The Last ORIGINAL 1994 Brickyard 400 Car Runs Again! Travis Bell's "Barn Find" is Going Home!

this car is out how it raced at the first brickyard 400. you're the only person i'll sell it to why because everybody else wanted to make it a day's a thunder car but we need a caution right mm-hmm so there's a button right damn it don't make me cry on tv bump it over one more time and clutch out hit the ignition go if it said burger king on it or if it said kmart on it i wouldn't give a damn about this car but i was born and raised in indiana my parents went to speedway high school and uh this says the corporate car of indianapolis on it so it's like finding the spirit of saint louis and living in saint louis so it's back it is the only car wearing the same paint the same chips the same dent sullivan somehow kept all the doors on it and it's going back home to indiana how old were you when you watched that race so i was in turn one when mast and and earnhardt got together and and bent massed the tailpipe up yeah and then they mass so i was in turn one on the very first brickyard 400 on the inaugural race and you know you got to think there's 400 000 people there we were right across from each other because i was in pit box one okay so as as they come through yeah they come through and slam and of course they're going to take the whole field out on the first lap i mean this is the golden era of nascar this is not maybe what we have now big e was going to lead that first lap no matter what come hell or how well yep and so if you watch the footage he comes out of four and nails the wall and shifts the whole track everything off hit rick too hit rick hit everybody known to man but then uh you might as well hit the pace car too right so uh so on lap four or three the passenger side window blew out of this car magically and it just and it hit the ground in front of us so all of us and you know everybody we the spectators see things before the track officials do so we're all in turn one pointing pointing pointing and then here comes harrigan boom runs it over and throws it into the crowd over the fence and i still have my chunk of the window that i caught that day from this car and now i own the car wow so see the magic caution was a lot of people don't kathy didn't have a crew or a team so she got this car from morgan mcclure rcr richard childress race and they put it together had their motor in it they crewed the car so when dale needed a caution he hit the magic button there that holds the window in and and then sullivan pulls in and everybody's on the pit wall and they look at him like what the hell are you here and they couldn't see that the window was missing on this side and of course they have to run down but they didn't pack up the car they had to run down and get the window out of another and this that another and racing down there and they finally got the window in but uh he was five laps down when he came back to uh into the field and at the back of the field but he finished out of 43 cars starting 26 lost five laps he was only four down at the end of the race and finished 33rd and kept all the doors on it have you looked at the window frame to see if there's any forensic evidence of the one blowing out because they couldn't put they didn't have they didn't have the right so they had their holes in it there was rivet holes through the and they may be on the inside but this we'll show you how the magic magic yeah how the so we need a caution right mm-hmm so there's a button right or basically a seat belt so guess what flies out and then oh he's got a zip tied oh there it is and then lands in the speedway and so there's uh there's some rivet holes there magic holes that that aren't supposed to be there because that's how the windows are held in all right so we're just and in the video when you see them come in the pit lane they're just and the nascar officials are sitting there with their arms and uh and it's just taken off and it doesn't fit and they tried to tape it in yeah it was the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen but then uh they need a magical caution and guess what happened was that seat belt clip original to the car yeah that's how it is how they were all built after not too long after that incident we they started instituting because at the time like everybody had their own way to hold these windows in it was every team was a little different they were a little bit and then they came out with those little little push clips or whatever yeah so once they came out with those and then you know people started putting three or four so finally so let's say he's gonna have two of these clips in here this is where they go this is how it works and the driver couldn't the yeah he had no access to get the window out basically the only way you could reach it was be out of your belts not from just reaching over and going so was this a common thing back then for people to put a buckle here and pop that yeah i never noticed that i mean i've seen this car in here a bunch of times we had to build a whole new everything for this because the window was going and uh did you save the other or no that didn't have a window in it so the window was missing at the when he got it and then at the speedway or the north carolina motorsports hall of fame it was gone too so now after it left in 1994 the windows back new windows back in it now so what on this car um did you actually like update to make it work we rewired the whole thing we rewired it and uh grandpa rewired the whole car because it was just so like brittle it and it was old like trailer wiring harness that we used to use back in the day not nice nickel stuff that we use now can you decipher the tires at all or is that right rear daytona blah blah or is that just what was on it