Restoring Jim Halls Chapparal 1
- Thread starter NASTYZEN
- Start date
Zeke
Well-known member
Thanks for bring back this old thread. First time I'd seen it. I saw a lot of the Chapparral cars but never a front engine one. I'd be high on the fumes just to idle that thing around.
SoCal355
Member
That's just too cool
Nice job !!!
Love Chapparal's still my fav all time car
Nice job !!!
Love Chapparal's still my fav all time car
Stuart in MN
Well-known member
Found this the other day and thought the transporter looked pretty funky.
Wonder what it was??
That vehicle still exists, it was inspired by a car hauler Mercedes Benz built that used a 300SL engine. Here's an article about it from 2013. http://barnfinds.com/cheetah-transporter-chase/
article about the Mercedes car hauler, for reference: http://www.carthrottle.com/post/the-300sl-powered-blue-wonder/
665.0coupe
Member
Interesting that the video says the car still has the original paint.....
racer-john
Well-known member
H Nasty:
Just came across your restoration site. I knew Jack Boxstrom back in the day. I completely stripped and rebuilt his "Formula Ferocious" that he bought from Max Beimler. I didn't go to the track (Harewood Acres) and one of his crew left a spark plug on the intake manifold, when he tried to slow down at one corner the car wouldn't. That nasty spark plug got caught under the carb bell crank and Jack had a scary ride till he killed the ignition.
To bad you are so far away, I'd like to come visit.
Enjoy the winter, ha, ha.
Just came across your restoration site. I knew Jack Boxstrom back in the day. I completely stripped and rebuilt his "Formula Ferocious" that he bought from Max Beimler. I didn't go to the track (Harewood Acres) and one of his crew left a spark plug on the intake manifold, when he tried to slow down at one corner the car wouldn't. That nasty spark plug got caught under the carb bell crank and Jack had a scary ride till he killed the ignition.
To bad you are so far away, I'd like to come visit.
Enjoy the winter, ha, ha.
Original paint scheme perhaps?
Small world we live in John. I wonder how old Jack is now?
Your story reminds me of the time Jack took his freshly restored Saddler Mk 1 A to Mosport to shake it down. It was so fresh it was still all in silver Alu skin.
Unfortunately, some thing caught and jammed the throttle wide open between corners 4 and 5 A..... I don't think Jack got hurt much that time but back to the fab shop the Saddler it went.
You can visit any time. Always great to meet a fellow member.
BTW Can-Am 50th anniversary reunion will be held at Tremblant on the 7 - 10 of July 2016.
I saw them at the Glen in the 90s. There were over 40 cars that took the flag. Just wow!
Nothing will keep me from being there.
racer-john
Well-known member
quote "Small world we live in John. I wonder how old Jack is now?" quote
I would think around my age, I'm 83.
His run at Mosport in the Sadler sounds like the same problem he had at Harewood
I would think around my age, I'm 83.
His run at Mosport in the Sadler sounds like the same problem he had at Harewood
From http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/2433/Chaparral-1-Chevrolet.html:
"The obvious powerplant was Chevrolet's small block V8, which had already proven itself a worthy contender in international racing. Traco enlarged the 283ci Corvette engine to 318ci by increasing the stroke. A triple Stromberg Carburetor with an Edelbrock manifold setup was initially used for the induction, but shortly into the racer's career they were replaced by a six carb installation. Hall reckoned his small-block V8 was good for around 300 bhp, which gave it a better power to weight ratio than most European engines. The engine was mounted as far back in the chassis as possible to achieve a perfect 50:50 weight balance. It was definitely mounted further back than was comfortable for the driver who sat more or less next to the engine instead of behind it." FWIW.
and to you and Mr. Hall
"The obvious powerplant was Chevrolet's small block V8, which had already proven itself a worthy contender in international racing. Traco enlarged the 283ci Corvette engine to 318ci by increasing the stroke. A triple Stromberg Carburetor with an Edelbrock manifold setup was initially used for the induction, but shortly into the racer's career they were replaced by a six carb installation. Hall reckoned his small-block V8 was good for around 300 bhp, which gave it a better power to weight ratio than most European engines. The engine was mounted as far back in the chassis as possible to achieve a perfect 50:50 weight balance. It was definitely mounted further back than was comfortable for the driver who sat more or less next to the engine instead of behind it." FWIW.
and to you and Mr. HallE.rodz
Well-known member
super cool build! keep up the great work!
bulletpruf
Well-known member
Just. Freaking. Awesome.
APEowner
Well-known member
Thank you for sharing. I think the most beautiful racing cars are from that era and your restoration work really does them justice.
That's a great piece of history. I curious of what you thought of the construction of the car?
