Overdrive
- 1930s roadster. While engines and the mechanisms to extract horsepower were lightly available even by modern standards, the rest of the car was a petite step eliminated from the horse-and-buggy era.
“A lot of us guys had an interest in hopping up cars, and I eventually said, ‘Let’s get a little organization together.’ So we met in one of the guys’ garage. Armistice Day, the 11th of November, 1937, and cooked up the logo and the name, the Road Ramblers. We all had black shirts — real shirts, not T-shirts — and license plates with the logo on them. The plates all had numbers on them. I had plate number one.”
Road Ramblers today: Bill Russo, Nolan Wright, Ralph Sawde, Bill Holt. “To get into our club you had to have a car that would do eighty miles an hour.”
Pic by Byron Pepper
Nolan Wright is 78, brief and wiry, with a good head of white hair and a face that remains boyishly gorgeous, lightly identifiable as the youthfull man in the 57-year-old photos.
On a latest afternoon we sat in the den of his condo on Soledad Mountain and went through a folder labeled “Road Ramblers.” There was the picture of all the club members gathered in the meeting room of a long-vanished restaurant in Balboa Park, their black shirts and ties providing them a vaguely menacing, paramilitary appearance.
It was the eighth of January, 1939, and there were two thousand people gathered for the time trials. The very first cop to demonstrate up on the scene was coming from the Poway side.
There were yellowing newspaper dippings, letters written on stationery with the Road Ramblers letterhead, photographs of cars, and sheet after sheet of times and speeds recorded at the Ramblers’ time trials.
“To get into our club you had to have a car that would do eighty miles an hour. Now, eighty miles an hour, a true clocking, was pretty good. A stock Ford V-8, a ’32, ’33, ’34, had to be tuned pretty good to do that. I had a ’34 coupe, it looked totally stock, but it was supercharged and would do over a hundred. That was a running commence, not a quarter-mile haul; we had a lot of room to wind up. That car was very prompt, but I had a problem with the radiator.
“I had a tachometer on one of the hubs of the water pump, and one time I revved it up to about five thousand rpms in low gear and the tach drive came off the hub and flew into the fan, arched the fan, and made a big crease in the radiator. I didn’t have enough money to get a fresh radiator, so I just had a radiator fellow solder it up, and I lost a lot of cooling. I was running a water pump out of a truck, a high-volume job, and that radiator was so constricted that it wouldn’t circulate enough, and it would throw most of the water out in the run-up. Steam pockets would form in the head. By the time I got to the time trap, it’d fever up and I’d crack a head: Pinnng! Ding, ding ding, ding. I’d put in the clutch and coast the last half of the trap, still average over ninety miles an hour.
“I never figured out what the problem was until I loaned my supercharger to a friend — he had a ’35 roadster — to go run at Harper’s dry lake — now that’s Andrews Air Force Base where they land the space shuttle. I went rabbit hunting out by Julian, and to get out of there you had to come up the Banner Grade. I scarcely made it up there; that ’34 kept overheating and that’s when I ultimately understood that the radiator was the cause of my problems. I got a fresh radiator, but we’d lost our speed disrobe by then, so I never knew just what that car would indeed do.”
By the late ’30s, Southern California already had the highest per capita number of cars in the world and most certainly the highest number of hot rods. Youthful boys had been hopping up cars for more speed since the very first automobiles were sold. and Southern California had always been at the leading edge of the hot-rod culture. Up in LA., a little clothing called Bell Auto Parts, embarked as a wrecking yard in 1919, had evolved into the world’s very first “speed shop,” selling carbs, cams, and goes that turned sedate Model Ts and As into racing machines. For $100, an overhead-valve Crager head and a Winfield racing carburetor boosted the Model A’s four-cylinder output from forty one horsepower to a fire-breathing 86. When Ford came out with a V-8 in 1932, it was a hot rodder’s wish come true, an affordable car with almost unlimited power potential.
The downside was that while engines and the technics necessary to extract horsepower were lightly available even by modern standards, the rest of the car was still just a puny step liquidated from the horse-and-buggy era. Nolan just laughed when I asked him if brake and suspension modifications accompanied the souping up of their engines.
“The brakes on those things were terrible, and we didn’t even know what suspension meant! Some of the cars didn’t even have four-wheel brakes, and mechanical, not hydraulic, at that. We paid a lot of attention to what’s under the spandex hood, didn’t truly think too much about anything else.” Headlights were feeble affairs; tires were narrow, still mounted on wooden-spoked rims on the older cars. It all combines to make Nolan’s youthful exploits even more astounding.
“Once we formed the club, we joined the Southern California Timing Association. They had a meeting at Clifton’s Cafeteria in Los Angeles, I think it was the very first Monday of every month. The meeting commenced at eight o’clock. I had a hard time getting home from work and switching to leave San Diego by six! But, you know, I was never very late for one of those meetings. The old road ran right through the middle of all the towns up the coast, and. I’d slow down through them, but in inbetween, 80, ninety miles an hour all the way. The road was narrow and twisty, and we took some side roads to miss some of the towns. Talk about daredevil; I’m fortunate I got away with it! One night we timed it, it took two hours and five minutes. Coming home I wouldn’t be so chesty, maybe take fifteen minutes longer. That ’34 V-8 had an overdrive and lots of power; it wasn’t any strain for it to roll along ninety miles an hour all day long.”
