with 300 dollar to build a Baja Offroad Racer
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| From Biography |
I've received a few congratulatory remarks about my Toyota days....and I accept the compliments.
....But let me tell you how this really went down.
So I'd been racing the Baja 1000 since Oct '70. I attracted the attention of a couple local doctors who had me build 2 Baja Bugs for them, and A guy who worked for me also built a Baja Bug. Together with my new car.......
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| From Biography |
All Aluminum, Hillborn fuel injected, 2200cc mid-engined VW....class 1 single seater
..........we had 4 cars in an earlier Mexican 1000 race. As far as the off road community went, I was kinda a big deal. This caused the editor of Four Wheeler Magazine, Bill Sanders, to become interested in us. Eventually he became a good drinking buddy, and he would spend a good deal of social time with us at the races.
We called Bill 'L A Bill'. In '73 L A Bill had been doing projects for his magazine on a Toyota Land cruiser. As I remember Toyota owned the Land Cruiser, and Bill got someone (Ack Miller, I think) to put a turbo charger on it one month, and another company converted it to Propane another month.
'73 was along about the first gas shortage of the last 50 years, so alternate fuel was in the interest to the four wheel drive crowd.
Anyway when Bill was done with doing projects with the Toyota, the factory had no more interest in the vehicle. What to do, What to do??.......Well L A Bill talked Toyota into signing the vehicle over to him (for a dollar) and letting him run the Baja 1000 with it.....and they gave him 300 dollars to get the car built.
Bill, got ahold of me, an a deal was struck. I'd build the car.....for the 300 dollars. Bill got many of the folks that advertised in his magazine to put their products on the Land Cruiser, which was a lot of the work. My job was to trailer the car around to the various place and organize the build. Crew Chief in today's vernacular, I guess. I did put the shock mounts and shocks on the Toyota.
From Toyota Land Cruiser, the Champ
The FJ40 got a complete set of HD springs and ten NASCAR Shocks....besides seats, seat belts, and small items to make it race-able. Doug Bowen, a high school friend, was very instrumental in helping me with the details of the build, and Toyota lent us a Toyota pickup truck which Doug and his wife, Sharon, took about 600 miles down the Baja peninsula to La Purisima for a pit stop. He and Sharon were the lone pit crew for our whole race. Big thanks to Doug.
About a week before the race, while out testing, Doug and I managed to blow a head gasket on the 6 cylinder engine. That 6 cylinder engine has a minimum of head bolts so the Turbocharger made head gaskets a weak point. Doug and I managed the repair in about a day. Losing that day, as you can imaging, made the time line a lot tighter before the race. Talk about worried, At that time in my mechanical life. I'd never changed a head gasket before, but apparently we did a passable job.
Now for some of the stars that aligned. The Baja races had gone on for 5 years by then, and the Mexican powers were watching all this money being made by Gringo organizers (NORRA). They decided to take the race over, and run it themselves in '73.
That pissed NORRA off, and they put on a race in Parker Arizona to compete the same week as the Baja 1000 which drew about half or more of the competitors. Normally there would have been about 10 or 12 racers in each class, 4 Wheel drive and Modified Four wheel drive.
So we ended up with about 6 cars in our stock class, and then there were another half dozen cars in the modified class. That didn't make much of a race for either of our classes. The race organizer had a meeting before the race to ask if we wanted to run 2 classes or just lump them all together.
Of cours, the modified guys, who were supposedly faster, wanted to lump them together, but we slow stock guys didn't want to race the modified guys. The vote came out to have 2 classes. Cool,...... L A Bill's influence helped with the outcome.
So we started the race. Bill did a great job of taking care of the car while he drove. I remember riding there with Bill going a fast as the Toyota would go, south of San Felipe thru about 25 miles crossing sand washes, That beautiful FJ40 flew, coming out of each wash, just as straight and level as an arrow. It was scary and beautiful at the same time. Bill and I swapped driving duties all through the night.
Some where down there below Los Angeles Bay climbing up to El Arco, We passed Rod Hall or Carl Jackson who were in a Stroppe/factory Bronco (probably our most significant competition). He was broke down in a remote place with a blown steering box. Woohoo.
There was zero communication down there in those years so we didn't know where we were race wise, but that Bronco being out was good news.
Anyway we raced thru the night with only 2 hitches, the starter went out, which required push starting when needed, and a bit of the exhaust came loose which cut down, or maybe eliminated, the boost from the turbo.
We had set up with a propane company to supply the propane for us, and they hit all the fuel points right on schedule. So we crossed the finish line around noon, at about 26 hours of race time.
There were other cars still out on the course that were in our class that could beat us. We went to bed for a while, and when we woke up the modified cars had gotten to the race organizers, and had lumped our 2 classes back together, and we were 3rd.
With LA Bill's influence, he was able to get the classes separated again.....So we were now second. A little more investigation showed that the Bronco that beat us didn't qualify for the stock class, so, again LA Bill got him put in the modified class. Now we were first....Yeah, we had won the Baja 1000.
See what I mean, 'Luck beats good'.
The Mexicans organizers went bankrupt, suffering from so few entries, and weren't able to pay any of the prize money. We finally did get paid a year later when Micky Thompson and SCORE took the race over.
The Two doctors who raced with me....one raced for several years more and died of a heart attack at age 42....the other was vacationing near La Paz and went off the road and burned himself up along with his wife and kids in a horrible accident. Do You see the 'luck beats good' theme here?
The other guy who worked for me, went on to a fairly successful career in off road racing with his Baja Bug racing.
How the Mexican 1000 winning FJ40 got to the Spector Off Road Warehouse where it's living out it retirement currently.
Bill Sander and I raced the FJ for a couple years until 4 wheeler mag had no more interest. Then Bob Lewis began to campaign the race car and painted it from the old red to the yellow and blue that it is now.
They raced it for a couple years as well. I'm not real sure about the timeline. Bob Lewis may come on here and add to this story. I hope he does. Anyway, Bob decided to stop racing the FJ so as I understand it he gave the FJ40 to someone who worked for him. Maybe there was some money involved or he was just showing appreciation for work that he'd done toward racing.
That guy used it like a recreational 4X4, and one day took it 4 Wheeling out around Ridgecrest Ca. While there he broke it so that he couldn't drive it home. he left it for dead.
It was impounded by a tow company out there. I heard that it was kind of accidental that Spector found out about it. Thankfully, Spector paid the fees against it and resurrected a once proud and storied offroad race car. 0 Comments Write a comment…
