The Dale Jr. Download - 386 - Dale Earnhardt Jr & Friends.: It Ain't Cheatin' If...

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

They say, it ain't cheatin' unless you're caught. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis share some of the best cheating stories to ever be heard on the download, with some surprises thrown in. Has the statute of limitations passed? And is it really cheating? We like to call it creativity and innovation.From Todd Parrott illegally cutting NASCAR templates while officials are being distracted, to Darrell Waltrip using Nitrous to boost his racecar, these are tales that are of legend. On this episode we also hear from racing great, convicted felon and creative genius Gary Balough. He reveals some tales from his days cheating up racecars on the short tracks of America. Ward Burton even brings a Daytona cheat to the floor. One of Dale Earnhardt's early car owners tried to skirt around a Dale Earnhardt cheating story. Dale Jr. and Mike hold him to the fire and get one of the wildest admissions of cheating the table has ever heard.No cheating show would be complete without some stories from former crew chief, car owner and racer Andy Petree. Oh, and just when you think the show is over and all the tall-tales are done, we bring a new surprise into the studio and an unexpected guest. Dean Jones worked with Petree, at Leo Jackson's team, in a secret room making some intriguing things for their racecars. Jones brought something to the table that stole the show.DIRTY AIRBefore getting to the dirt from our guests, the Dale Jr. Download gang comes to the table with their own admissions. What have they cheated on? Fess up!ASK JR presented by XfinityHannah Newhouse hits Dale Jr. with fan-submitted inquiries about: Who's the more trusted babysitter, Mike Davis or Matthew Dillner? Favorite and least favorite broadcast booths Goodwood dream ride? Some bucket-list tracks for Dale Jr to hit. Oswego Speedway and Supermodified glory Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What do you remember about qualifying that day? I can't tell it at all. Why not? This is a production of Dirtymoot Media. What is fair play? Special. It's innovation. Different.

It would be fun to do experiments like that. Well, see, we were not rule breakers. Thinks it's fair to make a rule and follow it. They make rules for everybody. We were rule makers. Okay. And perhaps we'll learn. some things about fair play.

Did you ever have any nitro in your car? As you see this story, we want you to think about question. Well, I go getting a hot rod and the cop once you pat me down. Get away from me, man. Questions such as... When they said, you can't do that, I'd say, why not? Do you think that's fair? What about it?

What do you think? What is fair play? It's not cheating until you get caught. Hey, everybody. it's Dale Jr. back again at the Bojangles Studio here for the Dale Jr. Download episode 386, if it ain't cheating. Mike, how's it going? It's going good.

Yeah. So you ready to talk about some tall tales of creativity, innovation, and cheating? I've never been more ready. All right, let's get to it. We've had a lot of people come on this podcast over the years, and so we're going to get to that down the road. But first off, Hannah, Matthew, you guys are here. Let's do some dirty air. Dirty Air is not great for everyone.

But this is our dirty air. So let's go. Yeah, you know, you set this up. We always say that it's not cheating. It's creativity. I feel like that's the coin line for this episode. So we were all tasked with the homework of coming up with our own, you know, what is the time that you maybe played in the gray area a little bit here? And I don't know.

Am I supposed to go first here? Am I supposed to be the first one? Should we just do ladies first? Sure. Let's go ladies. research. So we had a pro truck series where the whole goal was to be cost effective, right? And they didn't want anyone to do custom shocks. And the rule was written no like rebuildable shocks. They had to be non-rebuildable. So we went and had a custom tie-down shock built for the left front

and sealed it. So it was non-rebuildable. And we got kicked out. We got kicked out after about four races. And I mean, it was in the rules, right? Like it was a non-rebuildable shock. We just had it built and sealed. So it was non-rebuildable. And yeah, that didn't go over well. Did you argue it? Did you protest? Well, see, here's the other fun part of it. My dad was also on the truck series board. So he just kind of went, okay, I'm good. We got caught. We got caught. So we got we got finishing points that night, and I don't think we got pay. But needless to say, that shock did not come to the racetrack. I think I actually got gifted that left front shock at the banquet that year. Yeah, you should have it hanging up. I think it's somewhere. It's

Definitely somewhere. All right, Matthew. Dillner, yeah, you got one here? I only cheated once when I was racing. Okay. Yeah, no, seriously. And I sucked anyway, so it didn't even work. But my favorite cheat would probably be my dad and uncle's race car, which I have hanging

up here. The tech guys would always give them crap, especially when they first started. And they weren't going to let him go out on the track. I think it was the second week because the injector was sticking up out of the hood. And they said there was a rule. It can't be. It's got to be flush. So they're like, you can't run.

So my uncle's kind of a wise ass. So he went back and he found as many washers as he could. And he collected as many from the next pit and the next pit over. And he said he stacked washers about this high. And he said the hood was sticking up about this high above the rest of the defenders. But then he went to go back on the track there. Like, you can't bring this piece of shit on the racetrack. He's like, hey, it's by the rules.

You said it couldn't be sticking out the top. So there you go. I think, Davis, you're going to have better. No, that doesn't count. It's lousy. Yeah, I know. Was it lousy? It's not in, listen. Okay, I cheated on it.

Okay, I'll give you one. School. Does that work? Well, that's the only place I do my cheating. Mr. Von Haik, eighth grade, he was kind of oblivious. So we all knew what the answers, the questions were going to be for the test. So before he got in there,

I went on the sideboard, and I wrote all the answers down to the test for the whole class. And Mr. Von Haik never saw it. and everybody in the class got 100. Boom. There you go. That was cheating.

That's cheating. That's better. That's better in you're stacking your coins in the hood. Now, Mike, I'm curious on yours here because. Oh, yeah. Matthew's first story didn't even involve him in it. Right. And this is your idea.

It's like, I got it. We're all going to come with our best cheating stories. Got a little homework for you guys. Well, my best cheating stories. Hey, Dale Jr. cheated one time. And I'll tell you about him right now. Well, hold up here. We were in here earlier talking about what our cheating stories were going to be, and you told me you cheated on a legend car with a packer in the left front or something like that.

Yeah. It was illegal. Yeah, and it was illegal. But I sucked, so it's not like there was an advantage. I went from sucking to sucking less. He tried to cheat. It didn't work. That's a special brand of cheater. When you cheat and you still suck. I wonder how many of those are in that car. They suck so bad they don't even get tagged, right? I mean, like, they got the most illegal stuff in their car, but there's too slow for anybody to care. Dale, if you ever saw me in a lens car. Happens every week. I bet it does. If you ever saw me in a lens car, I look like a sausage coming out of its casing on the grill, you know?

It was not good. There's a lot of guys that cheat and don't run well intentionally just so they don't get caught. I'll never forget. They confiscated a bunch of bodies of like when they were still doing the steel bodies in K&N, and we had the combo race at Iowa. And we showed up and they confiscated four guys's bodies. Like took them and said, cut those things off. We are taking them now because they were so yod.

but it was guys that were like 27th, 29th, and 35th, and they're like, we clearly did not do this right correctly anyway, so you might as well just let us run it because we sucked. And they made him cut it off. And he's like, yeah, I mean, you cheated, but you just sucked cheating. Like you just didn't do it right.

They were yawed out. Or Mike, we still need yours. I'm going to get to it, but I'm curious about something real quick. Do you remember the conversation? I don't even know if I'm supposed to bring this up. Do you remember the conversation when you ran a black number eight at Talladega because all of the DEI cars

were all black as a tribute to your dad. Yes. And I want to know if I remember this story, right? Did Tony Jr. not say to you in the motor home before the race, hey, do you want to run? Or I think it was the week before. And he's like, do you want to win that race? You're like, yeah, you're like, no questions asked. You want to win, right? Yep, I want

to win. And, you know, even if there's something that comes on the back end in terms of penalties or whatever, and you're like, I want to win that damn thing. You know, let's win it. And he's like, all right, well, if you win, back it into the wall on your burnouts or something like that. Do I remember that right?

Yeah. Okay, so there was something in that car. Now, we blew the motor before we ever got a chance to do burnouts. I think the engine expired at some point. But I just remembered that as, and I didn't know if that was just a fun story, then I've embellished it or if it really, Tony Jr. said, hey, back it into the wall if you do burnouts to ruin the evidence. All right.

So there's that one. I don't know what he did to the car. Do you? No. Probably not, right? Yeah, he didn't do it. Something was spoiler, I imagine. Probably.

Yeah, he did that at Darlington, too, didn't he? Yeah, you got six weeks off. Are you going to tell your story? I mean, listen, I'm not a race car driver. I don't have good racing cheating stories. I have college three times, got busted every time, algebra, astrology, and astronomy. Astrology. Yeah.

I have cheating stories and all of them. I'm not proud of them. I'm a bad cheater because I did get busted every time. time. I got bust. The astrology course had 500 people in it and I still got caught cheating. Like that's hard to do. How do you cheat in astrology? Copy someone's answers. Oh, okay. That's pretty simple. And you know, when you turn in the test and all the answers are, you know, but naked same, it's pretty obvious. In astronomy, uh, that was in astronomy. In astrology, a buddy mine, we're sitting there trying to, you know, we're sitting in a hallway trying to, you know,

do last minute work that we had not done. and he's given me his work and I'm sitting there writing the answers down with his piece of paper and the professor comes and stands right over me you know busted just before class even started I got busted on that and now I took it so many times and I think that the professors were just glad that I was cheating just trying I think it was effort like God get him out of here me in numbers there's classes that begin with A like you could you could bet I wasn't going to get one without some help but if it began with A I was going to struggle That's me. Yeah, very cool. I had a bunch with my late model stock car. We were supposed to have steel interior, and I put a bunch of aluminum interior in mine just to try to save some weight. Ran cheater fuel from time to time.

Had a ram air. The duck work on the front end, the top would hinge up. So when air went through it, it would hinge up, and air would go over the radiator and into the air cleaner. So we could run bigger jets and get more. fuel. I, uh, we, we, we soaked tires every once in a while, but you can, they weren't really policing that too much. Um, but it was a lot, I did a lot of stuff to my, to my late

model stock car. I tried to buy nitrous once, but dad caught me on the phone talking to a man. If I saw, you know, if I heard a story about cheating, I immediately tried to figure out, like, how could I equate that idea to, to, to my late model stock car? How could I? And, you know, it was, you just needed a little bit more. We were pretty good. We'd run top five, but we'd usually run second or third or fourth. And I wasn't very good at tire management back then.

So, but we worked, we worked hard at it trying to, trying to cheat a little bit without getting caught. Hey, you know, Mayfield brought up soaking tires in his interview last week. And I was wondering, I didn't want to bring it up in the moment there. But like, for people that are listening that don't know exactly what that is, what is soaking tires? Basically, you could treat the tire comes at a certain hardness. The compound is hard and has a certain, you can measure it with this tool. And a softer compound tire will go faster. Now it won't last quite as long because it wears out quicker.

But if depending on the asphalt or the texture and how much abrasive the asphalt is, you can soften the tire up quite a bit and still have enough tire life to run. well in the race and so now the good year tires that we run are bricks at some racetrack so softening that tire up is going to absolutely make you faster but also it's it's hard enough even to that point that you'll you'll not have any tire issue in where so i absolutely think soft you know putting softener it's a chemical and you roll it on or you take the tire and put it in a pan of that chemical and rotate it right and it just sits there and rotates and you're just or you apply it with a roller over and over and over.

And then you can wrap the tire in a plastic wrap so it will maintain the chemical and soak into the tire without evaporating. Or they have some that you can put inside the tire, right? And you put it into the valve stem and then you put the tire on a roller and have it rotating so that chemical is getting displaced throughout the entire tire and it works as well.

from the inside out and softens up the material. But yeah, it's very common to be used at, you know, short track racing. I mean, some places it's legal. Some racetracks allow it. They don't police it. But some do. Some have a gauge, and you better read a certain hardness. And if you're tired and read that, they throw you out.