Overdrive, San Diego Reader
Overdrive
- 1930s roadster. While engines and the technics to extract horsepower were lightly available even by modern standards, the rest of the car was a petite step liquidated from the horse-and-buggy era.
“A lot of us guys had an interest in hopping up cars, and I eventually said, ‘Let’s get a little organization together.’ So we met in one of the guys’ garage. Armistice Day, the 11th of November, 1937, and cooked up the logo and the name, the Road Ramblers. We all had black shirts — real shirts, not T-shirts — and license plates with the logo on them. The plates all had numbers on them. I had plate number one.”
Road Ramblers today: Bill Russo, Nolan Wright, Ralph Sawde, Bill Holt. “To get into our club you had to have a car that would do eighty miles an hour.”
Picture by Byron Pepper
Nolan Wright is 78, brief and wiry, with a good head of white hair and a face that remains boyishly cool, lightly identifiable as the youthfull man in the 57-year-old photos.
On a latest afternoon we sat in the den of his condo on Soledad Mountain and went through a folder labeled “Road Ramblers.” There was the picture of all the club members gathered in the meeting room of a long-vanished restaurant in Balboa Park, their black shirts and ties providing them a vaguely menacing, paramilitary appearance.
It was the eighth of January, 1939, and there were two thousand people gathered for the time trials. The very first cop to display up on the scene was coming from the Poway side.
There were yellowing newspaper dippings, letters written on stationery with the Road Ramblers letterhead, photographs of cars, and sheet after sheet of times and speeds recorded at the Ramblers’ time trials.
“To get into our club you had to have a car that would do eighty miles an hour. Now, eighty miles an hour, a true clocking, was pretty good. A stock Ford V-8, a ’32, ’33, ’34, had to be tuned pretty good to do that. I had a ’34 coupe, it looked totally stock, but it was supercharged and would do over a hundred. That was a running embark, not a quarter-mile haul; we had a lot of room to wind up. That car was very swift, but I had a problem with the radiator.
“I had a tachometer on one of the hubs of the water pump, and one time I revved it up to about five thousand rpms in low gear and the tach drive came off the hub and flew into the fan, arched the fan, and made a big crease in the radiator. I didn’t have enough money to get a fresh radiator, so I just had a radiator fellow solder it up, and I lost a lot of cooling. I was running a water pump out of a truck, a high-volume job, and that radiator was so constricted that it wouldn’t circulate enough, and it would throw most of the water out in the run-up. Steam pockets would form in the head. By the time I got to the time trap, it’d warmth up and I’d crack a head: Pinnng! Ding, ding ding, ding. I’d put in the clutch and coast the last half of the trap, still average over ninety miles an hour.
“I never figured out what the problem was until I loaned my supercharger to a friend — he had a ’35 roadster — to go run at Harper’s dry lake — now that’s Andrews Air Force Base where they land the space shuttle. I went rabbit hunting out by Julian, and to get out of there you had to come up the Banner Grade. I scarcely made it up there; that ’34 kept overheating and that’s when I eventually understood that the radiator was the cause of my problems. I got a fresh radiator, but we’d lost our speed unclothe by then, so I never knew just what that car would indeed do.”
By the late ’30s, Southern California already had the highest per capita number of cars in the world and most certainly the highest number of hot rods. Youthfull dudes had been hopping up cars for more speed since the very first automobiles were sold. and Southern California had always been at the leading edge of the hot-rod culture. Up in LA., a little garment called Bell Auto Parts, commenced as a wrecking yard in 1919, had evolved into the world’s very first “speed shop,” selling carbs, cams, and goes that turned sedate Model Ts and As into racing machines. For $100, an overhead-valve Crager head and a Winfield racing carburetor boosted the Model A’s four-cylinder output from forty one horsepower to a fire-breathing 86. When Ford came out with a V-8 in 1932, it was a hot rodder’s desire come true, an affordable car with almost unlimited power potential.
The downside was that while engines and the technologies necessary to extract horsepower were lightly available even by modern standards, the rest of the car was still just a puny step liquidated from the horse-and-buggy era. Nolan just laughed when I asked him if brake and suspension modifications accompanied the souping up of their engines.
“The brakes on those things were terrible, and we didn’t even know what suspension meant! Some of the cars didn’t even have four-wheel brakes, and mechanical, not hydraulic, at that. We paid a lot of attention to what’s under the bondage mask, didn’t indeed think too much about anything else.” Headlights were feeble affairs; tires were narrow, still mounted on wooden-spoked rims on the older cars. It all combines to make Nolan’s youthful exploits even more incredible.
“Once we formed the club, we joined the Southern California Timing Association. They had a meeting at Clifton’s Cafeteria in Los Angeles, I think it was the very first Monday of every month. The meeting embarked at eight o’clock. I had a hard time getting home from work and switching to leave San Diego by six! But, you know, I was never very late for one of those meetings. The old road ran right through the middle of all the towns up the coast, and. I’d slow down through them, but in inbetween, 80, ninety miles an hour all the way. The road was narrow and twisty, and we took some side roads to miss some of the towns. Talk about daredevil; I’m fortunate I got away with it! One night we timed it, it took two hours and five minutes. Coming home I wouldn’t be so chesty, maybe take fifteen minutes longer. That ’34 V-8 had an overdrive and lots of power; it wasn’t any strain for it to roll along ninety miles an hour all day long.”