The Fred Farndon Story: My 50-year Love Affair with Drag Racing

Chapter One

As told to Steven Justice, Nitrogeezers.com
All Photos Courtesy of Fred Farndon

This nitro geezer was born on September 4, 1938 in Toronto, Canada, but actually grew up in Highland Creek, which is a small town 18 miles from downtown Toronto. I initially got the racing "bug" doing what a lot of young males did. I hung-out with the neighborhood "gear heads", which at that time raced stock cars. Now, what we are actually talking about is ’35 and ’40 Ford coupes outfitted with flathead engines. They had a garage and I got to do a lot of the mundane jobs, like sweeping the floor, cleaning parts, and running errands; cool stuff for a 13-year old kid. Toronto Exhibition Fairgrounds had a quarter-mile, paved, oval track, and they had races there every week. Finally, one Friday I was invited to tag along. That was it. I was hooked. The excitement, the engines, and of course, going fast!

Because my neighbors, the Keeler Bros., wanted to rule the racing scene, they took out the flatheads and installed 292 cid OHV engines. The whole concept of installing a big monster OHV engine in a little Ford coupe set the hook even deeper. The Keeler Bros. did dominate the roundy-round scene with these big OHV-powered coupes, but let me digress with a little story about this. If they did not win, it was because another driver cut ‘em or banged into them. Now, this usually led to a big brawl in the pits, and they being Golden Glove-caliber boxers, never lost. However, I wasn’t so similarly gifted, and being only 5’9" and 150 lbs. didn’t help. I figured I would eventually get my brains kicked-in, and that realization led me into the world of drag racing.

After school, I did what a lot of guys did back then. I worked at the grocery store, the bowling alley (no automatic pin-setters back then), and even did the whole lifeguard thing just to save enough money to buy my first car. I joined The Blockbusters, a local hot rod club, even though I didn’t own a car. In 1953 at the age of 15, I purchased a 1938 Chevy 2-door sedan with a straight six. This was quickly replaced with a 1948 Monarch convertible, a ’40 Ford coupe, a ’34 Ford, and on-and-on. I kept track of all the cars I owned for a long time; probably, 250 or more.

My first drag race was at Cayuga, Ontario. My 50-year love affair with drag racing started that day. The visual and audio experience was riveting; the roar of the engines, the exotic smell of the racing fuels, and the infinite variety of rods, coupes, and dragsters. I was especially attracted to a certain front-motored dragster running the nitromethane fuel. That Chrysler-powered nitro-burning dragster was owned by Jim Donald, a member of a rival car club and owner of an auto machine shop. I went to him and told him I wanted to build a dragster. He offered to sell me a chassis he had laying around in his back yard. I had no idea what I was buying, but I purchased it and took it to the barn that our car club used to work on cars. Basically, what I had was a chassis fabricated from old drive shaft tubing, a rear end, seat, radiator (yes, radiator), roll bar, and Ford floor shift transmission. All it needed was an engine. That was a problem. I couldn’t build a model airplane motor, much less a racing engine. Fortunately, my ex-neighbor’s, the Keller’s, had decided to get out of racing (sound familiar?). I bought one of the Ford OHV engines complete with Isky cam and 2 four-barrel carbs. It fit perfectly in the rail and I was off to Cayuga with my first dragster. I remember being more excited than scared. Anyway, this damn thing went straight as a string and ran 110 mph on its first pass. All in all, I ran a best of 112 mph at 12.xx and won the class trophy (C dragster?). I was not only hooked, but filleted, and fried, too.

Enter Jim Arnold, a life-long friend and influence on everything I did, then, and later in life. Jim was a member of our car club and owned an oddball ’32 Chevy coupe (everyone else had Fords). Worse, he had a "Jimmy" truck 6-cylinder motor in it. We had a garage where we worked on all of our cars. Although somewhat quiet and reserved, he was a master mechanic. I got the bright idea to buy and install a dual point distributor and a hot coil so my dragster could go even faster. I pulled-out the distributor, installed the points kit, but could not get it to start. Duh! Jim took pity on me, came over to help, and with his usual caustic comment, announced, ‘well, you f---ing moron, don’t you know how to set the timing’? We were friends for life. Back to the dragster; it was pretty homely so I decided to give it a make-over. I found a Fiat Topolino body and we attached it to the ugly chassis. Then, we replaced the Ford engine with a 364 cid nailhead engine that we found at a local wrecking yard. Other than a six-carburetor log manifold beneath six Stromberg ‘97s with progressive linkage, the motor was stock. It ran 120 mph and we had lots of fun with it.