Chapparals that I've seen up close have surprised me quite a bit; signs of incredible innovation everywhere you looked, and yet they looked like they were built with not more that basic hand tools. And no regard to how the finished product actually looked; somewhat haphazard construction. Pure function over form. It's a big contrast to some other Can-Am cars, where every component was perfectly finished to absolute perfection, (the best of course being the Porsches).
Chapparals that I've seen up close have surprised me quite a bit; signs of incredible innovation everywhere you looked, and yet they looked like they were built with not more that basic hand tools. And no regard to how the finished product actually looked; somewhat haphazard construction. Pure function over form. It's a big contrast to some other Can-Am cars, where every component was perfectly finished to absolute perfection, (the best of course being the Porsches).
Thanks for the approval guys! It was a great project. Already 23 years ago....
Doesn't make me any younger.
Well Skyline, it WAS built with not more than hand tools. There was very little budget for it. It was miraculous that Mr. Hall got his hands on engines and gear boxes. This car has a Cro-Moly tubular chassis with unequal a-arms much like your Formula Ford. But bigger and with a huge motor. This thing still blows the doors off of everything in its class. It's main problem was the driver space. I'm 5 -10'' and didn't fit. Jim Hall was a tall fellow, I wonder how he did it. Other set back was the pretty body. It gets scary lift at speed, hence the birth of the front spoiler to make it a little less hairy.
Have a look at Ferrari's and other cars of the era and you will see some shoddy work here and there. Often, they were meant to last for the season and here we are ,50 years later with these guys still racing them hard.
Doesn't make me any younger.
Well Skyline, it WAS built with not more than hand tools. There was very little budget for it. It was miraculous that Mr. Hall got his hands on engines and gear boxes. This car has a Cro-Moly tubular chassis with unequal a-arms much like your Formula Ford. But bigger and with a huge motor. This thing still blows the doors off of everything in its class. It's main problem was the driver space. I'm 5 -10'' and didn't fit. Jim Hall was a tall fellow, I wonder how he did it. Other set back was the pretty body. It gets scary lift at speed, hence the birth of the front spoiler to make it a little less hairy.
Have a look at Ferrari's and other cars of the era and you will see some shoddy work here and there. Often, they were meant to last for the season and here we are ,50 years later with these guys still racing them hard.
Thanks for the walk down Memory Lane.
From 64 through 67 many of my hours of time were spent as one of the track electricians at Watkins Glen a/k/a Yates' pasture. My compensation was my all track pass along with a similar pass for my then female companion and a collection of teeshirts and jackets. I believe it was 64 when that car or one of its twins sort of made a wrong turn along with another gentleman in his car and found themselves in the Village. Oddly, both cars came back up the hill accompanied by red & white cars with rotating red lights and sirens. Might have been something about license plates, or it might have been an arranged publicity stunt.
You are quite correct about the joys of Hall getting into that ride, and some generous member of the crew had slightly reshaped a grain scoop and painted HallHorn on it which tended to wind up hanging from the pit roof at appropriate moments. I don't recall if Maryann got her picture taken in the Chaperral, but I do have recollection of her sitting in a Cobra informing Carole Shelby it was a completely impractical ride for to and from work as well as bringing home groceries.
Better times in a much better world for sure, when we were ignorant of what was to come and many happy memories. Now I'm sitting here remembering the car with 4 chainsaw motors driving fans to **** it down in the corners, and I can't remember who built it or drove it. Unofficially it was the vacuum cleaner, and many suggestions were made it should go clean the track up.
How and why we all lived through it still amazes me.
Regarding the O/A welding, when that car was built Heliarc (TIG) was still in more labs than shops getting figured out, and MIG was at least 15 years in the future. It was O/A, stick or carbon arc Everdure.
From 64 through 67 many of my hours of time were spent as one of the track electricians at Watkins Glen a/k/a Yates' pasture. My compensation was my all track pass along with a similar pass for my then female companion and a collection of teeshirts and jackets. I believe it was 64 when that car or one of its twins sort of made a wrong turn along with another gentleman in his car and found themselves in the Village. Oddly, both cars came back up the hill accompanied by red & white cars with rotating red lights and sirens. Might have been something about license plates, or it might have been an arranged publicity stunt.
You are quite correct about the joys of Hall getting into that ride, and some generous member of the crew had slightly reshaped a grain scoop and painted HallHorn on it which tended to wind up hanging from the pit roof at appropriate moments. I don't recall if Maryann got her picture taken in the Chaperral, but I do have recollection of her sitting in a Cobra informing Carole Shelby it was a completely impractical ride for to and from work as well as bringing home groceries.
