J D Zink
J D ZINK: PORTRAIT OF A JET CAR DRIVER
by Steven Justice
“.....it was for the fun and the glory.....”
Driving Jack Birdwell’s Scorpion at Fremont Raceway (1969); the flagman?
He immediately dove
for the ground
GETTING REVVED UP
With the exception of the years I drove for Romeo Palamides and attended law school in Davis, I’ve lived in Chico, California all my life. The same goes for Doug Timmons, lifelong friend and my current racing partner with our record-setting A class junior fueler. By 1959 my enthusiasm for anything involving cars was deeply etched in my psyche. Hanging out with friends and working on cars were my favorite pastimes although I probably wasn’t the best mechanic out there. I went to my first drag race in 1960. I really got the drag racing bug after a trip to Medford, Oregon for a race. There were several slingshots at that event and I knew that was for me. I returned home, and at the first opportunity, contacted local racer and chassis builder Noel Black. I bought a 92” bare frame made from drive shaft tubing, got my spoke wheels and rear end, and put an unblown Chrysler engine into it. I went back to Redding, passed tech as a B/GD, and turned 110 mph on my first run down the track. At the time, I thought that was really fast. Other than Redding, I raced a lot in southern Oregon. There was a car club called the Southern Oregon Wheelers and we worked out a deal to mate my chassis with their engine and body. We added a supercharger and ran A/competition coupe. In 1961, we put my engine in it and I took over the driving chores. Though it was still running gasoline, this blown Chrysler ’47 Topolino Fiat coupe ran 155 mph.
My dragster chassis in the Wheelers’ A/Competition Coupe: “The Zombie”
The Zombie with my engine and yours truly driving; 1961
Later, I took the body off The Zombie and just ran A/GD, and this allowed me to squeeze another 10 mph out of it. I mainly raced locally at Redding and Oroville. In 1962 I started driving for other guys. First, Jack Birdwell’s top gas dragster, and later that year, my first top fuel ride. If the cars looked primitive, ditto for the safety equipment. My standard outfit in those days was: leather jacket, open-faced helmet with dark glasses, and a 4-point restraint system.
Two shots of Jack Birdwell’s 430 cid Lincoln in my Noel Black chassis; Oroville (1961)
My initiation to top fuel began with the Brown-Fator team from Redding. Fator had a Palamides chassis with a 354 cid Chrysler that they took from Brown’s drag boat. It was in this car that I made my first 180 mph pass. It was one of the few cars that could get the Algon injectors to work. Almost all the racing was done at Redding Drag Strip although we did manage some forays to Vaca Valley (Vacaville) for their Saturday night program and Fremont for the Sunday drags.
Brown-Fator top fuel dragster; my first fuel ride; 1962
THE UNTOUCHABLES
In 1963 as I was getting acclimatized to the smell of nitromethane, Jack Birdwell was negotiating a deal with Romeo Palamides to buy a jet dragster. The terms of this purchase was all put into a binding contract. One of the stipulations of the deal involved Palamides being able to lease the car back should anything happen to his Untouchable jet dragster. At the time “Jet Car” Bob Smith was touring with the Untouchable back east, and unfortunately, crashed the race car at Union Grove, Wisconsin when the chute failed to deploy. Bob was OK, but the jet was totaled. So, Jack’s jet goes back to Palamides to insure that the balance of the commitments were met. Later that same year, Bob Smith had another accident at Union Grove severe enough to land him in the hospital. So much for Untouchable 1 and Untouchable 2; scrap two jet dragsters. In 1964, Palamides built two jet cars virtually identical to each other. Untouchable 3 would be for race dates on the East Coast, and the other belonging to Jack Birdwell, for bookings on the West Coast. The West Coast promoters finally began to see the marketing potential of the jets and Romeo wanted to take advantage of the situation by leasing back (again) Jack’s jet. Based on all the experiences from 1963, Jack was pretty weary about who was going to drive his jet. The guy he had in mind was me, and that is how I got to be a jet car driver. It was the summer of 1964; I was a student at Chico State, and working in a lumber mill up around Yreka. On July 2, I got a call from Romeo to come on down to Oakland and he’d give me a primer on how to operate a jet dragster. When I got there, we went out to the tie down pad at the Oakland Airport so we could run the engine at full throttle and that, more or less, was the extent of my preparation. When the session was over he said, “”You are ready to go racing”!!
The first race date was just two days away (July 4th at Madras, Oregon), and on the way up to the track, we also had to stop at Bend so I could take the FAA flight physical prerequisite for the competition license needed to drive the jets.
My jet license signed by Bernie Partridge
That summer I went from top fuel driver to unlimited jet driver. Basically, there were three agendas: exhibition runs only, jets vs. dragsters, and jets vs. jets. Racing top fuel dragsters was really inviting trouble. First, we had two 16-foot ring slot parachutes, and these got tangled up with the dragsters on more than one occasion. Second, the dragster had to get out of the gate on the jet because the engine literally sucked all the oxygen out of the air; nothing like getting suffocated while you are getting torched. My first jet vs. dragster race was at Kent, Washington against Jerry Ruth. We were still having after burner problems, so “The King” beat us. But, that was soon to change.
My first jet vs. dragster race: Kent, WA against the always tough Jerry “the King” Ruth (he won!)
