Bolus

Ball of the Day

Okay, maybe it's not a real 3-d ball, but it rules.

By the Beard of Jupiter, It Will Be Mine

I admit it. I'm a complete mesmerized dope for Turbonique. A couple of years ago I wrote a blog entry (reposted here) about the history of the mysterious Orlando, FL company and their insane line of rocket-powered hot rod speed equipment. That led to more research and digging, and an expanded version of the piece that appeared in Garage Magazine #14. I continue to work on a couple of other Turbonique related projects.

In the course of writing those pieces I've had the opportunity to interview some of the people who worked with Turbonique and the daredevils like Ky "Rocketman" Michaelson who used their products. Along the way I even obtained my own Turbonique C-2-A rocket supercharger. So I thought I was pretty set until I saw this (h/t to several readers):

That there is the "Tobacco King" '64 Galaxie 500 of R.J. Reynolds heir Zack Reynolds. Up front, a 427 FE topped with a Latham axial flow blower, fed by 4 sidedraft Carters. In back: A 1000 hp Turbonique rocket-fueled drag axle.   Put 'em all together and figure 1500+ hp to the rear wheels. This was Reynolds' Saturday Night Special, which he would street race in Winston-Salem and Greensboro NC in the 60's.  I interviewed a man for the Garage Magazine article who worked on the car, who reported that Reynolds was absolutely nuts and (given his family station) had no fear of  the police, and thought nothing of kicking in the rocket motor for a low-stakes street race.

To me this is the single greatest street-driven automobile in the history of planet Earth, and on May 17 it goes up for auction. I don't care what unspeakable deeds I have to perform to make it happen, I swear it will be in my garage someday. Unfortunately I suspect that rapacious bidders will push the price beyond my meager means.

That's why I'm taking my hat in hand and asking you to send an email pledge of financial support with the subject line "Make Iowahawk Happy Pledge Fund." Please, no actual cash or PayPal donations.  Just a pledge amount that you'd be seriously willing to contribute on the condition that I actually get the car.  If that happens,  I promise a free rocket car ride to any pledger that comes to Chicago.

Excelsior!

PS -  Even if you don't want to make me happy, I'll still take your pledge! Just send it with the subject line "See Iowahawk Splattered On a Cliffside Pledge Fund"

The Real Acme

[ed. note - this article was originally posted here, and my much expanded version appears in Garage Magazine #14.]

Update: Welcome visitors from FARK. Feel free to peruse the archives for more crazy junk.

Once upon a time in the postwar, before the advent of EPA and OSHA and the Consumer Products Safety Commission and weenies in bike helmets and multilingual warning stickers on stepladders, crazy people walked this earth. Good, fun-loving Americans who knew that "instructions" were something you threw in the trash along with the empty Falstaff bottles. A halcyon era filled with manly men who savored the wholesome virtues of a rugged game of un-seatbelted automotive chicken.

Where did they all go? Perhaps it was the feminization of culture, or the rise of litigation, or the cumulative toll of various maimings. All I know is that entire industries were once devoted to sating their demand: tether lawn mowers. Home blowtorches and 110 electric welders. Oly party balls. And for the kids, Jarts and clackers and Thing Makers and M-80s.  But there is one name that stands alone at the apex of the daredevilry supply industry: the Turbonique Company of Orlando, Florida.

Though the company no longer exists, mere mention of the name "Turbonique" still inspires a shudder of awe among drag racing enthusiast, the company's principle target market. Even in the Wild West atmosphere of 1960s drag racing, Its products represented the zenith of no-compromise, crazyass crazy. Recall Acme, that enigmatic mail order purveyor of catapults and jet skates to cartoon coyotes? Pikers, compared to Turbonique.

As best as I can determine, Turbonique Inc. was established in Orlando in 1962, reportedly an offshoot of a NASA space program subcontractor who was determined to establish a consumer market for rocket technology. Its founder was a Mr. Gene Middlebrooks, about whom I can find little information except a 1969 book reference. Turbonique's product line consisted of three items: "AP superchargers," "rocket drag axles," and the legendary "microturbo thrust engines." All employed the same basic rocket technology, albeit in stepped grades of insanity.

