At Weeks End
Bob Radford introduced me to stock car racing in the early 1960s, back when you could get into the game with an old clunker.
Id seen a couple of races at Lapland, the old track in Gas, in the 1950s, but I didnt have the urge to soup up a car. I had an old jalopy, a 1950 Pontiac business coupe that burned about as much oil as gasoline, and was in no shape for a road trip as short as to Iola or Chanute. I had to beg my dads 1955 Ford to take a date to a movie.
Radford, from Topeka, convinced me he was well up on the ins and outs of building a race car.
Call me naïve, but he did pretty well at selling himself.
As fellow students at Pitts-burg State, we checked at a place on the east side of town and found an old car we could buy for next to nothing and were in business. A friend claimed he was a good welder and tacked on the roll cage thankfully we never had to test it.
Eventually, we got the car ready, and our first venture was at a track in Fort Scott. The next day a couple of guys wondered how we did. Third in the B feature, I beamed, but neglected to add that just three cars finished.
The Radford-Johnson racing team didnt last long, but a couple of years later, then in Iola, the racing bug wouldnt let up.
By then Id learned a thing or two.
First off, I talked John Chard into giving me a hand. He was handy at welding and had mechanic skills honed from several years of building pipelines in Saudi Arabia. He also happened to have a well-equipped shop.
We found a four-door Ford Sedan that resembled a giant beetle on wheels, and went to work. Its great advantage was a solid axle under the front end, instead of coil springs, which ensured the beast could corner well on a banked oval track.
Al Weiland was my ace in the hole.
Al helped me build up a flathead Ford engine. Al had raced flatheads years before and still had an intake manifold that mounted a four-barrel carburetor (a Holley, of course) and a pair of Canadian heads, cast in aluminum, milled down a bit to increase compression. We shot the crank off to California for balancing and bored and stroked the engine out to nearly 300 cubic inches.
As with any engine Wei-land ever touched, my flathead ran flawlessly, and propelled the sedan as if it were outfitted with twin jets.
The final piece of the puzzle was finding a driver, since that wasnt my piece of cake.
Bill Hillbrant needed no coaxing. He jumped aboard and from the first race the old Flying Red One flew around one track after another.
Hillbrant went on to race for many years, but I imagine hed tell you the flathead was among his favorites.