those are my tires off my land speed car yeah they were the nicest ones they're the nicest ones so you got 225 mile an hour tire but yeah so if you watch the sun get back to i'll cut you off there so when he put it back together he would call or we'd text and he goes how far do you want to go what do you want me to do what are you going to do with this thing travis and i go you know i'm going to bring it home but you know they have the they have the sports car or the stock car classic guys that go to rockingham and stuff i mean it'd be fun to take a couple laps but i don't so my main goal can you reach in there sorry about that did you feel symbolic putting the window back in after watching it fly out i just can't the yellow paint knowing that it was morgan mcclure where in my hometown's name um you know why would a guy that lives i live on five acres and have two pole barns and my pole barns look like this i have one ass of two feet and too many cars so uh and but the ceo of my life my wife is uh she's like chase your dream so uh why on god's green earth do i do need this why don't i need this and it's i think it's going to a good home i think well so our goal now is to get danny sullivan to drive it one more time around the brickyard 400 or around the motor speedway the good race is the annapolis 500 which there for the years of tony george it was it was bad so but they race or they'll take a couple laps in vintage cars before during opening ceremonies and if we snuck this thing out there and sullivan really didn't know it was there because he even though we've we've talked a lot about it on the internet whatever else um dave doug bowles who is the president of the motor speedway is the best thing that ever happened to that place and penske picking it up doesn't hurt much either but uh he knows about it so it may leave here go to my house for a couple end up at the motor speedway museum for a little while and then on opening ceremonies for the next indy 500 it may take a couple laps and i will be a train wreck if you i would like the car and then it was a mess and aaron took it back and it's running and uh so i will be a complete disaster so don't film me that day because i cry at nascar races anyhow half the times so this was like put together by children how come it's a mcclure car why wasn't one of their old ones oh so she got it and brought it to them put a deal together for childress to crew it put it you know put it all together and put their moat had a children's motor in it it was supposed to be a pontiac too it's supposed to be a grand prix because all when the when they unveil it with the mayor back then was mayor goldsmith and everything they unveil a grand prix and then he's out of chevy test day and he's out the chevy and we're like going what the hell is going on but then of course on chevy test day he blows it up and that's when and it had you know an aaron travis budget and mitch mitch budget and you know this was the pit crew and everything else but then danny goes out there and detonates it and blows it up and so that's when they got the rcr power plant and they had they said hell if the city is behind it how can the city of indianapolis car not qualify so but all this that's local so the the uh the race the first race was was carried by wrtv which is the abc affil affiliate in indianapolis um of course allison transmissions are from indy all that's indianapolis this was the guy his name's dennis i i can't think of his last name uh he was the one that put this whole deal together and took checkers pizza off the car or checkers soda and whatever it was called and uh and then put all these people together and then uh if you open up that brickyard 400 program it's uh it's it says where the car you can go see the car at target and whatever else but that was the pontiac that they would take around and everybody can get their picture taken damn it man i mean think about my life now i own the car that i caught the window from and uh i have a mentor that that taught me 12 volts and made me a car guy my parents when it's broke my parents put tape on it you know and like if the if the recliner's broke like it's got tape all over it kind of thing but uh it's uh i it's it's uh damn it that's a good day to be a vintage racing fan did you find anything cool while you guys are all up inside this thing like any weird just neat things yeah actually when i first bought the car we uh brought it back we put on jack stands we're cleaning it out man i wonder if this thing's got lead in it when we pulled out 450 pounds of lead yeah one side of it it was actually on both sides yeah it was it was all the way in the right front and then that whole left rail and the inner box was pulled so it was a pretty good car at the time i mean if you get 400 pounds of lead to one of these things back then that's pretty sporty there wasn't no pile of junk that's for sure is the windshield so foggy aaron built a new windshield for it which was a struggle yeah because they don't make once the aluminum aluminum template's gone so that's from scratch uh because it doesn't matter how bad you buffed it it was not coming back it's not coming and this back one will in the front yeah but then the only other thing that's different i mean of course you made it a driver and is that goofy air box wherever that air box is that was that box was not before this this car yeah because when you laid around here yeah and uh but it's weird that you know how long and low they are now too because of course i mean after this they became really cattywompus and you guys that earnhardt kind of made your own when we when we hung these bodies back in the day i mean you might offset the deck lid a half inch in the nose maybe three quarter and the roof might have a little twist in it it definitely