In 1959, the NHRA Nationals were going to be held at Detroit Dragway, about a 4-hour drive from Toronto. We desperately wanted to be part of the experience even though we knew the little Fiat was outclassed. We added a nose piece to help the speed, but the extra weight actually made it go slower. We returned home and continued to race on our turf. Undaunted, we returned to the Nationals the next year, the last year it was held in Detroit. While there, we met a guy with a southern drawl that we suspected was just a "little full of it". Oh yeah, he had this Buick-powered ’40 Ford coupe with (2) 6:71 blowers on it, and he was going to build a lightweight dragster real soon. His name was Robinson and he drove all the way from Georgia just to see the Nationals. Yep, it was, indeed, ‘Sneaky’ Pete Robinson and he would win the Nationals at Indy in 1961 with his little light-weight Chevy dragster.

As I settled-in for another long Canadian winter, I started dreaming of a better ride, a dragster styled like a slingshot. I was always pouring over my Hot Rod magazines and saw pictures of Tommy Ivo’s single-engined Buick dragster. I thought that was the nicest-looking race car; and fast, too. So, I approached Jim (Arnold) about being equal partners on a serious race car. I laid-it-on pretty thick about how we could purchase one of Scotty Fenn’s kits (Chassis Research), have it shipped from California, and weld it up ourselves. In his typical under-stated manner, he said, "Let’s do it; how much is this going to cost me"? Now is a good time for a little side-bar on Jim Arnold. He was always thinking outside the box. He always thought it best to take a different approach. If it works and you start kickin’ ass with your combination, the other guys are going to be hard-pressed to give up on their investment and try and copy what’s beating them. Jim taught me not to be a follower, and to this day, I’m not. Thank you Jim!

With Jim in on the project, I started calling California for all the stuff we would need to build the dragster. We got a Chassis Research K-88 from Scotty Fenn, Isky cam, and Hilborn fuel injection. I said, "Give me the same parts you sell Ivo". (Yeah, right!) Anyhow, we had everything shipped to a buddy in Niagara Falls, NY to avoid the 40% duty on speed equipment and dealing with the impossible Canadian customs nightmare. Once everything was in Canada, it took Jim and me only six weeks to put it all together. We hooked the engine up to a Cad/LaSalle tranny (using a bicycle chain and sprockets to the shifter) and a Chrysler rear-end. With Inglewood slicks and a fabricated aluminum body, it looked like a real dragster. And better, it ran like one, too. We never lost our class races that first year, and we set track records with that car for B/GD at Cayuga, Desoronto/St. Thomas, and Niagara Falls. Jim adjusted the valves and we changed the oil every race, and that pretty much summed up our routine maintenance. It was a bracket car before its time, running 135-138 mph; every run in the 10s. Yup, we had something different alright, and it drove everyone in Ontario and upstate New York nuts for two seasons.

The evitable quest for more horsepower got us thinking about putting a blower on the Buick and running it on gas in AA/GD. But, neither of us had any experience with superchargers and the thought of it was a little intimidating. A guy I knew, Jerry Haman, not only drove a supercharged dragster, but managed Niagara Dragway. So, off we go to Niagara to race the Buick and pick Jerry’s brain. As luck and good fortune would have it, Jerry is scheduled to race the legendary Setto Postoian in a match race that day. Setto was one of the ‘baddest of the bad’ in those days, and his purple, full-bodied, nitro-burner would smoke the hides from start to finish. The race result was bad for Jerry but, in the end, good for us. He lost the race, exploded the engine, decided he was done driving, and sold the dragster to us cheap. Us, also meant Jim Halge (aka Helga Oksa, the tall, skinny Finn), now. Halge ponies-up some $$$, Jim taps the old savings account, and I slither over to the finance company vultures for a loan. We sold the Fenn car and in a few weeks time, the Haman car is in Highland Creek and Farndon-Arnold-Oska team is on their way to fame and fortune. We would spend countless hours in our little shop in Highland Creek that winter tearing apart and re-assembling that dragster for the upcoming season. Stay tuned for the debut of Farndon-Arnold-Oska team.

The next installment will highlight the years 1963 through 1966. During this time the team moved up from AA/GD to AA/FD, secured sponsorship from Karbelt’s Speed Shop, and started to match race extensively. Fred will also give us his "My First Pass in a Supercharged Dragster" recollection. Also, the infamous race with Fred matched against Tommy Ivo and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And, as always, lots of great photographs and other memorabilia-ed.

CONTINUE TO Chapter Two