"Mr. 4 Speed" Episode 4: I Don’t Do Nothing Very Well - A Documentary on the Life of Herb McCandless

[Music] [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 breaking records a young man's hot rod was not just a form of self-expression it also provided the means for a social life and some stability 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 handheld stop washes the 1960s brought a wave of capital into the fledgling sport resulting in dedicated drag racing arenas arena seating thousands with sophisticated electronic timing systems dozens of individual car classes coast to coast tv coverage and huge money purses at the major events it wasn't just the public that was hooked auto manufacturers were taking note too 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 [Music] this documentary is a story about her mccandless and it seeks to capture all that he's accomplished as a drag racing legend and a respected businessman today herb is retired but he doesn't do nothing very well he's extremely active and has a keen understanding of the value of long-term relationships and the importance of helping others built me an 80 by 80 building down behind the house so i'd have a shop to work in because i knew i was going to be doing something i wasn't going to sit around do nothing because i don't do nothing very well i got to be busy and i carried a bunch of stuff home from the shop out of the machine shop out of the rear-end shop and took me a pretty good while to get all that organized and settled up and fixed me up set up there where i could do whatever i wanted to do following a day of shooting for this documentary herb and his sons organized an impromptu racing round table with herb buddy martin dave christie chick denino and jeff stunker [Music] giving them an opportunity to reminisce about all their adventures [Music] hey what was your what was your day like as the manager of bob soxmart you'd probably be better off asking my wife because she said i never came home well the big thing was is you know you're always having to make contact with the sponsors and keep them happy you've got to get the parts that need from chrysler or whomever from wherever and at the same time booking the races the match races and uh all the other things that went with it and it was a pretty pretty good day this what's keeping us out of trouble was a big part of the thing he came out in the shop one day building a 72 car i just got these titanium hood pins from trick titanium regis built them for me made them for me buddy picked him up and looked at him he said wow that was titanium where'd you get those i said i got it from regis and trick titanium how much worthy i said i don't know i charged him to you that was his average day he never knew what we were gonna do i did language they come out one day i said check on getting a we just got a new truck he said uh check about getting the air conditioner because they didn't put factory air in the truck says about getting air conditioner on the truck and so the next day or so he came by said you check on air conditioner get an air conditioner put on that truck i said oh yeah it's on there he said how much was it i don't know i charge it to you but buddy never said a word about stuff like that he would he'd go i pulled one on him one day we had to go to washington dc i had never told this story we had to go to washington dc to get these pictures made we all had to have these certain kind of pants and the usrt deal yeah i don't like that so i asked tom richardson i said what do i need to do to get something he said well buddy's got a count up in this current hey i think was that the name of it i wouldn't forgot me a coat to tie a pair tom said later he said buddy came in with his ticket in my office said what's this charging that uh current hey for a sport coat and a spare slacks or something and tom said you told herbie had to have one didn't you car now you know chrysler built some fairly crazy stuff in the early 60s and then they went to the 67 cars you had the clinic the 67 gtx and the 67 row car where they gave them the same curb weight that was the same nhra weight for the two of them so let's talk about how much fun that was to drive with a four speed oh they were like driving a street car those things big 3 700 pound tanks is what they were but they were the first slick shifted four speeds they ever made and assembled in a production deal because they those cars came with a slick shifted four speed on who did who did the modifications for the force was that done at chrysler chrysler provided that way they just had the gears made with every other clutching tooth missing and then had the sliders broached where every other tooth was missing we used to have to do it by hand oh yeah grind i have ground on many of those though in 68 they built some pro-shifted transmissions like the lugs that were welded on later with the two teeth missing out of the slider right well chrysler built about five of those transmissions i know ronnie had one i had one strickler had one there they're about five of those transmissions is all it was they did at 65 we had those goofy things from england in 65 but uh they worked but i've actually still got the part of the pinion gear on mine i ran it all year long in that 68 car right there never took it out of the car all year and finally it rolled the cluster gear off low gear and every tooth on the transmission