didn't go to the six inches on some you know by 2005 we had the tails offset literally five inches yeah the roof twisted sideways and you know nose all bent and one you know slightly like that corner would touch the ground it was all goofy looking but then so of course it was a painted morgan mcclure car and then they painted over the top of that yes underneath that is a yellow kodak car it is not a wrap it is a yellow codec number four have you done any digging to find out the history of this chassis what's next we tried i think travis i think travis will figure that one out okay i talked to tony glover a little bit even though yeah so i'm sure there's some guys out there that'll know you know what chassis mm-19 was and yeah you know it must have been a pretty good car qualified in for the brickyard 400 it was faster than three quarters the rest of the cars that showed up so you know i think there was 90 cars 99 yeah that first race everybody wanted to be in it and so paid 100 000 just to start the damn thing well and then so here was the thing that you and i talked about so they had four indie indy 500 drivers they had aj foyt jeff braban uh they had john andretti and danny o'sullivan so that was four people out of all the winston regulars and everybody else that tried to put a car in the field but then if after this car finished at the awards banquet the purse was only like thirty two thousand dollars for for that but then a guy that you know said i wrote a check to danny sullivan for four hundred thousand dollars just to drive the car and i was like going danny sullivan made you know 16 or 20 times more than the car actually brought home in a purse but he kept all the damn doors on it like it's still there so he didn't do too bad and you know nobody was shoving cameras in his face when it was over it's uh he quietly went away and it quietly went into a garage so and now it's back here no it's cool i'm glad it's going to a good home yeah i bought it i wasn't necessarily a fan of danny or any of that but i knew it needed to get saved that's what you know and that's what i thought put buying it and putting in dawn's museum was a good place for it that's why i forgot i had it yeah and i'm calling that spaceport and i go i go 99 card goes who is this what how'd it go trasbell indianapolis blah blah blah why are you calling me i go you have a black 99 car he said i'll call you i wear a space board i'll call you with a guy and he called me and he said when you're coming down so i walked over to grandpa and because we were racing that weekend and you know and i walked over to grandpa i said do we have a black 99 because he looked at me he said yeah that's in dawn's museum oh that one yeah that one yeah who who wants i mean it unless you're from india if it's not a burger king it doesn't say good wrench on a real but it doesn't say kodak on it anymore who the hell else once other than a kid that grew up in basically speedway indiana and caught the window and cheered his hometown car on and now we're taking it back home going to be like you and that's bud mcgee in the 43. have you have you sat in it yet i haven't even i didn't set it sitting at the at the speedway or at the museum or no this is the first time when it was here i didn't sit in it well it was it was stuck in coveted land forever yeah and you couldn't get it out of the museum and you had to move two petty cars and two race trucks just even here yeah that was quite the adventure just to wedge it out of there so he sent me photos and he was like man i like you but this has been a long day and uh we had half the museums and a half year shop and don miller's like don't scratch this how did you first hear that that the car existed still be that he had it see how did you get a hold of him to ask him about it so i'll send you these but there that is them moving petty car petty car and putting it on rollers just to get it out of the museum and it was the worst ever and that was it so they had to move all those cars to get it out that door back there crazy and then put everything scoot everything down and then for me i saw it floating around the internet it was sitting next to a continental bathroom tissue like a thunderbird and then it was about mark martin yeah and then it's but it was at kathy's place for their sports marketing thing and then of course they got a divorce and it was sitting on facebook marketplace and aaron's like it's not on there anymore i bought it so but your son contacted you yeah i think so and then you just i just google search it they said you were we're happy to have this whatever and it was sitting back in one of these corners and add to the fleet and and uh hopefully we'll find time to work on this thing did the did the the quality test are you going to turn it into a days of thunder's car and if that answers no then you move on to the next question is it quite an interview he said now this is going to be the price and that's it and uh so once that didn't scare me off and there's like why the hell do you want this and when what are you gonna i said aaron i'm gonna have you do the work dang all right well i'll meet you at the motorsports museum that just puts more work for me so you're gonna get in it yeah oh yeah are you gonna get in it well i think you should get in at first all right you even sat it's you haven't i'm surprised you have not no god if i were you first thing i would do is hop in this car and jiggle the steering wheel like a seven-year-old pretending to drive why would you not do that no so how old were you when you watched that race so i'm 48 and that was in 1994. so i don't know i went to indiana and did bad math but it's uh i thought first day gosh man what a crazy why do we do this uh i don't know i feel like these kind of things they just