"Mr. 4 Speed" Episode 1: Born to Win - A Documentary on the Life of Herb McCandless

[Music] [Music] [Music] uh the 1930s saw drag racing in its infancy the deserts and dry lake basins around southern california were a hotbed of thrills and spills as young men set their hearts and guts on beating the next guy in bragging records drag racing which started as an underground pastime on the streets rapidly grew in popularity by the early 50s with faster and faster cars coming off production lines organized races were regularly held on abandoned military runways dry lake beds and timed by hand-held stop-washes the 1960s brought a wave of capital into the fledgling sport and for young men who found themselves in the right place at the right time this was an era of unprecedented opportunity in automotive history urban canvas was one such man earning his mark early on as mr four speed he lived a life full of the inevitable ups and downs that come with the drive to succeed this documentary is a story about herd mccandless and it seeks to capture all that he's accomplished as a drag racing legend and a respected businessman herb mccandless was born in 1943 in the suburbs of memphis tennessee he has older sister retta raised by his divorced mother the family's poor but that doesn't really stop herb at all i was just a normal kid like anybody else well i don't know if it was or not but uh when i was 11 years old i got a morning paper i wasn't supposed to get it to year 12 and i talked a guy into letting me be a substitute for this guy well he was sick a lot and he didn't have his parents didn't want him to have the route so he quit and i had it till i was 16 years old turns out those paper routes set the stage for building herb's never quit lifetime work ethic and while a paper route is a perfect job for a normal kid herb's about to discover he really isn't so normal especially when it comes to mechanics i started out wanting to build me a go-kart because that was a thing back then so i found a old car seat somebody had thrown away and i drug it home behind my bicycle with a rope cut the back off with a hacksaw and got a reel type lawn mower from a guy across the street took the motor off of it mounted on the car seat went to the gas station and found a short fan belt in the dumpster and we spaced the motor up till the fan belts fit and we took all the clutch and the gear reduction stuff off of it and put a front end out from under a wagon to steer it with and that was our go-kart we rode that thing around the neighborhood for a long time until we wore it completely out i mean i wrote it a lot [Music] lee williams is a neighbor two doors up who works as a fireman seeing her special skills it isn't long before lee takes him under his wing he didn't have any kids at that time him and margaret were just wonderful people and lee always worked on cars and of course i was up there with him every chance i got i'd sneak out of school early so i'd go up and help him in the afternoons but he'd get ready to do something or he had to do something he'd come down and get me come on boy you got to help me and so way i'd go and up to his house and him and i did all kinds of things together we put cars together worked on cars he taught me so much i had so much respect for that man who loved him to death he was kind of like a dad to me really and many times he'd come down get me out of trouble pointing me in the right direction and taught me a lot troublemaker or not lee's not the only one who sees something special in young herb mccandless i was 14 years old 57 and my uncle bought a new 57 thunderbird and he lived about all mile mile and a half from the house so i got up sunday morning got on my bicycle and rode over to his house when he come outside i'm sitting in the thunderbird under the steering wheel of course come out through the keys tell me he said come on let's go over to your mom's house and of course i took advantage of that i stuck the key in cranked it up and away we went and we pulled into my mom's driveway and she was out in the front yard and she didn't know where to kill me or him she was she was livid today he had let me drive that 57 thunderbird i wasn't 14 years old he said oh he's okay he's doing fine so that was the first car i drove on the street you know illegally i guess you could say i didn't have a license but when it comes to what he wants to do herb isn't exactly confined by boundaries even when it comes to his mom's car she got a 58 old mobile and i would uh borrow it when she was asleep go get my pipers and caramel and my piper out and then come back home put in the driveway i was 15 then [Music] i had a job at a esso station there in memphis where i work on the weekends and sometimes at night during the week and when school got out i got a job working for my uncle he owned a truck line and i worked in the truck shop there all during the summer servicing trucks and putting brakes on them and saying whatever needs to be done to it that's what we did herbs got the itch bad and started working on cars in his spare time one weekend he sets out to rebuild the engine on a 56 chevy he only has one problem i never rebuilt the engine in my life and i said okay now what do i do he said well what have you done i said well i'm gonna rebuild his engine for this man he said oh my god so he comes down he helps me get it squared away and took it in on friday afternoon worked all night friday night had the heads to the machine shop saturday morning got all the parts and finished it up late late saturday night and carried it back to the man on sunday and it ran fine so by now herb's 16. he's got his license and he saved enough to buy his first car a 1957 chevy because everyone had one his payment is 46 dollars a month when i get off at five o'clock in the truck