Hey, you know, this was something that I had been thinking about. You know, a few weeks ago we were talking about ways to make the all-star race better. Why can you not do an all-star race where there were no rules? Like you could just let people be as creative with their cars, soaked tires, do whatever it is. Like, really go see who could be the best team at making a car go fast without rules. So you don't, no, I don't. Not a good idea.

Dude, I helped my friends soak tires once and I'll never do it again. It ate through my brown jersey gloves, holes in it. I'm not messing with that stuff. I had a funny story where a buddy of mine and I, I were soaking tires. And we had, we were pouring it into, we were pouring it into the valve stem or getting it, pouring it into the inside, interior of the tire. And I had this stuff and I had a Dixie Cup full of water.

As we're doing this process, I'm telling, I knew this, I was going to get my buddy. And this was, this was my plan. So as we're doing this process, I'm telling him, like, we've got to be careful. Can't get none of this on our skin. we got to be careful not you know this could this could hurt us real bad if it got us got in my contact with our skin and I was just going on

and on about that and finally he leaves the room and he comes back and I've got a Dixie cup full of that stuff but it's actually water and I stumble over a tire and spilled it on his pants and then I started screaming like you gotta get you gotta get them pants off oh my god

and he takes it off running out the room pants down around his ankles head into the wash pit and wash his leg off. That's awful. That was so fun. I mean, if that ain't happening at your race shop every day, some kind of hooligans or shenanigans like that, then you're not doing it right.

That's fun. That's fun. All right. So forget soaking tires, but I'm saying is it, if you did that, if you just let, hey, this is a no rules race where you just go do things to your car, let it be a competition between engineers, you're shaking your head,

but I'm saying is that if the race stinks, then you can appreciate that somebody made their car so fast that nobody could keep up with it. Get out of hand. But it's an all-star race. Well, so devil's advocate here. We have a series out west that I raced in. It was the super late model series,

but it was called the Big Five Series. We had five races. It was five big paying races. And they essentially had five rules. So you had a tire rule, you had a carburetor rule, you had a shock rule, a weight rule. And I can't remember what the Finland was.

But realistically, it honestly came down to ingenuity. Like, we all kind of were in the same ballpark. It was a quarter mile racetrack. So it's not like you were being overpowered. Honestly, you kind of wanted to have the crate motor because otherwise you'd wear your stuff out. And people showed up with wings.

Like I'm talking. Thank you. Plexiglass wings off the side of these super late models. And it just became a spectacle. Like you were, and it was short track racing. So it's not like we were doing super speedweight, you know, shenanigans. But it was like who could outsmart the other person on an engineer level on a quarter. on a quarter mile and it would get frustrating because some guy would show up with a wedge body

and you're like, that's what it is. He's beating me because it's a wedge body. So then we'd put a wedge body on and we'd still run fifth. You wouldn't do it at Daytona. Right. You wouldn't do it at Talladega, but you would do it at Wilkesboro. You could do it at one of these short tracks where, yeah, let's see who comes. It's almost like, you know, let's make an all-star race for it's almost like a soapbox derby. When you know that one person that shows up with a block of wood, but then all of a sudden it's flying. It's fast. And it's fine. It's like, whoa, what do that? They got nothing, right? I mean, it passes tech, but there's no rules.

You're not going to go look in places that you would for a points paying race. There you go. I just fixed your All-Star race problem, NASCAR. You're welcome. All right, Allies is going to bring us our guest segment this week, and we're going to hear some great stories from a lot of the guests we've had here on the show in the past about innovation, cheating, and just being creative, skirting around the rules. rulebook and thank you ally for all you do for us here at the Dale junior download it's great to

have allies in your corner whether professionally or personally and we've got some allies that are going to tell you some great stories look this isn't your ordinary best of episode we've got a lot of new things in this episode you've got to ask junior coming up so listen we've got some incredible cheating stories that are coming up so let's just get into it right now well see we were not rule breaking we were rule making we were rule making NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Daryl Walter from episode 325 of the Dale Junior download. Were you still concerned about whether your car was legal or not at that time? Or had you come to grips with it?

That wasn't my car. Now you're fine. A junior's car. You've learned to cope with it. Well, Junior was, he was a pretty big fanatic about a lot of things. One thing about you could not run the big motor. I mean, that was, no, no, you could not do that. And we had a qualifying motor.

and I think the limit was what is it, 358 and we won a pole somewhere and they tore us motor, we won't poll like in 81, 82 want to poll every week and they'd tear the motor down about every other week. So finally about second year we'd same

motor over and over again, they tore it down it was 358. 0,000 1 and they were I mean they were going to take, they were going to disqualifies because of that.

And junior Jr talked them out of it. I mean, Junior had a lot of, he had a lot of clout. But that was the only time that I drove that car that I ever heard or knew of us being anywhere near over the limit. That was it. Now, there were other things that we may have. Like what? Done that were not necessarily.

Like what? Well, see, we were not rule of breakers. We were rule makers. Junior had a roller cam. They were not legal. But he had figured out a way to take a flat tapet and put a ball. in the bottom of that flat tap it and turned it into a roller can. And so all these things were okay until I came along.

When I came along, I said, hey, hey, hey, can't do that anymore. We had a spacer, this really beautiful piece of work. I don't know who did it. Tapered spacer, no, can't run that anymore. Got to put that away. Everything that had made them special, different, creative, innovative, if one by one they took away. Because of you or?

Because of me. I was, look, I had a tough time. And I did it, look, I did it to myself. I was a smart ass. You brought heat. And so when they said, you can't do that. I said, why not? Or when they said, well, that's the rule.

Well, that's a dumb rule. I never forget, I called Bill France one day. I said, Bill, there's some rule change they had made. I said, Bill, I'd like to know who the dumb ass is that made that rule. He said, you're talking to him. So anyway, but you know what I love, and Dale knows this, they make rules for everybody. And a lot of times those rules don't necessarily fit what you're doing or your situation.

But they try to make rules that fits the entire field, not just one little guy, Yeah. Not one guy. One of the things that I heard that Junior and his guys were doing in the due car was lead shot in the frame rail. Yeah, that's possible. That's possible. Yeah. Well, look, everything.

I want to explain to Mike what that would mean. So, you know, they put lead blocks in the cars to bolt that, and they bolt that in, right? Mm-hmm. And the car makes weight. And so in some cars, and this is not exclusive to junior, but back in the early 80s, maybe a lot in the 70s, they would feel the frame with lead shot, and then they would keep the lead shot in there with a putty or a soap or anything that might get hot and melt. Oh, yeah. And then once it came up to temp or maybe there was a trap door to open or something like that, the lead shot could pour out of the frame. and make it lighter,

then the car's hundreds of pounds lighter. Well, and here was the deal. But the lit shot had to go somewhere. Yeah, they create, they would create situation for it. They never thought about unintended consequences. So the car, let's say the car had to weigh 3,700 pounds

when it went through tech. So you made sure your car weighed 3,700 pounds when it went through tech. They wouldn't weigh them after the race. I was at Martin's, I said, they were going through this, I said, hey, everything about weighing these cars after the race?

And Bill Gasaway was his fact. He said, boy, let me tell you something. When that car goes on the line, it's legal. That's all I care about. Why would you plant that idea into their head to weigh the cars after the race, being that you were the beneficiary of it? If they weighed everybody, I'm okay with that. Yeah, I got that.

It's the top five or whatever, but they wouldn't weigh anybody. And we always knew. We had the lead shot in the frame rail. This is what we did. If they put, they didn't have scales like they got today. They had grain scales. So you had four of them. And they had a place where you drove the car up on.

They weigh all four wheels and then push you off. So if they put those scales in the truck, we knew they weren't going to weigh the cars when the race was always, because they don't load it up ready to hit the road for the next race. So that was an invitation to be creative. Empty the car out. Be creative. That's so interesting.

I want to, you know, when I was working. Where did it all the lead shot go? Could you see it? I just, I'll never get. So one, at a place like Martinsville. Oh, yeah, no, let me take. No, you'd love this. So Dick Beatty, he liked to walk to racetracks every day because he was, that was his exercise.

So I'm walking to racetrack at Martinsville with him one day just for fun. We're walking around and trying. He said, you know, DW, something I don't understand. Every week I walk these damn racetracks, I see all these little be-bees laying everywhere. He said, I have not figured out where in the hell they come from. I ain't got a clue, Dick. I don't know. Gosh, that's weird.

Wow. Need to look into that. How long would y'all run that until, like, when does the lead shot come out? Yeah. Lamp on? Well, you had to be, you had to be care. You had to be care. Here's, look.

Okay, so we dropped a little lead every now and then. But everybody did. Yeah. I mean, you know, when you go to Martinsville, just Martinsville. fix out my mind. Wayne Thornberry, he'd work for Richard. They would take a wagon down to Richard's car. They would take the car cover off of it. They would change out the radio and the helmet and everything else. And that wagon had come back down through there and he could barely pull it. It was so loaded

up with lead and everything else. And so the tires would be, you know, squished down. And so it wasn't like you're the only guy that was smart enough to do it. I mean, there was other ways of heavy helmets, heavy radios, heavy whatever. Yeah. But this is pretty cool. So you have a jackstop in the frame rail where you jacked the car up. So that's where we let the lead shot out at. And so I had a little wrench, this little T-handle, I'd undo that.

I'd back that center of that jack-stob out. All the lead shot would go out that hole. You were the one that... He had to engage the... You were the one. In the car? You're like the wizard behind the curtain sitting there at the controls of the the lead shot. We didn't do it every week. We just did it every now and then. But anyway, so we're at

Bristol. And it's under caution. I didn't do it right. So undercost, I backed that screw out. And all of a sudden, all that, that, I guess that lid had gotten wet or something. And it didn't come out. Oh. And so I didn't know if it didn't come out or not. I just did what I was supposed to. So we're going into race. All of a sudden, the damn lid all comes out at one time. And I, I mean, I'm in third turn. I'm just, I'm about to. spin out and I and I finally catch it and I just shoot down pit road. Well, Dave Marcus was on pit road. So I come down pit road out of control and they thought Dave Marcus was the one that was dropping the shot. So they're wearing his car out trying to figure out where it came from.

They ain't going to find it. So they're looking at all the cars. So they're going to look at, I won the race. They'd look at the car. They take the jack. So here's the jack stop. So they put the jack and they jack the car up. So the jack is sitting on the whole. Yeah, on the track goal. And they could look for a day. They could look forever. They're never going to find it possible. The jacket's got the hole covered.

They covered a hole. That's awesome. So it was, a lot of that was, I mean, I know that sounds kind of. No, it's great. That's what I always believe that if your crew chief isn't trying, if that car is it illegal, then he ain't trying hard enough. I agree. And that our job as drivers and crew chiefs and all the mechanics and crafts,

and crafty guys back here, engineers especially these days. It's their job to find holes in that rulebook. Like you say, not break the rules, make new ones. Yeah. And it's their job as an industry, as an organization, to govern it. Yeah. Well, there were not a lot of inspectors. I mean, you know, there were, what, five or six maybe at the most,

and they had to look after all the cars, and so some of them were your buddies, and they had to look the other way about certain things. But we literally the things you've heard, Maybe you haven't heard decent. But if we had something on the front of the car that we were trying to get away with, maybe we had cocked the nose or move the nose or whatever, we would go to the rear of the car and we would do something so blatantly obvious

that the inspector would walk by and say, you got to fix that. We talked about this last week on the show. We talked about this very thing. You got to fix that. Okay, okay. Well, we'll fix it. Yeah, no problem. It's just like the boxer in the ring that spins one arm and punches you to the other one.

Yeah. We talked about this very thing. I'm interested because you just said sometimes they'd look the other way. So, you know, certainly I'm not speaking of the way NASCAR would govern the league today. But Junior had a lot of sway. Yeah. And he also was very creative and innovative and stuff. And so there were things that he could get away with, I would assume, because, you know, the story that I was privy to was

because I worked with Jimmy Spencer and he was telling about that 1994 season when Jimmy won his only two races in that car and I believe he said something like that Junior came up to him and said you know you do a way better junior impersonation than I could but boy if you can't win in this car you need to be bagging groceries

or something like that right and I believe if I heard the story right that NASCAR kind of was on to what they did but then they said don't bring it back. Yeah. And they brought it back. Yeah.

