by George Sheweiry » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:36 pm
Yes Ross,he was over here for a performance seminar arranged by Graeme Dobbie who has had a lot to do with him with several race Teams. He was here once before doing the same thing. It was great timing as I had only just bought his latest book on head porting which he kindly autographed for me. Reminds me of a similar situation in 1987 on my first trip to the states. I had just bought a book that had a lot about AAR in it. I was going to go down to Santa Anna to AAR to see Dan Gurney about a set of Gurney Weslake heads as Lying Lyall Williamson had told me he still had sets there for $1200.00 complete. Incidently I had just been to the Pomona swap meet where I had seen a set for sale for $500 but i thought by the time I went thru them they would probably get close to the price of a new set. Dan still had plenty of sets left (including 1 of the 3 valve sets and a complete V12) but they were $3600 a set!!! To get from the front office to the workshop we had to walk thru a 16 ft long corridor that was lined with photos of all the cars Dan had run, boy that was impressive, he has raced everything you can think of. He is a really nice guy and kindly autographed my new book for me, he was interested in what cars I was running and what the racing scene was like in NZ as he had been here in the 60s I think in fact I have the feeling he ran in the NZIGP one year. He seemed to know Ronnie Butler quite well, a Kiwi who worked for Shelby the same time as Johnny Olsen and who I later visited with Murray Bunn up at his place in Santa Barbara. Ron at that time still had the Indy Turbine car lurking in the corner of his workshop Butler racing that his son and daughter had pretty much taken over the running of.
Yes Ross,he was over here for a performance seminar arranged by Graeme Dobbie who has had a lot to do with him with several race Teams. He was here once before doing the same thing. It was great timing as I had only just bought his latest book on head porting which he kindly autographed for me. Reminds me of a similar situation in 1987 on my first trip to the states. I had just bought a book that had a lot about AAR in it. I was going to go down to Santa Anna to AAR to see Dan Gurney about a set of Gurney Weslake heads as Lying Lyall Williamson had told me he still had sets there for $1200.00 complete. Incidently I had just been to the Pomona swap meet where I had seen a set for sale for $500 but i thought by the time I went thru them they would probably get close to the price of a new set. Dan still had plenty of sets left (including 1 of the 3 valve sets and a complete V12) but they were $3600 a set!!! To get from the front office to the workshop we had to walk thru a 16 ft long corridor that was lined with photos of all the cars Dan had run, boy that was impressive, he has raced everything you can think of. He is a really nice guy and kindly autographed my new book for me, he was interested in what cars I was running and what the racing scene was like in NZ as he had been here in the 60s I think in fact I have the feeling he ran in the NZIGP one year. He seemed to know Ronnie Butler quite well, a Kiwi who worked for Shelby the same time as Johnny Olsen and who I later visited with Murray Bunn up at his place in Santa Barbara. Ron at that time still had the Indy Turbine car lurking in the corner of his workshop Butler racing that his son and daughter had pretty much taken over the running of.