shop i'd go over to warehouse and work over there until seven or eight o'clock so they got all the trucks loaded out at night because i was doing anything i could to get enough money to pay my car notes and have some money i didn't we didn't have any money you know you if you wanted something you had to go earn it the chevy's a junker but it gives herb his first real taste of freedom and he's testing the limits of that freedom out on the streets yeah we did some acceleration tests on the street yeah we used to do a lot of that there was a place called the toddle house over on poplar where we used to all hang out at they had stalls back there where you parked well the number one stall was always the fastest car and if somebody was parking number one stall and you didn't think you ought to be there you'd go up and challenge them and you'd go out to yates road or some of those places out there where they were building the interstate then and had a lot of fun doing it i don't know why we didn't get killed it's a wonder we didn't get hurt none of us did thank goodness but as a teenager living on the edge herb is naturally pulled to bigger challenges and soon he finds himself at a real drag strip the first race i went to was halls tennessee and i just had no business being there i got beat really bad i didn't know what i was doing i was completely lost and i got spanked really bad even though herb's now driving and racing legally he has no problem pushing up against the boundaries and skating on a thin edge this time it's his uncle's car my uncle had a 6300 f-24 cross ram car he'd always send me to get stuff well he'd say go over here and pick up such and such so i'd go out there and jump into his car because he always left the keys in it and you could punch second gear in that thing then just light the rear tires up on it i'd take off and hit on the underpass out there in front of the warehouse burn the tires off that thing i'd come back he'd be standing out on the dock hands folded there and all mad he said i didn't tell you to take my car you didn't tell me not to so i don't know how many times i swiped that car a bunch of times when i was a kid so i always swore i was gonna have me one of them things as herb sets his drag racing aspirations higher and higher he learns the hard way when it comes to cars never settle for second best my 57 chevy that thing was 46 a month car note and i stayed broke because that thing was a rag his 57 chevy eats up three transmissions in nine months he's ready to move up and it kept me broke all the time so in 1959 i traded for a brand new 60 chevy group develops an outside the box approach to optimizing cars one that repeats itself to this day in a 60 chevy he installs a hurst shifter and headers something nobody in memphis has ever seen on a street car feeling proud and ready to go heard needs a way to test the car and himself and a new local dragstrip is the perfect place for that by then they had built the drag strip there in memphis at lakeland uh bill taylor pat collins larry coleman and raymond godman and that was the most modern nhra drag strip east of the mississippi river at that time in 1960 and i got involved with running it at the drag strip and working on it trying to learn how to make it go faster i won class with it i was really proud well i did that five weeks in a row and i had five little trophies hit in the trunk because i wouldn't carry them in the house i was afraid my mom would kill me so i finally got the nerve to carry them all in the house and she wanted to kill me once i explained to her what we were doing and how much fun was having and stuff was she wound up going to the races with us and uh i think i ran the car 16 times that year and i won class 14 times with it so i was hooked completely and that's where i really got started running my 60 chevy that was where i really started winning and really got hooked on it and got to meet a lot of people and got to know a lot of people now with his mom on board herb's totally eaten up with the racing bug he quickly finds his mechanical street smarts tested against better backed opponents yeah at the end of 1960 there they had a what they call the mid-south championship race and a guy named gordon black his folks had tons of money they owned a truck line there in memphis and he had a mechanic that worked on his car and they towed it out there with a tow bar and he was he'd gone somewhere to some nhra race somewhere and wanted and so he come to lakeland for the mid-south championships there and i spanked him real good and he got so mad he didn't hook the tow bar up he got in the car and left the drag strip just fuming mad and he actually wrecked the car on the way home i got protested there at lakeland a protest is a complaint lodged by another competitor that has to be investigated by a race official and can be made for all kinds of things this time it's herb's motor being protested i didn't have any tools with me or nothing so i called my mom and told her i said get my toolbox and throw it in a small toolbox of mine put in the back of the car and there was an auto parts place that was open on sunday on summer avenue i thought i said go by there and get me a head gasket and an intake gasket and bring it all out to the drag strip so she brought it all out there and so i pulled the car apart took the head off of it and taken everything set it on a table down at the end of the drag strip herb's not about to be intimidated when he knows he's in the right so i got it all apart laid all the pieces up there and i said i'm going up tower to get my 50 protest money he said well i hadn't checked the car yet i said i'm not worried about that i turn around walked off because everything was right so we were found legal and put it all back together and drove it home