Dale Jr. Download: DW's Cheatin' Stories

[Music] we were not rule breakers we were rule makers okay junior had a roller cam they were not legal but he had figured out a way to take a flat tapping and put a ball in the bottom of that flat tappet and turned it into a roller cam and so all these things were okay until i came along when i came i said hey hey can't do that anymore we had a spacer just really beautiful piece of work i don't know who did it tapered space no can't run that anymore got got to put that away uh everything that had made them special different creative innovative uh one by one they took away because of you or uh because of me i wasn't look i had a tough time and i did it look i did it to myself i was a smart ass you brought heat and and so when they said you can't do that i said why not or when they say well that's the rule well that's a dumb rule i i never forget i called bill france one day i said bill it's some rule change they made i said bill i'd like to know who the dumbass is that made that rule he said you're talking to him [Laughter] so anyway i i i learned the hard way you know i'm a like jaws for a reason yeah all right but because you were chewing up the competition no no cal yarbrough gave you that nickname because of your interviews oh yeah yeah that's bad i was bad to go off did you know you were bad at that did you know that that was uh incurring heat on you like you like it ultimately did did you put those things together i probably did but i don't think i cared i think you like it like you tried to use it for your benefit yeah i did uh the media he played it up he worked he plays yeah played all we had was the media we had to print media we didn't have twitter we didn't have tv shows every day we didn't have show we didn't have any other avenue any other venue to express ourselves and so i made sure that i was really really good friends with all the media guys tom higgins steve wade any of those guys that wrote you know weekly reports or at the track every week i was their buddy that's astute and i was your go-to guy and you know what it really made me feel good because it happened it'd have a lot but every now and then bill france jr come put his arm around say you're my go-to guy on this whatever the issue might be uh you're my go-to guy you know yeah that's right i'm your go-to guy you know i'm your man but you know what i love and dale knows this they make rules for everybody and it's a lot of times those rules don't necessarily fit what you're doing or or your situation but they try to make rules that fits the the entire field not just one little guy yeah not one guy one of the things that i heard uh that junior and his guys were doing in in the do car was uh lead shot in the frame rail yeah it's possible [Laughter] that's possible yeah well and then look everything i want to explain to mike what what um what that would mean is so you know you you they put lead blocks in the cars to bolt that they bolt that in right and the car makes weight and so uh in some cars and this is not exclusive to junior but back in the uh back in the early 80s maybe a lot in the 70s they would feel the frame with lead shot and it had and then they'd they would keep the lead shot in there with a putty or or a soap or anything that might could get hot and melt oh yeah and then once it came up to temp or maybe there was a trap door to open or something like that the lead shot could pour out of the frame and in the car then the car is hundreds of pounds lighter well and here was the deal and and everything but the lead shot had been somewhere yeah they create they would create situation for they they never thought about unintended consequences so the car let's just say the car had to weigh 3 700 pounds when it went through tech so you made sure your car weighed 3 700 pounds when it went through tech they wouldn't weigh them after the race i i was at martin's i said they were going through this right away and i said hey everything about weighing these cars after the race and bill gasway was inspected he said boy let me tell you something when that car goes on the line it's legal that's all i care about why why would you plant that idea into their head to weigh the cars after the race being that you were well if they did beneficiary if they weighed everybody i'm okay with that yeah i got the top five or whatever but they wouldn't weigh anybody and we always knew we had the lead shot in the frame rail that's just what we did if they put they didn't have scales like they got today they had grain scales so you had four of them and they had a place where you drove the car up on they weigh all four wheels and then push you off so if they put those scales in the truck we knew they weren't going away the cars when the race door was because they're not loaded up ready to hit the road for the next race so that was an invitation to be created empty the car out he created it i i want to you know when i was working where did all the lead shots go could you see well i just i'll never get so one at a place like martinsville you'd love this so dick beatty he liked to walk to racetracks every day because he was that was his exercise