And they won again. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Well, I know Junior told me, I said 94, I guess when Spencer, you know, I love Spencer, but I wouldn't say he was the greatest driver I ever saw, but I just pretty, pretty, pretty, he could be, he could be. He could be an adversary sometime.

But so they won a couple of races at Daytona and Talladega. I think, well, I know Daytona and Talladega. And I went up to Jr., I said, junior, what the hell are you doing anyway? He said, boy, we'll win every damn race until they catch us. that's awesome yeah i love i love doing this because you know it kind of brings back memories some good some bad uh but the sport today people just have no idea what it was like when we started to the way it is today if a guy walked in the shop with a briefcase we don't even come in here go somewhere else because you know it had a briefcase and it had a computer or a laptop

laptop, we're going to keep laps and tires, nothing, no, no, no, no. We got this handle. You go do something else. We're fine. And that was really my, it's probably my downfall. Did you ever have any nitro in your car? Once. Really?

Yeah, one time. Well, when I went to drive for DiGuard in the first year, Donnie, Donnie and Mario Rossi, they've been running every week. Nitro? Yeah. And that's how they qualify pretty good. Who was it that set on, was it, J.D. McGrath? Elfie sat on the pole and wrecked his car and the nitrous fell out of the frame.

It exposed it. It exposed it in the side of the car. That's possible. It wasn't that, it wasn't all that unheard of. Really? To have a little assistance. A little shot of nitrous. When you qualified.

Normally just when you qualified. But I only got that one time, like me and AJ for it, he was, I think I was on Poe. He was outside or vice versa. I don't remember which. And neither one of us had run. worth a damn all day long, you know, like we're 25th in practice, but we end up qualifying on the front row. And so it's kind of like, what did y'all do?

I'll never forget, we take that car in there, and Rossi was a crew chief, and he had put the nitrous bottle in the petty bar. So it's about that long and it's mounted and covered up in the road cage. And all I had to do is stick a little wrench in her and open that baby up, and that thing would take off. I mean, I've never done it before. So I was excited about, wonder what this is going to do. It wake that baby up.

I'm telling it. What did it feel like? Oh, it took off like a rocket. It put you back in a seat. Oh, I don't know that, you know, at Daytona, you didn't necessarily feel it, but you could tell it was going because you're like, you've been turning $7,000. Now you turn 7,500. I mean, good, three.

When would you do, walk me through the process then? When exactly would you do this? On the straightaway. I mean, you know. Yeah. While you're running? Oh, yeah. While you're in.

You'd go out of the pits. And get up on the bank and get on the back. You had this little wrench. You had it, you had it to take that little rent. reaching up and slot and that thing go, and it'd take off. I mean, that's awesome. Go crazy.

You're doing that while you're driving at speed. Up to speed, you qualify. Right, still. Can you imagine how many people wotted up just like, what were you doing? Well, I mean, I had to wrench that thing. I mean, you've got to open it up. I was pretty busy in my race car for a lot. You know, we had, when we'd go through tech, your right side had to weigh so much.

So we'd have a block of Mallory that was bolted to the, frame on the right side to make the right side weight be right so when we get ready to then put me in the car they'd undo that they'd give me a piece of just tube and they'd put the tube for the for the mallory was and I'd take the mallory and put it over on the left side to get the left side weight up so I it's just I bet the worst but listen this sounds really bad I know but it's not because there wasn't a lot of people around to watch to I had a helmet. It weighed 50 pounds.

I never wore it. But it hung in the car. I had a radio. I'll never forget this. We're at Charlotte. And Dick Beatty. And he comes, me and Rusty and Dale and also were sitting there talking one day. And he walks up.

He's got this radio right here. And I said, Dick, is there something wrong with your radio? And he goes, wham! He throws that damn piece of Valerie down his weight about 50 pounds. He said, it ain't my damn radio. He said, you want to know where we're? We got it. I said, I think I know.

I was going to say, I bet the worst day of your life was when they introduced in-car cameras. That would have changed the game for a lot of people. Yeah, you're just hard to get away with stuff like that. Yeah. The playing field has been leveled. Here's a quick admission from Daytona 500 champion award, Burton from episode 343.

But so when I have to go back and look at Daytona's, in 01 we had the baddest hot rod there. We led the most lap. It would have been a different outcome of you and Michael, all I can say. Yeah. Oh, if you had been up there? I mean, yeah, because I was passing Tony Stewart by myself on the outside, and they were the next two. Yeah. So I'm not saying Michael wouldn't have wanted, you know, all I can say, I was going to be a player.

You're going to be in the middle of it. My car was bad. It was handling and it was cheated up. I'm not going to go tell you where. It won't under the hood, but I mean, that thing was hauling the front. Wait, wait, wait a second. This is a safe space. You didn't know that?

Like, this is where people come and tell about all their cheated stories. I didn't know there was any safe space. It was cheated up. At least he said that. We just did a podcast with any feature man and he unloaded. He told us everything. I did. It was awesome.

Remember that car that Hary Gant won four in a row? It had all kinds of things going on, he told us about. Well, we had, so the floor firewall, I'll go, hell, I'm going to say. The floorboard on the car, we had welded an extra layer of floorboard. And the only way you're going to tell it if it somehow or not it flipped up and gotten torn all the heck. Anyway, and we went to Talladega, I don't know why, but every single thing we touched made the car better. Even if I got a penny, if I'm walking and I'm acting like I'm pushing the car and I stuck a penny up under the left top windshield and put that penny in there,

it was a half a tenth. Every damn, every time it was a half a temp. Now here is one of the great crew chiefs in NASCAR history. That's right. Todd Parrott from episode 3.30. What was some of the things that y'all did to the cars back then to find speed out of them? We'd like to share some of those secrets on the show. Oh, you do?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, back then we had a long template. There wasn't many templates back then. Yeah, one template. You had one template, you know, and the Chevroletes had pretty good hot rod. Had some friends that, you know, worked RCR and knew a couple things they were doing. But Barry was really smart.

Barry was, I mean, because, you know, he worked with M.C. Anderson, Kell Yarborough, you know, in those days before he came to Blue Max. Harold Kinder was the truck driver for NASCAR. Right. Flagman. You flag man. And they kept the truck down in Charlotte in this old garage. And that's where the templates, all templates, everything stayed in there. They're like hound dogs.

I mean, there's guard dogs down there. Barry said, I need you in Red Dog to go down and check the template. I'm like, we said, what do you mean? Well, I want you all to go down there and fix the template. And he showed us what he wanted us to do. We go to Charlotte. Hey, Harold, you know, Harold, he's lucky, go. You know, he's just happy and go lucky.

We need to look at this long template. We get this long template out, pulls it in that building. And Red Dog, because Red Dog was a truck driver, him and Harold, you know, Harold's got all these fancy chrome things on his truck. Yep. So while Red Dog had Harold Kinder out looking at a truck, he fixed the template. Yeah, I had snips in my pocket. God.

And so the Pontiac had a, the long template had a little thing on the end of it. It kept the nose intact. Right. So I went down there and cut the end of it off so we could extend our nose about an inch and a half. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. Hey.

Did they figure it out? No. No. No. No. No. So I cut the template. And when I cut it, it snapped.

I'm like, oh, I'm looking around. God, I'm going to go to jail. I'm never going to be around anymore. But back then, it was like, it's fun. Yeah. That's pretty damn badass. So then I took the template and I drug it on the ground. You know, because I took those templates out of truck and he stole.

Drug them all over the place. Yeah. You scuffed up the place to make it look like it had been that way. Exactly. That's awesome. Look, for those, for anybody that knows Red Dog, Do you know Red Dog Buddy Barnes? Okay, like I can only imagine the conversations he's using to get people away from that template.

Like, I can hear him right now. I mean, I wish. He's so full of shit. Yeah, exactly. Sorry. Exactly. No, no, he is. But in a very endearing kind of way, right?

Like, everybody loves him. But he, God, that is hilarious that that was all part of his strategy. Oh, yeah. So he took him to the, you know, to the other side of the trailer to talk to him about it. Yeah. So he couldn't even. see where I was at inside the building. Because Harold brought that template out and put it in that building.

That's awesome. And when you brought it in the building, the dogs were all outside. This is good. What else did y'all do? What else did y'all do? So the other thing, I think of 1988, 89, we won tons of races with that, you know, the new Pontiac. Yeah.

It wasn't the one with the squared off back window. I think I saw a car in here, yeah, like that one over there, the three car. Yeah. Yeah. And then we got the new car So the long template On it, when they built it, you know, it didn't have that little thing on the end of it

Because they went off the template that they had Which had been Cut by you? No. Had been fixed. Yeah. So we added two inches. So back then it didn't have a hook on the back of decklet

Like they do now. So you know, now, you know, they got that long template and it went over the back. Yeah. But before then, it just went, you know, right there on the deck lid. It stopped. And stopped. So we added two inches to the back of the deck lid.

So we took and moved this whole corner of the deck lid, the whole deck lid about two inches. Wow. And it laid a little. What would that do? More down force. Okay. But that would still be obvious, wouldn't it? I mean, even though the template ends, now of a sudden the car's growing.

I mean, like. They didn't pay that much attention to it. They really didn't? Wow. No. That's pretty awesome. It was like open season for- I learned a lot of stuff in my early days

that I was able to transfer. Yeah. Was your dad that way? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, is that what makes the great great? Yeah, it's not cheating until you get caught. That's right.

It's innovation. Yeah, exactly. It's taking that rule book and interpret it. The way you want to. The way you want to. Yeah. Who's the greatest innovator? Who?

Of all time. Of all time. The greatest. I'd say Ray. Ray. Ray was pretty good. He was. Yeah, Ray was really, really good.

He told us a few. And, you know, and I learned a lot, you know, in my days working with Yates. Racing. You know, racing next to a 24 car. I mean, I used to wear those guys out because I'd sit there and spend more time staring at their cars. And I'd go home next week and come back to next week and Ray go, car looks like mine. Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do. But, yeah, he probably was.

I mean, he learned a lot. really smart yeah very smart now here's one of the most intriguing episodes that we've ever had it was episode 264 with a racer one of the best ever a convicted drug smuggler and just one of the all-time greats in creativity that is gary balloon you say air is free and I try to tell my late model guys the same thing how do you explain to us what you mean by that I got off in the arrow as I knew I knew nothing about ERO with a couple of cars. So I said, I'll never get there. I don't understand none of this.

And he got around Pete Hamilton and Ray Stonkers. Pete was into Arrow with a late model car, you know, and, of course, they wore it. He drove from Petty and so forth. He'd tell me, I'd call him, and I say, this ain't still tight getting in. You know, he said, puts more in a nose. Put some more in the nose and it'd be loose getting in. I said, now it's loose. He said, puts more on the back.

You know, okay, put some more in the front, puts some more in the back. And we kept on and we kept on And so we got a real good balance And then I got to where I started painting the nose and stuff And I actually put like two inch holes in the nose With a balloon plate over the top of it I could move around I got so balanced Underneath

Right, you know, it turned up underneath But it was ugly behind somebody else It'd lose the air So then I started moving the nose to the right And then I found to wave Before the couple cards It's closing the hole up And I worked on closing the hole up

Closing the hole up And pull away from the bottom So I just got off into the air, and then I got moving the carburetor box around and the air box around and cheating in the back with the rear spoiler and had some mechanical advantage back there. Sometimes the back would hop up two or three more inches and worked on the roof and narrowed the roof up

and worked on the B post A and the B and turned the A's. Oh, yeah, but the big advantage I had was that I did get to go race for the couple cars and see a lot of that. Then I was around Rain Beatle also with the drag cards. I think one great example, we've got a lot from the book, but 1973 at the Schaefer 100, you basically bolted two fuel sales in the car, so you wouldn't have...

