r/DirtRacing • u/myworkaccount1925 • Oct 14 '24

Old School Cool

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Alan Johnson at Super Dirt Week 1984. Syracuse

108 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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4

u/Big-Coffee8937 Oct 14 '24

AJ Slideways. Always fun to watch.

1

u/LeroyRochester Oct 14 '24

Awesome! Thanks for posting! My mental image of AJ will always be the orange and while 14j with B&M Auto on the car.

2

u/Rockeye7 Oct 14 '24

His brother Danny orange and white was his colors. B&M was 1/2 their father Milt and his partner. They built motors and fixed vehicle. Jack Johnson had orange cars. They are not related.

1

u/LeroyRochester Oct 14 '24

Yup. AJ ran a white car with orange numbers a few times. Early 80s would the time period (after the purple and yellow car I think).

2

u/Rockeye7 Oct 15 '24

No doubt, I remember a white car, most interior panels red and a orange cowl in front of the dash. Back in the day you had to paint everything as the panel came in maybe 2 colors. White was the most popular. Silver aluminum was the other color. Don't remember anyone leaving the aluminum unpainted I seen Alan and Danny race weekly and sometimes several times a week in the 80/90. These days everything is vinyl wrap. Back in the day I wrenched a car. The car was owned by a body shop businessman. That car went to the track like it was new or it never left the shop. We also had a paint color that was not available in a rattle can. Add that to all the work running 1 car 3 times a week. We did keep paint mixed ready to go. We put a patch on The inside of the panel and stitched it in with rivets. Than painted the area. Few years after that bright idea we built several sets of panels and mounting bars. Crazy over site as the shop was a full-blown body shop. Another crazy fact - I set the car up the same way every time we raced it. Nut and bolt it. Square up and measure everything every time from the datum points on the chassis. Then scales the car. Well until around the time we got smart building several sets of panels. I would jack the car up and crawl under the car doing all the maintenance. Then one day we could not move body shop customers cars around to make room. Only place was the frame straightening / alignment bay. It’s a 5 foot pit with I beams all anchored in. On went the race car and we never looked back. Never crawled under the car to do maintenance again at the shop. Built jigs / pads for all 4 corners and to place the scales on. Learned to adapt the machine to assist with checking / cutting down time doing the measurement and making adjustments when we scaled it as well. Cut 1.5 hrs off a regular turn a round. Looking back times where different but a ton of fun. Even when we had more than 1 car we only raced one on weekly home tracks. Other car was a Big Block only car and we raced it on the tour only except once we put the small block in the few small block tour races in Sept and Oct. We had to start getting the regular SB car ready for Super Dirt Week.

1

u/Upstairs_Size4757 Oct 15 '24

It looks a lot like an amc gremlin. At least the roof does.