so i'm walking the racetrack at martinsville with him one day just for fun we're walking around and trying he said you know dw something i don't understand every week i walk these damn racetracks i see all these little little bbs laying everywhere he said i have not figured out where in the hell they come from so you got i ain't got a clue dick i don't know gosh that's weird wow need to look into that yeah how long would y'all run that uh until like yeah when did the lead shot come out yeah lap one well you had to be you had to be care you had to be here's here's look okay so we dropped a little lid every now and then but everybody did yeah i mean you know when you go to martinsville martin i think spartansville sticks out my mind wayne thornberry he worked for richard they would take a wagon down to richard's car they would take the car cover off of it they would change out the radio and the helmet and everything else and that wagon would come back down through there and he could barely pull it it was so loaded up with lead and everything else and so the tires would be you know squished down and and so every it wasn't like you're the only guy that was sure smart enough to do it i mean there was other ways of heavy helmets heavy radios heavy whatever yeah but this is this is pretty cool so you have a jack stop in the frame rail where you jacked the car up so that's where we let the lead shot out at and so i had a little wrench not this little t-handle i'd undo that i packed that that center of that jack stab out all the lead shot would go out that hole you were you were the one that he had to engage the you were the one yeah you're like the wizard behind the curtain at the controls of the lead shot we didn't do it every week we just did it every now and then but anyway so we're at mar we're into bristol and uh it was under caution i didn't do it right so under crosstalk i backed that screw out and uh and uh all of a sudden all that i guess that lid had gotten wet or something and it didn't come out no and so i didn't know if it didn't come out or not i just did what i supposed to so we're going in the race all of a sudden the damn lid all comes out at one time and i i i mean i'm in third turn i'm just i'm about to spin out and i and i finally catch it and i just shoot down pit road well dave marcus was on pit road so i come down pit road out of control and they thought dave marcus was the one that was dropping the shot so they're they're wearing his car out trying to figure out where it came from they ain't going to find it so they're looking at all the cars they're going to look at i won the race they look at the car they take the jack so here's the jack stop so they put the jack and they jack the car up so the jack is sitting on the hole yeah on the on the trap they could look for a day they could look forever they're never going to require that the jacket's got the whole car to cover the whole [Laughter] that's awesome so it was a lot of that was i mean i know that sounds kind of it's no it's crazy that's what our so i always believe that if your crew chief isn't trying if that car isn't illegal then he ain't trying hard enough i agree and that our job as drivers and crew chiefs and all the mechanics and crafty guys back here engineers especially these days it's their job to find holes in that rule book yeah like you say not break the rules make new ones yeah um and that's and it's their job as an industry as an organization to to or you know govern it yeah yeah well there were not a lot of inspectors i mean you know there were what five or six maybe at the most and they had to look after all the cars and so some of them were your buddies and they'd look the other way about certain things and but we literally the things you've heard and maybe you haven't heard these but if we had something on the front of the car that we were trying to get away with maybe we had cocked the nose or move the nose or whatever we would go to the rear of the car and we would do something so blatantly obvious that the inspector would walk by and say you got to fix that we talked about this last week on the show we talked about this very thing okay okay well we'll fix it yeah no problem yeah he's just like the boxer in the ring that spins one arm and punches you with the other one yeah yeah we talked about this very thing i'm interested because you just said sometimes they'd look the other way so it you know certainly i'm not speaking of the way nascar would govern the uh the you know the league today but uh but junior had a lot of sway yeah and he also was very creative and innovative and stuff and so uh there were things that he could get away with i would assume because you know the the story that i was privy to was because i worked with jimmy spencer yeah and he was telling about that 1994 season when jimmy won his only two races oh yeah and that in that car and i believe he said something like that junior came up to him and said you know you do a way better junior impersonation than i could but boy if you can't win in this car yeah you don't you need to be bagging groceries or something like that right yeah and and i believe if i heard the story