looked like it had tooth decay because it had so many runs on the thing we'd run it so much wow wow herb's sons have all found success in their own right these apples haven't fallen far from the tree in the early 2000s herb's son michael started collecting his dad's race cars together with some dramatic forward-look chryslers aside from the race cars this 59 desoto was one of mike's favorites it just blew through this place he houses the collection in his museum in burlington which is where most of this documentary's interview footage was shot on a custom-built set i love the cars especially from 57 to 61 and that era 62 where they had fins and these cars can be really made into really nice cars and the biggest thing people screw up in them is the wiring any of the cars that michael has bought for the museum here and stuff most of them wind up going through my place because they won't have her hunter they're messed up and anything that leaves there when it leaves there you can get in it and go wherever you want to with it and go he does herb almost never flies anywhere especially if it's a car show or auction event people treat me really good at these events and i couldn't do as much as i do without what michael has done with this museum and the cars we are back in harrisburg and the first of three consecutive sox and martin drag racing cars has arrived [Music] mccann was really one of the most respected postdoc drivers super stock drivers back in the day yeah the car that he drove to the ahra championship gt1 championship back in 1970 this is the car 390 is the bid and [Applause] so much drama so much excitement with this todd warner collection and we had a little bit a little while ago here heard mccandless who you've met and his son mike mike what did you do today uh well you know i've been at the aaca library all week doing research on some of dad's old cars and i have all of his cars from 65 to 72. this car though he drove he won multiple times in the car and i didn't tell him but i was sitting here hiding out waiting until at the very end and snuck in a few bids and very fortunate to come home with the car what a nice son you have he's the best i had no idea i had no idea i knew nothing i was standing up there and i looked down and saw the beard [Music] father and sunday here with the makeup oxen congratulations nice job yes sir thank you very much appreciate it thank you bill i'm very proud of my boys all three of them all five of my grandboys just like he did with herb junior herb is passing the torch to his grandsons jonathan and jason they're good boys they help me all the time they work with me all the time they've been raised down there in my building with me since they were big enough i've got pictures of jonathan standing on a stool that's about three foot tall putting the carrier in the rear end tightening the caps up on it and i'm very proud of that because they're very well-mannered very good young boys and we go to these shows and just have a ball no this isn't the one that jumped over the toyota like father like son and now grandsons they all got bit by the racing bug herb jr guided them through the junior dragster program and they were very successful with it they won a lot well they got aged out of that so they wanted to put them a bracket car together they only ran it four or five times and the last race they ran with it was at piedmont it was a twenty thousand dollar to win bracket race and whatever it was they wound up getting the runner up they got beat on the final but uh they won eight thousand dollars in one weekend with this bracket car that probably got a fourth of that tied up donald brown curry north carolina beautiful 69 nova [Music] dialed in at 6 20. against jason mcanlis is 779. double one to not a double 01. in 781 583 for dallas trip zip to 19. mccandless gets the win 19-2 cherry couldn't get there i got three other grand boys but they live in raleigh of course they're all grown now they're you know they're in their 20s and grown up and going fast blake is known as mr f4 speed on virtual racing platforms such as eraser and iracing [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh god not only a driver he's also a commentator oh what a huge run on the outside three wide into three winners derek justice looking for the race lead shot out of a cannon with prior lebron malik ray goes up top it's justice with the lead out of four i'll tell you what keegan leahy is using every lane on this racetrack to try and make moves although bowen bouncing off the apron he's somehow able to collect it look at how close that 32-23-11 machine gets to graham bowen as they were working off the corner and that that is the one thing about this race james these drivers are testing the limits getting right up to their doors he and leahy showing he's going to keep the track position he has been in every single lane in the last lap and leahey trying to control this race it's awfully hard to do when each lane has been as competitive as it is like blake is a great guy works with uh i race with him on i race in a little bit blake is part of the broadcast he's one of the he's a pit road reporter for for this it's really cool so uh he does a great job um and one of our network partners ought to look into blake mccandless as a pit reporter someday do a truck racer anyways uh thanks for all the questions and most recently he's landed the position of crew