About October 1968

About October 1968, I went to the Manufactures Meet at OCIR, with Mike Burkhart, who was competing there. We got there a couple days early, and had a chance to see some sights, and visit a few speed-parts manufactures. Never had been out west before, so it was a learning experience. I had seen the funny cars at some small local races, but had not paid that close attention to them. At this race that's all there was, maybe a hundred of them. And of course there were the California girls. The girls in Texas didn't look or dress like that. This event sort of set the stage for the next six years.

I decided right then, I would like to have one these cars, and do some traveling. We got home the next week, and it just happened that Burkhart had his '67 funny car for sale.

He wanted $3300.00 for it. I had never seen that much money at one time, so it looked like I would need some partners to make this work. I requited a couple old friends, Jim Duncan and John Schultz, eleven-hundred each later we were in business. A lot of work went into up-dating, but in the end it looked like this. Taken at San Antonio drag strip 1969.

We raced the car kind of as a second "Mike Burkhart" car for bookings purposes. When we would race each other, we had a sign made, "The Stinger", that we would tape over his name. The following are a couple pictures from early 1969 taken at "Little River Dragway" located near Temple Texas. This track was a very narrow old two lane farm-to-market road. No guard-rails, only a chain-link fence for crowd control, and it was right on the edge of the strip. There wasn't any return road, so the strip served for that as well. Because of the lack of room, we would tow both race cars, with one tow car.

Just prior to Memorial Day 1969, I more or less retired from my car and went to work full time for Big Mike. He was taking delivery on a new '69 Chevy Nova, to be driven by Mart Higgenbotham. I worked the remainder of the year, for Mike towing one or the other of the following cars around the country. On numerous occasions neither him or Mart could make a race, due to business commitments, and I got to drive each car at small or lesser named tracks. That served as my first experience driving blown cars. Didn't take long to learn you can't go back.

I purchased the red and blue body in 2000, but wasn't able to find a early Don Hardy chassis. Anyone reading this that knows of one for sale, let me know. fcrollin@sbcglobal.net

Dave Ray