i mean they leave an imprint down here for this stuff i did yeah because i mean granted i live in the mo i'm in the racing capital of the world but it's nothing compared to this street alone what's the best way feet first just dive in head first no you got to remember i owned a general lee definitely i owned a general lead for 18 years and i put that part don't get harry's car so i was able to get in and out of my general league quicker than i could with the door but i got a rougher shoulder now man definitely takes thermal yeah yeah pop that out what are you what are you feeling right now oh it's crazy man damn it don't make me cry on tv i cried on benwicky on youtube but nobody knows yet but [Music] it's not bad for my first time you got it you got to figure it out man they are so close [Music] man that's a bad probably goes this way a little bit better damn all right aaron so what is it clutch it in first or not first ignition turn ignition off oh just bump it over and make sure it's not in gear so there you go hit that one up all right you're not in here go ahead turn it clutch is in though yeah so bump it over one more time and clutch out you're good hit the ignition go all right how'd that feel life is good i'm gonna turn that back off bro look at me look at you you're doing it it does smell i didn't know anything about a damn door pad we actually got that from next door from billy it's the period correct one from yes sir did it always just say danny yeah on all of his cars it never said sullivan just danny all of his cars just and he's from louisville he's just danny no he's the good danny aaron there's a you can't slide off the foot pedal going to the passenger side either that's just how he drove it that is so crazy but how adjustable were the pedals going back home does yeah super fast you feel like a full circle yeah it's bananas and i'm in the car that i saw it the 1994 brickyard 400 that is coming back to indianapolis so it's good life is good if i can get back out we'll just push you in the trailer oh my god junior used to go head first not too bad dude i'm way too tall for head first but owning a generally for 18 years helps so you've done a lot of interesting things with a lot of cars where does this and like sitting in there and turning it on right now this one's up there i mean so i own the first generally from the dukes of hazard i spent years looking for it it's like finding the millennium falcon and being a star wars fan but i had to keep my mouth shut because it wasn't for sale this one was for sale but how much do you put into it and then you trust somebody like aaron to not that was our thing how do you not screw it up so when i first bought the first general lee everything else is a replica and then of course we jumped to general lee and then jumped one for mtv and had lots of fun so i'm in and out of the windows no problem but uh that's pretty big without using a can just push it in and give it some gas yeah and when you see it come up here stuff that would help all right so it's got a flapper about that so make sure you put a screwdriver down there all right so making sure i'm not done tell me what this is again this when you used to go the track that was the the chevrolet number and you had to have this it had to be on there in order to race it and then we kind of evolved like at dei we chopped up those noses so much on them speedway cars yeah we made a mold and made our own noses actually tim tim clements that works here made the mold for all the speedway cars and we made our own carbon fiber nose do you know where the morgan mclaren number is on the the tag somewhere on an aluminum tag riveted somewhere around here right there from the front yeah right there it is oh wait mc-19 morgan mcclure 19. so do you know the back story of how this thing ended up from mcclure to indianapolis and chris virtue kathy kathy virtue she's been in the nascar business for a long long long time and she had sports marketing and all kinds of stuff with her husband yep and so they did this deal you know inaugural brickyard 400. well 99 cars show up oddly enough well and they had uh it was supposed to be the 99 cent checkers pizza because i have the checkers uniform so everything at checkers was 99 cents sodas malts hot dogs or whatever else and then of course this guy came along and said hey let's do this and let's put danny sullivan in it and even though he was already the injured driver and entered driver but then they went from 99 cent check well we didn't have checkers in indiana so it really made no sense even though we don't have winn dixie and bojangles they still raise the cars but he blew it up on uh chevrolet practice day in a red fire suit i sent you the pictures of that yeah and and he's pushing it that's amazing the pictures you've come up with the people that have come out of the woodwork uh ever since our goofy conversation and were like okay travis you're the only person i'll sell it to why because everybody else wanted to make it a day's a sunday car a damn day's a thing i had so many phone calls so i want to do this and i want to do that and i was just like nope nope i could have sold this car a hundred times i don't know and i was like nope nope nope yeah so i didn't and then travis called me and he's like danny sullivan i was at the racetrack when the window blew out i'm like all right we might be on to something here yeah oh i want to keep the car just like it was and we're going to put it back together i don't want to do anything because it's all original decals yeah this car is the body is out how it raced at the first brickyard 400. i mean i worked at rick mass we sat on the pole and they beat us you got to think though out of the 43 or whatever starters went that day and all the other cars either got turned