Coming Right Along!!
Dave Storstad’s car is going to be a beauty…
Look at the fresh touches that are a really cool contrast to the old chassis… Pretty soon this old bessie will be looking like a million bucks!
She will also be humming right down the salt, with the scent of nitro in the air.
Bruce Meyer’s First Trip on the Salt!!
Yes, the music may have hijacked from an early experiment of the first synthesizer tests, but if you take it as an ode to the Jack Roger’s awesome 80’s vintage Camaro… it could possibly be brilliant.
Bruce Meyer, who we have talked about a lot HERE… is a really important car guy, and has so many amazing accomplishments, that I do not even want to begin! Despite all these accomplishments prior to this he had not driven at Bonneville!! I am sure it has changed his life for the best.
So… This beauty is a ‘33 Ford that a new figure at the Busby shop named Dave Storstad bought and is having the Busby A Team make into a car that runs and looks as good as the ‘32 Roadster owned and operated by Jim Busby and Richard Munz…
I talked about it before, HERE
They have completely taken it apart and have done some frame repairs and reinforcements…Meanwhile they are assessing what needs to be done with the engine to make the little flat head run as fast as possible with Nitro!
I can’t wait to see how this car transforms!
Bonneville Overview…
The car drove well. The boys came home with world record of 181.363 mph hour!! The weather was rainy in some places… They arrived to a flooded tarp the morning of their first run…
Some really fun people were down there (as usual) as well!
The best part of all, is that all these pictures were taken by Jim Busby himself, they are the things of Bonneville that caught his eye… It is always good to get a different perspective!
I am setting up a bunch of posts about Bonneville that will play for the next few days, because I am headed to Palm Springs to get hitched on Wednesday!! Woo hoo… So please come and enjoy, it will be really cool stuff about the World Finals 2010 at Bonneville.
Well… I am headed up today to check out the shop, take some pictures, and hear all the stories.
Jim Busby and Mike Morrison took a lot of pictures, too. So, I am going to get the low down on all the pictures, with their stories. Can’t wait!
These pictures are of them packing up, there should be some good stuff to talk about all this week.
Well… Sure looks like fun out there!!
Richard Munz is travelling around the US in his giant RV… The unusual thing about it it, is that the 792 car is painted gloriously on the back of it!
Bruce Meyer is down on the salt for his Rookie run! He is driving a 225 mph 1982 Chevy Camaro!
AND… for the first time John Mumford has his Brizio- built 1932 3 window coupe on the salt.
That is some impressive hardware, with some really fun people!
I can’t wait to hear all the stories that are being developed as a result… I will keep you posted!!
Rebuilding 792’s Engine…
David Busby is working overtime to get the Ardun Flat Head converted engine rebuilt in time for the October trip to Bonneville. It took a full rebuild, after Fireball Boyle ‘blowed it up’.
Can’t wait to hear how they do out there… Unfortunately I cannot make it.. I am getting hitched on October 16th, and I have too many loose ends to tie up before the wedding!
But don’t worry! The Busby A Team’s very own Mike ‘Hippy’ Morrison will have his trusty camera taking pictures so that you guys will all be fully updated of 792’s journey to the Salt!
Around the Shop
Jaguar XJR-5 Chassis 001
Jim owns this Jaguar XJR-5 001 GTP with Bill Karges and Tom Minnich. The engine arrived last Wednesday from Ed Pink Racing Engines.
It’s a 6 liter V-12 Jaguar with 6 Weber carburetors. The chassis is a XJR-5 001 the first XJR-5 built.
Once the engine is installed we will probably do a shake down run with the car at Willow Springs!
You can see video of our last Willow Springs test run, with this car’s sister chassis owned by Rick Knoop, HERE
Cars of Bonneville… Part 3
Jim and the Busby A Team will be headed out to Bonneville Salt Flats again, during the October speedweek… They are re-building the engine after Fireball Boyle’s big day out, and it is going to be better than ever! shooting for 180mph+!
Keep scrolling down, I did a couple more posts on Cars of Bonneville last week… And keep coming back! We will have great stuff this week, including some really cool photos we found while in Monterey while visiting Jim’s close friend and race sponsor/ manager Bill Karges…
Len Jones and his son Len Jones Jr (above) showed up to check on the car… I loved that motorcycle he rolled up on! Turns out they were in impound! That had broken a record just before we showed…
They broke the long standing Push Rod Production record with a speed of 116.25; this record had been formerly set by a team of Harley Davidson Engineers, so the Lenny’s were pretty stoked about it.
Nice work.
David Busby and his team with their Lake City Ford Fusion, after having won their second consecutive weekend at Irwindale Raceway!! Go David!
Big Thanks to Tom Addis at Lake City Ford, and Tim Huddelstone!
Just a quick view of Jim Busby heading out of the starting after being pushed by the ‘32 Sedan…. I will have a much more developed Bonneville video soon, it just is taking some time.
For now, enjoy this tasty little bit. It is pretty cool to see that shiny black beauty streaking down the pure white salt.
We Make it to Impound!
When your car breaks a world record it is sent to Impound.
This means you have to leave your car under SCTA (Southern California Timing Association)’s monitoring overnight.
The next morning you can return, get your car out of impound and back up your record… You have to break the record twice, then your times are averaged out and that becomes the world record.
Impound consisted of some truly ominous thunder clouds rolling in, so we cleaned and covered up the car and got out of there. Hope it doesn’t rain out the track!
Day 1- Tech/ Not so good of a run…
Spirits were high as we arrived at the salt flats and pulled the 792 car out of the trailer.
Then, we headed to Bonneville Tech, for a major safety inspection. Bonneville’s first priority is safety.
We could not wait and see how the car ran with all the new changes done to it.
Unfortunately, despite the Busby A Team’s painstaking preparation of the car, 792 was not firing on all cylinders.
The Busby A Team began the long troubleshooting process and came up with some solid theories about why it was not working well… They got a lot of work done that day, but we had to get out of there, as people are not allowed to stay on the salt too late in the night.
Jim Stepan, Jim Busby, Mike ‘Hippy’ Morrison, Richard ‘Big Dick’ Munz, and of the course; The Legendary Fireball Joe Boyle on the right.
We had one heck of an adventure at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah…
We arrived to a competitor! John Lawson had broken our former record of 173 mph with a 173.4 and was in impound when arrived after Pebble Beach Concourse D’Elegance.
The 792 car was not running properly… For the first two days 792 was only running on 3 or 4 cylinders, things were looking grim.
Jim Stepan, Mike Morrison, and Jim Busby were not going to give up! They literally replaced almost everything in the car, as Jim put it “We replaced everything, but the air in the tires.”
It was late in the third day, and we had to hustle to the starting line.
Despite a strong headwind, Jim Busby took the helm and decided to run the car. The result was a Record killing 177 mph.
We headed to impound, getting the car covered just before a solid thunder storm rolls in!
At the crack of dawn we headed down to the salt flats. The Busby A Team prepped the car and we pulled it in line with all the other record contenders. As soon as we pulled the car up to the finish line, the track was closed due to high winds!
We waited for 2 hours. Finally Jim Busby screamed down the track, more than backing up the record, with a blistering speed of 183 mph!!
There are a lot of awesome pictures cataloguing this entire experience, so they will be going up for the next week or so… Keep checking in! I am back in Internet territory!
