Tech question: Beauchamp's 55 Chevy, roll cage

[Maineboy]

Getting ready to build this car in the not too distant future, just going to order the decals.

swanson9 by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

I like the story behind the people that led to this car being built and raced. This was Beauchamp's first stock car. And in those days they were indeed stock, just as they came from the factory......almost anyway. I have looked at this pic a lot and tried to figure out the roll cage....as it was in this car. I can see no tube ahead of the drivers position only the one behind the seat. It looks like a single roll bar with a sideways brace moving upwards toward the driver's side. And it looks like one bar angled to the rear.  Does this make sense or am I seeing this wrong? I know driver protection has changed drastically over the years, and much safer for the driver. This was in 1955 and competed in  organized racing events in the midwest. Other cars must have been built similar. Does anyone on the forum have first hand knowledge, or a good idea, of how the roll cage, such as it was, was built back in the day.

Dale Swanson was the mechanic in this picture. He was an outstanding engine and race car builder. His son, Dale, Jr, told me in an email what this car's colors were. I thought it was all white at first glance. It was mostly a baby blue color with a white roof. The Swanson family is still building race engines and cars in Harlan, IA. I told Dale Jr I would show him pics of it when done. He couldn't figure out why anyone would want to build a model of one of those old cars. I told him there were still a few of us who loved the history of racing on short tracks.

Any info on how that cage was built would be appreciated.

MB

[Brian Conn]

Lets see if I can be of any help here.....
  A few years back I built a '59 Ford Galaxie that would have raced locally here in the late 60's as either a convertible or with its roof on.....I had to do many  hours of research as I wanted it as close as possible to be an exact replica of what I was after.   Long story short, I chased down many, many Rabbit holes with cars that raced on the short tracks in the Midwest ...whether it was dirt or asphalt during the 50's and 60's....
 
  Although its a Holman/Moody piece from the mid '60's, the roll bar in the lower Left corner was still available where either the builder wanted it or rules stipulated that no bars could pass thru the dash or rear metal panel behind where the back seat would be located(as in the cage pictured in the upper Left).
  I've studied the picture that you have provided, focusing on particular areas of the roll bar....rivet counting X 100...here's what found.
  You are correct about the single roll bar w/ a diagonal bar.....whats not pictured with the diagonal bar is where it ties in with the Right roll bar vertical upright either at a metal plate (boiler plate) welded to the floor or to an extension coming off of the car frame .....2"X2" or something similar.  It ties in with the Left roll bar vertical upright basically in the center portion of the bend.  I would imagine that there are also a pair of short diagonal bars, as pictured in the lower Left corner from Holman/Moody, that attach to the floor or frame in the same fashion as I described with the main roll bar.  I also imagine that there would be a horizontal bar, as pictured from Holman/Moody, that goes between the the Right and Left vertical upright pieces of the roll bar aprox. half way between the floor and the top of the roll bar.   I'll try and locate the pictures that I used for reference to substantiate what I'm saying. 
  Unsure what is just behind the Right side "B" pillar....doubt it has anything to do with the roll bar.             

[Maineboy]

Brian, many thanks that is all good information. I would guess that many cars competing in the same area might be roughly protecting the driver in about the same manner, especially when you went and competed, as Swanson and Beauchamp did, in a circuit where there was a meaningful set of rules. Swanson's first car was a ford coupe cut down to be a roadster. I think the year was 1948 or 49. That car had a roll bar over and slightly behind the driver with one brace going to the rear. Two drivers were killed in roll overs that summer in similar cars. Beheaded they said as grisly as it sounds, and easy to see how. They shortly went to coupes with steel tops and much better protection. But the idea of one roll bar and a brace must have hung on for some time as can be seen, more or less, in#55.

I grew up in rural coastal Maine and stock car racing was in it's infancy for sure. My first contact as a helper was racing essentially "Jalopies" (street car, gutted,  with some sort of primitive roll protection) and limited to engines that came in the car. We first were involved with it on the old horse racing track at the Cherryfield, ME fairgrounds. No banking on the turns, and very loose surface. Worked as pit crew for a couple summers than got to thinking "hey we can build one of them too".....and we did.

Around these parts installing some sort of roll protection was called "piping up" the car. I think this came from the fact that a guy building one scrounged up what galvanized or black iron pipe he could find.....and went for it. We just looked around and kind of copied what others did. Sometimes the pipe sizes didn't match too good as in any case we were limited to whatever sizes and lengths we could find or get somebody to part with. The welding was done with Mr Lincoln's red box or something even worse.  If you look at the pic of my #56 in that other thread, you can see that pipe sizes did not match all that good. In my era (late 60's) nobody in Maine was ever seriously hurt or killed. That came later when the cars got faster and more power. We raced 56 chevys for 3 years and had lots of fun and learned lots. I wish to god I had taken lots more pictures of it all. Would do it again in a heartbeat too.

MB

[Brian Conn]

.....Located some of the pictures that I spoke of in the earlier post....
 http://www.shorttrackmodels.com/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=17

Slim, from here in the forums has several builds of the same era as this one your building...I used some of his cages as reference material on the build that I mentioned previously.  You will have to scroll through the link that I posted to see the builds that I am referring to.