There was a mandatory fuel stop, and he both... So he, you know, they just, they would think around the rule book. It wasn't a break. Cut the bottom on one, ball them together. Right. Bigger can. Because we run 45 gallons, I'll call them things, so we run constant light tractors. So it wasn't nothing, the

weighed, I mean, we worked on that. So I think, and Gary's, Gary was an amazing driver. Should have won it. But for more, yeah. From what I take away from that is he could get in anybody's car and be awesome, but if he could actually work on it a little bit beforehand, he could make it even better because he worked around the rulebook.

He didn't break the rules. They didn't say he couldn't run two. It looks like he might. Let's not go that far. Thank you, Del. I mean, what are some of the craziest things aside? I mean, that's a great example. Putting two fuel cells together in the car to be able to hold more fuel,

so you didn't have to take so much fuel on that mandatory stop. leading it, they held us in the pits. They held him in the pits because this fuel guy didn't, he didn't do a good enough job to win a Grammy, try to fake the fuel into the car. What's some of the cool, craziest things you ever done to trick your cars up and even break the rule? Well, Arrow was real big.

I mean, we had the back of the car to where... You talk about the car hiking up three inches. Hiking up. The hell, the record was hiking up. So you put like four inches. five inches, three inches more where it's spoiling a car, you get off from the corner deeper. You know all that. So how did you do that?

Mechanically. Yeah. Windy cranks and then probably the most outlandish thing we ever did was run Mercury. What is that? Wait, what? So why would you run Mercury? Left side. My car was 60% left side without the driver.

Yeah. So how did you do that? Pumps? Stain those cans? Yeah. The frame rail to frame rail. And it pumped mercury from one side of the car or the other. Yeah.

Why you're on the racetrack or why you're in the pit? He went through tech. Right. Yeah. Incredible. It's amazing. Yeah. So, Darrell Waltrowe.

Yeah, it was nothing in the world book because you couldn't do that at the time. Yeah. They got to where EPA and all that stuff, boy. Yeah. I imagine how many rules have been created because of you, like, because of your stunts. I mean, I bet there's a bunch. Yeah. Now, you guys slid, I've heard things about you guys being able to slide around weight during races.

That's what he's talking about. Yeah. I mean, the mercury. The mercury pumping from one. the car of the other. During the race. Yeah. Well, in the pits. Okay. To get it across the scales. I'll tell you a good story. I had a fire bottle and I'd move from the left side to the right side.

It was like 41 pounds in full mercury. So it was pretty hard to get that under the steel wheel and get it from the right side and the left side. But one concord, and he got caught. The steering will be caught up a lot, cool down a lot. I won it. Yeah. I couldn't get it over. I was in trouble.

You know what I got to do? I rolled up off for him. I passed out. I was exhausted. I pulled off, went down in the infield and just pull up to the inside guardrail and bumped a little bit, and they all come running. I was right, move it, move it, get it over there. Yeah? Ray, got it over there.

Then we got to the scale, but the fuel and everything, I think we're about three pounds light. And then back and forth, back and forth, we stuffed it, we shook it, with everything, you know? And I'm like, ah, la, blah, blah. They got quick change gears. They come up, it's a great change gears, and I put them on pockets. When I go, I go getting hot rod, the cop once to pat me down, I said, get away from me, man.

What's wrong with you? Do you nuts or what? And I got to call him, finally may wait, you know. Dang. I'm a cop was patting you down. Padding you down, man. Get in the race car. He said, get away from me.

What do you think you are? That is amazing. Well, they do that stuff at the Snowball Derby now. I mean, you know. Ricky Brooks is the best best inspector I've ever seen anywhere, any place. Oh, yeah. He's better than DEA drug dog. Well, you know that, right?

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. Now let's get to Tommy Russell. Now Tommy was one of Dale Earnhardt's first car owners, and the interview was a rare peek into the formidable years before the seven NASCAR titles when Dale was just trying to make a name for himself on the clay ovals of the Carolina dirt track scene.

And old Tommy, he shared a story that had never been told before. It was on episode 364. I told you, Daddy, one day I said, come on and take a ride with him. We're going to go over to Dinkwidenhouse's shop. He said, what are we going over there for? I said, I'm hunting a carburetor. The rulebook said two-barrele carburetor.

Well, always, even if we're winning races, I want to try to be a little bit better, you know, because you can get behind in a hurry. And I told Dale, I said, you know, there's nothing else we can do for the engine, but we could do something with the carburetor. So we went over there to Dinks, and Dink said, yeah, look out there, all you want.

These are trucks, you know. I found a carburetor, so help me, it was this high. and it had a flat plate on the front there with a bolt holes in it and I took my measuring stuff it was a lot bigger than the Ventura than what we'd been running. We had tried, you know, Holly two barrel. God, even today, Daddy did one and some of the guys they were cutting a Holly race carburetor apart

and running off just the front two barrels on it because they were bigger than another. So we got that, I measured it quite a bit bigger than one. what we had and take it back to the shop. They didn't give me two of them and give me the garbage kits to take all you need. So we got back to the shop and daddy, he was looking at it and he said, I mean I think this will work. Well, we went over to Speedway a little bit, Shaw and Motor Speedway and Daddy kept up the vehicles

over there, so we just took it out there on the racetrack and I said, Dale, I'm driving it. Well, we were running down, you know, and then turn around and come back pit road. Dale's over there hanging on to the roll bar and he's scared, you know. I'm whining that thing up here. So I told Dale, I said it feels good here, but we're going to take it to the fairgrounds Friday night. We'll warm up with it.

We'll take it off, and we'll put our other car back on there, and we'll try it back and forth like that. So he went out there and he run the qualifying race, and he said, Tommy, this thing is flying. I'm serious. Let me drive it in the feature. I said, all right, we can't do nothing,

but learn the motor up, you know, because we didn't. I didn't want to raise the race. hood. I don't want anybody to see it. Well, I was looking under the hood and see if we had any leaks or anything. Well, Ralph come over and he got down and looked down there and he said, what the hell is that? He said, it looks like a fuel injector. I said, no, it's a two-barrow carbure to get them across the street. Well, we run it in the feature, won it. And we started running every since. Put one on both cars. And then they went to a four-barrow, we put two of them on an engine. And they finally, they probably,

they protested. Well, I couldn't hardly breathe there's so many people around the car. I had to take the carburetor off. I didn't read the whole rule book, but the rule book said two barrel carburetors still in production. I knew as a two barrel carburetor, but I ain't sure about that production. Well, they had to put up $70 or something.

There's ads in, I mean, papers in here about it. And so the promoter held up to money, took the carburetor. He called, I think it was a, a holly carburetor truck carburetor he called them and they said how many you want we still in production we'll say all you won't so we were clear we got our money and plus the money they put up for tearing it down that's right but guys were crowded around me there that one guy said god that's the biggest thing ever seen it looks like a big old blower on a on top of that

engine all they're just going nuts with it but that's the part I loved about raising trying something different stir up some stuff you know and we just we we just had a good time back in the Yeah. So you're a round dad in his first cup start at 1975 at Charlotte, the World 600. What do you remember about qualifying that day? I can't tell at all. Why not? Just won't. I'll tell you later.

All right. Yeah, Dale had a way with my daddy. He could talk about anything. He called daddy and said, James, we really need Tommy over here for a couple of days because it wasn't nobody but Nor. Norman being the mechanic and, you know, Dale was in the car and everything. So they let me off work, went over there and helped them get the car ready to race and everything. Me and Norman was going to change the tires and everything. That's a big deal with us, you know, running a grand instrument car. Massive.

It was, I thought I was somebody there for a while. But how'd qualified go? We made the race. Yeah. Made the race. Yeah. I'm curious on what he's not saying. Yeah, me too.

I guess there is a cheating. Your buddies are back there talking about it too, and I want to put a mic on them because they're sitting there doing their hand gestures. Statue of limitations. Look at him. I feel like everybody in the room knows what's going on except us, Dale. Should I get even tell it? Yeah.

They're saying, yeah. What happened? We had to have a bottle. A nitrous? Dad had nitrous. Oh, boy. And I said, Dale, where is the bottle? he said damn it time me i'm sitting on the bottle

and he he says you see that pop river behind the air filter that's where it's coming out at damn soon as a qualifying's over we got it to hell out there yeah that's a big mistake i wish i'd have known that i hope nobody watches this show now well i mean everybody i mean you know there's a lot of nitrous back then um in race cars you know uh but uh that's funny It is funny.

So, well, the funny part is because around 1995 or six, I was working on my late model car, and I'm out in this, I'm working on my car in a warehouse. Dad put all his parts and stuff in from his Xfinity team. I think Jeff Green was a driver at the time. But I'm out there working on my car, and I'm right next to the paint booth. there's a phone and I don't know how the hell I figured this out but I got a hold of somebody that sold nitrous and I was on the phone with this guy asking him about it and dad walked up on me I didn't know he's standing there and I'm on the phone talking to this guy and I got off the phone

and I turned and there's daddy and he's like if you ever put nitrous on or if you ever put nitrous on your late mall car you won't be going to the racetrack with it he's like I'm he's like that's my car and you ain't putting nitrous on it. That was his way of saying that you're not going to do that. And he talked so, he talked like a guy who had never, right, used nitrous.

If I had known, well damn, Eddie, you use a little nitrous ragging today. Andy Petrie worked with many racers, Terry Gantt, Phil Parsons, Dale Earnhardt, to name a few. He was listen, Andy Petrie, one of the best innovators, rule benders, whatever you want to call,

it, Innovators of the Rule Book. Andy Petrie was on episode 339 and he had some stories. Phil's great. I won my first race as a crew chief with Phil in the Cup series at Talladega. So, we got some good memories. About that race. What year? What year? That was 88.

Yeah. What about that, right? How did he win that? Like, to go what? He had the fastest car. He did. No, I know. But what was in that car? Okay. Statute of limitations had to run out on that one. No, it's run out. No, I don't think so.

It's going to tell you something. We had a few tricks back. Back then it was, you know, it wasn't so much. If you built a car by the rule book, you want to know where they went. Oh, yeah. So the way you raced is how you race to the enforcement. Whatever the enforcement level was, you were always snuggling right up and right next to it. And that's the good crew chiefs were the ones that knew where that was.

Like you couldn't, like no new guy could come in there and figure it out. You have to just keep working. You don't have to explain it to us. We're all about it. We love this. We had a little advantage. We love the innovation. That's what we call it.

We love innovation, right. We had Chad Nouse pulling out all his tricks and everything. Oh, I didn't pull them all out. I even had DW in here admitting some of his because he's... Oh, you know, I heard that thing about the lid dropping out of the shit shot. You know how prideful he is. He won everything fair and square. Oh, yeah.

Right. You were a genius on the pit box and set the... Where did this come from? I mean, seriously, because you are telling us that you didn't even know... you didn't know what wedge was. And now you're winning a race with Phil Parsons. You are, let's say, applying some imagination to, maybe not imagination. You're applying some of you, you know, things that you can, you know, set yourself apart on this car.

Where does this come from? Well, a lot of, most of it's want to, right? I wanted to do this. I wanted to be successful so bad that I was willing to do whatever it took. And I didn't, like that, I didn't have an engineering degree. it back then none of the critches did but you know I was at least smart enough to know what I didn't know and I would I would always seek out people that I knew that had that had more you know either experience or knowledge or and I was never afraid to do that I mean I did that through my

whole career you know like I just told you about John Settlemyr and Tommy Houston I mean I aggravated to the to no end I mean they just got tired to see me coming because I just have a list of questions a mile long you know about everything I just I wanted to I wanted it so bad that I was willing to use every resource that I could to get me there. Do you tell drivers? Honestly, this could be a question for you. How much does a crew chief tell the driver what things they're doing or trying or in the car? The stuff that you don't want.