chief and spotter for e-nascar cup series driver james davison jonathan and jason spend a lot of time helping their granddad and uncle on the road at car events across the country and sometimes it puts them in the front row for one of michael's surprises well here it is the 1970 saxon martin pro stock duster that heard mccandless drove for them i was commissioned to resurrect this car and we spent a lot of time hunting down and uh documenting what would be all the correct pieces that would go on this car so here it is it's uh ready to go to carlisle and back to mike mccandless who is going to surprise his dad with it [Applause] well we're back at carlisle again i don't know how many years i've been coming up here somewhere between 15 and 20. this is the biggest mopar show of the year i love it we had 2500 cars here last year i don't know i'll talk to a couple thousand people in the next three or four days without any trouble [Music] [Music] what made you fall in love with chrysler versus ford i was running a chevrolet 1964. that was the 11 package and i used to go to the drag strip on saturday night and i would beat up we'll have to tell this story what is going on what is that i don't know what's my what's michael doing that's the next [Music] question [Music] where did you get that get what that's a clone of my 70 car that i want indy with well i figured since the real one didn't exist uh the best thing we could do is get you a uh identical twin to it so that's great come here take a look get in i might get the fever [Music] wow [Music] oh if i turn to 7000 let go of the clutch what do you think this is the car that that changed my whole life yeah really did biggest race in history first ever u.s nationals yeah so now this is all the cars i gave away the race of york a red light in this car to land he needed my behind kick for that i had that one i went to indy a month later and won it left fair went down real and won it well i decided about a year ago that uh we needed to have this in the collection and like i said since the real one didn't exist i figured we need to get uh as close to a real one as we could so here we are yeah this is the car that was a clone of the car that changed my life how did it feel to sit in there for the first time first time you said a helmet i walked into the soccer martin shop in may this was sitting there with my name on the door and i went and ran jenkins that weekend in a match race and i got paid to do that and i made good money too and that's that's just where the whole thing started buddy hired me and he said get in this is yours and that smile must have been hard to wipe off your face if i'd had a diet it took on to take her two weeks to bury me you couldn't get a smile on my face but you know the saxon martin team was the number one team in the country by far and buddy could have hired anybody anybody would have took the job you've been a fool not to and he called me and asked me if i wanted to drive stamped stamp of approval wow wow and the blue engine that was a jake king trademark he painted all of his engines blue what do you think of your boys to go way out of their way to do something like this nobody's got kids like i got nobody nobody's got a family like i've got one of the most important things if you don't have family you got nothing and i got the best i've got the best by far and all the people around me it's not just i mean people have been so good to me my whole life and the only thing i could do is shift gears a surprise like this is a great way to get the chrysler nationals started but for real car enthusiasts it's a place to catch up with your friends and see what's new i knew i would finally run into a real car guy out here hey chris how you doing good to see you man good to see you oh this is a clone of the 1970 car that when i came to work for socks and martin that i drove the real car was destroyed in a towing accident it burned to the ground car and truck never but these were stock cars i mean the pro stock cars now they don't even resemble that no stock is in quotes i mean this thing came off the showroom as a six cylinder car yeah and it has a bolt in lakewood roll bar if we were to wreck we'd have been dead [Laughter] wouldn't work just there to uh so the rules would be satisfied yeah that's all it was that's what the whole thing was i mean he had stock disc brakes we didn't have any lightweight brakes yeah we made our own lightweight brakes in seventy-one that's the elmer made the spindles and we've got the rotors cut out and put their heart calipers on because there was nothing you didn't pick the phone up and buy anything back then right you pretty well had to make whatever you did we made the aluminum mounts to what we call the elephant ears and mounted it and it had a 18 spline chrysler four speed in it you know back then we were cutting every other tooth off the gears and what they call a slick shift yeah and that's what we ran for a transmission back then we didn't have the plenum manifolds in these were the ir manifolds before the wine did there was no manifold for a hemi to put two fours on right at that time other than the stock street heavy thing and a cross ram and so we built these ir manifolds and then they made some out of steel because aluminum got so expensive and then wyan did the manifold with the plenum on top of it and it was about three mile an hour faster than this manifold so of