at night went over to the toddle house and took shoe polish and wrote on the back window of the car that this car was protested at lakeland torn down and found to be legal that was a fun day it really was i got an extra 50 bucks out of the deal an extra 50 bucks goes a long way for her and making sure everybody knows sure is a bonus plus he's doing a whole lot better now on the money front than he ever did with his 57 chevy my car note was 64 a month and i had money left over at the end of the month because that thing didn't break every time i turned around well i had a 456 gear in the car we started off with a 323 went to a 411 and everybody figured out i had a 411 so they all went about 411 so i wouldn't bought a 456 and put in mine of course i drove his car on the street every day this is my daily driver chevy came out with his 409 they actually came out with in 61 but 62 they became available to anybody want to go down to dealership and buy one well there were a lot of people that went down and bought them and they thought they were bad boys so i'd go pick on them with my 60 chevy and i beat about three or four of them in these uh saturday night acceleration contests we'd have so one saturday night i'm up at the toddle house and here comes a new guy through a guy named roy smith had a blue 6249 well he was a whole lot sharper than other guys i've been beating on so i'll follow him up to the red light at the corner of poplar and perkins and i pull up beside him and look over at him and grin the light turned green he spanked me like he owned me i said wait a minute i said maybe these things are faster than i think they were since losing isn't even an option curb doesn't waste any time upgrading so i went and traded my 60 chevy the next week for a 409 i drove around the street for a while went out and tried to run it well you know i wasn't competitive with the bad boys there so i wanted to win so it's time to make a change and when her makes a change this important he goes straight to the top don nicholson was the 409 hero in 1962. he worked out a place called natalie chevrolet in atlanta georgia so i called him ali chevrolet and i managed to get him on the phone and i asked him if he had a an engine that i could bring my engine down and pay him the difference and swap for one of his engines and he said yes that he was just putting a new engine together and he was taking the one is in the car out he said i'll take 350 in your engine for my engine that was on a thursday morning well i jerked the engine out of the car put it in the trunk of a friend of mine's car me and him and my mom she wanted to go because she didn't trust me going out spending 350 so we rolled in there saturday morning i walked into mr nicholson's shop and walked up to him introduced myself to him i said i'm heard mccandless i said i talked to you thursday about buying your engine out your car here's my 350 dollars and there's my engine where's my new engine and he said it's sitting right there on the floor so we loaded up went back home by now another pattern's emerged tenacity it may as well be herb's middle name doing anything necessary to win but this time out he gets his hat handed to him well i got a match race with a 62 pontiac aluminum front end four-speed car guy named charlie mitchell had but charlie spanked me pretty bad and he put the window down stuck his arm out the window and waved at me in high gear come on oh that that hurt so i went back home for herb home is a place where he can slow down and figure out what's going on with his car he then gets the parts the tools or the people who can help them straighten it out and get it running tip top the carburetors were stumbling on the car didn't want to leave the starting line right well i heard about this guy named bill jenkins so i picked the phone up and i managed to get him on the phone and i sent him my carburetors and paid him fifty dollars to fix my carburetors so i got him back i called the guy running track over in arkansas stand for bowling i said i want to run charlie mitchell's pontiac again he said you just ran him about three weeks ago over here he said we can't run the same match race again i said i'll run him for 50 bucks so he agreed to do it and i went over there and when i put the car in high gear i put the weather down wave to charge cause i spanked him bad he was not happy and so i was on a roll from there i had the car straightened out and running and ran it rest of the year did real well with it the engine from nicholson and the carburetors from jenkins turned his street car into a winning machine and herb's got the trophies to prove it birds got a grueling schedule working 10 hours a day in a print shop and actively racing on the weekends but drag racing is no longer just a bunch of hot rodders tearing up and down the streets it's becoming big business and herb's about to get his introduction into the big time and at the end of 64 there was a gentleman out there running a plymouth named john moore and we ran against each other every weekend and i usually beat him so he came over to me about november october of 64 and he said herb crusher's building these super stock package cars next year he said they're only building 10 four-speed cars he said you think you could drive one of those four-speed cars well you don't ask a 22-year-old kid a question like that of course i can drive it i had no clue but i told him i could drive it so he gives me his card i didn't know what he did he gave me his card and he said come up my office tomorrow i want to talk to you john moore isn't just any racer he's an assistant regional manager for chrysler's home office which means he's got a direct line to the engineers at chrysler who want to win and win bad so i went over his office and sit down and talk to him and