Okay, so he knows a lot of things that were happening with this car. I'll go ahead and tell you that right now. He might not admit it, but he knew about everything it was happening. You don't, you know, one reason you tell the driver that you got, what, one reason you tell him a little bit, though, and you want him to know is you want him to think. think he's got an advantage. That's good point. Because that is usually worth more.

Just him thinking he's got an advantage, it's usually worth more than the actual advantage. I used to race late models with Gary Hargett, and I told him, I said, whatever you're going to tell me, lie to me. So that, just like you say, I think that, man, this thing's going to fly, right? And, you know, if you're going to take a little wedge out, if you're going to change the right every spring, don't tell me that. Don't even tell me. Just don't even tell me. Let me go out there and tell you how it drives. I don't want to predetermine idea in my head what it's going to drive like, right? Because I'm already going to screw it up. But if you want to tell me you put rocket fuel

in there, by all means, tell me you put some rocket fuel in this thing. Some people reacted to that different. Like your dad, it wouldn't really matter to him much. Really? You know why? Because he was getting 105 to 10% of that car every lap. All right. all the time. So you could, if you tell him that, it doesn't help any, right? He's already giving you

more than you should be getting. But the other drivers would. This is a good story with Harry. So we built this car. It ended up being the car that we won the four in a row with in 91. We built it, and it built it super,

super light. So we had a lot of ballast in the right-hand side that you, to make the minimum weight, I think, was 1,600 pounds at the time. And so we made this little deal,

you know, exploiting some of the rules, where Harry had a little ratchet, we would take, in the right side, battery box we didn't put a battery in it we just put some lead of pieces over there and then on the line we're putting him in the car you used to let the interior guy get in the car and help him right so they would swap this over harry would stick it over in the seat besides so you'd make

total weight right but they never really looked at the right side weight and so we put these pieces over there make it left side hit well shoot man harry you tell him he because he's doing it he knows he's got this advantage he's not going to let anybody be well by the time that four-in-row deal comes around this car's been run you know quite a few times and you know what happens they get head heavier as you run them. Well, by the time we did it, the thing was already 1,600 pounds on the right with no weight. You know, so we didn't even have any ballast in the right side of this thing. And so the interior guy, Scott Robinette, says, you know, we still need to be swapping that lead,

just so Harry did not lose that advantage. Right, right. The mental advantage? So we were going like 40 pounds or 50 pounds over on the right with that thing in there and just switch it over here. Wasn't even illegal. Harry's like, I got more or less that weight than you. I'm going to beat you.

That's so awesome. Yep. That's perfect. I don't even know if Harry knows that, but he does now. Dude, these guys are playing mind games. Yep, yep. That was the advantage. And then he had this, in his mind that one certain car was better than the other one,

so we just changed the stickers on the dash sometimes, so he didn't know which one it was. Yeah. That really happened? Yeah. He was always usually smart enough to figure out that, yeah, this is not the car because the pedals or something, you know, y'all know. You're sort of confirming what I've always suspected. Drivers are sort of mental, right?

Hello? They're headcases. They're headcases. They're head cases, right? They are head. And you have to just to get them, sometimes just to shut them up, just drive the car, and you have to trick them into like Jedi mine tricks. We used to have all, we used to party all the time down in the saloon.

Everybody that came in there that wanted vodka, wanted gray goose. Got to have gray goose. So you just poured that one in there, yeah. So when the gray goose bottle was empty, we just started taking the brittets and pouring that in there. They don't know. You know some great goose here? There we go. Man, you guys make careers out of lying to people is what y'all have done.

I tell you. You've got to tricking people. Yeah, what's real anymore? So, wow. Okay, do we want to talk about Harry Gant, 91? Because that's, that was an amazing stretch right there. It was. It was something special.

I mean, I still think we just try to pry out what was so good about that 1988 Talladegaard. Okay, good. All right, listen. Let's just let go, listen. Your statute of limitations may not be up. Ours passed a long time ago. So it is assumed, I can't believe I'm going to do this, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you what it is.

All right. Let's hear it. Okay. So we run the Daytona 500 in 88. We did. Well, what happened was we were, you know, we were pitted around the 12, I think it was a 12 car. Bobby Allison was driving. Anyway, I suspected they were sucking air under the restrictor plate.

Back then there was. Bobby won the Daytona 500 that year, I think. Yeah, he sure did. And I was suspecting this. I could hear the way it was idling. I could hear all these things. And, you know, then he obviously goes out there and wins the 500.

We ended up finishing third with Phil. And we just, even though we finished third, we couldn't even compete with them. I mean, they were like in another league. And so I went, told Leo Jackson, he's going to be really mad when he hears it. But I went and talked to Leo about, you know, if we want to compete,

then we got to do what they're doing. I said, we got to figure out of the way. They're finding a way to get air around that restrictor plate. We have got to figure it out. And so he said, He said, all right. He was very reluctant. He didn't want to do it. But I said, in matter of fact, we got an argument. I said, okay, if you just want to go to the race, just show up, we'll do that too.

So he got mad, went to work, fixed a manifold. It's one of the most amazing pieces of art you've ever seen. I mean, cut it in pieces, made it, put these holes in it. And it was, I still got it. You still had it? Oh, yeah. Heck yeah, I got on show. Like where do you keep in my shopping shop somewhere? That's so awesome.

And I guess I few other things, too. but so we put that thing on there and Leo did it right. I mean, it was worth a pretty good advantage. Yeah. We don't sit on the pole, though. Apparently everybody else is doing it too. And so the last lap of the race, Bobby's trying, Bobby finished second, and we ended up winning.

I was wondering how Bobby was making that front end on that Buick run so good on a plate track, because that front end was what's underneath the front end was making it run. The grill on the Buick at that time was. like running the wrong way. It's like the opposite of what you won't. He was pretty good too. He was. But that was, after the race was over, we were tearing the engine down.

I look around, no Leo Jackson. He wasn't going to be nowhere around that. But we got it through. He did a really good job with it. But I'll tell you what he did do. This is the best thing. He goes back to the shop and he makes this thing that will actually bolt on the engine, pull a vacuum on it and check for that.

And takes it the next week to the garage and gives it to the series director. and he says if I can't cheat, nobody can. This is what we need to be doing. So he showed them how to use it. That thing is still being used in the garage today. Wow. That similar thing. Yep.

That's why they protect them now. I know that I never heard that about Bobby's car. I know that I thought that that was the big rumor on the four car when it was winning all the plate races. I think it's probably more than a rumor. Yeah. Like they had drilled. It had gotten so hard by that time, though. That's why you got to give, I guess as Runt Pittman was building the engines.

and Tony Glover. You've got to give them a lot of credit because it was hard to get by with that back then. Yeah. I heard that they had, they were drilling the studs for the carburetor.

The carburetor studs. They were drilling holes in those down in there and then routing into the... You need to get Glover in here. Put him on a hot seat. Make him come clean. Oh yeah.

It's fun. You've already got me. All right. So are we satisfied with the Phil Parsons' explanation? I am. Okay. So then we go move on to the next

recreation car. So I tried that. So I heard that y'all were doing that kind of stuff. And when I ran my late model at Myrtle Beach, the Allen plugs in the intakes. Yeah. Yeah. I would drill a hole in the side of that Allen plug and then valley it into the intake. But then you could turn that Allen plug of, you know, a quarter of a turn and then seal it.

Yeah. So nobody, you know, it wouldn't leak. Then when you get ready to go run, you clock that thing back a little bit and open it up. It was good for, it was big on two-borrow car, but didn't help me win, but still had to go through the corner better. Harry Gant, so you talked about Harry setting up that car in his shop, and so you'd been around Harry for a while since the early 80s, right? Actually, I'd, you know, I've been exposed to Harry Gant back in the 70s.

You know, I first started going to Hickory. He was racing there, and he was, actually, he row mine. I mean, it was like, I mean, it just doesn't get much better than what he was doing. He was, you know, his coolest guy on the track and winning races and, you know. So, you know, Camberdhausens, towed housings, all that stuff is so common and everybody's doing everything they can to max, max, max, max, even thousands of a degree, right? What was the, again, Mike kind of tapped into what my thought is here as to what, how's the conversation start? Okay, so here's what happened with that.

So that was in the real early days of the radio tire. Right. It was in 1990. Is that the first time you ever thought in your mind, I would love to have a little more camera? Yes, that was the first time. But here's what drove us to that, because that radial tire,

we were running kind of the same. We just put the tires on and go run the same setups. And we don't have any tire data like they have now. There's so much data that the crew chiefs engineers have and it's generated, you know exactly where to put the toes into cameras. We didn't have any of that. And so we're just kind of going from history,

which was, we're on three and a half over here, three and a half three here. On the front. On the front. This is front cambers. Well, then the engineers, the tire engineers, are trying to give us a little bit of, you know, hey man, y'all try a little more camber in those front tires.

It's their fault. Everybody started running more camber. They're the first ones to say something about it. And so we tried, gosh, it really reacted to it. I mean, it really reacted to camber. It was crazy because the buy-spot tire was kind of numb to it. You could put a little more camera. It might be a little bit.

But this thing, you put a little bit, boom, it was good. You know, you knew it was there. and so we go to Richmond we finally got the front cambers kind of figured out but we come back from the Richmond race and we used to have to dismount all of our tires that we ran in the race unlike today

where they just fill them in a hauler and somebody else does it all. But I'd always go out there on Mondays and look at all the tires that came off the car to just see make sure we're trying to get the maximum out of the car. If you're wearing the right rear's too much

over the red, you know, you're trying to look at all that while I start looking. We're killing outside edge of the right rear tire. I'm just wearing twice as much. as the inside. And it's kind of the same thing on the left. And so, like, dang, you know, that camber deal would work if we could get some camber in this rear end. And so I go to Leo, and I said, what do you think about this? He said, I don't know how you get that axle to work, you know, there's all this stuff designed to run straight. I said, well, I said, I got an idea. I said,

if you'll help me with it. I said, I'm going to crown this, I want to put that axle in the leg, and I'm going to put like a little ball on it. And then, no, I said, why don't you do that because I was going to do it myself, but I didn't have the right tooling. He said, let me do that part. So he goes and does that, brings it back to me. But it still won't go in the, it still won't go in the drive plate because the root of the spline needed to be the same way. So I put it in the lathe. And I just took a Zizz. I literally took a Ziz wheel on an air hose. And I went down in that route all the way around those splines of that axle and made it kind of ball shape, stuck and got it where it would actually fit in the car. This is after we cambered. We actually bent

the housing like a half. a degree maybe the first time. No more than that. No more than about one anyway. Because that's all that really wanted to give up. You know, you're trying to bend this housing. Good. Yeah.

And then we try to make these axles fit. We finally make them fit. And we take it to a couple of races. It didn't just start off. We didn't start winning right when we did it. Right. It was kind of an evolution. Then we ended up putting a little more and trying to get a little more,

getting a little better at it. And we put grease, make sure they could live. And we just kept sneaking up on it until the 91, four in a row by that time. we'd gotten it pretty mature. So the problem initially with trying to camber the housing, you can torch the housing or cut it or do whatever you want to do to make the actual housing flange have camber. But then you have a drive plate and an axle and all those things like you say

that are made to run straight. You had to shape the axle, but then the valleys of the teeth in the axle itself. That's what I had to take that Ziz wheel and go down in there and make clear. That was the key. I wouldn't even thought about that. I'd have been like, oh, it ain't going to work. Who's got another idea?

Nobody normal thinks about that, right? This is what makes them good. But the combination of that, the front end and a few other things, really gave that car a competitive advantage. The biggest thing is the engine. People don't really know much about the engine. At that time, like I said, we'd worked all these cambers out. We'd already got made a lot of headway on some things. And then we found out that we were behind on our engine stuff.

There was a loophole in the rules. There was a 22-degree angle or 23-degree angle rule for the cylinder heads. Well, they had teams that were welding up the heads and then just basically rolling them. And it was kind of a loophole. And we were way behind the curve. We didn't realize it because we're up in Asheville and we're not kind of in the mainstream, but somehow it gets to us that we're behind on it. Well, our guys go to work.

