notice the military surplus fighter plane gun camera mounted to the roll bar the size of an 8mm camcorder, decades before big bulky VHS camcorders of the 90s, and Go Pros in the twenty teens
notice the drag slicks? And wonder what the hell they are doing on a road racer? They were bought from Voigt Tire in El Monte, because in the late 50s, tire development wasn't worked out yet, so getting a tire made of any particular compound was possible if you looked around. These were the widest drag slicks Voigt made, 7 3/8ths inches wide, almost twice the width of the sports car tires on the Ferrari and Maseratis, made of half crude rubber, and half gum rubber, grooved in 1 inch squares 1/8th inch deep (only noticeable in the 2 following photos)
The car made its first appearance in print in the June ’53 issue of Hot Rod in a story titled “Building a Hot Rod Sports Car,” by “Racer” Brown
Named for the Potvin Eliminator cam in his bored and stroked Merc flathead, Duffy built the car from a T-Bucket racer he had acquired from hot rodder Jay Chamberlain. It's number 184, for time spent in a squadron or company number 184 in the Navy.
The car started life in 1950 in the Sherman Oaks garage of hot rodder Jay Chamberlain, who intended to compete in the California Roadster Association short-track series. The car used a ’24 Ford T-bucket body mounted on a late-’20s Ford frame and running gear.
Chamberlain commissioned the great Indy car body builder, Emil Diedt–who later built the Scarab bodies for Lance Reventlow–to hammer out a stunning steel nose for the car. But before the project was completed, the CRA allowed tubular chassis, which made the T-bucket obsolete.
It even has the one year only Ford tube axle that came with the "latest" 1937 V8/60. According to the '53 Hot Rod article, the front shocks were Ford Houdaille adjustables, and the brakes were aircraft Bendix
It was raced with a surplus WWII aircraft bucket and a Japanese army helmet sliced in half to serve as front brake air cooling ducts. The frame was Z'd and the body was channeled over the frame
Raced by Duffy from 1954 to 1960, the 1925 Ford Model T-based Eliminator proved to be very successful in the SCCA.
In 1956, as Livingstone’s muffler business thrived, he purchased a 265ci Chevy hooked to a new Borg-Warner T-10 four-speed under the guise “Tihsepa Mark II”
Why call it “Tihsepa Mark II”? That's Apeshit backwards. That would probably slip by DMV's scrutiny too.
Its crowning moment came at the 1959 Los Angeles Herald Examiner International Grand Prix at the Pomona County fairgrounds, where it qualified 19th in a field of 57 cars, drew as high as 8th and finally finished in 11th against such stars as 24 Hour Le Mans winner Roy Salvadori, Formula One competitor Maurice Trintignant, and Count Wolfgang von Tripps, Dan Gurney piloting Frank Arciero’s 4.9L Ferrari, Ken Miles in a Porsche Spyder, Jim Hall driving a Lister Corvette and Carroll Shelby driving a 5.7L Maserati, Jerry Unser in Mickey Thompson’s Kurtis-Pontiac, Jim Rathmann wheeling a Ferrari, Tony Bettenhausen in a Ferrari Monza, Lloyd Ruby and Max Balchowsky drove his Ol’ Yaller to round out the field.
Duffy ran his car through inspection primarily to get his pit pass, secondarily he had an ulterior motive - he gave the pass to his friend who worked at a photo lab. “He cranked off a few for my buddies. I thought that my buddies and I could sit in the infield and watch the race…rub elbows with the big wheels,” laughed Duffy.
“I went out and qualified 19th fastest, the Eliminator out-qualified Jim Hall (Lister Corvette), Wolfgang Von Tripps (the Ferrari Formula One ace was killed at Monza Italy in ’61), and Maurice Trintignant, it was only 6 mph slower than Dan Gurney and 5 mph off the winner Ken Miles in a Porsche Spyder.
By then Livingstone was gaining fame in the booming world of karting. He had built the second-ever kart after seeing founder Art Ingels’ prototype at the Kurtis-Kraft shop in Glendale in 1956. Duffy then created the Go Kart Company in Azusa and established himself as one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport.