into a bush car or not raced again somewhere else it got into an arc team there's none there's no one car that started that race that day that is as it started to race like this and even the winning car gordon because they had a couple of dollars and they they replied they wrecked it and the race i think they wrecked it at pocono because you clipped it and then i mean it's over there all restored now but it's not these are the this is what it this is this is it they they made it in 99 cars so on second day qualifying he qualifies 26 i mean come on now and of course when you come through indeed where did he did he finished twenty thirty third thirty seven so because i think we finished twenty he lost he lost five laps because of this because the window blew out big he needed to caution because him and rick get together and he slammed the wall and but of course at indy's so big when you go through one and then two if you slide through two you scrub off all your speed on the back stretch and in qualifications he had this thing sideways and so when he's coming back through three on his warm-up clap at her lap and everybody's clapping and he just thought oh well i'm danny sullivan thanks so much and he comes back around he said partner you put it 26 in the field and he couldn't believe it himself it's just a cool story that this car is still you know and kathy had sat in her barn for 30 years yeah how did she end up with that she owned it so then they put that plaque on it and they had it they had it in her little they had it in her little warehouse and then when her and her husband got a divorce she ended up with it yeah yeah so yeah and then uh they moved it she just lived in a neighborhood so it was in her neighborhood and uh along comes aaron brown and says all right uh i i don't know what we'll do with it but it shouldn't just sit in your garage we're gonna figure out how to strap this thing down yep so what is the proper all right so when strapping in the trailer don't grab these oh there's a hook right there there's two hooks yeah there you go all right mitch you see that yeah just make sure those hooks um make sure they uh clears it may be close after one of the first videos we did with the garage shop some of you guys linked me to the vinwicki video with travis in the corporate car which i watched and i was like wow that that's really cool that guy is like all in you could tell that thing just just lights him up he actually reached out to me when he was driving out here and said hey we're gonna pick up the car you should come out and film something i'm like oh absolutely i will be there if you want to know the entire story you can go watch the vinwicki video with travis there's four more pictures for more details he kind of goes over the synopsis of it but that is the last car that is in its original condition from that race that's it that's a crazy piece of history i don't know could you could you tell how pumped he was to sit in that thing yeah like i think that's cool because i think not a lot of people have that fire for something if that makes sense a lot of people yeah they might like football or they might like a certain car or something but they don't get that excited and fired up just passionate about it like to go search for that specific car and have it restored to its glory once we weren't filming he was um talking to his wife on the phone or whatever and the verbage he used i thought was very interesting he said i'm a happy kid right now and to me i feel that because a while back i discovered the more i explore things that i was interested in when i was a little kid the happier i am now it's like those things are just they are the buttons that still poke my interest today and i could tell that he was feeling that when he was looking at that car and sitting about it sitting and thinking about it it's just the fact that he used that verb which kind of confirmed that for me so i challenge you think about what you were into when you were five six seven eight nine ten years old somewhere around there and go indulge that a little bit as long as it's legal but i promise you you will find a type of happiness and interest that you may have not had before i found it you could tell travis found it i'm sure aaron found it by preserving the history of all that stuff in there which by the way you can check out on the garage shop youtube channel uh this is only the tip of the iceberg because kind of history stuff is why we moved here so if you like that too you should subscribe because you'll be in the right place for it yeah also we are still working on the monte carlo update video be coming about on that soon making some fan stuff you can find the things we're wearing at staplesonautoworks.com i'm not going to do a huge plug here no yeah not not what you're wearing that's what you were to the gym this morning but we got hoodies t-shirts all that stuff yeah go go check it out not gonna drag it out this was just cool i'm glad to participate and i want to know leave a comment and let me know what you think the coolest part about this car was but the fact that it's still all original that travis is so pumped about it that he watched it that he had a piece of the window or that it had a button to make the window pop out in the first place there's just save that for that long like a piece of a broken window yeah he's still what the hell would think to do that unless they really cared yeah exactly it's like it's just crazy i'm glad you guys are here and i'm i'm glad you made it this far because that tells me you you share the same interest in this kind of stuff that we do so welcome to the team

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Id: CQMReEDut7I

Length: 31min 35sec (1895 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021