And, like I said, Leo Jackson is one of the best. And they do, I mean, they do it right. It took 200 hours of welding on those heads to make them. and then you remachine them, reshopping them, re-heat-trade, all this stuff. Well, that engine, that race at Darlington was the first race we showed up with that motor. So to me, that's what sent us over the edge, that it was the engine. Dang. Along with all the other things.

Sure. Incredible. I'm trying to process 200 hours of welding. One guy, it took him weeks and weeks. It took forever to weld these things. I mean, it was really, I mean, you were talking about welding three quarters of an inch or more on one side of the head. Like on the base. of the head. When did you start to see around the garage everybody tuning in to the camber?

It was, I don't know how that got out so easily. It shouldn't have. I guess we just weren't, you know, we weren't tight-lipped enough about it. And then, you know, all of a sudden, then we're playing catch-up because everybody else is going instead of one degree or one-and-half, I think is where we wound up. They're going three and three-and-half, and then they're breaking axles and they're, you know, we never did break an axle or strip of spline doing that. That's amazing. A lot of teams did.

That's like the perfect example of how the garage works. You know, the teams observing each other, I'd go to, and I know you're well in the throes of this and deep into what's happening, but my favorite part of the competition meeting was the part when Alan Gustersterson would open up his laptop and connect to the whiteboard on the wall and show us all of the photos that they took all weekend of everybody else's stuff. Yep. And, oh, man, look at how they've got that made. Look at how they've shaped this.

And that was my favorite part is to sort of see the ingenuity. How detail these photos are that they get from the roof that you see a lot. I mean, it's hard to hide stuff on the outside of the car. It sure is. And the garages are ob, I mean, while you're in there working on your own car, you know, especially back when we had practice, which we hopefully get back at some point, some shape or form, you're not only working on your own car, but you are looking at every, Every opportunity when a wheel comes off of that car next to you and you get a shot at it,

you get to look in there and see what they're doing. Yeah. Every opportunity to be able to see a different vantage point from your competitor's car because usually you only see it on the racetrack or sitting on the ground. Everybody's pretty protective of that stuff. I know when I was at ESPN and working with Fox, I could walk through the garage. And I wasn't a threat, right? I could look under people's hoods.

I talked to, you know. Man, as soon as I walked in with this shirt on, I just, you kind of get. You forget. You kind of forgets. I walk in there, I'm looking, I think it was Joey Lugano's car, and I'm standing there looking at, and that guy's, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, oh, okay. Yeah.

Listen, I know we're supposed to, I know we're supposed to talk about all your days with Dale Earnhard and everything, but I still got one more I want to ask you about, okay? Because this stuff is fascinating. And I'm impressed. I was watching an interview that Ray Evanham gave, and where he was talking about, this deck lid at Daytona. He's one giving that up? Well, I guess.

I mean, it's on YouTube. Really? All right. What did he say about it? Well, the deck pin, the pins, like somehow. Was it his? No, yours. Okay.

He said this was yours. Yeah. Where Earnhardt could lower, no? Wasn't Earnhardt. It was not Erndt. It was Harry Gant. I've still got it. I've still got it.

Is this on the same shelf as the... It's close to it. He's got a trophy case of all his most stuff. When it comes to selling your stuff, I want all those things. I want all the, I want your little cheat-in-up parts. So, listen, if Ray Everingham's out there talking, he's on a PR tour to talk about all the stuff that's what the Hall of Fame needs is an exhibit. That's right.

They need an exhibit. So what can you tell us about this deck lid? Okay, so we go to Daytona, they came up with a spoiler angle rule. I guess it was 89 or 90. I can't remember what year it was. And we had always been good. Like I said, we won in 88 at Talladega, I finished third at 500. So we're always good at Speedways.

exploiting all the rules. Well, some of that spoiler angle was some of it, some of it was heights, a lot of of things that we, but Gary Nelson came along and really tightened up every, you know, this is his first, going to be his first season as a series director. And so, you've got to clean it all up now. We can't be cheating. They're going to check heights. And so now all of a sudden we can't do our little things we were doing.

And we weren't very fast. We were testing, and we were really slow. Motors were off at that time. And I remember being on a plane coming back. I'm just kind of in my mind thinking, what are we going to do? I thought if I could figure out a way to get that spoiler to lay down and get it back up because they're going to check it post race. And so I had in my mind, before I even landed,

I had in my mind how we could make the hinge, you know, and conceal it and how all that would work. And what I didn't have was an actuator for it. And so I go, I mean, I go to work on it. As soon as we get back, me and a guy named Dean Jones worked in our shop in a little locked up room on this thing. Nobody knew. And we get to saying all working the spoiler. Hinge is perfect. Everything's good. I've got the back plate of the spoiler. I do this little deal with

silicone where it looks like it's welded, but it still has flexible, and it's, you know, it's all good. But I don't have any way to move it. And I'm looking at, back then, no internet, right? So you don't have way to go to search this thing. And I've looked in catalogs. So one night I took my car that we drove as an automobile, Delta 88, they gave us to drive, you know. So I'm driving it to the store, and I get to the store, get some groceries, and I pop the deckle, it boop pops up, you know. throw the groceries in the trunk. I shut the deck lid. And if you remember these cars, they would click,

and then they would have this thing and just pulled them down tight. You know, and so as soon as that happened, like as soon as they went, click and went, yeah, I was walking to the driver's door, and I went, whoa, wait a minute, I popped that deck lid up. I said, where is that thing?

What's doing that? And so I take that thing right straight from the grocery store over to the shop, and I pop that thing out, and I find that little motor, and it is dead, perfect. It's got this little thing going up and down. I'm thinking, man, this is perfect.

And so I take it. I go in there and fab up. This is like 8 o'clock at night. I fab up this little thing to like hold the deck lid down on this car, you know, and take that thing. And then I had to buy another one, right? Because I needed one on each side of the spoiler. Okay.

So we start making all the little linkages and everything. But it has perfect. It had a little limit switch and we could set it and we got it. And it was nice. Again, Leo Jackson, not one that wants to cheat. And so. How did you engage it? So, okay, that's the key to it.

So we get it on the car. I told him. So look, I wasn't going to do it without telling him. He said, he didn't want to do it. I said, let me put it on the car. If you can find it. If you can find it, we won't run it. And you know it's on it.

We haven't heard that before. Okay. I said, if you can find it, we won't run it. I'll give you all the time you want. I feel like we've heard. Somebody had that same exact story. It was, it was the, the shot, the shot that would come out of the, out of the frame rails. Yeah, but he was like, no, but he could.

find the door. They were saying the same thing. Like, if you can find it, we won't do it. Somebody else is uncomfortable. That's pretty good way. So we put the, right, I mean, because he knows it's in the car. You inspect it and see if you can find it. So we roll the car, ready to go Daytona.

Roll it in there. Where was it? Huh? Okay, so we had a radio box. Back then, we had a different kind of radio system. It was an analog thing, and we put it in a box. Everybody kind of had them. There was a aluminum box that would keep out the interference.

And it's set on the tunnel, the way we had ours right beside the driver. And it had some switches on it and dials to turn the radio up and turn it on and off. So we just put it a little extra switch in there, a little three-way, like middle and up and down. On the radio. On the radio box. I wired all this stuff through the roll bars. I mean, the key to cheat is you've got to do it right. You've got to really do the work.

And so we spend hours and hours doing this and concealed it up in the hinge part, you know, and all the stuff in the car. Everything's ready. Put it on there. Check. Okay. So Leo checks the angle. It's 45 or 1. whatever the number was.

And he goes in there, starts looking at switches, and he's raising the deck lid, and he's looking at this, and he's looking at that. I mean, he's all over this thing. Can I find it? He said, I don't think it's on this car. I reached in there to the radio box,

and the spoiler goes, yeah. Oh, that's cool. That would have been so good. I would be, where, did you have people in? So I would be, I'd be, I'd be, my pants if I was you because. I was. I was. The whole time.

You go to the track and you're like, oh, God, I just knew they were going to catch us. I mean, I was, I guarantee I looked so guilty. I couldn't stand it. They were all over that thing. I'm like, good Lord. And we get ready to qualify. Rolls out there. Gary Nelson is checking the spoiler angle. The first day on the job. The head of director. He is supposed to be stopping all cheating. He is doing it himself.

Instead of having somebody, he's at the, right before you go on the track, he's going to put it on your car. So I had it up a degree or so just so I didn't have to mess. safety yeah well he says knock it down i said no it's good i was wrong he said no he said knock it down i'm like oh god my heart's one you can see it beating through my shirt i guarantee you i'm trying to get it it won't move man it won't move not it won't bend i mean i've got linkages and everything and finally it goes down a 10th or something and he finally says go and i was like oh so he takes off and at the end of pit road at Daytona it's right close to the track and i'm standing there with my stopwatch I'm going to clock area when it comes by

and Gary's standing right there in front of me checking the next guy swallor I look at that car coming by and I think and I'm like, God! Visually. Oh yeah. It was flat. Oh.

And Gary didn't even look over there. Oh, my God. I mean, it was obvious. Yes. Damn. So after that, I said, we got to get that deck lid off the car. I can't stand it anymore.

I just can't do it. This is no way to live. Uh-uh. Back then, they used to let you put the cars in the hauler, and so we had another deck lid, and I had them get in there and chop them wire and put the stock deck lid on it. That way I could breathe for speed.

I couldn't do it for two weeks. Right, you only did it for qualifying. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You know what was bad? We qualified third. Yeah. I found out years later,

Junior's cars were on front row. They were cheating more than we were. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure. They wasn't a legal car in the lineup. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

I think it's somewhat of a coincidence that I find that from Ray Evernham. because who do it? I don't know how even told him. How did he know that? Well, that's what you got to sort out. You know, Mike, whether I've been in the garage, right, as a driver or in the studio as a member of the media, the biggest lesson I've learned over the years is that we are all better off with an ally. A friend, a partner.

My favorite part of the download has always been the opportunity it gives me to connect with such a wide range of people. They love racing as much as I do. and it means so much to me that when we leave the guest segment, I leave it with a feeling that I can call each and every guest on the download of a true ally. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the show and the entire Dirty Mo Media team. Yeah, I got a surprise for you. Oh, Jesus.

You love surprises so much. He's always doing some shit. You know about this? I knew he was going to do something. Okay. I wouldn't be as worried about it as you think you should be. Oh, it's a person? What in the world? A little champ jiffy.

Wow, we got, what is this? How are you doing? I'm great. How about you? Doing good. I think I should flip this over, right, Dean? Yep. Deck lids aren't supposed to have wires in them. Yeah. Oh, boy, look there.

Oh, I see what you're doing here. That's the hairy gant deck lid. Put on those headphones. Well, thank you, sir. Well, this is, we're totally surprised by this, and we've had somebody come. Would you like to introduce you? yourself and tell us who you are what you brought? Yeah. So back when you had Andy on, my name got

used in vain about the decklet. Oh, did it? Andy Petrie? But he was on it, right. Yeah. Yeah, right. So he used my name in vain. And so Andy and I, I basically was locked in a room at Skull Bandit Racing at Leo Jackson Motorsports for about a month building deck lids. What's your name? Dean Jones. Dean Jones. I remember him telling us about you. And so he puts you back in the room and said, come up with something. No. How it started was, you know, Andy got part of the story right about the test. We went to

test at Daytona, came back and the motors, he said the motors were not like they, you know, should be. And so he said, we started brainstorm as on a Monday morning when they got back from the test. I can remember it well because it was rainy out. And so

he says, I want to be able to drop this car down and put air to the shocks and be make the shocks go up and down. That's how we're going to get faster. That's what we're going to do. And, you know, I was a shop foreman there, and I said, Andy, that's just way too much work.

Hiding all the airlines through the roll bars and all that stuff is just like, that's not easy. So I had this idea about the actuator to be able to move the spoilers blades up and down. And so I said, your wife Sherry, Andy's first wife, Sherry, I said, she's got one on her Delta 88, because she had a French, you know, a manufacturer's car at the time that she was driving through Osmobile because we had the Osmobile deal.