course we all went to that immediately all right so what is your one single fondest memory about this car oh winning indy that was the first pro stock today it just don't get any better than that yeah i tell these kids that you all don't know what a high is the highest when you put this car in fourth gear you look out the wind and you're in front that's when you get a high that's great all right so tell me once you're strapped in you're getting ready to go it's time to race when do you start thinking about your reaction are you thinking about that as you're rolling up are you thinking about that as soon as you get in your car because that's really the key is your reaction time when it's it's kind of weird but when we got in these cars and shut the door and buckle the belts everything was just rhythm i mean you made the burnout you hit the tires you staged and back then you ran a full tree in prostitute the best way i know describe it is people who thought about it screwed up most of the time so you really didn't think about it no it was just all part of the rhythm it was just the last step in the entire checklist i mean you just did it i used to love to see a guy sitting next to me you were playing with his shifter or something we never did that yeah i mean if you had to think about what you were doing you're going to screw up most of the time yeah it was just simply reaction yeah and we raced you know three days a week sometimes i've raced i raised five races in four days one time two at the same day you know one afternoon one night race yeah so you did it so much that was an advantage that i always felt like that we had because we made so many runs in the car and you'd go to some track and run a local guy in a match race that's the first time he'd run his car in a month and you know we didn't run twice that week somewhere else and made you know half a dozen runs plus i was fortunate enough to get to go to mylon and test it mile in a lot with mr hoover and mr coddington and that bunch we make three runs change something make three runs change something make three more runs practice makes perfect right of course well that that was our thing is we got to make so many runs in the cars that other people didn't get to and i always felt like that was a big part of it what is it about this livery and the sox and martin brand that remains so timeless i mean here we're talking 40 plus years later and this is just as recognizable today as it was back then why is this such a special livery and special team well the sox and martin team was unquestionably the number one team in the country they had full factory back and they had clinic programs and their cars were so good back then we didn't have anything that other people didn't have we just prepared everything better i really believe that's a good part of it because when we mash the clutch down the engine didn't move forward the firewall didn't move back everything stayed where it was supposed to everything was mounted solid and we didn't break stuff good way to describe it yeah so you're driving it properly yeah well man i'm so stoked to see this back on its feet and it's it's a it's a perfect replica of the car you drove is that right yes absolutely down to the to the end yeah you know what let's fire it up that's ready to go that right there that's the gearhead mating call the people who never did this have no idea the feeling to get to do that yeah i get choked up talking about it i mean i love it i've done this my whole life so cool herbs thank you chris it's my pleasure to know you dude you gotta you gotta come to burlington it's on my list spending time with old friends is a big part of these shows for her but there's something else he really looks forward to herb loves making new friends diving right in and talking about cars just like their old friends welcome to the 2019 chrysler nationals make sure you come down saturday at 10 30 and check out the hurt rick pandas seminar mr four speed we'll be doing a q a down in the seminar tent saturday 10 30 with her mccandless now when we had the business we'd have a booth set up but then once i got out of the business i wasn't going to quit and so i talked to lisa that was running this thing she was talking about doing some seminars that said well let me do one and so that's how it started and i've been doing them ever since and that was at least 15 years ago they don't book a seminar after mine because i ain't never finished on time him and his wife marie mccandless built one of the most successful chrysler parks businesses in the country and to this day obviously 22 years later he still has a great following from burlington north carolina give it up for her mccandless thank y'all that means a lot it really does to me it does uh who are some of the guys you drove for and they were real experienced like heavy i drove for heavy i drove from billy step i drove for of course buddy and ronnie uh i drove for landy and i actually drove a forward for jack rouse for a few months the 91 moved to detroit jack's a great guy very intelligent man and i spent a month with him at his house while we built the car and jack had wrecked two pro stock cars and he's afraid he's gonna kill himself so he hired me to drive the thing they were fast they were really fast but their parts weren't the quality of stuff that we had at chrysler my 62 imperial is sitting over here and edelbrock has come out with a