Ray Evernham's Massive IROC Racecar Collection is Even BIGGER! (Barn Finds & Test Drive)

[Music] this was literally in like a chicken cpop it was full of chicken poop there were mice down inside the manifold I mean how cool would it be to see Lewis Hamilton race Kyle Larson maybe you've seen the first video we did with Ray everham here with all of his irck cars handful of months ago and he had a lot more now so we had to come back and see him what do you what's new here well you you've becoming my irck buddy my irck expert you you've seen just about everything I've got you've ridden in the in the two-seater which we' have a blast with that car what was the life of this one where did you find it at well believe it or not your uh your YouTube channel helps me a lot uh since we do these things people call me uh they've been calling they've seen your videos they ask if I'm interested in cars or parts or pieces and and then we track them down find out what they've got go and visit them and uh flew Down Louisiana close to New Orleans to grab these two and he had a garage full of parts and you meet a lot of great people who 30 or 40 years ago bought this stuff with great intention of restoring it and you know as they get older it gets harder and harder to do that stuff it gets more and more expensive so so they're letting it go so when somebody calls us about an irck part and they want to make a reasonable deal we go and get it you know we have some people that call us up there you know they they think the things might have been made out of gold or platinum I don't know but when somebody calls us with a reasonable deal you know we get it we talk about the irck series and the the Porsche they were PES were real cars that were roll cages were put in them and so were the first series of Camaros this is what I call irck series 1 Camaro it's not the right but you can see what these things looked like they were stock cars there were no down tubes or anything like that they were cars that were converted they were bought at a dealership whether it was Roger Pensky Chevrolet dealership in in Pennsylvania or or others they actually have a VIN number from Chevrolet and we're uh been in constant communication with j signori and the folks uh at our Rock certainly it's been quite a journey trying to to put all these pieces together after so many years but really a lot of fun to be tracking down uh tracking down these cars trademark for the first two generations of Camaros they started with a key wonder if they stopped doing that in race cars in general is cuz uh somebody wasn't going to make the race cuz they couldn't find their keys find the keys Mark donu and all his his group of of Trans Am guys at Pensky you know put roll cages in them you know got them ready for racing we've got a lot of the history that came along with these cars because this car and the what we call the half the car upstairs there were from the original iro Series this car was both orange and silver we've been grabbing these things up so I was lucky to get them uh with Enough original parts uh to to put that car together and and Through the Years many of them get used in different Seca GT1 or Trans Am So they get cut up and cannibalized this car stay stayed really pretty good that one we've got a little bit of work to do steel top glass windshield Real Steel Hood fenders with just fiberglass flares and a lot of things that they would have done uh for Trans Am racing the problem was irck then went to Daytona and Michigan and Talladega and the driver said hey we've got to have a real stock car so generation 2 Camaro or the banjo Matthews Camaro's tube frame very much like what would have been a Grand National Sportsman at that time so these cars are getting rarer and rarer and I think right now we have probably more iro stuff than than than anybody at least that's what Mr Pensky told me this place is becoming big irck garage now you change the sign we have a love for it here I don't know where you can find cars that have this much history you know when you look at a car that's been driven by the ERS by andred by F by Petty by nhart you know where do you get a car like that a lot of the great sports cars and Indie Cars are are have really been you know bought up and and they're they're well and to to six and seven figures you know these cars are still representative you can still take them to the racetrack and you know when you look at the cars that some of the cars that we have have not been driven just by our our great indie car and NASCAR and sports car stars but we have cars here that been driven by James Hunt Brian Redmond and Nikki La one of the cars that we have here was one of the original Generation 3 Camaro that that I helped build this car here is is a pretty unique Car you know there aren't many unicorns out there there's two other unicorns that I know of that were third generation Camaros that were not turned into Dodges Richard chers has one and Dell arhart Enterprises has one this car we're trying to find out how it got out of Ira we bought it as a wreck we we believe we wrecked this car at Michigan tire testing and it got trashed at that time it wasn't worth fixing so I think that that it somehow got sold it sat in an old again you I can't hate to keep saying Barn Barn Barn but this was literally in like a chicken coup it was full of chicken poop and it was just a mess it was still still had the red you can see the red in the thing it had red number 19 and I 100% remember this car I worked on it um Daryl walri drove it at Michigan I know that for fact uh you know no book no paperwork with it but I looked at it and like this is a car that I built we bought it from the guy came with some body panels because again I feel like there aren't that many original Camaros out there and may this may be the only the third third one everything else has been changed back to a Camaro Roger Pensky may have one I don't know but you know I I can't believe anybody else would have one have a good friend Aaron Brown over at the garage shop who does incredible work uh too by the way got a scanner he duplicated the pieces we took him the bent chassis and he duplicated other pieces you know off of his scanner and then and did an incredible job bringing this thing back to life so we got the chassis back we're Gathering parts for it right now um we've got enough body panels to make the Camaro we've got an original floor plan uh floor pan but again Gathering 1980s vintage banjo Matthews parts so if somebody knows hey if you got some trail arms out there some some old banjo lowers uppers things like that we need those for this car