At the mild end of the Turbonique product line were its AP (for "Auxiliary Power") superchargers, so named because they had their own power supply. Unlike regular superchargers (driven by a crank pulley belt) or turbos (driven by exhaust pressure), Turbonique AP superchargers operated independently of the engine and scavenged no power from it. They appeared to be a spiral turbo with a spark plug, and were engaged with a dash-mounted switch - a sort of prehistoric Nitrous setup. When the driver threw the switch, the supercharger unit would receive liquid oxygen for ignition, and then it was fed a rocket fuel named Thermolene -Turbonique's trade name for N-propyl nitrate.  The exhaust thrust from combustion would spin a turbine impeller up to 100,000 RPM, ramming the engine with such intense boost that it essentially turned it into a giant two-stroke. Turbonique dyno-tested an AP unit on new Chevy 409 in 1963, increasing horsepower from a stock 405 to 835 -- backing up their advertised guarantee to "double your horsepower" -- although it came with a recommendation not to run the unit for more than 5 minutes and only with forged cranks, pistons and connecting rods.

Here are a few photos of Turbonique AP blowers from the company's 1966 catalog. (note "safety" cord. Heh.)

"He's scorching Western dragstrips with his turbonique AP supercharger installations. He's Dr. Gerald R. Guest of Phoenix, Arizona, who turned 146 mph in 10.21 E.T. in his turbonique blown '63 Plymouth"

So whatever became of this enigmatic drag racing physician? I really would like to know, but I have absolutely no idea. But more about him soon.

For those interested in upgraded insanity there was the Turbonique Drag Axle, which appeared to be a center section for a quick change differential - but with a mutant spaceship tumor growing from its hinder. That tumor was, in fact, a rocket engine providing direct drive to the rear axle. When not in use, the car would drive under conventional power through the front drive shaft. When the driver hit the "panic button," the rear mounted rocket would immediately engage and begin channeling One Thousand Three Hundred Thermolene-addled rocket horsepower to the rear skins. All this despite weighing a scant 100 pounds. It was advised that the driver keep his thumb on the switch during operation since, having no clutch or fuel metering, the only way to control acceleration was by shutting off the fuel supply.

What kind of nutjob would put one on his car? Quite a few as it turns out. I previously mentioned Roy Drew, the African American racer who defeated Tommy Ivo's "Showboat" with his Turbonique-sponsored Black Widow drag axle Volkswagen. Here's the catalog shot of the showdown, with the Bug clocking 9.36 ET at 168 mph.

Another: the "Tobacco King" Ford Galaxie of North Carolina. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.

Okay, so rocket superchargers and drag axles are all well and good, but what if you really needed undiluted, industrial-grade insane? You'd be in luck, because also Turbonique provided microturbo thrust engines. Not rocket powered superchargers, or rocket powered axles, but rocket-powered rockets - pure thrust engines for horizontal speed.

Here's one application: a '64 GTO powered by "twin T-22-A Thrust engines."

Note the page caption, "AUTO JATO,'" and the following:

"The same type JATO (Jet Assisted Takeoff) kits that give aircraft short term, super performance is also applicable to automotive use."

Most of us have, at one time or another, heard the urban legend about the friend of a friend of a friend who stole a JATO motor from an Air Force base, strapped it on an Impala and ran it into a cliff side at 300 mph. If you've ever wondered where that story originally came from, here you go.

Still, even with a rocket there's a lot of weight and inertia involved in moving a large hunk of Detroit steel down a race track. That's why many discerning folks opted for the ne plus ultra of Turbonique insanity: ROCKET THRUST GO KARTS.

If you read closely in the left image you'll see quarter mile time slips in the mid-8.8s with speeds up to 160 mph. You will also see a small photo of our friend Dr. Gerald R. Guest piloting his Turbonique rocket kart, apparently to shake the empty ennui of too many 146 mph passes in a boring Plymouth. On the right, nota bene:

"TOO MUCH: The above cart, which is equipped with T-21-A engines, is considered unsafe for 1/4 mile competition as pictured. The thrust/weight ratio is such that speeds over 160 mph are reached within 4 seconds."

Turbonique, the company where safety comes first!. Such pleas for moderation fell on the deaf ears of "Captain Jack" McClurg, who eventually coaxed his Turbonique kart to over 240 mph in the early 1970s.