fuel injection system with fuel rails just like your new cars have it comes all assembled you don't do anything oh boy it's nice if you're even considering a fuel injection setup it helped the fuel mileage a little bit not much but like i told smitty you can't get fuel mileage with a 5500 pound car if you tow it with a rope now even if you're not putting an edelbrock system if you're just doing a throttle body system of somebody's edelbrock has a fuel system do not take your tank off and go buy some high dollar tank with a pump in it and run all these lines under your car they got 50 pounds of pressure all everywhere don't do that edelbrock's got this little system now when you look at mine on my imperial it's big but that was the first one they built and edelbrock's got one now it's about this big you mount it anywhere up front in the car you run your stock fuel line from your stock fuel pump to it it feeds the system it's got a reservoir and a pressure system in it there's no return lines there's nothing it works great that one's been on there for six years i only have one seconds trouble out of it what's wrong am i getting kicked out oh okay getting kicked out thank you all very much [Music] at carlisle in 2019 herb runs into one of his best friends from chrysler's engineering race group this is my good friend mr tom cottington he was part of the ram chargers group he was part of the race group at chrysler he worked with the motown missile car he was pretty well in charge of building the chassis and the car in the motown missile car and let him tell you a little bit about what his job was at chrysler because people like him made people like me look good it wasn't a hard job he was good to begin with but we had nascar and drag racing and i worked for tom hoover which was the head of racing doing the drag racing stuff and the development we would go from dynamometer to racetrack and dynamometer never told us the whole story it would give us a clue what we should try on the car and then herbert would try it in the car and we'd find out if it worked you know engine transmission a little bit of suspension although i didn't get into much of that mine was mostly powertrain so what about carburetors well there's a little story about the carburetors you ran off with we were testing milan dragway we usually run it about one to two days a week and our carburetor expert john balman had some sweetheart carburetors that he wanted to test so he came to herb to try bird fell in love with him next thing you know herbs on the truck going down the road and john's chased him he wants the carburetor back right i throw the window down i said they're on the car build another side just like him we had fun and we had good times and it was a challenging thing and we learned a lot about data acquisition we actually got help from the huntsville people that were the prices rocket people and we had a really expensive recorder before we had telemetry and we recorded all the data off the car so then we can go back and analyze it and do it scientifically sometimes the seat of the pants would tell you one thing and that would tell you something different you had to learn what to believe and the thing about doing the testing you had to be able to make three runs and run the same number and i was lucky i could do that was a good test driver though he was a very reliable test driver a lot of drivers would not try to be consistent they'd try to keep improving their own driving skills we wanted a reliable test drive it the same way every time so we knew it's the engine or the carburetor that's doing it not the driver right right i've got a sheet hanging in the museum you might have saw it i think we made 28 runs one day doing the w-2 intake manifold for holley in one day with a four-speed race car he's the only one that could do that really really and he was consistent so we learned a lot with her and what was so neat to me was getting to work with these guys i mean i hardly got out of high school i could just drive a four-speed and these guys were geniuses you know they built the road runners the super bees the hemis the six-pack 446 pack they did all that that's what the kids were interested in maybe on the street but i mean when we had some really hot cars woodward avenue was a racetrack tonight absolutely that is my pleasure [Music] all right ladies and gentlemen we invite everyone to come down to the grandstand stage area here in just a few more minutes we're gonna have a little presentation for her mccandless [Music] got so many cool cars sitting on the show field including these from the mccandless collection let's see if we can bring some up here to the stage and do a little bit of something with them and that's exactly what we're going to do here in just a few moments we're happy to have her mccandless here along with his son mike and we'll do some proper introductions of both our guests and the cars here in just a moment okay ladies and gentlemen this is a chrysler 300 but it's not just any chrysler 300 it's vin number one the very first ever chrysler 300 produced and then this is the uh the replica of the 1970 sox and martin duster and they'll talk a little bit more about that ladies and gentlemen mike mccandless hey thank you guys appreciate it uh this car the number one first ever chrysler 300 built they built then number one in vin number two about six weeks before they built vin number three