Bahari Racing's Former Golden Era NASCAR Shop: Ahead of Its Time in 1989! (Michael Waltrip Pennzoil)

We always say cars end up in museums, but not the buildings they came from. We're here to show you what used to be the Bahari Racing Building where Michael Walrip, Johnny Benson, and Derek Ko raced out of among other people. Well, this is the the one they call Rambo. Whenever I said that we wanted to come here, every single person I asked said, "You need to find Rambo." First race shop in this park, 1989. And everybody thought that Chuck Ryder was crazy for building such a big shop, believe it or not. Yeah. I was thinking like this is like a mega shop for 1989. You think about like what Stavas were operating out of back then. This really hasn't changed that much. Everything looks just about the same. Ginger used to sit back there Chuck Rogers's daughter and she was a always a pleasure and always smiling, always laughing in here. They had carpet. They didn't have epoxy floors. The hallways, everything is exactly like it was with the offices there. We had a gym down there on the end upstairs. Same thing. Chuck's office. If you came up here, were you in trouble? Yeah, you were in trouble if you came up here. Of course, Lorance Harry was his partner. That's where the horror comes from. Bahari was Dick Bear. Lowance Harry and Chuck Ryder. That's Bahari. That's how they come up with it. Upstairs is also an apartment where the uh truck driver when we was here, truck driver Tommy Riggsby, old uh hot rod. Did you ever pass out up here? Maybe a time or two. Was there a gift shop in here or something? It looked pretty big just to be No, not really. The trinkets and trash deal with t-shirts and hats and stuff wasn't really that big back then. That's the door that we actually came in. We parked on that side. We come in there, which at the time that I come here, I was the jackman and a fabricator, which we'll go into the fab shop. But when you come in here, this was this was um the assembly shop right here. This is stayed the same. Same with the windows. Um the high ceiling, which when we come in here at first and and I'll tell you later about the shop we come from, but it was nothing. This this is unbelievable. We're like, look at this place. I mean, it was uh it was definitely definitely a beautiful place. This is nice now. Yeah, it is. It is. But um I mean like when it was brand new, they painted the floors red and I think they um hired the lowest bidder because when we moved in here, the floor came up, the paint, you could put your foot on it and spin it and the paint would just come off and then you'd be around the cars and your uniforms turned red from the paint. And then we ended up getting that fixed. If you want to walk in here, the fab shop. And I know there's a lot of stuff in here, but that's the door that went up to to the apartment. The apartment's up there. And this all was a fab shop, including the the part room up there. This is where it changes a little bit. The big door wasn't there. And this come around this come around to about right here was about it. And the reason why I know that is because my toolbox sat there. My welding bench was there and my welder sat right here. And from here that way was the fab shop which was um way bigger than what we had and definitely roomier. And we had you know all the equipment and everything. Carrie worked in here. Mike Fox, Zoomer was in here, and this is where we spent most of our time. Like I said, I was I was right here around this corner, and then there was a wall there. This is where we put them together, where we built them, did all the fab work, and then uh where' the chassis come from? The chassis back then, you would get a a Hutch chassis, um a Banjo chassis, a Hopkins chassis. You had the chassis builders that you would buy the chassis. Very few people were messing with uh making their own chassis, building their own chassis. This was actually really nice because we could line the cars up. We'd have all the cars lined up there. We had a surface plate right there. Man, is it hot in here? It's hot in here. Hang on a minute. Oh, he came prepared. You had me fooled. How about that? Epic. I think it shrunk when it was hanging in the closet. But anyway, pretty nice little touch, isn't it? Yeah, I wasn't ready for that. Yeah, how about that? So, anyway, uh we had the surface plate here and then this was our assembly shop. We had tables along the walls because I actually come here when it was actually Penso. I was a fabricator and then I was a mechanic. I was over there. I did all the front suspension, everything. I worked up against that wall there. We had assembly rooms in here that are still here where we would put our components together and in the storage room. What were these rooms? Do you remember what they were for component-wise? Yeah, we had we built rear end housings and at one time we had a um blind guy who had all these cool tools that made noises and he was would build our rear