Better times in a much better world for sure, when we were ignorant of what was to come and many happy memories. Now I'm sitting here remembering the car with 4 chainsaw motors driving fans to **** it down in the corners, and I can't remember who built it or drove it. Unofficially it was the vacuum cleaner, and many suggestions were made it should go clean the track up.
How and why we all lived through it still amazes me.
Regarding the O/A welding, when that car was built Heliarc (TIG) was still in more labs than shops getting figured out, and MIG was at least 15 years in the future. It was O/A, stick or carbon arc Everdure.
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driftpin
Well-known member
I was attending races at Watkins Glen from 1964-68, I was a kid, not old-enough to drive when I started. My dad knew I was into the auto-racing scene, any performance cars, really, street or track. He had a friend from work who also liked racing, and we traveled to Watkins Glen many times for both the F1 races and the sports car races. All I had at the time was an Instamatic using 126 roll film, cartridges, but I still have the pics from those times. One of my brothers worked at Kodak in Rochester NY in color processing while he was putting himself through the University of Rochester, so I got my developing for free. I was very 'sparse' with my shots though, I tried to make every one count.
The Chaparral series was one of my favorite manufacturers, and I knew about them from Car and Driver and R&T before I saw them race. As a kid in the early 1960's I had a couple of Chaparral slot cars in HO gauge, Aurora Model Motoring sets before they went to the chassis magnets. The 'sucker car' was a Chaparral, and it used two two-stroke engines and skirts that actually went down to the road to provide the lower-pressure area under the car. That and the rear deck wings were developments of Jim Hall. Hot Rod magazine has been running some great stories about the sports-racing days of the 1960's and they did an article on Rattlesnake Raceway in Midland TX, which was Chaparral's testing facility. One of the interesting developments was a chassis that Hall got from his 'back-door resource' at GM, it was a chassis that was drilled with many mounting point holes which were numbered, so that Hall could check-out the results of changing the setups for the components installed in the chassis, kind-of a primitive 'data-acquisition' procedure, but one that bore ripe fruit for Hall's cars. A recent article revealed some secrets of the transmission Hall ran, which allowed him to concentrate on driving instead of shifting.
I've often read that 'tin-beating' ruins your hands, elbows, and shoulders. I think that was in-reference to the pneumatic hand-held air hammers used in the metal shaping, but if the OP is still doing this into his 80's, he must have some coping mechanisms.
I have pics at Watkins Glen of the filming of the Cinerama-format movie, Grand Prix, where they used a Ford GT with the front nose removed, and a big platform mounted to the front deck of the car, for the camera to be mounted. If you've seen the movie, you know that there are shots from most of the season in F1 that year, but evidently there was a problem of purchasing the rights to the footage they shot at Watkins Glen, and all their racing footage ended up on the cutting-room floor. James Garner, as the lead in the story, 'won' the race at Watkins Glen, but we never see the racing footage. There is just a shot of the loving-cup trophy going onto a shelf for his win, after the race.
I just can't get-enough of the information about that era of racing, just a very cool time in motorsports, the 1960's.
If no one had posted the information about the cab-over transporter, I was going to provide some input, as I had read a couple articles about it, but I see it's been addressed.
I sure would like to see anything the OP has that he would care to post, or links to his material elsewhere, thanks.
The Chaparral series was one of my favorite manufacturers, and I knew about them from Car and Driver and R&T before I saw them race. As a kid in the early 1960's I had a couple of Chaparral slot cars in HO gauge, Aurora Model Motoring sets before they went to the chassis magnets. The 'sucker car' was a Chaparral, and it used two two-stroke engines and skirts that actually went down to the road to provide the lower-pressure area under the car. That and the rear deck wings were developments of Jim Hall. Hot Rod magazine has been running some great stories about the sports-racing days of the 1960's and they did an article on Rattlesnake Raceway in Midland TX, which was Chaparral's testing facility. One of the interesting developments was a chassis that Hall got from his 'back-door resource' at GM, it was a chassis that was drilled with many mounting point holes which were numbered, so that Hall could check-out the results of changing the setups for the components installed in the chassis, kind-of a primitive 'data-acquisition' procedure, but one that bore ripe fruit for Hall's cars. A recent article revealed some secrets of the transmission Hall ran, which allowed him to concentrate on driving instead of shifting.
I've often read that 'tin-beating' ruins your hands, elbows, and shoulders. I think that was in-reference to the pneumatic hand-held air hammers used in the metal shaping, but if the OP is still doing this into his 80's, he must have some coping mechanisms.
