Holman Moody's Fireball Roberts Ford Galaxie NASCAR Race Car & Lee Holman's History Lesson!

the seat belt that held fireball roberts we didn't get to look at this car yet fireball robert's car so this was pretty cool about these is that um this particular car was raced by a number of different drivers because back in the day what would happen is if the car got wrecked or something happened to it they'd pull up to the home of media up at the at the airport where we used to be and they'd pull it into the front of the front of the shop and go to the back and pick up a brand new car and they'd go race that one instead of the same car so instead of just repairing the car and coming back to it later they just drop it off and go pick up a brand new one so it's almost like a rental deal yeah kind of like that fireball this is the fireball livery so this one's been redone to all hand letter i mean this stuff's awesome it's all hand brushed painted and everything so who else drove this car i believe um i have to ask me again like my fireball car out there we didn't build that car we built 35 of them we're 40 and each team got three or four and if they wrecked one they would take it to the back of the building and drop it off and go to the front of the building and pick up one that had been repaired so each car got driven by whatever team picked it up and so that purple car was painted yellow when junior drove it was painted white when farm when frederick drove it and purple when fireball drove it but each of the cars had multiple history multiple team usage we were a factory building that many cars there were only three or four companies in the world doing that at that time jaguar with their d jags ferrari with their customers and hormone and moody i mean this thing is wicked there's a couple different really cool yes it just opens what holds it closed there's a pin that goes in there and it pins it closed yeah so this is like oh this seats like a factory seat factory seat with a pool noodle and a piece of metal shoved in yeah good oh this is fantastic oh it is fantastic oh yeah and now yeah chop that steering wheel like a oh yeah this feels like my monte carlo yeah it's crazy do they have gopro mounts in 66 oh you know all the updates yeah this one got racing goodwood in 2016 so we had it out there ripping it around yeah this reverse lockout that's so cool yeah it's got a kind of a street cage still got door bars though which is pretty cool they were still thinking about some safety back then so this is the original cage yeah they put the reservoir it has river cage and this is all like you know welding blankets that they just riveted into the floor fiberglass like welding blankets or fire protection maggots how did they make this uh this leather print in the sheet metal they rolled through something i don't know about this one honestly that's pretty wild yeah it's pretty wicked like there's there's no need to do that but they did that the floor it's just like fabricated floor is this still a uh factory rear suspension or they have truck arms i believe you can look at it right here uh shock mounts uh what's really cool about this look back here this is a nine inch rear nine inch rear yep leaf spring shock mounts that's crazy that it's pre truck arm yeah pretty good difference 63 yeah cc3 this right here uh it's all it's a vent so when you'd fill it up it would come out and there's a check ball in there and it would pour out the back here so when you knew it was full this is like a primitive uh before they had catch cans they didn't let it dump on pit right yeah jump out the side out the back of it and uh what happens is this is supposed to when you roll the car it's supposed to be a check ball that goes in and seals this so it doesn't just roll and pump you know dump fuel out on the on the track is that a blower for the rear end cooler yes that's exactly what it is that's a that's a blower motor with a with a uh just a regular heater core that they've you know run all the the gear loop through and then that is the catch can which is just an old spray bottle with the top cutoff though they are but it is a spray paint yeah this is great is that original to this car or i don't know if that one's original to this car but i do know that's how they did it these block off plates have that um stamping in them too that's interesting that's a i mean if i were to do one of these cars i don't think i'd ever make a street version it'd just be this this is so cool yeah i love this thing it's awesome i got the fenders riveted on so i could change them easier yep and then this is right here these are fully straps yeah so the back glass would fly out when you're going down the racetrack because they didn't have windows so they just blow the air and pull you know throw their back glass out on the track if they weren't careful big parachutes so this is how those originated first to keep the windows out keep the windows in from flying out racing them you can pause and read this okay fred lorenzen fireball roberts does it run it does i don't know uh i haven't seen it run in a while but um man if lee was here cowl inductions that's like this is cool stuff man like this is back in the day like they were pulling it fresh air from the cow because it's low pressure so you'd make more power that way you can actually get it all this is cold air and they pull it right from in here that's awesome is if they kept it i don't know if they sealed it but you could hear the intake noises because it's all you know all the cowling's open to the inside of the car so you could hear all that interesting all the noises coming out because kelp cars still work that way yeah they had the hole there and these these boxes there because this is like the the highest force so you actually get a kind of a ram air effect from that exactly what does the exhaust look like on this thing it's got no h-pipe it just sticks right on out the side yeah they just put a hole through it and weld the little tube section in there that's neat i like that yeah you can see all the all the you know battle scars from all the missed checkpoints over the years oh yeah yeah they didn't even have a jack peg back then they just put it right on the it looks like they braced the frame right here because it was probably getting dented from getting jacked up i mean because they had the one pump jacks i mean they're over there just laying on it and you know lifting that thing up in the air there's all kinds of dents on that frame rail too like it had been yeah i would patched this thing's probably not a link straight anymore it's still in great shape