ends. Can't remember his name. You had a blind guy building rear ends? Yes. like when he would set the brakes on it, he had his calipers would talk to him. I mean, it was it was pretty amazing. But we'd do the rear ends, front suspension, cleaning room, and uh then we would have a storage room. But it really blows my mind about this place, and I'm friends with Kelvin, and I've been in here a bunch of times. This is where the building ended. This overhang was open. So from here straight across that way it was all open and you could come out here. We had a um wash pit right there. We put a brick wall up and that's where our pressure washer was. We had a lift in there and that's where we washed the cars. But this was open. This was all open and that was it for for Bahari Racing. That was as big as the building was. M then this building has got built on to I don't know four or five times cuz there's a body shop that holds tractor trailers on the other side of that wall. I mean it's it's huge. It's um definitely really uh really big. But this was a shop and I remember we couldn't have been here I don't know we probably here 2 weeks and they had gutters that come down here and our truck driver was in a little parts S10. He backed up and matched the gutter. And that was like the first scratch we put on the shop. And uh I'd laugh about that. That was pretty funny. But yeah, this was this was just an overhang. And uh it's been built on and built on and built on on the other side of that wall. Changed so much that I can't even figure it out. But that's where our motor shop was. We were doing our own motors. Last time I was over there with Kelvin, I got lost and I had to ask a couple questions because I wasn't sure where is this picture taken. Is that on the overhang in here or these ones? Yeah, that would have to be out there after they build on cuz them pendul cars, right? Yeah. Yeah. This wall I know for sure was here cuz I at one time had the table there and this was the motor shop. Does that leftover red floor or did somebody else paint it red again? They might have painted it. I guarantee you that didn't left over because when they first painted it red, it was it was horrible. It's all come up. But this was um this was the the the engine room and Mark Kronquist was in here. Later on, Ron Purer was in here for the Penso days. But um it was just full machines and looked like a motor shop and it wasn't it wasn't really that big for a motor shop, but it pretty much looks the same. I'm not sure about that if they might have put that up there or not. We had dino sales and of course you have clean rooms and you have, you know, different stuff for the motor for the motor shop. If you, you know, been through a motor shop, you know, they got all kind of stuff, different rooms and stuff. But yeah, the dinos were in the back. See, I don't think I don't think this was here. I think I still remember it being open. These rooms right here look like they may have been added on as dino rooms. They got the little window and looks like some holes were patched up where there had maybe had controls that went through it. Yeah, sure enough, that could have been. I don't know how many iterations this place went through between ' 89 and it's hard. It's hard to tell. It's definitely hard to tell. The doors definitely were not there. We didn't have big doors. They were just man doors. What funny seems to me like maybe that's it. There was a door. This is a door that we come through all the time. I don't know where it's going to take us. Like I told you, last time I was here at Kelvin, I got lost. Well, we ain't going there. This right here would make you feel like you're at home. Like I've been here. I know this. I remember the cars. I remember the people. Remember setup plate. I remember all that stuff right here. We really didn't mess in the motor room that much. They roll the motors out. We put them in in here. And but uh this right here is just like being here in ' 89. And really hasn't changed as far as the same feeling, the same space. You I don't know if I'm Yeah. I can see from the pictures it really even the stripe like it was just yellow stripe. Yeah. instead of blue. Everything looks kind of like That's vinyl, too. I wonder if the yellow's still under it. Yeah, see the wall down. It might still be yellow. It could be. What's up there? I have no idea. Now, I don't know if that's just open up there because he runs he runs these little cars. Hey, man. Hey, what's up above here? Above here? Yeah. What's up there? Uh, it's old offices and stuff. Just offices. Yeah. Okay. But see, this wasn't here. Well, use the offices anymore. It's just like storage space and stuff. Yeah. Okay. Just wondering. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember this whole this whole building right here. This corner, this building right here. Um I don't remember it being here. It it was this was open. So, I think that they come in and built that because we had we had our cars lined up on this wall. Huh. And then on that wall and like I said, we had a surface plate right here. There any uh funny stories about anything that come to mind like somebody messing something up or putting on backwards or Well, the the uh you know, Tommy Hot Rod lived in the apartment. We were at Wilsboro racing and we're going to Road Atlanta to test and uh myself and one of the motor guys, Bob. We were going to take the S10 to the airport and the S10 was in the back and we had fence and a gate. When Tommy pulled out, he's going to leave the gate open and then we pull out cuz we didn't have a key. We was going to pull out and then lock the gate back. So me and Bob come here and you know early enough to get on the plane. We get ready to go. We're getting our stuff. Okay. And we come in here and go out back and the truck's sitting there and we're like, "Now we're going to Road Atlanta. We're getting on an airplane. So we're going to be there in an hour." And the truck is sitting here. So So like, hell, took off, went up, knocked on the door. Tommy, Tommy, get up. Oh. So he he gets ready. He gets ready and he goes and he hops in the truck and takes off. The funny part about it was while we were doing that, we got a couple minutes late. So, we pull up at the airport. We're walking through the door and they're like, "Hey, we got to go. Y'all are late." And I said, "Let me tell you about late." I said, "Your truck just left the shop." No way. What happened? I said, "I don't know what happened, but I'm telling you, your truck just left the shop." So we flew flew down there and went and had a sit down breakfast, which you never have. Had a sit down breakfast and still had to wait on the truck. But it was it was pretty funny cuz we they were on us for being late to the airplane and the truck was still sitting at the shop. Funny that you work every day with these guys and now I can't remember their names. You know, I know Mike Fox because I've seen him before, but Carrie worked in there. I can't remember Carrie's last name. Zoomer. I don't even You You could tell me his name and I wouldn't know it was Zoomer because that's what we called him, Zoomer. Just like there's a lot of people that don't know what my name is. They just call me Rambo. I couldn't get a real name for you. Really? They were like, "If you just ask for Rambo, they'll know. They'll know who he is." Yeah. And that and that's the way it is for a lot of people. And but the shop that we come from, it was like three shops. And the main shop was like a four bay building that was a little deeper than a normal garage. you you know what I mean? It was like a little deeper. Then on the other side, there was another building there and that's where a fab shop was. It wasn't made for race cars. And then there was another one. And in Statesville, it's it's still there. The the the four bay building is tore down and the building where the fab shop was tore down, but the back building is still there up in Statesville. Just right there on 70 right before you get to the John Deere place on the right. So you go from that kind of like a regular garage to the mega shop. Yeah. and we come to this and at the time it was a it was a mega shop. It was it was definitely a showpiece and they you know they thought Chuck was crazy for building such a big place and I had thought that at one time they were going to Chuck and and Lorance had a um Preferred Power I think is what it's called and they was distributor of Briggs and Stratton engines and I thought that some of this shop was going to be warehouse for that because it was so big but the way it's built it don't tell you that cuz they built the motor room assembly and a fab shop. It don't say we was going to make some warehouse space. We come from that little shop and we come down here and we fill it up. You know, it's crazy how you uh you know, it's never big enough. Yeah. It's never It's never big enough. And were you kind of like the envy of other guys in the garage? Like, oh, you get to work in the big fancy shop or Well, is there any talk like that? Didn't really like that. I mean, it's nobody really cares when you get to the track. Nobody cares where you come from because Junior was whipping everybody's butt out of them buildings up there in Englehala. And all that was was build this building and well I need more room so I'll build another room and I need more room just like the Petties did. If you know you did the petty stuff that that shot there and in the Lshape that was it. Where all have you worked at? Oh, I've been everywhere but the electric chair seen anything but the wind. Maybe we should find Kelvin and see what he knows about these additions and who put them on. I'm sure he's he's probably collected a good bit of information just by owning this place and people telling him about it. I think that he said that was Matt Kenz's old new in there, too. If this is not the first time you've watched one of our videos and you don't want to have to search