This Allied

Given the previous posts, I feel like I should do a little explaining on what happened next.

Jud and Sally married in '55, and their daughter Carol was born the following year. With all of the obligations he had, he must have decided this was one project he could do without. According to what I've been able to find out, the car was parked outside of his race shop, and then towed to the back of another race driver's (Pat Flarity) brother's cash register repair store, and then towed to a field next to the Konze Brother's machine shop. It was at the later location for many many years, but not alone. The Konze brothers were locally famous for their machining skills, and their ability to packrat an enormous amount of machinery. They built racing components, as well as industrial contracts, and some military contracts as well.

The car was moved from that field, then bought and sold a few times (without changing location I believe), and at one point it changed hands simply for a Jones tachometer it had. Greg Snyder in Wisonsin owned it, and it was sold to a vintage racecar buff on the west coast, and ultimately was purchased by Tim Ritter in the St. Louis area, who I bought it from.

As you can see by the pictures, the car had not been kept prestine, but on the other hand, any worse climate than Southern California, and I believe there would be no car left. The car had no engine or transmission, no interior (except for fiberglass bucket seat shells.), no brakes, and while I think somewhere there must have been someone who put house paint on the bare fiberglass body, it didn't extend to any interior or mechanical pieces. It was a rolling body and chassis.

It did have some interesting items though which reinforced Jud's involvement on the car. It had an early (Carson City) Halibrand quickchange rear end, three early sprint car knockoff spoked wheels, a solid front axle that appeared to be something from an aftermarket hotrod, or racecar fabricator, a postwar manifold boost guage as well as an instrument cluster gauge that included a measurement for fuel pressure, three rotors which went to Halibrand disc brakes as well as sprint car cross torsion bar suspension. There were roll down windows, a Doretti steering wheel, and a very thick Chrysler radiator (perhaps from a stationary engine). The latter three items were I believe, supplied with the body as part of the Allied kit, since there are other Allieds which came with these items. The floors were plywood, and the back hubs and spindles were a combination of sprint car and Jaguar components. True to the Offy story, there was a front motor mount (along with two side ones), as well as a place for the dry sump tank that the Offy would have had. A lot of components were Ford such as the steering box, and tie rods, as well as the master cylinder for the brakes. There were (and still are) a number of items that I can't identify.

The most significant item though is the frame. It is made from mild steel tube (not chrome molly), and is fundamentally two longitudinals which stretch back to a point in front of the rear wheel where they arc up and over the back axle. There are outrigger tubes welded to this which support the outside rails of the body, and there are long truss rods which form a very flat V shape over the course of the longitudinals. Angle iron forms the interior footprint of the floors and firewall. The back part of the frame is remarkably similar to work done by Frank Kurtis with plate uprights which run vertically from the upper longitudinals to the support smaller rods under the back axle. Guide tubes for the torsion bars are welded in this plate, and associated items are welded on the frame for exhaust holders, brake line holders, seat mounts, gas tank mounts and so forth.

The body was all there too. Mounted only in the front and back, the body had a lot of crazing of the glass, as well as dips in the roof. There were headlight buckets, but of course no bulbs, the windshield was in place, as were all of the side windows. The rear window was gone, and the one rear taillight (from a '37 Pontiac I believe) was mangled, but there really were no major places where the fiberglass was physically damaged. The hood was warped, and the one front fender well had a crack in it. The firewall is sheet aluminum as is a panel from the back floor to the parcel shelf. The interiors of the doors like the floors were all wood, as was the bottom of the doors and a lot of the supports.

Next up: Disassembly