And so he, you know, there's no cell phone saying. He calls home and leaves a message because Sherry's at the grocery store on a Monday morning and it's raining outside. I said, so he calls her, she gets home and comes to the shop. He tells her to come to the shop. So we pull Sherry's Oldsmobile Daddy 88 in the body shop and we dismantled the deck lid to pull the actuator down out of the trunk that when you set the decklets down, the actuator pulls the trunks down and latches them, right? So, like, Andy's flipping out about that. I said, this is what we need.

This is what we got to have. So we ended up calling local Chevrolet dealership. Anton Chevrolet was in Canton, North Carolina. The guy named Ted was the parts manager. I said, I need two actuators for, I don't care what it's off of, this aquator. It's a Delta ADA would be fine. They were a Chevrolete O's Marlain. dealership. So we get that and so then the you know the wheels start turning about how

we going to make this thing work. So so the first thing we do is we get a deck lid back in this back room and we this back room has got one two keys. I've got a key and he's got a key. None of the other guys in the shop can get in this and this is the area where we did the bond to work on the cars and then we move it over one stall to to the paint paint area. And so this is 1992. We've already won the first. four races in a row with the what I call the X-1 car, the special, you know, that car is more, more, it's more special than just the Camberdura end. Everybody thinks there's a lot more to that car than that. So we, you know, we're, we're brainstorming how we're going to make this

happen. So the first thing is, the blades. So because of the way this thing is built, you know, the long spoiler went down the center of the car back then, so you can make, you had two blades. So you got to make both of them, you got to make both of them work. Both of them move. So we, we end up building blades with flaps. and we cut slots in the back of the deck lid and we're sliding it inside to the trunk, right? And we're going to figure out the mechanism. Andy, where he came in really,

he figured out the quarter inch hymns joints and rods to be able to hook it to the actuator. And like he said in the interview with you, he had to make a stop on it because the actuator moved too much, right? And so we're figuring all that out and we end up have to mill areas in each blade for a piano hinge that we're going to pop rivet to the face of the blade. They're in there, right?

Because the blades are actually attached to the top of the deck lid, not the back of the deck lid, right? So we figure all that out. We get the actuators going in there. And so the next big challenge for us was the back of the spoiler, because what do you do because the back of the spoiler you're actually welding it to the blades and then bolting it to the deck lid. So, you know, Andy's, he's sweating it a lot.

We're going to get busted with this thing. It's a big deal. And I said, Andy, I kept telling him, kept reassure him, they're just not that smart, Andy. I'm telling you they're just not that smart. I know. Before I work for Skull, I worked for Dave Marcus. I spent six years at Dave Marcos from 82 until 88

and then 88 to 90. 94 when Harry retired. I worked at Skull Bandit. And so we get this, I mean, we get the thing all built and we figured out the wiring. You can see the wiring hanging out of it. And so we got our hinges hidden hidden on the car back then because it's a speedway car. This car that came off of was the same car that Phil won the Talladega race in 88. Yeah. And that's the same car. So when those cars were to crown skull cars, they were black and white without the decals on. And so they gave them whale names. Shamu. And Orca, those were the cars that we got when Leo got the Skull Bandit team.

We inherited those cars. Okay. Right? So our very first car that we built there was a car we named Alf. And that was the car that won the first race at Darlington in 1989, the Trans South 500, and that where Harry threw the monkey off his back. And, you know, he got back in winter circle, you know, our fifth race as a team. But we had such an innovative group there.

I mean, Charlie Presley was there, and he'd ran a whole lot of short track stuff with Bob, and he'd work for Morgan Shepard. We had a guy in Scott Ramanette that had worked, and he came over, he was down in Denver. There were just other people that just came on. But Leo, you know, Leo Jackson does not give enough credit for how wise he is and how genius like he is.

You know, there's other things about our other cars I can tell you about. So the big thing at the end of this thing was how are we going to, how are we going to figure out this back plate to make it look like these back plates are attached to the front blades? And so I said, that's no problem, Andy. I will use a silicone gun and I'll stitch this silicone beads on here just like a weld. It's like a weld. You can feel it right now.

It's rubber. And so the blade can move back and up and down. But there's three hinges on each one of these that are pop riveted here, pop riveted to the blade. and so how do you hide those because Bondo doesn't stick to aluminum. So I took, first of all, J.B. Weld and put J.B. Weld over those to be able to, because it would stick to aluminum.

J.B. L. would, and then I bonded, the Bondo would stick to the J.B. Weld, right, to get it so you can't see it. So in the process, we actually started out with one deck lid, and we had the slots cut in it, ready to put the blades in it. And, you know, I mentioned Matt about Buster Oughton. You just show up at your shop sometimes and say, okay, boys, this is what we're doing new this year, right?

So at that time, the year before that, you were able to slide your spoiler around the radius on the deck lid, and the number was like 22 inches. Well, we were building that first deck lid at the 22-inch number. Buster Oten shows up and says, well, the new number is now 21. You got to come up. So we got to come up. So that first deck lid, scratch out. So we got to start all over again.

So we get that all put in there. But the best thing and the best time of all of this was Andy and I are locked in the room the very first time that we run it. We hook a battery up to it. We hooked the waters up to it. And we're sitting down. We got it on a trash can or saw horses or something. You know, and we got it. And we hook it up and he goes, bz-z-click.

We look at each other. We just horse laughed ourselves right down to the floor. I mean, we knew we had it. We had something right here, right? We really had something. How many degrees did it move? 15. If you look at this one right here, I ran this thing, I don't know, a couple years ago,

but it looks like one of the actuators is not working. So the blade on the left-hand side is down and the one on the right side right now. That's how far it would go down. And the thing with the whole purpose of this thing was Leo Jackson wanted to win a poll at Daytona. He wanted to win a poll, and he, I mean, he's a very proud guy about his. horsepower. And so the Skull Bandit Engine Department, before the race team actually came there, was already

in place. Leo was already building engines for Benny Parsons in the 55 Copenhagen car, and Richard, his brother was building Phil's stuff for him. And so those cars were still getting prepared down in Denver. And, you know, we started up,

Johnny Hayes allowed us to start to team up with Leo there at Airport Road. Asheville, North Carolina. But most of the guys that worked there were from around there, and they were lived there. I mean, racers from that area, you know, Kerry Boatenheimer's, we hired a couple of guys that had worked for Kerry in the past. Jimmy Penland was there, and he's still involved with NASCAR. Dwayne Falkle was another guy we hired that worked at Cary's, and he was just great,

and he passed away recently. He was working at Penske. He had an accident out on the road, and he passed on it. It was a big deal when that happened. But there was guys that just came in. We had a guy named, Mark Parks that showed up. He just, he wanted to be part of the team. He worked for Snap on in Elizabeth and Tennessee at their plant there. He wanted to be a part of this team, you know, and so we hired him. He could, he could.

Did you go to the track when the spoiler went to the track? Yep. And so my job, when the car goes to the track, I'm the only one to touch the deck lid. Because when you go to the race track in Daytona, the first thing you do, you're up on Jackson's, you got pulled fuel cells out. They want to check them fuel cells, right? So if a NASCAR official starts to hinge that thing, and feels the weight of it, it's all over right then.

You could tell. Oh, this is heavy. It's heavy with those actuators and the stuff that's in it, and the bando that's on it. It's heavy. So I had to touch, I mean, I was the only one to touch it. So one of the things Andy didn't tell you about that day with the deck lid and Gary Nelson the first day on the job was we did get busted.

We got busted. So Leo created these things we called them fuzz balls. They were a copper ball. cupped out and they went between the jack screw plate and the so it could basically compress.

Yeah, the frame of the car. Yeah, and so no, just the plate and the spring. Okay. And so we put those on there and I'm all the time I'm telling Annie, why do we need those things? We just need to know how long we need to have the spoiler down to run fast enough to win the pole

because if we run the spoiler all the way down along the racetrack, we're going to be a lot. We're going to be a second and a half faster. Then they're going to be all over it then, right? So he's bound to determine he's going to run the fuzz balls. And it falls under the category of, we'll do this, and if they catch that, we'll be okay with them catching that. Ah, yeah.

You know, there's that mindset, right? So we have the fuzz balls on there, and we're too low when we come back through for inspection. Because with Gary Nielsen in place, this is the first time they're checking heights after you qualify. Yeah. Right? And so we're low.

And so they're over there off in the corner and they're, Gary's examining how did they get this car low, you know? The whole thing with the shock thing that we threw that out the window that first day. There's about four or five us around their brainstorm and how are we going to go faster with, you know. And the engine got better anyway, but that our engines weren't off long. If we were off, we were not off long. They would figure it out. We'd get better.

So I just remember that the day Gary's over there with Andy And he's there sitting on two tires Because the tires off the cars and they're sitting on the two tires And they're in the wheel well looking there trying to figure out Why is that car low? Right and he finally sees the copper things that are smashed Flashed yeah right And honestly I can't tell you if if Andy got fined or I don't know We qualified fourth fastest

So so I mean that the whole day there was was kind of fun for me until after we qualified and after they found the fuzz balls, what we call the fuzz balls flattened out, we got to put the cars back in the trailers because that was an error when we could put the cars in. So Andy said there's one decklid, there's two. The Bud's shootout car or the Bush Clash car had a power spoiler on it. He's got it.

This is the one off the actual 500 car. So we built two more. I had to build two more stock decklets because if we did get caught, we had to have backup. So after that fiasco was over with Gary Nelson and the Fuzzballs, Hoss Berry was our truck driver and his best truck driver in NASCAR, in my opinion. He drives for NASCAR now. Anyway, we get the cars in there and I'm up there, the only one.

Swapping it. Swapping. Yeah, and it happened to just be Sunday. We qualified on Sundays back then. Sunday afternoon, it's 85 degrees in that taller, and I'm up there sweating. I bet. And I'm the only guy that can fit. I can't.

The only guy can fit. So we changed him out. And he says, we've got to get. them off there. We've got to get them off there. I can't take it no one. I can't take them walk. He didn't even want them on the cars in the haulers. No, after he got busted with the fuzzball. Where did you put the where did you put them up in the cab? The other deck lids? Yeah, the ones you took off the power deck lids. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's why that's why I'm able to bring this to you. As soon as when you interviewed Andy and you said I want to have that

stuff to him in that area. I said I got to I got to call I got to get a hold of Matt Dillner. Yeah. I You got it. You got the one. I got the one. And Andy's got one too. And so Andy, you know, he cut his apart. And I would occasionally go out and see Andy after I left the NASCAR world. He'd have me, I have a graphics business. And so we would do stuff for him. And so he cut his apart. When Jerry Punch was instrumental in getting Andy his job with ESPN, right, I think he cut his apart to show the executives from ESPN. Oh, here's the Decliffe.

The Creativity. Because, well, the Declos were a thing. I mean, Ray knew about it because we were so close to Ray. I had known Ray from IROC days because when I worked for Dave Marcus, Dave would test IROC cars. Before there was any testing limitations, we would test Dave's cars with the IROC cars at Daytona and Taladegh when they would test them.

So I just got to know Ray pretty well. But, you know, Andy and Ray were really, really close at the race every week. So what do you do, Dean? You just go around showing off this piece of art? This thing is like you're an art exhibit that you go around? No, no, I don't. No, people, I've mentioned this to people and they say it needs to be in the Hall of Fame. I say, I mean, I know Winston Kelly, you know, and so pick up the phone call Winston, hey Winston, you know, can we do this? It's not my point. I'd rather Andy do that, right? Yeah, right. But it's been in a, it's been a loft in my, at my building at my home ever since 1992.

too. It's a cool piece for sure. Yeah. But I wanted you to have it. Oh, we're going to keep it? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Oh, man. You said you wanted it? We'll hang it up in here. Yes. We'll hang it up, but it's yours. We're not taking it. Listen, there's things in here that don't belong to us, but we'll proudly display it, but give you all the credit. Sure. I had, after that interview, I had people

texting me like, I can't believe Andy mentioned your name about that. Yeah. Well, we'll gladly showcase it in here. Yeah. It's like the greatest example of of ingenuity and creativity. Yeah, I think because it didn't get, it didn't get confiscated. Yeah. Right.

