Tuesday 27 February 2018

Rollin with Ricky Bobby's Rod Shop

Gerber Spl

Several years ago I found a book written by John Gerber.

John was an American oval dirt track car driver. His book details many years of racing and car building.
His most successful car during the depression years, was called the Gerber special.

Having read John's detailed description I couldn't help but begin to sketch some dimensions and before long, John's book had pencil notes and scaling grids all over the printed photos. My result can be seen if you follow the index on the side bar of this page (I have just noticed that the photos have disappeared, I will reinstate these asap. The index is under "outlaw" racer or similar).

Recently I spotted a very close representation of the same car and with a bit of internet sleuthing I found a great description of the build here:https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/john-gerbers-1920s-sprint-car.999603/page-3
This build is a near perfect representation of John's car apart from a slightly different engine.
It is certainly alive again as you can see from the video.

My own build was a representation in the spirit of John's car.
Reverse engineering is great fun.... hopefully one day soon I will be able to return to it.





Here is my own Spirit of:



Note, the rear axle is simply rolled under the rear to save space, it is really another 24" longer wheelbase.