Mikes' First Car (truck), 1937 Chev

This is my dads (Mike) first truck. This was the first vehicle he ever raced. He raced at the Deer Park drag strip in high school and it ran a 19 or 20 second quarter mile. It was powered by a 235 Chevy 6 cylinder with a cast iron PG and a manual valve body (Rossi), Fenton dual carb intake, Fenton cast headers, Corvette Blue Flame Six solid lifter cam, Offenhauser polished aluminum valve cover; a really hot setup!

In the late fall after he graduated high school, he drove this truck to Provo, UT and back; going down through the Tri-Cities and Boise.

The six cylinder thing started with my grandpa (Doug). He bought his first car before he was 16 working for a farmer in the Palouse one summer away from home. It was a 216 chevy that blew the engine right after he bought it. The farmer took him into town and they picked up a 235 hi torque truck short block to replace the blown shortblock. Then they put the 216 head on the 235 truck block. The valves hit the pistons, so in good farmer fashion, they installed a couple extra head gaskets to get valve clearance. Grandpa said he left plenty of flathead fords in the dust with that setup. His parents weren't so excited, he came home with a car and no money after a long summer of work.

When grandpa found the 37 PU, dad was about 14. When he was 15 he started by finding a 235 with full pressure oiling in a 53 Chev with PG. The standard trans Chevy's back then did not have full pressure oiling so they were limited in the HP you could make with them. The engine was machined in the shop of the dairy down the road. It had .060 pistons, he worked on the ports with a high speed steel burr in a 3/8" drill, took a long time to do! Grandpa found the Fenton intake and exhaust from a local stock car racer; the stuff was worth nothing then. Grandpa worked for a auto parts distributor so all the engine parts came through them. Dad found the valve cover in the left over table at Thrifty Auto Supply, the local speed shop. He broke two of the stock torque tube drive lines, so they switched to a Spicer rear axle from a GMC, it even had posi! For the first few years, it had the stock truck 4 speed trans, no synchros. Then he decided the PG would work better at the track, but with a stock converter it took forever to get rolling. I didn't hit high gear until 600' before the finish line!