True Tales - Jay's VW

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"Jay's VW" Copyright 2007-2012 by: E.C. "Stan" Field
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My buddy Jay and I loved to race cars. All kinds of cars. Big ones like Cadillacs, medium ones like Valiants and Ramblers and small ones... Like Fiat-Abarths and Volkswagons.

One thing we found out quickly, was that when you race cars, they will break. And if you have to take a broken car to a dealership to be fixed, it will cost a lot of money. Money was one thing we were really short of, back in the 1960s, and so, out of desperation and need... We learned how to be hot rod mechanics.

Most of the time, we were working either out in my side yard, another friend's barn or Jay's really small garage.
One particularly cold winter weekend, I was at his place and our wives needed to go shopping while I helped him work on an old 36hp VW. Since it was the weekend and we were not in any real hurry, as soon as the ladies left, we started working on the first of several six-packs of beer.

True Tales - Anything Fits!

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"Anything Fits!" Copyright 1993-2012 by:    E.C. "Stan" Field
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Back in 1966... or maybe it was '67, there was a real excitin' street racing fraternity around northern Indiana.  Every town had one or more sections of farm road, fairly smooth and straight that the local boys could use to break their cars.  One of the lessor-know champions of impromptu dragstrips was a really big fella called "Meat".  Now Meat only drove Chevrolet products.  He had several late 50s race cars and a radical '62 Corvette with wider tires under the back end than anyone had ever seen on a street car.  But... that's another story.

One hot summer night me and meat and about a half-dozen other foolhardy streetracers were about halfway though a keg of Milwaukee's finest when the subject turned to engine swapping.  Since Meat's four-car garage had enough tools and equipment to outfit a complete race-team, he bragged long and hard that he could fit anything into anything else.  Nothing was impossible to the dedicated mechanic!

Chrysler XVI 2220 16 cyl engine

Photos taken at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, CT.
www.neam.org