question for Todd Z

[Bronco billy]

Hi Todd I have a question,I am sure you could answer.
Back in the 70s and 80s there was a guy that was always at Parker and the mint racing the hell out of a 55 chevy car do you remember?
I think his name was Larry Schwacofer or something like that. Iknow it was not a bronco or class three but real cool racer.

[toddz69]

Hi Todd I have a question,I am sure you could answer.
Back in the 70s and 80s there was a guy that was always at Parker and the mint racing the hell out of a 55 chevy car do you remember?
I think his name was Larry Schwacofer or something like that. Iknow it was not a bronco or class three but real cool racer.

Yes, you are exactly right. He had a '55 Chevy and a '57 Chevy that he raced. Jim Patelli still owns one of them (I think it's the '57). It's black and he raced it at the SCORE Henderson race a few years ago. The Henderson races were run in the middle of the summer. An acquaintance of mine co-rode in the car a few years ago and said he nearly passed out from the heat!

Larry raced a Ford F-100 in the Seventies before he switched to the Chevys.

Todd Z.

[straightaxle]

That 55 won a ton of races. Curious as to how many races total, do you have that one in your data bank Todd? I even started building a class 6 back in the early 80's with zero budget. They killed the class before I got to far.

[retroblazer]

That 55 won a ton of races. Curious as to how many races total, do you have that one in your data bank Todd? I even started building a class 6 back in the early 80's with zero budget. They killed the class before I got to far.

What was it you were going to build?

[toddz69]

That 55 won a ton of races. Curious as to how many races total, do you have that one in your data bank Todd? I even started building a class 6 back in the early 80's with zero budget. They killed the class before I got to far.

That's one I don't have, even with a lot of digging in the shed :-). It was a ton, that's for certain. I don't recall if Larry kept racing until John Swift came along in his Explorer and decimated the class or not.

Todd Z.

[retroblazer]

That's one I don't have, even with a lot of digging in the shed :-). It was a ton, that's for certain. I don't recall if Larry kept racing until John Swift came along in his Explorer and decimated the class or not.

Todd Z.

With the arrival of the SUV's, it was all downhill for the car type platform. The Jeeps and the Explorers decimated the class and for good measure Evan Evans built an awesome 2wd Blazer that had twenty inches of travel on all four corners and serious horsepower. I think I was at Parker when I saw the Blazer run and I was amazed at how fast it could get through the rough.

[straightaxle]

With the arrival of the SUV's, it was all downhill for the car type platform. The Jeeps and the Explorers decimated the class and for good measure Evan Evans built an awesome 2wd Blazer that had twenty inches of travel on all four corners and serious horsepower. I think I was at Parker when I saw the Blazer run and I was amazed at how fast it could get through the rough.


That's exactly what killed it. Even with the new purpose built entries, the class did not survive.

I started building a Ford Granada, of all things. I originally bought the car to put the spindles and disk brakes on my Mustang, the rear end went in my wife's Mustang. The Mosers (Spy Racing) were racing a 60's Falcon/Ranchero at the time pretty successfully in the class. The Granada was basically a 60's Mustang or Falcon unibody platform, and was probably a horrible choice. I had the car all stripped down, and even drove to So Cal to pick up the tubing for the cage. There was a snafu with the guy who was supposed to order it for me, and it wasn't there when I got there. Drove home without it. I ended up buying a second car for $80 at an auction with a 351W, and turned it into a circle track car that only lasted a few races. With a single crash you could clean the entire front off the sheet metal frame of the car. The third one was a freebie parts car, and I won a street stock championship with it in '95. The car was totalled the same year, and that's where the engine that is in the Bronco came from. Ugly cars, but at that time you could go to any junk yard and pick any color replacement fender you wanted. The guys I was racing with were using Chevelles with $300 hoods and fenders, if you could find one. The decision to go with Class 3 did not come until 2000.

[AngerIssues]

And why did you choose Class 3 over Stone Stock Full, BITD when the Ford $ in our class was 10k? Imagine that, you and I were building cars at the same time, but for different classes. Took me over 3 years to jump to SCORE, once the Ford money was cut down and after getting sick of 9 inches of wheel travel and too many rules.

[retroblazer]

Class Six has been, and still is a big class in the Midwest. The mid-seventies Chevelles,the Laguna body style, became the dominate platform at Crandon, with a 2wd Blazer winning lately.
Henry Arras ran another older Ranchero very succesfully as well. I remember at one of the first race drawings that I attended in the late seventies had the dominate Saab in the parking lot on display.
When you ran the Granada in circle track mode, did you run frame connectors? Or better yet, what did your cage connect to in the car?

[Nick's Trix]

larry won many races, yet won many from being the only finisher or lasting the longest.
they did a great job wiht the old chevy and had the cool wagon prerunner to go along with it.
definetly an icon of the 80's.

[straightaxle]

And why did you choose Class 3 over Stone Stock Full, BITD when the Ford $ in our class was 10k? Imagine that, you and I were building cars at the same time, but for different classes. Took me over 3 years to jump to SCORE, once the Ford money was cut down and after getting sick of 9 inches of wheel travel and too many rules.

The single biggest thing that pushed me into building the Bronco was the Baja 2000. I did not even consider the sponsorship stuff at that time, it was just to build something to survive that one race. We settled on the Bronco because it was a Ford, and since we knew we were going to be limited on hp, it had to be 4wd because I didn't want to get stuck!

Going forward, we didn't even race in 2001, deciding to go for it again in 2002.

[straightaxle]

When you ran the Granada in circle track mode, did you run frame connectors? Or better yet, what did your cage connect to in the car?


I did not run frame connectors, and the cage was basically an 8 point type with about 6" x 6" plates under the ends of the tubes, welded to the sheetmetal. The front tubes went to the spring towers, the back tubes just above the rear leaf spring perches. To get the front to survive the constant contact with the wall and the other cars, I cut it off just in front of the spring towers and inserted 2 x 3 tubing that ran from the radiator to the firewall, and then slipped the front back on. The tubes gave me something solid to mount the bumper to, which would otherwise just rip out of the sheetmetal. I never did connect the tubes to the rest of the cage, but it probably would have helped. In a crash, you could depend on the the wheel, tire, and lower control arm getting wadded up as the sacraficial parts. I had lower control arms stacked up like cord wood, and could change one during a long yellow light. The car was totalled when I got t-boned coming out of turn 4. It spun around, broke the left rear axle at the wheel, caught in the dirt and rolled over 4 times down the main straight. That's why I won't race without a floater rear end any more! The car pretty much broke every spot weld and was just loose sheet metal. The cage held just fine though. It took them so long to drag off the remains that I had time to go back to the pits, tape the numbers on another borrowed car, and finish the race.