that was done to get the cars ready for daytona in february of 55. this car was raced by vicki wood in the women's time trial event and you got to think about that statement the women's time trial events they were not allowed to be in the pits would have to come down from the grandstands get in the car she goes sets the world on fire wins the race goes back up to the grandstands kind of crazy to think about in the men's race brewster shaw the actual owner of the car goes and he ends up second in the men's time trial vicki not being happy just with going out and running in the women's event jumps into the men's event and gets third so the chrysler 300s even though they're only two of them at the time finished first second and third at this point in particular she's a hundred years old she's still alive she's in michigan sharp as attack very honored to have this car very excited to preserve the history and i'll i'll pop the door open here when i get off and you can see the vin tag still on there as a one zero zero one there were three major match race cars nicholson in the ford jenkins in the chevy and ronnie in the plymouth so if nicholson and jenkins ran each other right in heavyweight race so chrysler agreed to let buddy put a second car together and buddy picked me thank goodness to drive the car and hired me in may of 70. so that way we'd have four cars and we could all keep racing two or three days a week well one thing people don't realize you were 26 yeah in 1970 when you got this car and then going back to getting your first factory hemi car at 21. yeah and 64. i was 21 when i got the factory hemi car i'll get away from here because you get me started talking boy i can go for a while so if you've got any questions about anything about these cars or if you've got a question about something you're doing to your car or thinking about doing to your car please talk to me about it i don't work for anybody and i don't sell anything but i can point you in the right direction and so many people all they want to do is point your wallet in the right direction i don't care about your wallet i want to help you with your cars i love it thank you herb and mike mccandless ladies and gentlemen and i don't think herb could have said it any better right there he wants to help you so if you want to come down and talk to him about the sox and martin team about the race car come on down and thank you for being part of this wonderful afternoon [Music] there are surprises around every corner of these car shows like the collector who ended up with herb 67 ro car one of only 17 four speeds ever made how did you end up finding the car like what's the background for that now this is the back and 99 2000 right and i found an ad on the internet uh for an ro car in southern virginia right got a hold a guy went and got it and uh brought it home and i i i saw that this car had all those layers of paint on it and it looked like somebody's old race car right and i said i better not touch this car until i find out who used to face it right and then 20 years went all right well thank goodness because i mean that's what ended up getting us together yeah that you didn't have the 67 car that long you got the car in around june right of 67 may or june i actually had it into early 68 when i sold the car okay and they put an automatic in it because nobody drive the four speeds back then thank goodness well that was part of what allowed him and i to start connecting stuff together on the cars and then the story that a lot of people don't know is about the your car becoming a gtx oh yeah yeah so why are you turning red dad if you had a gtx with a hemi in it you ran super stock e instead of d because it was heavy enough well i won't go to jail i will i don't know friend of mine worked at the dodge dealership and this guy came in there was trading in a 67 gtx and he's in the office in there making the deal and the vin plate fell off his car out in the parking lot and we picked it up and carried home and put it on my ro car and went through nhra and they still kicked me out because we left the hood scoop on it but here's the great part about that story is that when i had not told eric about that and so when i'm there to look over the car one of the points that comes up is the vin tag is not put on with the factory rivets and for a lot of people that would be a flag that would say man i'm not so sure about this but then i told him well actually dad re-riveted the tag back on which so this is actually further proof that the car is actually right and we have pictures of you racing the car as a gtx with the white interior and everything like that is that how we should restore it should i put it all right it might more refine the vision but yeah i just want to thank eric thanks so much because maybe if you hadn't preserved all that stuff there's no way i'd have it and without that we wouldn't be able to share it and be able to tell it couldn't have been any better to go back to you along with all his other memories marie is never far from herb's mind and every chance he gets he makes sure something positive can come from his family's loss just get your physical every year if you were ever dumb enough to be a smoker when you go get a physical tell the doctor don't ask the doctor tell the doctor you want a chest x-ray and they'll tell you that we don't give chest x-rays when we do physicals so i didn't ask you if