right that nascar kind of was on to what they did yeah but then they they said don't bring it back yeah and they brought it back yeah and did one again and they won again yeah you know yeah well i know junior told me i i said 94 i guess when spencer and you know i love spencer but i wouldn't say he was the greatest driver i ever saw but i it's pretty pretty he could be he could be running adversaries sometime but so they won a couple of races at daytona and talladega i think i know daytona turning talladega yeah and uh i went up to jail i said junior what the hell are y'all doing anyway he said boy we'll win every damn race till they catch us that's awesome yeah well i i i i've had i love i love doing this because you know it kind of brings back memories some good some bad uh but the sport today people just have no idea what it was like when we started to the way it is today if a guy walked into all in the shop with a briefcase we don't even come in here go somewhere else because you know it had a briefcase and it had a computer laptop we're going to keep laps and tires nothing no no no no we got this handle you you go do something else we're fine yeah and that was that was really my it's probably my downfall did you ever have any uh nitro in your car once really yeah one time well when i went to drive for dieguard in the first year yeah donnie donnie and mario rossi they've been running every week nitro yeah yeah and that's how they qualify pretty good but who was it that uh set up was it jd mcduffie sat on the pole and wrecked his car and the nitrous fell out of the yes it exposed it yeah it exposed it in the side of the car that's possible it it wasn't that it wasn't all that unheard of really to have a little assistant when you qualified yeah normally just when you qualified but the only guy that one time a qualif like me and aj floyd he was i think i was on pole he was outside or vice versa i don't remember which and neither one of us would run worth the damn all day long you know like we're 25th in practice but we end up qualifying on the front row and so it's kind of like what did y'all do i'll never forget we take that car in there and rossie was a crew chief and he had put the nitrous bottle in the petty bar so it's about that long and it's and covered up in the roll cage and all i had to do was stick a little wrench in there and open that baby up and that thing would take off i mean i've never done i've never done it before so i was excited about wondering what this is going to do yeah it wake that baby up i'm telling what did it feel like oh it took off like a rocket put you back in the seat well i don't know that you know daytona you didn't necessarily feel it but you could tell it was going because you like you've been turning seven thousand now you turn 7 500 i mean when would you walk me through the process then how when exactly would you do this on the straightaway i mean you know yeah while you're running oh yeah while you're in now like you did you'd go out of the pits and get up on the bank and get done start down the back you had this little wrench you had it between you and take that little wrench reach it up and slot that and that thing and it'd take off i mean that's awesome go crazy you're doing that while you're driving at speed speed qualifying i mean right still i would imagine how many people wadded up just like what were you doing well i mean i had that i mean i had to wrench that thing i mean you got to open it up i was i was pretty busy in my race car for a lot you know we had we when we go through tech your right side had to weigh so much so we'd have a block of mallory that was bolted to the frame on the right side to make the right side weight be right so when we get ready to then put me in the car they'd undo that they'd give me a piece of just tube and then put the tube where the where the mallory was and i'd take the maori and put it over on the left side to get the left side weight up so it's just i bet the worst but listen this sounds really bad i know but it's not because there wasn't a lot of people around to to want to take i had a helmet weighed 50 pounds i never wore it but it hung in the car i had a radio i'll never forget this where where at uh where's charlotte and dick beatty and he comes me and rusty and dale and i also were sitting there talking one day and he walks up he's got this got this radio right here and i said dick is there something wrong with your radio and he goes wham he throws that damn piece of maori down his weight about 50 pounds he said it ain't my damn radio he said you want to know where we got it i said i think i know [Laughter] obviously i bet the worst day your life was when they uh introduced in-car in-car cameras uh that would have changed the game for a lot of people yeah you just hard to get away with stuff like that yeah it just the play and feel has been leveled yeah for sure i mean it truly is nowhere nowhere to hide things hardly is there [Music] no

Channel: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

Views: 1,097,936

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Id: uLNT8_ZkwaE

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020