Hello again. Well I did not get much work done on the champ car this summer. It is one of two complete ground-up car projects I am working on - the other being a tube chassised '49 Anglia 6-cylinder hot rod. Both cars are currently stored in a building about a mile from my home. Because of that I have detoured a little bit and I am now thinking of building a small, period-correct-looking trailer to be able to transport them back and forth to my home to get worked on. Building a trailer just big enough to hold these two cars is a side track I'd rather not be on but down the road it could actually save me time, not to mention the fact that I will need it to transport the champ car around behind my '46 pickup truck. I had originally thought of licensing the champ car to drive on the highway but the more I thought about it it did not seem practical, as I would still need a trailer to attend vintage races in it.
To answer your question about 'what is a champ car" the answer is a little burry. In the '20s and '30s closed course racing split into two basic categories - midget race cars and full sized cars. Midget cars were powered by smaller car engines (V8 60s, Crosleys, etc., and motorcycle and outboard engines) and the larger cars used full sized car engines (and sometimes aircraft engines). Gradually race-specific engines were developed like the Millers and Offys for use in the big cars and sanctioning bodies evolved to sponsor big championship races and series. Those became known as "big cars" or "champ cars". Sprint cars were a subset of those big cars, usually designed for shorter, fairground sized venues with shorter wheelbases but bigger than midget cars. That is an oversimplified explanation as evolution has produced many permutations of the two groups of open wheel racers - quarter midgets, three quarter midgets, full midgets, winged sprints, non-winged sprints, 360 sprints, 410 sprints, Indy cars, Formula cars, etc.
I plan to use Coker dirt track tires of the era with wire wheels. The wire wheels will be one of the most expensive parts on the car. I've heard Dayton wires - like the kind used by many of the Indy 500 teams - can still be bought new but cost about $8000 for a set of four. I'll seek cheaper alternatives, like Coker. They make some that have a 5 x 5 1/2 bolt pattern.
Your Essex motor would be right at home in a '30s era champ car. A body could be made easily with few compound curves using an old implement grill and some cut up fender sections for the tail. Some guys use two hoods from a '40 Ford clam shelled together.
Be patient with me - I think faster than I work.