you give it i want one because lung cancer has no symptoms whatsoever you don't know you've got it until it spreads and it's too late then i lost marie three years ago to that so just make them give you the x-ray and check it and do it if you were a smoker do it every year because you will not know you've got it till it's too late yes sir back at the round table the group talks about the unique era they came up in an era that they were so privileged to make their mark on time we've been together in several years all of us we all think the world of each other and we do anything for each other and it's just great to get to sit around with everybody and talk and we grew up a job we grew up in the best time this country's ever had for what we were doing we absolutely did you can't do today what we did back then and and make a living at it and gain the notoriety and and then turn it into a business and and just basically enjoy your life i'm 75 years old and i've enjoyed every day of my life i mean i i quit my job in 68 and this is what i've done since then well it's like i've told these guys ronnie and i talked about it quite a few times before he passed away it you know it'd be great to be 25 again today and the tv coverage and the money that's out there and everything else but wouldn't take anything in the world for the era that we came through because the like herb said the racers today just they just they don't know what summer duck is they don't know what being up you know from thursday morning to monday morning and all the different things that you go through and it's uh it's just a different world but yeah and then they have these nostalgia races and they don't do it right they they do it with a christmas tree and they they don't put down rosin and they don't do all the things you know we used to do and that's not the way we used to race i mean well they run 20 races a year major events they don't go to all the different places that we went to like buddy said they never been to summer duck or any of those places like that uh aquascape capital right on those tracks like that that we'd go to on saturday night to play some piece of crowd you couldn't even get walk around in the place yeah north will sparrow and dunn benson and fayetteville kind hey i went to george ray's wildcat hot rod dragon arkansas paraguay darkness i set a car on fire there once were there i did that there you go well as always i'm humbled to be able to sit with you guys i see myself as a historian but you guys made the history and uh it's been wonderful to always sit in and find out the things that people haven't heard before so thank you so much for all your recall about all that stuff as well yeah but the thing of it is it wouldn't be normal history if we didn't have guys like yourself right i just made it known when you're looking at people who are racing today what's the biggest difference between the biggest difference that i see between today's racing and what we did uh like buddy was saying yesterday we never roped the cars off the people could walk right up and talk to us today's racers they don't mingle with the crowd so to speak they're always closed up in their hauler and they're taped off areas and stuff like that you see yourself as a problem solver yeah and i'm proud of that i really am i mean i don't know i've we've just always figured out ways to do things when we didn't necessarily have what it took to do it or the resources to do it but we always got it done i mean we didn't think anything about it we just got it done i mean first time i ever broke a rear i just took it apart i didn't know what was in there i exploded a transmission in my 60 chevy one time i mean there was nothing left in it i'd never seen the inside of one of them i took it home took it apart laid all the pieces out one town bought me some pieces just like it and put it back together and it was fine you didn't have any training for that you did no you just figure it out you just figure it out i i had a guy call me one day taking the clutch pedal out of his car and he called me he said herb how do you get that spring back on there they had a huge spring that went on the pedal and he said i've been trying for two hours to put that spring on the car he said how do you do that i said well you take it over and stick it in the vise you bend it over sideways and stuff some washers in it you bend it the other way and stuff some washers in it and when you get enough washers in it it's long enough you hang it up on there and pull the washers out and he called me back in about 15 minutes and he said how did you figure that out i don't know we just figured it out what's your favorite color i like a red car and i like a pearl white car i like the brighter colors the stuff that stands out see i grew up in the chrysler era where you had sassy grass green and plum crazy purple and uh limelight green and moulin rouge pink and panther pink and and those color those cars were neat when you saw one of those cars you looked at it you absolutely looked at it you know chrysler painted those things pink and you know when you saw one of those cars it just was stunning how long have you been wearing cowboy wow i got married in them in 1968 66 i mean i've been wearing boots since i was real young i don't have i do not own a pair of dress shoes and i haven't in 50 or 60 years can you tell me about the tools you have in your workshop can you