i started asking him some questions about a christ for four-speed because i'd never even seen one nobody else had they just came out with four-speed and 64. i think was their first year for it coming from a chevy background herb knows there are differences in the chrysler transmissions and he's got a few concerns all the chevrolet transmissions that we ran back then were all aluminum case aluminum tail housings well chrysler's stuff was cast iron and i wanted to know if they were going to have an aluminum case which they did build aluminum case for the 65 car aluminum tail housing and just asked some questions about the synchronized assemblies and it was pretty much the same type assembly as the the chevy stuff was but the crusher's had a reputation for being very hard to shift he picks up the phone and calls the transmission lab in detroit and i'm talking to some engineer in detroit this kid's sitting in his office talking to some guy in a transmission lab in detroit not only is john taking this kid seriously herb is seeing a huge opportunity i was really impressed so i told him i said yeah i'd like to do this and he said well i can't get you a car because you know you've been racing chevrolet's nobody crasher knows you i said well i don't have any money i said i got a good job i can pay notes on it he said okay we'll get it financed talk about capitalizing on right place right time not only is john setting up a loan for herb he also arranges to send him straight to detroit they had a school about the hemi engine i never seen a hemi engine didn't know what it was nobody did they just came out with this thing now their primary focus of the school was for the automatic cars because there wasn't 10 four-speed cars it's in detroit that her first meets the racing movers and shakers at chrysler including the 25 or so engineers who in 1959 established a private racing club known as the ram chargers these men use a science-based approach to push cars and engines to their limits out on the racetrack and over on woodward app herb is not the only racer impressed with chrysler's race package and the big thing to me the big plus was the people that were behind it because from cahill right on down with maxwell and with the ram charges and with hoover and coddington and bowman and just on and on those guys really ate and drank drag racing and whatever it would take to to make it work and to go fast and go quicker and make it live they were willing to do among them are tom hoover and dick maxwell tom hoover who practically invented the hemi is the head of chrysler's specially formed race performance group and dick maxwell runs the parts division the the main thing mr hoover did was go through the engine step by step about how to assemble it how to put it together and just explaining to us what they were actually doing and about the cross ram intake manifold which we'd never seen before the difference in a hemispherical head engine and a wedgehead engine about the the bell housings the clutches the transmissions the whole thing was just a different ball game from anything chrysler had ever done you know everything was new to us as far as what we were doing here so that's when i got to meet mr hoover and mr maxwell and all those people up there mr coddington and all that group of people petty was there that's where i met richard for the first time and got introduced to him and got to know him a little bit even though he's out to make a good impression herb doesn't hesitate to let the group know exactly how he feels and what won't do i was introduced to dick maxwell and they told him that herb is going to get one of our four-speed cars and maxwell laughed and he said don't worry we'll send you an automatic to put in it and i looked the man square in the eye and i said no sure i'll quit first after years of successfully racing four speeds nobody's going to talk herb out of it now but there's two big reasons chrysler 4 speeds are unpopular the croissants had a reputation for being very hard to shift and i didn't really know why and they didn't really understand why because nobody had really raced these things at all nobody ran a four-speed car for chrysler because their torque flight transmission was just head and shoulders above anything ford and gm had so their primary aim at these cars was to build 100 cars 10 four-speed cars and 90-something automatic cars and the 10 of us were going to be the guinea pigs so to speak back home from detroit herb doesn't waste any time getting his hands on his new 65 hemi and turning a few heads along the way and the guy from commercial credit came out to my mom's house and walked around that car when it came in and he stood there and shook his head he said son i don't know who you are but you know somebody we don't finance race cars he said but we're going to finance this one so i financed it and paid 80 a month on it so john helped me a lot he went to the races with me a lot he introduced me to a lot of people that i would have never had the opportunity to meet john helps herb get his factory car but cars need parts and nobody knows that better than john it's going to be up to herb to keep the car running and john has something in mind i got the car and was able to drive it and went to a nhra points meet and maxwell was there all across the people there because it was the first meet of the year dick maxwell and the chrysler crew don't know it yet but they're about to learn that they're getting a whole lot more bang for their buck in young herb mccandless and i went over and asked if i could have a synchronizer assembly from the parts truck they had a parts truck there and he said sure you can get one he said take your car down to the dealership downtown so we've got a dealership rented you can put it on the lift and take transmission