Showing posts with label Pike's Peak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pike's Peak. Show all posts
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Friday, November 07, 2025
a 68 Road Runner that is destined for Pikes Peak... how do I know? I talked to the owner/driver/pilot/awesome guy, and he's got one hell of a story - and a cooler job. He's on the Pikes Peak tech crew at the start of the race!
Richard and his buddy Ben, both grew up with a 68 383 4 speed Road Runner... how unreal is that? But their dads also both died when these guys were young. Tragic, and just unreal coincidence. Now they have partnered on this Road Runner to race on Pikes Peak next year, June 21, 2026
Ben's father passed away in 2023 three days before he was set to race for the first time at Pikes Peak.
The first car he built with his dad was a 68 Road Runner and when Richard asked him if he could drive any car in Pikes Peak race, what would be?
Ben responded "a road runner "
Since Richard's father also had a Road Runner, things got really interesting. Richard lost his father in the Oklahoma City bombing and had been holding on to his dad’s car ever since. And both of their dad's cars were 68 383 4 speed cars!
That day the idea was born to build it for Pikes Peak. With some amazing help, the Road Runner was built in only 94 days to make SEMA.
The team at Apex Auto Works absolutely crushed the build.
hear the story in a podcast at https://www.inwheeltimepodcast.com/restoring-a-roadrunner-a-fathers-legacy/
Richard's hoping to get Isky to sign that decal, it's been on the car forever... I hope he takes the window off the car and finds Isky and gets it autographed!
I'm loving the wing, and how it attaches! When you figure that adding a wing is going to damage the original body, or the trunk lid, and try to figure out a way to get one on a classic Mopar without damaging anything? Brilliant
Starting with a Nascar chassis, removing 208 pounds of lead ballast in the frame, dropping the body of his dad's 68 Road Runner over that race car chassis, and getting the result that Plymouth was trying for in 1968 - a car ready for racing on the Nascar / Grand National tracks
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Friday, November 10, 2023
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
awwww hell, Ol Smokey, the 1949 Ford I've featured a couple of times, has flown off Pikes Peak, 175 feet down, and rolled 9 times, then came to a stop utterly wrecked and won't be rebuilt. Driver is fine, but the brakes weren't (and had no redundancy system)
during last weekend's Pikes Peak Hill Climb, Smokey had a complete brake failure Birdsall recalled in an Instagram post.
The truck flew about 175 feet down the cliff onto it's roof, and then rolled 8 or 9 times before it came to a stop in a snow drift.
the cage, safety belts, and helmet were perfect.
Pike's Peak racing 2023 is in the books, and on the video clips
Robin Shute captured his fourth title in five years, driving a 2018 Wolf TSC-FS in 8:40.080 and nudged second-place finisher Romain Dumas, also a four-time champion, by more than seven seconds.
Thursday, May 11, 2023
Lotus by Anstead, Button, and driven by Foust heading up Pike's Peak for the 101st Running June 25, 2023
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Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
Friday, July 15, 2022
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Friday, July 01, 2022
Bronczilla, it looks crazy, I love it
It has an aluminum tube-frame chassis built by in 1993 with a fiberglass racing body. It's rear-wheel drive, with a 351 a four-speed racing transmission from Auto Gear Engineering.
It had the class win in 1994, a then-record-setting finish in the Super Truck class of 11:36.630
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Monday, June 06, 2022
In 1916, William Warwick, his wife, and daughter Daisy drove a GMC truck carrying a ton of Carnation canned milk from Seattle to New York and back. During the return trip, they also climbed Pike's Peak.
Google Books
A major problem was the lightly built bridges of the time. They were made for horses and buggies and not the weight of the trucks. In the 3710 miles between Seattle and New York they broke through 43 bridges and culverts.
Although the journey was said to take only 31 days, that was only actual "driving time". The actual calendar length from Seattle to New York was exactly 10 weeks
The 1-1/2-ton model was on the road a total of 21 weeks and went more than 9,500 miles.
Warwick had never operated a motor vehicle before, but not many people had at this time.
He made the trip with his wife and 4 year old daughter, but his daughter became ill early on and was left with relatives in Idaho (or North Dakota, depending upon which account you read).
One of the unusual stipulations of this journey was that Warwick could not accept ANY outside help to repair his truck or get it unstuck.
No tows from other vehicles, horses, mules, or anything were allowed.
As you can see in these photos, in several instances it is almost unbelievable he was able to extricate the GMC by himself, especially considering the truck was underpowered and had slick, hard rubber tires.
The last few hundred miles of the return trip were the worst, taking one month to get through Douglas County, Oregon. Here, due to the terrible mud, he was only able to travel one to two miles per day, at one point taking four days to move a mile.
I found that California newspapers like the San Bernadino Daily Sun, are available on the California Digital Newspaper Collection website, for free. No paywall!
The feat of Mr. and Mrs. William Warwick was documented in the 47-page "The Story of a Double Transcontinental Trip Made by Mr. and Mrs. William Warwick in a GMC Truck"
In 1966 on the 50th anniversary, GMC and Carnation recreated the trip using a new GMC Golden Pacemaker truck hauling 17 tons of Carnation products. Four of Carnation's top drivers made the trip in six days.
GMC commemorated the 100-year anniversary of that road trip by recreating it in a 2017 GMC Acadia. They made a daily video, and the series is on You tube https://www.youtube.com/c/gmc/search?query=path%20to%20precision
and on the Teamsters website, http://www.ainsleyshea-development.com/638/Continental-Delivery they claim to have assisted the Warwicks:
In 1916, as motor trucks and technology improved, Teamsters once again made news by participating in a cross-country delivery for Carnation Milk.
But the teamsters site states that the return trip from New York to Seattle took 30 days. Of course, it didn't.
"Relics of the Road #1:
GMC Gems" by Gini Rice has about 30 pages devoted to this trip.
All Wikipedia seems to have to say is:
In 1916, a GMC Truck crossed the country from Seattle to New York City in thirty days, and in 1926, a 2-ton GMC truck was driven from New York to San Francisco in five days and 30 minutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMC_(automobile)
Saturday, June 04, 2022
Max and Morris Grabowsky founded Grabowsky Motor Company in Michigan in 1900. the changed the name several times, to Grabowsky Power Wagon Company, then Rapid Motor Vehicle Company.
A popular myth / urban legend was that the GMC logo stood for the Grabowsky Motor Company, which didn't exist after 1904, here's why:
in 1902 Max Grabowsky sold his first truck to the American Garment Cleaning Company of Detroit.
Later that year, the Grabowsky Motor Vehicle Company was reorganized as Rapid Motor Vehicle Company in 1904
Named for the serendipitously named street their new assembly factory was located at, Rapid Street, abutting the Grand Trunk Western Railroad tracks on the south side of Pontiac, Michigan. The Rapid Street Plant was the nucleus of what would become the Pontiac West Assembly complex.
By 1904, Rapid would turn out 75 trucks from the factory in Pontiac.
During 1908, General Motors founder William C. Durant began buying up Rapid's stock and the company soon found itself being represented by GM's sales force. GM was growing quickly and brought Rapid fully under the corporate umbrella in 1909 - the year that a Rapid truck made headlines by climbing to the top of Pike's Peak.
The GMC logo - which stands for General Motors Truck Company - was first seen on trucks in 1912.
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
Saturday, March 12, 2022
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