high attach point would need some work if you were going to run the car today. The primary structure and cockpit cage would probably need lots of work to meet todays much improved safety standards. Many of these early tanks had two large main frame rails with nothing under the seat area to enclose the bottom of the cockpit. There were no arm restraints or helmet movement limits so these features would need to be added.
Do you happen to know who owns the car now? It would be fun to know how it got to the Portland swap meet.
Is there any transmission or clutch housing equipment included? Have you got any specific plans for a car like this?
My Dad had the majority of a P-38 based tank similar to the original Markley car gathered with intent to license some of our crew members that worked so hard over the years to make our cars succesful. The chassis layout drawings and all of the materials are in the shop, but one of us is going to have to finish the project now that he has gone on to the great salt flats above. Let me know if you need any help getting your project together.
Thanks
Tom BurklandThanks to all that responded
Mike