though oh my gosh [Music] that's cool they got that poke through the frame like that i might try to do that when i saw that i was like that just gives me the all the all the info i need to do with side eggs yeah i like that pulling out all the pits my dad's right here and i'm right there wow what year is that 66. that's the ford versus ferrari that's crazy so having actually been there witnessed it what do you think of that movie um it was totally inaccurate but then it was a movie that was reams in 1965. i went over a year early to learn how to get cars through customs and all of that that's me fueling the cobra coupe 20 years old and forced to be in europe under those conditions you got the same shirt yeah i did these for good wood and the nascar guys had their deal the wooden pattern there is the original mahogany pattern for the single overhead cam valve cover the master tool to make those really wow machine mahogany and it's double oversized shrink so that you cast the aluminum tube to then make the core boxes to cast the real valve covers so that's what they call a double oversized shrink on the table is one of our scrapbooks but on top of it is the seat belt that held fireball roberts that yeah thanks nascar's fault that he died because they were using volunteer firemen as their safety crews and the guy that was doing the aluminized suit didn't want to go so he let his neighbor wear the suit to get a free ticket so the guy that had this fireproof suit wouldn't go near the fire wow fireball didn't caught fire that's really sad yeah and that's his that's the seat belt that didn't couldn't get undone and that guy could have just weighed it in and cut the belt and got him out of it how did you end up with that well it was our car we scrapped it and i just kept that wow that's the black and white pictures are team in 1957 56. my dad's standing up on the left ralph moody um curtis turner joe evely marvin panch bill amy there's a little letter right there from don fry we were under team orders not to pass a shelby car unless a ferrari passed to shelby carr that's why we finished third really is that the the real letter like that's not a photocopy that's wonderful i showed it to the guys today is it don fry signature on the bottom june 30 1965. that's so cool that's insane we've got all the old race records all the old details and stuff signed checks fred lorenzen's win at darlington and 61 paid 2 400 bucks to win what was the dynamic like between you guys and shelby back then you're like technically in the same team but you weren't how did that work well the history goes back farther than that um at the first race at riverside my dad was talking to his former employer employer um arkis dundoff and my dad was a tool and die maker and machinist and he worked for dundov on some of his projects and we were standing i was like 11 years old and we're standing uh talking to mr dundoff and carol shelby walked up and my dad said come on me let's go over here and as we walked away he said that damn texan's a crook i can't stand me around the song and um it was a hundred percent shelby nothing for anybody else you never could get him to pay 100 of an invoice and so knowing that when i needed three thousand dollars for the patterns for the girling cr breaks i charged him four he paid three but he still owed me a thousand dollars according to the invoice two years later he called up oh man you got any 427s yeah i got a couple yeah should be one i need one no you haven't paid me for the last invoice the last stuff i sold you and he said lee don't you understand business that was an old deal i got you in that one this is a new deal you can't let old business interfere with new business what made perfect sense to him because that's the way he did business and i said no thank you and this was for those chassis that he claimed he found in his warehouse that were original real cobra chassis that he really had mccluskey make the year before um but he had certified the d.o.t that those were 65 original real chassis and um i said really we're not going to sell you an engine he said can i get a 390 rebuilt don't they look just like a 427 and i said yeah they look like a 427. and he said well you build will you build me a 390. i said no because you will tell your customers that you paid us for 427 and we cheated you because they'll eventually find out he said the dumb sub [ __ ] to buy these cars could never know the difference but that's the type person he wants and everybody thinks he walks on water his crew chief um al dowd retired and the employees paid for a retirement party for him this was after shelby was closed and shelby showed up at it and al dowd got up it was his turn to speak and said if it hadn't been so much money so much fun to spend ford's money and your money to travel around the world race get the best traction in the country with more money than the other team so we were pretty sure to win i would have told you to [ __ ] off years ago i hate you and walked out of the meeting that was his crew chief of 20 years wow so that's kind of what everybody thought about girl shelby wow that's kind of crazy you knew you saw the movie ford versus ferrari yeah leo bibi comes off as a real jerk in the movie he was a very articulate very nice gentleman big hammer he could lop your head off if it was required but he was articulate and my daughter and i were displaying our gt40 and our ferrari up at limerock and mr bibi was the guest speaker at the shelby club banquet and he saw my daughter and i and we knew him quite well and he came over and said lee would it be possible for jan and i to have dinner at your table this evening because i've been with carol shelby for four straight days and the normal lethal dose is only two yeah but that's the way leo bibi would speak bibi was the guy that converted the willow run truck factory into aircraft factory in world war ii and he told me over dinner one night that the problem of building a truck an hour required 30 000 parts be at the right table at the right time before computers the airplanes had a million three hundred thousand individual parts wires and pieces and stuff and getting a million three parts at the right table at the right time so people didn't run over each other was logistically unbelievable but we did it and they produced a plane a day wow and somebody that can do that's a pretty bright sucker you know he was switched on did carol shelby and leo bibi have a bad relationship like they showed in the movie well leo beebe has passed away iacocca's family is still active and promoting iacocca iacocca was the jerk henry ii was a