By 1960 the karting business was booming. The aged Eliminator, with its ’20s chassis technology, was hopelessly obsolete. It was placed in the back of the Go Kart factory and ultimately sold.
After a series of owners, the “Eliminator” would eventually be purchased in Nov 1996 and restored by Brock Yates, who had first seen it when he was in the Navy, at municiple San Diego airport Montgomery Field in 1956, and learned that it had sat for decades in a series of race shops in Tuscon and an Anaheim storage unit - and Yates had it restored by Pete Chapouris at the SO-CAL Speed Shop
About Frank "Duffy" Livingstone:
He served in the Navy from 1942-46, enlisting at age 17 years and 2 months. He flew in Panama and in the Southwest Pacific.
When he got out, he settled in Pasadena, and invented the glasspack muffler in 1948, 15 years before Cherry Bomb was selling them. Livingstone sold them as GP Mufflers, and sold steel wool packed mufflers as SP Mufflers
They bought the casings and cores and the endcaps from Porter Muffler in LA, and put the glass in the mufflers. The first glasspack mufflers didn’t work out. The resin melted. Then they used the same fiberglass like you put on the hood of a car. The stuff would blow out the back of the muffler.
He was a card carrying member of the NHRA Charter Club (#156) and the Pasadena Roadster Club.
He got the idea to build a go-kart from four wheels and some tubing he saw at his friend Art Ingels' house. He acquired lawnmower engines and built two carts to start -- one for himself and one for a friend.
Then another friend wanted to build one of his own, etc etc then someone said 'Let's go down to the Rose Bowl and play with these things."
There were boys and young men racing quarter midgets in the parking lot, and they wanted to know where to get carts like Livingstone had. So they drew up plans and told the guys to meet them the next weekend to learn how to build the carts.
In 1961 the rules were changed in carting to race 15 laps instead of 10, and Duffy used an inner tube filled with gas to make up the extra fuel storage needed to get through the race
Dan Gurney drove a kart for Duffy during the beginning of Nassau Speed Weeks in 1959
“I knew Duffy,” said Dan Gurney, “and I got wind that they were going to have a kart race in Nassau during Speed Weeks. I was scheduled (June ’59) to be there anyway racing. The fact it was going to be the biggest kart race ever with a $1,000 to win…yeah I wanted to be a part of it. It was a serious effort on my part. That’s when I went to Duffy’s kart track and worked with the stopwatch and got down to business with the same West Bend twin-engine kart I would be racing in Nassau. I was deadly serious about the whole thing. I started 28th and I worked my way up to 2nd place."
https://www.conceptcarz.com/z27552/ford-eliminator-special.aspx
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/0402sr-eliminator/
https://www.mecum.com/lots/CA0813-161615/1925-ford-the-eliminator/
https://www.tbucketplans.com/iowahawks-top-ten-t-buckets/
https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/life/entertainment/story/2012/jan/24/0124e-go-kart-legend-retires-to-ooltewah/68974/
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/0909rc-the-legacy-of-duffy-livingstone/
https://www.tbucketplans.com/duffy-livingstone-eliminator-brock-yates/
http://www.roadkill.com/quick-history-model-t-in-grand-prix/
and if anyone finds spelling mistakes, either shut the hell up and keep it to your self, or tell me in a note that accompanies a paypal deposit. Why? This damn article took me 3.5 hours to sort out from at least 8 sources I've linked to.
Awesome story! By the way, the home movie camera is actually a military surplus fighter plane gun camera.
ReplyDelete- Don in Oregon
Thanks! I'll edit that and get it corrected. I looked at it, figured it was just a home movie camera I've never seen before, as there must be hundreds I've never come across from Bell and Howell alone
DeleteGreat job Jesse. Would have loved to be there the day Duffy raced those big guns and and made them scratch their heads wonder, HOW!?
ReplyDeleteThe number Duff put on the Eliminator and his karts was his basic training class at the Naval Training Center in San Diego.
ReplyDelete