I have pics at Watkins Glen of the filming of the Cinerama-format movie, Grand Prix, where they used a Ford GT with the front nose removed, and a big platform mounted to the front deck of the car, for the camera to be mounted. If you've seen the movie, you know that there are shots from most of the season in F1 that year, but evidently there was a problem of purchasing the rights to the footage they shot at Watkins Glen, and all their racing footage ended up on the cutting-room floor. James Garner, as the lead in the story, 'won' the race at Watkins Glen, but we never see the racing footage. There is just a shot of the loving-cup trophy going onto a shelf for his win, after the race.
I just can't get-enough of the information about that era of racing, just a very cool time in motorsports, the 1960's.
If no one had posted the information about the cab-over transporter, I was going to provide some input, as I had read a couple articles about it, but I see it's been addressed.
I sure would like to see anything the OP has that he would care to post, or links to his material elsewhere, thanks.
The Glen was an interesting place in the 60s, by today's standards a death trap, by the standards of the 60s the top of the mountain. I often wondered, who was the genius who thought the tunnel under the track was a good idea?
Fire safety was a couple pickup trucks and maybe a brush truck from a local Volunteer company from the area. I recall one weekend when a large party group burned an intercity coach to the ground for fun. That led to the "crackdown" no more camping on track property, which worked really well. No more scaffolding either, something that never should have been allowed to begin with.
The "elite" SCCA people from NY City who knew all about how to run a track, but didn't know toilets in the tower don't flush without water from the well, and water only comes from the well when the generator is running. It's also bad when you replace local vendors who built the places with approved vendors.
Memo: to elite people, don't piss off the people who make the track run. You look really dumb trying to figure out why the PA system for your meeting doesn't work without electric.
Memo: to SCCA, you want a tent at the Glen, rent it from a local Fire Department, not some tent rental place in NY City. Did you ever find the SCCA banner? Did you ever find your magnificent tent?
Gee, I wonder why Louie Ryan esq. managed to become a legend by keeping the track in Chp 11 Bankruptcy longer than any other case in history.
The Glen of the 60s was a special place, a collection of people who could and did make it run so fast cars could burn tires up. It could and did work until so many lawyers and doctors and executives arrived from The City to point out all the problems and fix them, and drive the track into Bankruptcy. It damn sure wasn't working in 71 when I was back after a couple years in a time zone 12 hours away.
Fire safety was a couple pickup trucks and maybe a brush truck from a local Volunteer company from the area. I recall one weekend when a large party group burned an intercity coach to the ground for fun. That led to the "crackdown" no more camping on track property, which worked really well. No more scaffolding either, something that never should have been allowed to begin with.
The "elite" SCCA people from NY City who knew all about how to run a track, but didn't know toilets in the tower don't flush without water from the well, and water only comes from the well when the generator is running. It's also bad when you replace local vendors who built the places with approved vendors.
Memo: to elite people, don't piss off the people who make the track run. You look really dumb trying to figure out why the PA system for your meeting doesn't work without electric.
Memo: to SCCA, you want a tent at the Glen, rent it from a local Fire Department, not some tent rental place in NY City. Did you ever find the SCCA banner? Did you ever find your magnificent tent?
Gee, I wonder why Louie Ryan esq. managed to become a legend by keeping the track in Chp 11 Bankruptcy longer than any other case in history.
The Glen of the 60s was a special place, a collection of people who could and did make it run so fast cars could burn tires up. It could and did work until so many lawyers and doctors and executives arrived from The City to point out all the problems and fix them, and drive the track into Bankruptcy. It damn sure wasn't working in 71 when I was back after a couple years in a time zone 12 hours away.
A true man before his time
My favorite Chapparal story, (I do not know the model number, but was one with the drag on the track side skirts and a snowmobile engine to power a down force fan) also had. per the new rules, brake lights.
But he rules didn’t say how the lights should be hooked up.
He wired them to the down force fan.
That way, when he turned on the down force and stepped on the main gas pedal in a corner the drivers behind him thought he was braking when he was actually accelerating.
They changed the rules the next year.
My favorite Chapparal story, (I do not know the model number, but was one with the drag on the track side skirts and a snowmobile engine to power a down force fan) also had. per the new rules, brake lights.
But he rules didn’t say how the lights should be hooked up.
He wired them to the down force fan.
That way, when he turned on the down force and stepped on the main gas pedal in a corner the drivers behind him thought he was braking when he was actually accelerating.
They changed the rules the next year.
As far as I know, the skirt car made it's debut at Mosport and so utterly outclassed everyone. I think he lapped the field several times actually.
It was also it's last. It was banned for the next events.
I think this thing blowing by the guys just sucked to the track in the corners would of freaked out the other drivers more than brake lights.
Have a look at some footage of the ground effects F-1 cars of the early 80's. They could easily triple the cornering speeds. Crazy! works awesome until you lose suction.