 

[Maineboy]

Brian,  Thanks for the latest info. I will look though it when it is not just before bed time. I have done some google searches of NASCAR stock cars from that 1955 era. A common thread seems to be a roll bar, just behind the seat, and curved at the upper joints with a brace dropping downward to the rear frame on each side. They used similar in the convertibles and those are easy to see.  Ever since I first saw those convertibles racing, at that kind of speed, I used to wonder who drove them. Don't think I would have wanted to.

On another thread here I posted a picture of Beauchamp's first race car, in 1948. It looked like a 30 or 31 Ford Roadster. Another sharp eyed guy on here said it looked like a coupe that the top had been chopped off of. On closer look I could agree with that. In any case that had just a simple roll bar behind the driver with one brace in the middle of it. That summer in races around the Harlan IA area two drivers had been killed in them, both beheaded it was said. A rather gruesome tale but  a good reason why lots more safety features, including the enclosed cages now that a NASCAR driver can crash at 160 mph or more.....and walk away from. Amazing. I think racing has contributed quite a bit to auto safety.

MB

[Maineboy]

Here is a pic of a 55 Olds convertible that raced in NASCAR in 1955. It is easy to see what they had in that car.

rollbar by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

From looking at pics of #55, and pics of other 55 chevys, and other brands of cars racing on NASCAR tracks in 1955, I think something very similar to what is in that Olds is what probably was in #55. You can see the same basic idea in other cars of that era. Racers have always been good at copying other's ideas. Andy Granatelli and his brothers built innovative cars and raced at Indy for years. He said that "copying" your idea was a form of flattery. And he also said that a guy building a race car for NEXT season, who is copying what you did this year, is giving you a great advantage to innovate.

One thing is for sure. They started racing old Ford cars on many of those old dirt tracks. There were plenty of them and they were cheap. And safety then was never much of a factor. But over the years safety has loomed larger over time and that is a great thing. Dale Earnhardt's death a few years back led to great improvements in neck safety in crashes. I cannot imagine a 150 mph crash of a 55 Chevy with just a simple roll bar like this one. Thankfully we will never see that, and that's a good thing.

This #55 car was a great innovation in it's day. Swanson and Beauchamp, racing in the midwest on dirt tracks, heard all about NASCAR and that there was more money there than racing in IA. So this car was acquired, off a showroom floor, and was fitted out with roll protection and anything else that was legal to use then to make it go as fast as possible. My parents bought a brand new Belair  in 1956. I remember that they paid $2700 for it, a lot of money then. So that is roughly what this cost in 1955.

But suppose the racers went and bought a brand new Chevy today and did just what these guys did to #55 and went racing. What do you suppose NASCAR would be today if they were racing factory built cars? The idea in 1955 was to race truly "STOCK" (from the factory) cars. The reason many of us dislike NASCAR today is that they no longer do this. It has changed and not for the better in my mind.

MB

[Brian Conn]

  Not necessarily tech related, but I ran across this story about Johnny racing at the Fairgrounds 1/2 mile dirt track here in Topeka.....

                                                Midwest Racing Archives
                                                THURSDAY, JULY 15, 2010

                                      Remembering the Topeka Fairgrounds
                         
               
                       
               
                       
               
                       
               


  Link to the Topeka Fairgrounds story.......side note: the #53 Camaro driven by Terry Bivins that is pictured along with the story raced at the fairgrounds track in 1978
http://www.midwestracingarchives.com/2010/07/remembering-topeka-fairgrounds.html

[Maineboy]

Brian,

Thanks for the photo of two truly great men who put the little town of Harlan, IA on the national map eventually. I believe that car behind Swanson is one of the famous "Black Widow" 57 Chevys that was built in Atlanta, GA by SEDCO, "Southern Engineering and Development Company", which was an operation by Chevrolet, under the counter as factory participation was NOT really allowed back then.  There were several of those "Black Widows" built in Atlanta, and one sponsored by Nalley Chevrolet, was driven by Beauchamp for a time. Can't see the number on that car so not sure which one it was.

1957 Chevrolet 150, "Black Widow" race car sponsored by Nalley Chevrolet, Atlanta, GA
blackwidow by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

Those cars from the factory were equipped with Rochester mechanical fuel injection. None of the NASCAR mechanics could make them run right. The mechanical genius, Smokey Yunick, said years later that Dale Swanson figured out how to make one work.  Those cars were 150 models and were the cheapest, and lightest, of the 57 bodies. They came with no radio, no heater and so on, to make them a bit lighter. Because they had no heater a metal panel was attached to the firewall to close up the opening. At high speed air pressure built up under the hood and fouled up the fuel injection settings as it was controlled by air pressure among other things. Dale Swanson took that metal plate off the firewall and opened it up to the passenger compartment. Voila, as they say in France. 

Chevrolet offered the job of heading up their NASCAR efforts to Dale Swanson. He thought a lot about it but turned it down as his wife and family wanted to stay in IA. Can't say as I could have blamed them. The Swanson family has been running that race shop, and repair shop, in Harlan ever since. See the link for current operations and photos.

https://swanson-automotive.com/photos/

MB