out of it and fix it i said no so i'll have it back in about an hour i'll be back out there running all those hours spent in lee's garage at the esso station and working at the truck shop or fixing to pay off for her this time right in front of the chrysler team so i took it apart during the track fix the transmission put it back together and went out there and ran it and boy does he run it herb had the motor and transmission dialed in so tight he literally blew the tires off the car well i tore up two sets of tires in two days there that was a joke so i put the tennis tires on sunday and they had four or five of what they called an afx car and i went out there sunday afternoon and just made them all look bad i ran faster than any of them and so mr maxwell came over to me and gave me his card and his phone number and he said you call me on mondays and let me know what you need for the car in the way of parts and he said we'll help you as head of chrysler's parts division dick maxwell is the gatekeeper to what every successful race driver needs parts of course john was tickled to death because he that's what he his goal was to get me hooked up with the parks division herb's just been given the keys to the kingdom and solidified his part supply chain maybe even for life with chrysler's body hoover's hemi in parts from maxwell herb's about to make a name for himself and wow the crowds in a new style of drag racing in the southeast part of the country that's where all the 3 000 pound heads up first man to the finish line racing started [Music] that was pretty much the rules first man in the finish line won and got the money so these tracks started paying you know good money and so i went to a couple of them and i won and boy this was great because i was making two or three hundred dollars a week and then it became instead of just a sunday deal it became a saturday sunday then it became a friday saturday and sunday so we could run around and make really good money the one of the first places i went to was union hill in nashville and they had a big two-day event there if i remember right they paid 250 150 100 we run three actual complete races well i showed up there on a saturday afternoon and bob wingo the guy around the track he had booked in eddie sharpman driving nicholson's comet and paid him to come he was the big draw for the race and you know he was supposed to spank all of us well come saturday afternoon i didn't realize he was supposed to beat me so i outran him in the first place and then i took a nap against robert nass and robert won first place money so i came back and i beat sharpton for second place so sunday we came back again sunday well i won first place sunday i went up the tower sunday afternoon after the race was over and knocked on the door guys said come on in i walked in there and mr wingo was sitting there and i introduced myself to him i said mr wingo i've heard my candles i like to get my money pleaser and he turned around in his chair i'll never forget he swiveled around in that chair and looked at me and he said boy where did you come from i said sir i'm from memphis tennessee i said i really like your track i'd like to come back and race some more so i race there a lot i want a lot of money at union hill in nashville in 1965 herb knocks out an 80 win rate including bringing it home with the fonted nhra winter nationals and super stock b modified he's winning enough to establish a reputation among drivers and track owners while he's going faster at the drags herb's personal life is speeding up too and one of the best things that ever happened to him is meeting a girl named marie i was putting an eight-track tape player in my 65 chrysler 300l and a guy that i knew was married to her sister and she had run away from home and went over to their house she didn't run very far but she got mad at her mom and dad went over to their house and she was getting on his nerves and he brought her by my house and he came up to me said well you take her to the movies or somewhere tonight take her easy just get her out of my hair for a while and so yeah sure why not she's a nice looking little gal and so i took her out we went to eat herb's a rising star with a fast car but none of that impresses marie she knew nothing about a race car the first time i carried her to a race we pulled in the pits and i parked the car and she looked around she said you mean y'all don't go in circles honestly she knew nothing about a race and she learned a lot real fast she figured out that was going to be part of her life if she was going to hang around with me i took her on a trip before we got married one time or her mom and dad boy they were they didn't like me to start with but uh i said something to her i said hey i'm running biloxi mississippi tonight you want to go i said i'm coming back and running memphis tomorrow well it's about 350 miles to biloxi from memphis so we left memphis you know about 11 o'clock something like that and we're riding down the road and we rode for about an hour hour and a half and she said where is biloxi mississippi i said it's down on the coast it's a couple hundred more miles and she got really quiet and she said i didn't know that i said so what she said my dad's gonna blow up because i won't be home you know tonight so her dad sits down and supper that night and he asked grams that's what we called her mom said rose where's marie oh she's gone to a race with herb where are they racing grams didn't know where biloxi was either biloxi mississippi and that old man went through the roof when we got home at 5 30 the next morning at six o'clock he was standing on the front porch and he was ill and i dropped her off i said i'm going check the car over and i said i'll call you in just a little bit and i said we're going to run