to find the next one, if you click the subscribe button, it'll just show it to you when you open YouTube. That's all that does and it's free. If you already are subscribed and love these videos, make sure you hit the thumbs up when you watch them because it helps recommend it to other people. When I when I left this place, this was just still an overhang. That's exactly right. So, this turned into part of the fab shop here and paint shop cuz I didn't not put the paint booth in. When I came here, this was uh Renzy was using this as the uh part of the fab shop and paint shop. So, they were handling all of that here. We would sand the floors or we would sand the walls and we would come back to red McDonald's and we would come back to the Viagra colors from Ill River and then we would go sand all the way down till we got to the Peninszor and then uh Country Time. So the walls and where in there? Yes, in here. So that's funny. We just talked about that. Like I wonder if you could sand it down and find yellow. Oh, you can you can find yellow in spots and everything and it's really cool. you put up a picture the other day and I was trying to look at that picture on Facebook and find where that spot is in this uh building. So, is that the cars in the back? He just showed me that picture. Is that the one you just showed me? So, this is where the transporters parked when it was just this overhang here, right? Because this room over here before this was added on was the paint room. It was not a paint uh booth. It wasn't a paint booth. They just went in there room. Yeah. When we purchased the building in 2011, Lorance, he owned the building along with the estate of Chuck Ryder. So, up until then, I had always heard of Chuck Chuck Ryder had owned the race team, but Lurance uh was big huge distributor of Briggs and Stratton engine parts. So, he was like the largest guy, I think, in the country at that time. But he was kind of the money guy. They would come to him and they would need to build on and he would front the money for the race team to build on and then obviously we get paid back. But he was kind of like the silent partner, but he was the cash. He was the he was It always takes two different people. And Chuck was Chuck was the guy that was at the track shaking everybody's hand, walking around with the suits on and and he was he was he was the go-getter and and Lorance was in the back, quiet guy. And um I mean he was he was a pretty cool guy. And uh like I said, he was he was the guy. There's always one guy that the buck stops there and that was Lorance in 1989. They tell me and there's a picture I've seen it somewhere right past my second driveway here was a culde-sac. And you probably remember that culde-sac. It actually stopped there. So the road came in here and stopped. This was the first race shop in this park. It was. Yes. I mean before Pensky, before Cran, everybody. This was the first race shop. So they uh he said they this is what they opened with is what they had up front. And then as they signed a new sponsor or they got a new deal, you can tell when a contract was up because when the contract was up and they got the new bonus money to kick new contract in, they added on. He said Lurance he he come back and he was talking to us when we were walking through to purchase it. He was telling us how it went and everything. I didn't know you were the owner right after them. Yes. I figure there'd be other people in there. No, he up until then, Il River and Renzy and all of them leased and and leased it from him. But yeah, we purchased it from the original guy who walked in and and purchased it. Now I'm confused about River. Eel River is over in Tybert Point. River started with the Viagra car. They were the ones who I think brought the Viagra because there's some Viagra. I don't know that it's here now because we've painted and done this and done that, but there's there were some. Okay. So, they started here and built that shop. Correct. Before they just went out of business. That's right. Yeah. And that shop was that shop back over there, the river shop, which is now Ralph Yates, I believe. Right. Where they're doing their machining and stuff. That place was huge and nice. Beautiful. So, one of the things Lorance told us when we were purchasing it and we were sitting down, he said that they should have went downtown Charlotte and got a revolving door out of one of the huge hotels and put it up there because once they shut their race team down, that was basically what the race teams look like coming in and out of the building. So, you know, obviously it served its purpose over time and uh the uh but at the time, you know, when you look at those view windows in there, this was it. I mean, it was a Taj Mahal in 1989. They have view windows. So they had to forthought uh forethought in 1989 to have windows because they seen that uh folks would come off the interstate and look into the windows and want to see. Y'all had a a car up front because…