On Labor Day we were suppose to race Ron Miller and the Valkyrie jet then owned by Mickey Thompson. But, they were having problems, so we made solo runs that day. Romeo Palamides used General Electric J47s ( Arfons used Westinghouse J46s) in Untouchables number one, two, five, and six; and Allison J35s in numbers three and four. A typical run would produce a low seven or high six second elapsed time with top end speeds around 220-230 mph. But, when the weather was cool, performance really took off. That summer night in 1964 at Puyallup the Untouchable explored the five second/ 300 mph barrier on a very short track; a very scary experience. In 1965, Jack got Untouchable back and Romeo built two new cars, the Untouchable 5 and the California Kid (Untouchable 6) so they could match race each other. That lasted until one of the jets driven by Al Biscay crashed at Union Grove. Boy, that track was a real magnet for destroying Romeo’s jets.
How do you like my office? Air conditioned, too! Check out those parachutes!!
Untouchable IV; San Diego Raceway (Ramona) 1965
Racing Don "Mad Dog Cook" at Fremont
The Untouchable jet dragsters, and there would be six of them, weighed an average of 5000 lbs. Essentially, they were surplus military jet engines on wheels. They could be run very frequently with little maintenance. By contrast, the exhibition jet cars today weigh around 2000 lbs. Romeo’s GE J47s and Allison J35s burned #2 diesel or kerosene fuel. Back then, the smoke was produced by turning on the afterburner without actually lighting it. Today, the smoke is just for show and the popping sound is done by lighting the AB, shutting it off, and then repeating the steps. The AB (afterburner) is simply nozzles that spray raw fuel into the tail pipe. The little gimmick they do today to make smoke for the fans can be very hard on the engine. The compressor in a jet engine compresses the air in stages to the combustion chamber. If too much pressure builds up in the AB by switching it on and off, it can cause a backfire in the AB tailpipe and stall the compressor; just a good way to bend the compressor blades and junk an engine. I raced for Palamides from 1964 through 1968 and made enough money doing it to pay my way through Chico State. In 1969, during summer vacation, I drove for Jack Birdwell (he got Untouchable 4 back in 1965); the jet car he called the Scorpion. Back then, they were still flying the Scorpion all-weather interceptors. Jack had the Spokane National Guard renovate the engine and we went racing for the last time. There are a lot of reasons I quit the jet dragster circuit, but certainly, safety concerns were paramount in this decision to get out of the hot seat. The parachutes were surplus air force made of nylon that sometimes melted into nothing if the afterburner didn’t shut off fast enough at the end of a run. If that wasn’t enough, the cars had Ford F150 pickup drum brakes that were totally worthless at speeds above 80 mph. I experienced enough chute failures to know that I was playing Russian roulette with my life. There were so many mediocre tracks back then, and if you didn’t stop at the end of the outrun, the trees, rocks, or a hillside would do it for you. The other consideration was strictly monetary. After all those years risking my life for RP, I asked for a bigger percentage of the take. When Romeo didn’t go for it, I decided to finish college, get myself a good job, then build a safe and competitive race car that wasn’t a rolling death trap.
1968: my last year with Romeo Palamides and the Untouchables
The Timmons Bros. BBC AA/FD; J D at the wheel; Sacramento 1970
The Aftermath
After I was done with the jets, I hooked a ride with the Timmons Bros. Doug and his brothers got into drag racing around 1962. They had the same Noel Black build them a junior fueler which they campaigned for awhile, until Doug got this wild idea to put a Rat motor in the junior fueler. It was a crazy idea, so much so that no one would drive it simply because you couldn’t see anything. Doug ended up being the only one that would drive that set up. After that, they had a really nice Tuttle car with a Hanna body that I drove until 1972. Other than Doug and me, Gary Ormsby also took some laps in this car. The fun ended that year when Doug sold the race car. We had both recently married, I was in law school, and Doug up to his neck in work building custom cars and hot rods. For the good part of 30 years, neither of us raced. Then, in 2001 a unique sequence of events pushed me back to the drag strip. I was at the boarding terminal (SFO) with my wife waiting for a flight to Italy when 9/11 happened. That grounded all the vacation plans to Italy, so we just decided to spend the two weeks traveling around the West. It was during one of our stops at Las Vegas that we decided to take in the Goodguys race. I ended up buying Dean Carter’s junior fuel dragster and here I am. Would I ever jump into a jet again? That’s not even on the radar for me anymore. Besides, I’m having too much fun with Doug and the junior fueler. This year we set both ends of the class record with a 6.89 at Sonoma and a 191 mph run at Bakersfield.
The bad boy in the image above is our record-setting junior fueler. This is a 225” 2004 Dave Uyehara chassis. The engine is a 399 cid Dart Iron Eagle Chevy block with 14 degree Pro Action heads with titanium valves, Kinsler injection, Bullet cam, Waterman pump, J E pistons, MGP aluminum rods all driven through a Hughes powerglide transmission and A-1 converter; it wails!!
CHRR 2005
What happens when the wheelie bar is in the “up” position; Goodguys Finals November 2005
I think I’m the first guy to blowover in a junior fueler; Goodguys final,
Bakersfield 2005
(all ended well except for needing a new car and a couple months of
recuperation)
ed. note: the race car is at Dave Uyehara’s shop and should be ready for the 2006 season. J D and Doug plan to debut at the Winternationals and race in Comp Eliminator. Also, they will compete for the ’06 Goodguys Junior Fuel A title.