here in memphis today so i left and went home worked on the car for a couple hours and called her and i said you want to go with me today she said god yes let me out here he was about to kill her she told him she said dad we raced in biloxi mississippi last night we left here at nine o'clock we were back here at 5 30 this morning there wasn't any time to do anything wrong what herb did have time for was racing and marie loved being with him on the road we'd go up to hardinsburg on friday night and then come back to national on saturday and if they didn't run a sunday race we'd go to orangeboro somewhere but we'd run two or three days a week back then almost every weekend at just 23 years old herb is full of confidence and he's doing what he's always dreamed of it's just a matter of time before herv asked marie to marry him and on november 26 1966 they embark on a journey together that will stand the test of time through thick and thin and it's the best decision of his life [Music] back out on the road good friend and competitive racer john livingston is a skilled driver who occasionally teams up with her as far as urban john are concerned to grow you have to go and that goes for trying out different kinds of cars too well john larrison and i both had a pretty good name so we bought a used funny car and decided we were going to go funny car racing with nitro and injectors and whatever didn't know anything about what we were doing and we managed to run it and won a couple races with it what's not that funny about the funny car is how expensive it is to run and that keeps the partners on their toes we were in florida to race and we were broke as two convicts marie was there and john and we actually borrowed some nitro and alcohol from robert nance because we didn't have no money to buy any and they were paying 500 that day and i won the 500 that day i don't know how we got home for having one and we booked a match race for the car at union hill and john was driving it and something happened and the car wound up crashing the car and turned all the pieces and so that was the end of our funny car racing for urban john 1967 is the beginning of a business partnership and a lifelong friendship and with ronnie sox melvin yao and her about running everybody in their four speeds chrysler ups its production made i don't know exactly how many they made but i know they only made 17 four-speed cars because once again nobody could drive the four-speed cars so we bought us 267 what they call the ro cars the 67 street hemi package cars and ran those rest in 67. successfully too even with the cars weighing out in the middle of the class herb and john are making a good show herb is now rubbing shoulders with big name drag racers sometimes with interesting results including one of the most popular funny car racers in the nation cheryl greer had leased the track and he called me they were having a a big super stock race i wanted me to come down so i went down there before i got off the truck cheryl came over to me and said herb they've already protested you of course herb gets why racing rules are in place he follows the guidelines but loves figuring out how to work the rules too and it turns out he's really good at it didn't matter what the configuration of the piston was it just had to hold 143 cc's well that was almost impossible to do with a real street hemi piston so i put a set of 65 type pistons in the car and we left the block uncut and we cut on the piston a little bit got him to 143 cc's which was legal we wound up winning the race so they tore me down and saw those pistons they all went crazy i said it doesn't matter about the piston all it counts is 143 cc's one inch down so at 2 o'clock in the morning they finally threw me out i said y'all got all your numbers written down what you cc'd and what it all came out oh yeah we got everything i said cause you hadn't heard the last of this so i left with no money i went home called dick maxwell nine o'clock monday morning well at 12 o'clock when nhra opened in california he got desmuke on the phone who was the head of the tech division and explained the situation to him and by about three o'clock that afternoon buster couching wrote me a letter wrote an apology on national dragster and sent me a check for my first place money for her that letter is a lot more satisfying than painting the results on his windshield at toddlehouse since he started racing there's no question herbs put in his ten thousand hours perfecting his drag racing skills he's put in almost as much time nurturing friendships that will help take him to the very top of the sport as well 1968 opens with a big bang for her putting him in the driver's seat at one of the most important events of the year and herb ending up in the seat is largely due to one of those relationships in january of 68 i was talking to dick maxwell on the phone and he asked me if i was going to pomona i told him no i wasn't going out there that's just too far to go you couldn't make any money at it and so dick said buddy ronnie carrying two cars to pomona and i kind of think he set me up by sick of death he did i had met buddy and ronnie but i didn't know him and so i said well who's driving the second one and they said well we don't know yet i said well i want to drive it because i knew it'd be a four-speed car buddy ronnie were carrying it ronnie sox is already a legend one of the most beloved drag racers in the sport starting off his career in the wild 50s ronnie partnered up with buddy martin in 1963 to form socks and martin racing buddy with his quiet collected manner runs the race schedule and the shop where the team builds its own cars plus production cars for customers chassis and engines for racers from coast to coast it's a hectic but extremely successful operation