But hey, why stop at the drag strip? The fine folks at Turbonique provide all kinds of helpful application suggestions -- rocket propelled boats, snowmobiles, motorcycles, hovermobiles, and my favorite, the unshielded rocket turbine prop go kart:

Good for going fast, and for chopping that unsightly underbrush! Speaking of motorcycles, the '66 Turbonique catalog features this product endorsement story from an up-and-coming Montana daredevil:

"Motorcycle Daredevil Evel Knievel plans to soon jump the Grand Canyon with his Turbonique equipped, "Norton Atlas Scrambler." Many of you may have heard Evel outline his plans for the Canyon jump on the Joe Pine Radio/TV show. Evel is dead serious in his plans for the Canyon jump. He is sponsored by Goodyear Rubber Company and several other large firms. Arrangements must be made for the Canyon jump with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Navajo Chief Raymond Hokai, and the U.S. Forestry Service. Knievel plans to make the jump next summer, and has both Montana's Senators Mike Mansfield and Lee Metcalf trying to clear the way for him. He's also contacting Arizona's Senators and Representatives."

Chew on that last piece and contrast with our current state of Federal Nannydom. Not only did people do crazy shit back then; actual U.S. Senators cheerfully pitched in to help them do crazy shit. 

Those days are long gone. Turbonique seems to have ceased operation around 1969. Original Turbonique equipment is extremely difficult to find, in part due to their extreme heavy duty use, and possibly because of deliberate destruction to avoid liability judgments. Details are sketchy, but I've heard various stories that the company folded after a series of customer explosions/accidents/deaths and the subsequent lawsuits. Even more depressing: Turbonique's "Thermolene" trademark lapsed, and is now a brand of weight loss pill.

Evel Knievel never got permission to do the Grand Canyon jump; eight years and a hundred broken bones later, Evel Knievel made a disastrous jump attempt at the Snake River Canyon. Would he have made it on the Turbonique Norton Atlas Scrambler? We will never know. His ride that day was the "X-2 Skycycle" designed by NASA engineer Bob Truax, whom Knievel would later call "an egotistical little bastard who burned up Gus Grissom on the launch pad." But that's another story.

That 1974 failure at Snake River Canyon seemed to presage a new era in the American psychological zeitgeist; the rise of safety fetishism, that patronizing nerf-ication of anything sharp or dangerous or cool. Crazy guys eventually discovered an even more destructive device than rocket powered go karts: class action attorneys. In my mind, it was the single event that ushered in the long cold Carter winter.

Will it ever get back to the way it was? I don't know, but I'm an optimistic sort.  A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this:

That there is a complete vintage Turbonique C-2-A rocket supercharger. It's out in my shop now, where I am beginning a careful restoration, and keeping my eye open for a worthy car project to use it on.

Does anybody know where I can get a canister of N-propyl nitrate?

Slots of Doom

During the winter, it takes copious doses of stupidity to keep me from going batshit insane.  That's why I and my youthful companion Hawkspawn headed north Sunday to join a group of like-minded individuals at Lucky Bob's Slot Car shop in Milwaukee, for the 3rd Annual Slots of Doom sponsored by the Primates Car Club. Believe me, nothing calms a Stage 4 case of cabin fever like high speed, 1/24 scale road rage.  Skoal!

The Southside Winternationals

Chicago - City of Big Shoulders. Hog Butcher to the World. Home of the Indoor Drags?

The Windy City occupies a special niche in drag racing history. Home base to the Granatelli Brothers, Chris "The Greek" Karamesines, Arnie "The Farmer" Beswick, Don Schumacher and the Ramchargers of Mr. Norm's Grand-Spaulding Dodge, Chicago bows to no city when it comes to the hot rod obsession. But let's face it: Chicago gets cold. Holy freakin' Ditka, it gets cold. When those razorblade February winds blow in from Iowa, and the asphalt strips of US30 and Union Grove and Byron are covered in five foot drifts, even the hardiest ChiTown street racers know it's hibernation season.

Back in '62, though, a dedicated group of Chicagolanders found a way to keep the rubber burning between November and spring pothole patching. Instead of going outside to the strip, they brought the strip inside.  The announcement came in a press release from USAC, trumpeting it as the "first INDOOR DRAG RACES ever held, anywhere" on Sunday, December 30, featuring "the fastest drag racing machines in the MIDWEST AREA."

The venue: the venerable International Amphitheater at 42nd and Halsted, amid the Southside projects and just a stone's throw from the old Chicago Stockyards where all that famous hog butchering was done.  Originally built as a livestock exhibition building in 1934, the cavernous Amphitheater saw its share of bad craziness before it was demolished in 1999;  professional wrasslin', Roller Derby, the Beatles. In '68 it played host to the Democratic National Convention that spurred three days of bloody antiwar riots. But nothing like the mayhem of the midwinter drags.