jerk leo bibi was not so that movie was not about the le mans race it was taken from a book about the relationship between ken miles and carol shelby yeah and the race part of it was just part of just part of the ambiance of their relationship it was it was not a feature thing there were lots of better books about the race um but they didn't do that and they didn't talk to anybody anywhere that had ever been to a race and one scene the shelby character rolls the card out and he says this is the way we're gonna speed up our pit stops we'll just change this and it was a complete front upright assembly with a-frame shocks brakes everything attached and it would only take you about two hours to swap that out and you got three more to swap but that's how in the movie they said we're gonna speed up the pits in one their daytona and the guy said how can they pit so quick and the other guy says it's those damn nascar guys that's us we just had our act together um when bibi asked us to join the program he told carol shelby when he was bitching about it that you're just a race team homey moody's a factory we need a factory we got to get this stuff finished and that's what we did that's interesting you said you never would have known that yeah we had 600 employees at that time and one customer henry ford ii every one of them was doing something for ford in comparison it was costing forward a million a day or not a million a week to keep that's not a million a month it was about 14 million a year um we were getting a million a month from ford to fund all of the drag racing all of the gt's all of the nascar everything about a million a month and we were getting the job done and hendrick and joe gibbs both have about 600 employees and it takes them a million dollars every business day to keep the doors open wow it's just different times labor more travels more cart parts or more the ford thing was was impressive the most money ever dumped into racing in one big lump ford spit more that year and their ads for the super bowl so when the overall image of of money chump change didn't matter but to racing it was a big deal that's really interesting so when for all those uh gt40s what what parts did shelby actually do like did they get their own bear chassis and put it together and you guys did too or they get stuff from you and they got all the parts and pieces from england and the chassis is from england and they assembled them and what we started doing was making the headers modifying the the bearings modifying the hubs modifying the uprights changing the suspension stuff shelby had never seen a surface plate so they didn't know how to do a childhood rebound um engineering study of the suspension where the parts were going as they would go up and down do they toe in toe out they just raced them we had the capacity to do all of that and so um we came in to sort it out if you look at the history of the gt40 it didn't do anything the mark ones were barely competitive and only rarely finished and the mark twos were a dismal failure until the fall of 65 when we were asked to get involved and they won everything they went to after that because of the chassis set the parts the pieces and the the way you put it together we made all the headers um we did all all of that we did a lot of the engine work that's cool yeah we never never really knew how that works were not successful they kept falling out and we're not able to logistically stand the pressure um because the little small block you had to turn them 8500 to get enough power to push it through the air um and then they're only capable of like 190. well the ferraris could do 180 or but they couldn't do 220 and they couldn't do 220 for for a full day and we could so you just steamroll them they're more cars because you could have a driver failure you could have a spin out you could have a tire below you could have a piece fail that was normally a good piece but it would fail so you'd have to send eight or ten cars to go do the job but he knew one of those cars could have done the job if they if they didn't have some extraneous hindrance what was robert yates like when he started working here he would just graduated from diesel mechanics training school and we gave him his first job he was just one of 10 12 inching guys and he wasn't the best but he was a good promoter and he promoted himself into sponsors set up his own shop i like property he's good but jimmy tucker was a better engine builder tommy turner was a better engine builder as far as just doing the engine but they never promoted themselves like that nobody else was doing race cars in mass and we could build an entire car except for the windshields in our building we could stamp the body panels if we wanted to we could do anything the interchangeable gears on the transmission you guys designed all of that yep that's really cool we're still making them today i've got one back there that we're doing it's it's a magnesium case with the four top loader guts that's awesome what parts and pieces and things do you still make today that people can buy you can buy the whole car it's a million bucks you know we do everything that we did with 600 employees we just takes more time and we just keep doing it um larry wallace started grinding camps for us in 64. he's still grinding cams today that's really cool on the same machines yeah that's the coolest thing ever how do you feel about the the way things are now with the cars and the drivers and how that all is well the problem they have is like a little there's a reason he couldn't really win many races because his wallet was so thick that his foot couldn't reach the gas pedal our drivers didn't make that much money they were there to kick ass and take names the drivers today are spokesperson for napa or dupont or whoever and they're getting paid three or four million dollars a year to be a spokesperson plus what they get for driving the race car and if you had eight ten million dollars in the bank would you go out and risk your neck really trying to race really banging into people and doing stuff huh but fireball and turner and weatherly and lorenzen and and our drivers they were they were racing because they had to make a house payment next week you know it was not a rich sport we won the championship in 68-69 and um it was most of the major races and the championship and we won a million bucks and david's half of it was half a million dollars they get that if they qualify good at daytona you think a lot of it has to do with all the restrictions and rules that they have in place now it makes it easier for kind of the spoon fed kids no…