with both ronnie and buddy critical to that success from their factory-sponsored race cars to their immaculate uniforms at top-notch haulers and race wins sox and martin is recognized as the top professional team in drag racing putting more than a few personalities in the team's number two car buddy's been playing the field for drivers we were fortunate enough to have some people good people that drove the forest with dave strickland jim mcfarland and then we had don carlton and melvin yao and driving for sox and martin is a privilege for herb it's a proverbial rite of passage so about 30 minutes later buddy called me i said i understand you want to drive our second car at pomona i said yes sir he said bring your helmet come on one of the hallmarks of a leader's winning attitude is the lack of fear when making big decisions sometimes right on the spot right now herb is in one of those very spots at the print shop where he still holds a full-time job so i went into office where i worked i told myself i need to be off week i'm going to california i got a chance to drive a soccer martin car and they said well you can't get off right now we're just too busy you can't take a week off right now i said well i quit and the lady looked at me she said what i said i quit i said you have my check ready friday and you won't see my smiling face in this place again cause i'm going to california up to this point herb's racing is relied on hard work skill instinct and sometimes pure brashness and luck but this this is different so i wrote out there with john levinson he was going out to run his car so i'll grow buddy and ronnie's 440 car i've never set out in a 440 car never driven one had no experience with it whatsoever this time herb's driving for the most dominant professional team in drag racing in a 750 car field hailing from 40 states he sees the door to the big time crack open and he welcomes advice from the seasoned pros ronnie made a run in the car came back and i got in the car and made a run i ran 210 slower and ronnie did he said what'd you do i said i shifted at 6 000. i didn't know anything about this car he said no you shifted five so i went back out and shifted at five around the same number ronnie did well everybody else was shifting about six so i was beating people by train links i was killed everybody and so everything really went great i set the record into class did really good with the car that was my first encounter with buddy and ronnie and what an encounter it is if first impressions are important then this was a good one back in tennessee he's still in the middle of his ahra class with a 67 hemi herbs anticipating the season opener in st louis for the 3 000 pound heads up series i told the guy ran the thing i said you know all i got's my 67 street every car i don't have a 3 000 pound car he said oh you're usually fast enough come on up run anyway so i headed to st louis while i stopped and picked up a friend of mine danny bird we got st louis and we took everything out of that car but the seat i was sitting in and it still weighed 3 400 pounds that was a 3 700 pound car when it was all assembled so i made a qualifying run i was low qualifier i pulled up on the scales and the guy told me said her pull off the scale there's something wrong with my scales they say you weigh 3 400 pounds i said that's what the car weighs and he just shook his head and i wound up winning the race even though he's got a heavy car herb's living up to his mr four speed nickname and he's winning a lot putting the car back together and everybody was mad because once again most of them are automatic cars we've run eighth mile and that four speed was just way faster than the automatic cars and i had a really good car and had the ability to drive it so that was just a series that they had about 15 races i think i won about 13 of them but i wanted a championship in it want a lot of money that you're doing that in the spring of 1968 herb's new factory car finally arrives it's built specifically as a race car for nhra super stock competition but herb gets down to work right away converting it to run an ahra heads up competition and man what a lot of work he does [Music] this car was built in 1968 by crosstalk corporation it was built as a super stock car and we immediately took these cars and formatted them to do the heads up three thousand pound stuff we took off the windshield wipers we took off the voltage regulator the alternator stuff like that that was completely unnecessary that nhra made you run as an nhra super stock car these cars had to match the cylinder mount up here on the firewall with rubber hoses on the master cylinder so we had to take the mast one off and lay it over here to get the valve cover off the car they also had the real fans on them they ran a 426 hemi you had eight spark plugs single distributor they came with a cross ram intake which mr hoover did the crosstram have been around for several years it was on the 65 cars they were made magnesium on the 65 cars these on the 68 cars were made of aluminum these cars had the two holley carburetors that were built for the cross ram intake you see the linkage is designed to open both carburetors at the same time wide open they had a hood plate that sealed it to a hood scoop and the hood and rolled fresh air in through the hood scoop to the carburetors to make the cart run faster you had to take these plugs out here to get the intake off their bolts down inside there these cars were terrible about eating spark plugs these intake manifolds were designed to run wide open with air flowing at a very fast rate because that carburetor fed this side this carburetor fed that side that's the way the thing was designed everything was lightweight on the cars they had fiberglass fenders they had acid dipped steel