name it i've got a really really well-equipped shop and i've taken you know 50 years to accumulate all this stuff it's not like it went out one day and got all of it uh i've got a sheer i got a metal brake got an aim this wheel i got a shrinker stretcher two different brakes and got a cold saw got a bridge port two different band saws and three different bands got three different welders uh what's your favorite tool in that workshop to work with my healing arc welder i love dwell i and i like to weld little stuff i don't want a weld quarter inch plate anybody can do that i like to make things out of sheet metal i use a lot of it's roughly about 45 000 thick to make panels and to make pieces go under the dash and just all kind of stuff i just finished the deal it goes on the dash it's got the air conditioner vents in it it's got a clock in it it's got a bolt gauge in it and it fits right up on the dash and i'll really enjoy making stuff like that and then you put it in and it looks like it belongs it doesn't look like some add-on thing i hate something that's stuck up that just kind of looks like it was added on every day you went to work these were long days and why oh we didn't work we played we raced for a living we worked seven days a week we didn't i mean you didn't think anything about building a car and climbing in there and welding bars and building sheet metal and putting fender wells in and cutting the car up and stuff like that wasn't work that was just what you did that day and and you thought about it all night the next day you had a plan when you got there what you were going to do that day and and the same way with these cars that we fooled with now i'm down in my building every morning by 8 30 9 o'clock i mean i get up that's where i go i'm down there and i'm there until 5 or 6 o'clock and sometimes a lot later than that because if i get to doing something i don't want to quit until i get it done if i'm fabricating something or making something i'm just going to keep right on work until i get it done and that's what i like to do what about the sound of a race car when you get to the drag strip and you hear the cars what does that sound like to you what does that feel like when you cranked the hemi in the pits everything else was grounded out i mean that engine just had a sound of its own and that was just the greatest sound in the world i mean it i'd get in that 72 car and buckle myself in and hit the button and that thing would light up and you just felt good i mean that's the only way to describe it you push the clutch in pull that thing up in the water and put the car in third gear and come out the water smoking the tires there was nothing like that there's no feeling like winning there's no feeling like winning it really and i don't care what you do in life nothing feels any better than the feeling we had back in those days driving those cars and going to a race and winning and especially when you're just getting started and you're able to go out there and compete with the big boys so to speak and outrun them and i mean it's the greatest feeling in the world and the more you do it the more you want to do it that's why i think we worked as hard as we did and at the pace we went at because we knew it we were going to the racetrack and at the end of the day you were just going to be fantastic when i got in that car and buckled the belts up and pushed the clutch in you were just in a world of your own that was what was so neat when you closed that door you were in a world of your own uh i had somebody say something to me about they were standing beside the track and they waved at me and i was going to start i didn't see them i mean you don't pay attention to the crowd you don't pay attention to anything how do you want to be remembered we're all looking back on this you know 50 years from now your great-grandkids are hearing stories about you what do you want them to say well i'd like for people to remember how erased what i did how hard i worked and how much i helped people that means more to me than you can imagine i love to help people uh i really enjoy helping somebody with a car tell them how to do it and showing them the right way to do things i don't take shortcuts i don't mess stuff up and and try to do it some cheap way or something people who save a dollar doing something spend ten dollars to fix it there's never enough money to do it right the first time but there's always money to fix it with but i just wanted people to remember how much i did to help this industry ah [Music] [Music] i found a mirror dakota digital makes it's got a compass an outside temperature gauge in it and i love to put those on the cars and i just put a mirror in a 59 dodge coronet last week it's got a backup camera in the mirror and you put it in the verse and the backup camera lights up in the mirror you don't see it on 59 docks but i i'm a wiring nut i love the wire stuff you open the door on several of the cars that i've done and it's got a little light in the door shines down on the ground and it puts a circle out about 18 inches diameter it's got a great big m in it for mopar and i'll pull in the parking lot at night and open the door and people go nuts wow you

Channel: McCandless Antique Auto

Views: 141,604

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

Id: 6cLqWEvBBpU

Length: 51min 24sec (3084 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021