USAC's press release outlined the dimensions: a 440 foot track, lanes 60 feet wide, steel guardrails, a 660 foot shutdown area. What it failed to mention was that the shutdown lane was beyond a pair of pinned-open gym doors, and the low traction surface meant plenty of puckered butts as competitors struggled to keep their cars straight through them.  Hundreds of cars entered that first '62 meet, with Richard Myracle of Melrose Park recording best ET of 5.68 in his U/SA '62 Plymouth. Richard Stroening of Wheaton took top speed of 76.26 in a '58 Pontiac.

The next Chicago Indoor Drags took place on January 5, 1964, attracting top area racers like the aforementioned Arnie Beswick and Mr. Norm, who pushed 100 mph in between the Amphitheater's concrete pylons. Unfortunately it would also be the last. Was it because of insurance? Chicago mobsters? Nobody seems to know, but a few photos remain to chronicle the crazy. Enjoy.

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Cross-posted at Iowahawk. This article originally appeared in Garage Magazine, with photos courtesy of the HAMB. 

You Stay Classy, America

Just the other day, I was having yet another conversation with Mr. Jalopy about the halcyon days of our shared youth. Sure, the seventies always gets a bad rap; in many respects, deservedly so. Just forget about the gas lines, rampant inflation, and polyester, and try to remember the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, fiberglass-bodied Chevy Vega funny cars and Evel Knievel.

Our conversation began (as it almost always does) with a discussion of the glory days of drag racing, reflections brought on by the purchase of the book mentioned in the previous post. Truly, giants stomped on MOON aluminum accelerator pedals in those heady days, ten-foot-tall, mutton-chopped gladiators whose driving skills were matched (indeed, sometimes exceeded) by their reckless, uninformed-by-focus-groups-style and showmanship. "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, Connie "The Bounty Hunter" Kalitta, Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, "Jungle Jim" Liberman, (and his bodacious muse, Jungle Pam!)

These were our bellbottomed gods and goddesses, coming down from the shag-carpeted comfort of Mt. Olympus in their metalflaked chariots to feud and fight for the entertainment of we mere mortals. The giants all went away eventually, and real drag racing went away with them, with the last example of the extinct species left in the person of motormouth pitchmeister John Force, bless him.

Drag racing was not the only place these sideburn-sporting titans battled with the fickle forces of Horsepower. From Formula One and Indy, all the way down to small-time demolition derbys, it seemed like our American birthright was finally being realized in a select group of crazy bastards willing to strap themselves in behind (or in front of) a Very Bad Idea and throw themselves at danger like flinging a water balloon at an electric fan, their only reward a shiny trophy, a can of Old Style, and the admiration of some sweet young thing with Farrah hair and a tube top.

Of course, if the subject under discussion is that of heroes dedicated to commiting acts of complete insanity involving internal combustion, lack of concern for life and limb, and white-toothed, white trash showmanship, then you need go no further than the apotheosis of the breed, Evel Knievel. He is the end point of the evolutionary line, the Tyrannosaurus Wrecks that tests the sustainable limits of the ecosystem. After he is gone, only small furry rodents remain.

It would be hard for someone born after 1980 to understand the hallowed place Evel held in the imagination of a kid back then. Forget fakes like Superman and Spider-Man, we had a real-life superhero to worship, a hero who dressed like a star-spangled Elvis, rode a Harley, smashed his bones like brittle Ortega taco shells, and who, in his ultimate act of insanity (and some would say of hubris) climbed into a red-white-and-blue rocket and shot himself over the gaping chasm of the Snake River Canyon. Like Icarus, he didn't complete his flight; missing the far side of the canyon, he plummeted to the canyon floor, narrowly avoiding drowning in the river below. I can still remember witnessing this event on ABC's Wide World Of Sports. just as I can instantly recall his painful slo-motion Caesar's Palace crash, the Zapruder film of my generation. As a kid, I had all the Evel Knievel toys, of course, and  later tried to jump drainage ditches on my dirt bike in imitation of Knievel, earning a broken collarbone for my troubles.

Yes, Evel was perhaps the ultimate example of the madness of the seventies, and held an honored place in the kid pantheon alongside Fonzie, Catfish Hunter, and those fat, minibike-riding twins from the Guinness Book of World Records (the book we couldn't wait to order every year from the Scholastic catalog.)

This wasn't meant to be merely another empty exercise in nostalgia-humping. As fun as it might be just to blather on about all this stuff, the more important question is this: what happened? Why did these giants vanish from the earth, only to be replaced by bilious actors, slutty anorexic debu-tarts, and insolvent vulgarians with orangutan hair-hats? When will the giants return?

(reposted from here, RIP Evel!)