but this have been the one of the banjo chassis that has a Torino floor pan oh yeah yeah absolutely we actually had to get a Ford floor pan for it the floor pan was a little bit rotted out this is how the cars came from banjo Matthews to irck and then we put all the brackets on you know the seat seat mounts window net mounts Dash all of that stuff but this is basically what you would call a surface plate car it would come with a roof and windshield bed and nothing else what color and Driver name are you going to restore this one to oh this one was the red 19 so it will be red 19 and as I said I'll have to do the research to find out who drove it um but but I I know that uh one of the drivers definitely drove it was Daryl Walter how long does it typically take to for you to get a car like this to a full in the iro days in the iro days and right now uh it's going to take us a while because we Gathering the parts in the history is the hardest thing that's the slowest thing but back then you had to remember with that irck team no kidding we we built I think it was 14 cars in 3 and A2 months so they'd come in they'd come in we' put the brackets on it they paint it we'd assemble it you know we'd get a chassis chassis would come in let's say on a on a Monday and by Saturday it was rolling around you know running around that's wild yeah you know but we had a complete assembly line for doing it you know we you know I remember building 20 wir har harnesses and I remember building you know 20 welding 20 radiator deals and you just do that and then when the chassis came we again we were just assembling and that's where J signor is a master he's a master at at saving man hours there there's just an incredible amount of of famous asses that have been in those seats if you will that looks like a factory seat that's not the one that's not the correct seat for this car um again we through parts and pieces we were able to get some of the original seats but that is not one of them this car was being modified that someone was going to take it racing uh and you know obviously didn't have the right seat because iro at that time as they changed cars they kept a lot of the driver's seat because they were going to have the same drivers for the following generation of cars so many of the seats that were bolted in these cars ended up in the next generation Camaro did they run with a factory steering wheel or did they change that too that steering wheel actually looks correct to what they had because we have uh either the the uner car which we may have a steering wheel in it you know so the uner car and the Redmond car actually had many of the original pieces on it so this this car here again is very correct and as you can see does not have the correct seat okay um you know what this may be the correct year I don't know if it's the correct seat for this car but as you can see the steering wheel the same thing this is the one you were working on we were here last time isn't it correct yeah you know and again this one and the um the Brian Redmond James Hunt AJ Foy car Are all uh you know all out of that same generation as well as the orange car and the our yellow half a car upstairs you got another Firebird too didn't you we do we you know we we added to the collection I have a good friend a good racing friend his name is Kent hussy he and his wife Melissa have an incredible collection of of cars and we have done several Restorations for me for him and he he offered me this car back ILO cast NIS drove this car among several other cars but I think ILO as is one of the greatest racing drivers of our time you know four Indianapolis wins I think he's got three or four 24-hour of Daytona wins you know he's just an incredible incredible race driver when they changed from the Camaros and daytonas and Avengers at that time NASCAR was really getting into aerodynamics and the cars were always built on Banjo Matthews chassis and what we call a rear steer this car uh these cars were built by Mike laughman and then switch to front steel because that was uh that's the way the direction was going and at that time Danel Matthew wasn't building cars anymore so this car came became a very modern version of of what the nas car uh would would been expin series would have been at that time and as you can see this is a front steer car the the um just meaning the tie rods uh basically are in front of the ball joints where the other cars we call rear steer cars the tie rods and steering are behind the ball joints it's simple as that but you know this car was basically designed to race on the on the radial tire and you can see it is very much like a like a Laughlin um they were Bush gr National at that time you know the irck guys always did incredible work Jay sigur and his group um again coming out of the Pensky mold very very into detail and you can see all of the little aerodynamic details on this car for that were bolt on and bolt off because it took it to several different places you know Michigan t they'd also Run Road courses um you know they ran Nazareth Pennsylvania lots of places like that I don't want to say restoration but just kind of a mechanical uh you know refreshening of the car but other than that you know it's as we got it and as I said Kent Melissa hussy had first class stuff so I know this car was well taken care of is that the same roof flap piece as the daytonas um not sure if it's the same exact piece but same style they went with you know a single a single Style I wondered if there was any shared components like how they had the Camara roofs on the daytonas well um they may have used the mold you know we can go look let's go look but you got to remember that as the all of the Avengers were sold off so they couldn't take many molds out of it you know the these things were sold off uh and I believe it's a a little bit of a different mold this one seems lighter um The Vortex generators are a little bit different I heard somewhere that these fire bodies were not actually one toone scale with the production car is that true well because wheelbase would be different width would be different now back then you know they didn't do everything on computer Randy wtin and in his group who Randy was a great designer at at General Motors responsible for many of the winning racing Corvettes for many many years U Randy was the lead designer on this Ira stuff so they would take a a stock bodied uh fireberg or stock body Camaro and then do it out of clay widths would be wider the track would be longer and they would just keep modeling it out of clay and then make the molds based off of of the of the clay car which was