doors everything was built as light as possible in the cars all the dumb dome was left out of the cars no radios no heaters no nothing these were race cars they were not built and sold on the street they weren't entitled to run them on the street and if you tried to drive it around like a street car it would just start puddling gas and just make a mess the the turbulence was terrible in the manifold when it was wide open it was fantastic they were race cars they changed the whole world of drag racing because we immediately took these cars and turned them into the heads up racing that we love to do in the south and we made really good money with the cars i ran 52 races this car in 1968 and i want about 90 of them now a full-time drag racer in a winning machine herb is almost continuously on the road and just exactly what that means for him is about to sink in 68 was the year that they were running a lot of heads up 3 000 pound that type stuff memorial day weekend they had a four day deal thursday night kansas city friday night gary indiana saturday night in saint louis and sunny in evansville indiana well marie was pregnant and she's laying on the couch wednesday night and it's about midnight she said her back was killing her i said maria i've got to go i got to be in kansas city tomorrow so i left memphis drove to kansas city i won kansas city thursday night i went to gary indiana won gary indiana friday night drove all night to st louis got in there saturday morning so i kept trying to call marie and i couldn't find her i got a hold of her mom saturday morning and i said miss stewart where maria i haven't been able to find her she said you mean you don't know i said i don't know what she said she had a little boy last night i said well tell her i see her sunday night and i hung the phone up and so i ran st louis ferry tonight i think i won second place in st louis and i went to evansville sunday one first place at evansville got in the hospital about two o'clock monday morning had the race truck in the driveway out there and came in walked down the hall and had my race clothes on the nurse said sir where are you going i said i'm going down here to see my little boy he was born friday night she said you're that racer aren't you yes ma'am that's me but uh i won fifteen hundred and fifty dollars that weekend so it was pretty good weekend marie wasn't too upset because i had enough money to get her out of the hospital when i got home so that's when herb jr was born burp still got pomona on his mind one taste of driving for socks and martin and he wants more just a couple months later he gets his chance i was up there in my car in bristol and buddy and ronnie showed up with two cars but he came over to me and he said hey we brought two cars you want to drive a second one i said well sure that's a dumb question to ask me so i went and got in it and i won with it did real well with it we were all happy when the day was over and none are more happy than her which is why he's going to keep looking for opportunities just like that one by the end of 68 herbs run 52 heads-up races he's 136 and plays second at eight more and he's crowned heads up super stock world champion by the ahra herbs on everyone's radar as the 1969 season gets underway he continues to pick up rides from the top teams in the nation the next year landy asked me to drive a car for him a b-modified production car at phoenix and pomona best known for steering dodges to victory landy's been a familiar face in the chrysler race family since 1962. with his southern california clean cut looks and big media personality he's long been a household name with drag race fans as well so i agreed to do it i went to phoenix and this car was a rag with both men hating to lose dick encourages herb to try and fix it so we took it back to their shop in california and that's when i met gail mortimer gail is landy's mechanic and this meeting will turn out to be a pivotal moment for them both gail and i worked on that car all week long we straightened everything out fixed the transmission we got that car where it was really flying it was running really good so we go to pobona well that came down to a socks and martin car and the car i was driving landis so i outran buddy in ronnie's car with landy's car ronnie beat landy of course and so sunday morning here comes landy and all across from people down to the pits i got gail and i got the car ready we're fixing to go around the eliminator with it and i felt very confident we could win it because the car was good and they tell me i have to get out of the car and landy's going to drive the car and i used to have a pretty hot temper and i lost it that morning at pomona and you know i had no choice but to get out of the car i was actually standing in the stands with dick maxwell and mr hoover when landy ran for the eliminator and i said i hope he gets beat maxwell turned around he said herb you're going to get paid just like you were driving the car i said that's not the point i came here to drive that car gail and i fixed that car and i should be in that car and so i i finally had to just keep my mouth shut before i got in trouble so he won and i got paid and that was the end of that herb might think that's the end of that but things between landy and him are just heating up and no doubt buddy notices it was herbert gale who fine-tuned a car that beat sox and martin this will set the stage and prime the motive that propels herb into one of his finest moments in drag racing [Music] um [Music] is is

Channel: McCandless Antique Auto

Views: 400,675

Keywords: Mopar, Pro Stock, Sox & Martin, Drag Racing, AHRA, NHRA, Dodge, Chrysler, Plymouth

Id: JwiZKEJK4O8

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sc0lm00]

Really good series. Note here are 3 more videos.