04-25-2006, 03:04 PM
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Senior Club Cobra Member
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Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Northport,
NY
Cobra Make, Engine: Kirkham, KMP178 / '66 GT350H, 4-speed
Posts: 10,362
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Not Ranked
Excerpt from "The Fast Life of Tommy Ivo"
"After the National Hot Rod Association rescinded its fuel ban in 1964, it began a series of promotions that eventually led to a multi-car drag racing exhibition in Great Britain. Among those chosen were Ivo, Garlits, K.S. Pittman, George Montgomery, Tony Nancy, Ronnie Sox, Buddy Martin, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, and Dante Deuce—the same Deuce that ultimately crashed and destroyed Nancy’s front-motor gas dragster. The voyage on the U.S.S. United States turned out to be a good news/bad news trip. The good news, in Ivo’s words, was this: “There happened to be a contingent of debutantes on board, so we never lacked for company.” The bad news was the size of his car trailer. “The captain had just been through some rough seas and was still smarting from the experience. My trailer had a built-in sleeper, and when I loaded it on the ship, it proved to be too big to fit inside the hold. So I had to park it on the deck. The captain told me if we ran into any bad weather, the trailer was going over the side. So I spent the entire trip looking up into the sky hoping the weather wasn’t beginning to turn bad.”
The English experience proved to be a lifetime thrill. Zoomies (upswept headers) were just becoming popular then, but Ivo the showman switched back to the weed-burners (down-swept headers) to shake up the fans. “The Brits had never seen a Fueler before, so I put the weed-burners back on and fired for effect. First, they made so much more noise than zoomies, and it didn’t hurt to have 50 percent in the tank, 25 over on the blower, and pistons 0.150-inch-down in the block. I can remember pulling up to the line and really shaking the ground. As soon as I cracked the throttle, it was all elbows and butt cracks, as the ones closest to the car were literally blown over. But the real thrill was racing in a place where drag racing was still in its infancy. I even sent a 55-gallon drum of nitro to England under an alky label. It was against the law to transport that much nitro, because the British classed it as liquid dynamite. In fact, it cost $25 a quart in Britain, and I got the drum for $150.”
But Ivo got squelched, too. After one of the exhibitions was over, a road-racing motorcycle sidecar racer offered him a ride. “It was just a wood floor and a pole to hang on. So I’m lying on my stomach with my chin 2 inches above the track when he takes off. We clear the timing traps at over 112, but he doesn’t lift. I had forgotten that these RAF landing fields (where the drags took place) are miles long and hilly. I couldn’t see the end, so I began banging on his leg to get him to shut it down. He ignored my blows until we reached the end of the runway. It was then that I found out he had a wooden leg and couldn’t feel a thing.”
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