really cool to watch him do interesting this one runs doesn't it yeah this one runs this one runs these are my favorite ones to listen to well let me see you know if old Ray can get his butt into ilio Casta seat which is a little bit difficult I'm going to shut that hook because if I can get my butt in that seat we're going to sneak this thing out the door and you're going to video it going down the road and then you're probably going to video the police arresting me but it won't be the first race car that will be driven down this road you know it there's so uh much information about the old iro series on the uh on the internet now it is uh it's really cool to see so much interest in these in these cars again because the story of Iraq and and how it how it just grew to so much popularity in the 70s and the legendary drivers that that drove it you know it's uh it is really a bigger part of auto racing history then a lot of people give it credit for these babies were just like race cars for this whole giant old steering wheel all right let's see let's see if we can get this one to start good starch will sneak it out of for my next trick we're going to see if I can get my butt out of ilio Casta seat and this car but you know the thing again that impresses me as a crew chief mechanic for some just you know how sanitary these cars were on the inside for this time you know it it it certainly got Pensky Mark of of of excellence in culture on it but you know J signori is is an amazing Mentor so many of us that had came out of the J signori School of racing went on to be crew chiefs in NASCAR and indie car and sports car racing um you know he is someone who is responsible for a pretty big footprint um in in auto racing because of the things that he as I said he's he's just one uh students of of the College of J signori and iro have have gone on to win so many major racing championships with the you know the things that he taught us and again you look around the inside of this car and you can just see how sanitary uh these things always were where a lot of the guys building these cars in New Jersey uh modified guys that weren't from Nascar land Jay took guys you know that that were all short track racers drag racers you know whether it was wall Stadium or English town Raceway Park or guys that a deal ships and and turned them into race car mechanics I thought that part was interesting cuz the headquarters was in Tinton Falls New Jersey wasn't it wasn't here it was in tinon Falls New Jersey Jay Jay lived in Manasquan New Jersey and when um The Story Goes as when Mr Pensky asked Jay to come back there were four Partners in Iraq um Roger Pensky less RoR uh you know the legendary football player and and general manager of Riverside uh Mike Phelps who was the the the TV uh man and Jay signor and Jay said look I'll do it do the work and we'll get it going but I want to do it here based in New Jersey close to my home because I don't want to you know Jay loves boats and and he lives right on the Manasquan River and he's like look I don't want to go back to Reading Pennsylvania where it's cold and I can't use my boat huh that's answers a lot of questions I was wonder why it was there what do you plan on doing with this car this car will stay in my collection you know we're going to I'm going to keep the one of my favorite of each series um we plan on selling the others uh hope to get something going on on racetracks with them what's really hard is they've all they've all got so much history you know it's a coin toss but uh you know as I said um I'm a fan of of ilos uh because I've got to work with him through SRX and a couple of other things I think he's an amazing driver so I'll keep this car did the engines in these stay the same from when the the firebird was until the very end yeah the engines they went back to General Motors they were basically you know a combination at this time Iraq was building its own engines so they worked with John blitt from flch uh in in New Jersey another modified racer and but they basically you know they kept the horsepower down in the 500 range so longevity these cars were plenty fast with with that these engines you know Pontiac Supply they had their own cylinder heads and and and whatnot but these engines were actually built from the guys at iroq you know if you look at the brake system some got better because these cars ran on the road courses which is you know why some of these are block off that block off is there for running the speedway but we take that off the brake D is under the inside of it aerodynamics again under the front of the car and and and whatnot 36 is there because this was a 36 the car number 36 for them move the batteries and things like that off to the right side you know to make the car a desirable road race car the use of naad duct for rear brakes and Cooling all of the things that that were were coming into play one of the biggest things that you see is the safety the way the seats were mounted and the seats going on from the fiberglass buckets that were used in the 80s to all aluminum you know good containment seats the way the seat brackets and things were adjustable making sure that the drivers were safer so we learned a lot about safety uh throughout the years and as I said you know J signori and his guys have just just continuously work to make things better so this is car 30 how high did the chassis numbers go to before they stopped again this is one of the later ones this is one of the newer ones with good history but we're trying to you know part of the thing you know Jay's 86 years old and a lot of the records now um some of that stuff's confusing so Matt Yokum who you know from ESPN and from Fox and NBC television is has become our historian here and he works with Jay quite a lot trying to go through and sort all those number out to find out which cars exactly were out there who won exactly and what you know and where they are now more importantly like where we're trying to find all of the cars Matt and I are going to do an IRA registry so we can really get uh aware of where are all of these things and do you have the car you think you have so if somebody watching this has one of these they could reach out you know you can just you know you can just send a note um to Ray ram.com uh Matt yum and I are going to be posting some things where you can send stuff but we we have access to all of the irck records from day one I I don't know that we have The Pusher records but we have the Camaro records uh Daytona records Avenger records and the fireberg records do you have the big log books that came with these we do we do and…