Because it didn't get, their, that's car doesn't have it. There may be other ingenuity examples, but they all got busted, right? You got this one, because of your fuzz balls,

you got, you got this one, this one cleared. Yeah, the attention. But Andy was really sweating. And I, I must have told him 25 to 50 times, Andy, we're not going to get caught with this.

They're not that smart. That's just what I would say. Don't you know that there's a lot of people have said that that also got caught. I mean, don't you think that? Well, I know that Travis Carter with Jimmy Spencer was driving the car for him. They tried something like that with springs on the on the blade somehow and they got caught. They got caught at Daytona. I mean. Well, yeah, but they won the race, right? Are you talking about the? No, no, no. They won both of them. That was a different car. Different car? That was a different time that you

cheated. Travis Carter's the nerve of that guy, right? I mean, come on. Yeah, Travis is very innovative too i mean he's been around the he's been around the block a few times and he's just great we just we just had a really that when we when i look at that era because i walked away from racing when harry retired on a on a on a team basis right and i look at the people that we had there in that era and i say man we had some of the best innovations and so the lugs that were are in the steering arms and the in the drag links and that changed the bumpster that was a leo jackson idea really yeah i remember allan Quickie, I didn't go to the racetrack a lot, but I remember the times I did go to the racetrack. Alan Quickey was always, when we were running really good in 91, Alan Quickey was all over that car.

So I remember the, I remember bump in a car and using the bumpster gauge that had the tie rod ends that were clamps so you could just clamp where you wanted the piece. You would clamp onto the drag link wherever you, you know, and wherever you got your bump number, then you would take the drag link off and drill where. the clamp located the hole, right? So you'd have to weld up the original hole on the drag link, steel drag link, and then you drill where the clamp was,

and now you have your bump steer the way it is. And so they said, you know what, be easier is to actually have slugs with different holes positioned. So you could just change it out instead of welding and drilling and all that. Well, we started, you know, we started building our own front sections, which Banjo Matthews really was really upset about that one.

because we you know his rear steer car so we we we look Terry Satchel who was an engineer that had worked at Penskees and he was kind of he'd been at Chevrolet he'd been at four and whatever he was helping us with something so we we got the opportunity to take our cars to the Detroit shaker and this is a rear steer car and the weakest part of those cars was the strut rods and the flat area and the strut rods where it went into the lower a arm right and so this is leo Jackson innovation right now. So we end up, he's ended up machining his own strut rods for this thing and we put a sleeve in the lower a arm to slide the, I don't remember what number the steel was, what hardness the steel was. So it had a monoball out on the front section and then it had this

sleeve in there with a big nut on the back side of it. And you were able to shim it also to get the lower a arms in the right positions. And so that was all about that time. We started building our front section we made a front steer strut rod car damn yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well man we appreciate you coming yeah some good stuff i'm glad to be here yeah i'm glad to hang out a little bit thanks for the uh thanks for the deck lid we're gonna be proudly displaying that on our show what else you got there so this is the car that ken schrader ran for andy petrie in 1997 this is the first year that it changed from the bush clash to the bud shootout okay and so i had done some graphic work i have a graphics business and so uh brian buckar was like the motorsports representative for u.s tobacco at that

time and i said he asked me if i'd design a car for for this for straight for shredder for running this so this car was supposed to run only in the bud shootout the very first bud shootout with kenny shredder driving the car and kenny wrecked the primary car in the 125 so he had to run this with a broken in sternum, he broke his sternum in that wreck and the 125s drove this car in the 500. So I think they ran this car at Talladegas also. So I just kind of proud because I got to design

that. And one of the things you know about designing cars, I know I follow you, how you like to design your own. So convincing them to change the door number to a different color so you could read the word skull better and put the shadow on the skull like that, I don't know how I was

able to convince Brian Buckauer that, but he was able to hire, he was able to influence the people above him that say, hey. Yeah. It does make a difference. Yeah. Little things, man. Yeah.

Well, we appreciate you, bud. Yeah, man. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Good surprise, Matthew. Oh, we've been talking about this ever since the Andy interview. Oh, have you? Oh, yeah.

We've been back and forth texting each other ever since then. All right, everybody, it's time for Ash Jr. here on the Dale Jr. download. We are thankful for Xfinity for supporting this part of our show. They've been a great partner of ours on the podcast for a long time and doing so many great things in the sport and I am a customer as well at one of my houses so they are it's secure it is always online I never have any drops and yeah and I've got multiple devices fired up to this thing and everything works flawlessly so thank you Xfinity let's get started Hannah well this first one we're just gonna we're just gonna go ahead and get after it right off the jump here from Ryan Goodman

He said, Dale, you and Amy are going out on a date night. Who do you trust more with your children? Matthew or Mike? Matthew or Mike? Who do I trust with my children? Yes. You're going on a date. We all know the answer to this.

You got to call up the babysitter and your options of babysitting are Mike or Matthew. Well, I'd have to say Mike and only because I've seen him around my kids. So I know what they would, he's, I've seen him. around them. I haven't experienced what babysitter Matthew would be. Which I'm sure they would be fine, but by the time I picked them up, they'd be full of water burger, cheeseburgers.

And just coming back from Bowman Gray. Yeah. Yeah. Or they learn to flip off the competition every time they'd drive them. They would have ice cream and cotton candy all over their face and clothes. Steak biscuits. Matthew's the Funkle.

That's what my niece is call me the funkel. There you. I believe that. All right. This one comes from Ryan Johnson. He says, it's almost time for you to get back in the booth.

What are your favorite and least favorite track broadcast booths to call races from? That's tough to say because I don't really remember, I don't remember exactly what each booth is like until I go back up there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this place. This place sucks. Yeah. Talladega used to be the worst one, but they got a new one now. but it used to be tight and small and old.

I know you had to struggle with Pocono the one time. Pocono. I remember you saying that. The Pocono booth's okay. We kind of use room right next to the suites. I almost tripped down the stairs because you're right. Pocono sucks. Yeah, the Pocono booth is kind of tough,

but I almost blew my knee out one time in that booth trying to get around. So it's so cramped in there where we had this real little alley of stairs, small little narrow alley of stairs, but there's also lights that are tripods and stuff that are on those stairs, and you've got to kind of weave your way down. And I stepped wrong and I heard my knee hurt for like a couple weeks because it was like I twisted something in there. But it was close.

there's just you know there's some booths that are just older than others but it doesn't really bother you the size some of them are way too big there's some sweets that are just gigantic but

they're all they're all fun I don't really have I don't know which one's the best I mean the newer ones I think it's kind of really the track you're at you're like hey man I love this track I'm not I'm more happy to be there because of the location or the race I'm about to see.

And the Charlotte boosts kind of tight. Like I said, man, they're all kind of, the Charlotte boosts tight as far as like height. It's low ceilings. And some of them will freeze you out. And some of them don't have any air conditioning at all. They're all just, there's all types of boosts out there. Freezing out and being too hot, that would put them at the bottom of the list.

right there. You gotta have the temperature control. I mean, seriously. Can we get temperature control back here? Yeah. This food sucks. It's so cold. Every week. There you go. That's kind of what it's like. So the booth, for some reason, whatever's happening in the larger... It's because the lights.

They have so many lights that produce heat in the in your guys' booths that they have to crank the AC otherwise you'll just sweat. Yeah. What's the excuse in there, though? I wonder. Is it just because there's a vent? I don't know. I think there's two vents. I think there's two vents and it's over. Too much circulation in there. Too much coming in there. Too much cold air coming in there. You need to just seal off one of those vents.

I feel like a goon when I walk out of my house at 8 o'clock in the morning on a summer day, and I've got jeans and a sweatshirt to come to the recording. You're like, man, did I bring my hoodie? I'm going to need that. I have a dirty mo hoodie in my truck specifically to record on Tuesday mornings. I got you. Maybe that's what we're doing. We're freezing you out so you wear the brand. Yeah. It's working. It's working. This next one comes from Jeremy the bottle rocket.

He said, you get to take one vehicle, any vehicle or race car in history, up the Goodwood hill climb. What car are you slinging up the hill? Man. That's very specific. Yeah. I guess I'd take the Nova. I don't know.

You know, I don't. That is the one I'm probably most proud of in terms of old cars that I own or have collected. So I'd probably take the Nova up there. I think it's been up the hill once already in its previous life when it was before we were stored it. It had all the stickers and decals all over it from Goodwood. Oh, wow. Yeah. And this last one here comes from Jared. He said, do you have any tracks that are still on your bucket list that you just somehow haven't been able to make it to? North Walesboro. You mean you're like to drive on? Sure. Or visit as a spectator? I, uh, well, I want to go to Knoxville.

Have it never been to a race there. You got to go for nationals. Sure. So I want to go to Knoxville and I want to go to Chili Bowl. So there's a couple there. I want to go to all the things that are going to happen at North Wilsonboro in the future. So that's a pretty decent list. And we actually do have one more. And this one comes from Slide Job.

He says, has Dale Jr. ever been to Oswego? And would he ever be interested in taking some laps and is super modified? Yeah, I went up there for an autograph session one time, I think. I feel like I've been to that racetrack track. But I would not. want to to raise some modified around there they fly um mike if you've never seen this place it's it's flat super fast boilerplate walls all the way around yeah i got the book of of the history of the classic and and um just some incredible stories in there it's how we it's how i learned about

bentley warren and and nola swift and all those guys and they they they just reading that book man they jumped off the pages became heroes of mine and uh pretty incredible historic racetrack. I've tried to get them to let eye racing come scan, but they are not sure what that means. They don't know what eye racing is, I guess. So we've got to get Oswego to jump on board. As I was going to say, I've only been there when it's a dirt.

Oh, yeah. Because I go for Super Dirt Week, and I'm going for good old eight days at Oswego this year. But I've never been when it's pavement, so that would be cool. Wow. They put dirt on it every year. Yeah, in October for eight days. Insane.

Eight days of racing it Oswego dirt. The footage of our Rundle episode of Lost Speedways has Bentley Warren and other drivers racing around Oswego, and it is absolutely stupid. They're crazy. Oh, God. Those super modified guys just in general have a different level of respect of mine because it is like drag cars that turn left. Like it is wild. It's truly run what you're wrong to the extreme. And I don't know of any other series like that in the world where basically you can just build whatever you want.

and put as much down force on it as you want, the biggest motor you want, and good luck. There's really been a resurgence, too, of Super Modified's up recently. Like, the Star Classic was really good this last year. But that's it. That's all we have for Ask Junior this week. All right, y'all.

Appreciate it. Great questions, man. Y'all got me wanting to go to some racetracks. And, yeah, so let's take a road trip. Thank you, Exfinity for everything you do for us here at Dale Jr. Download, and also for everything you do at NASCAR. Their Xfinity, X-Fi, it's more than fast, man. It's reliable and secure.

everybody gets to do all the things they love on all of their devices with Xfinity X-Fi. That's right. Thanks everybody for asking your questions. Remember to keep them coming at Xfinity Racing on Twitter. And thank you, Xfinity. They continue to give us the Wi-Fi coverage that all of our devices need. Xfinity, proud premier partner of NASCAR. All right, man, that was pretty good.

Great hearing all those stories about innovation and outright cheating. Some of those are just outright cheating, Mike. Let's be honest. Yeah. But there's some innovation, creativity. every race car that is on a racetrack today has some innovation and creativity built into it. There you go. It might not be illegal, but they are absolutely jumping through some hoops in that rulebook.

Well, if you don't have innovation, then what do you need engineers for, right? I mean, isn't that what their job is to basically come up with some, you know, ingenuity and put it in a race car to give yourself an advantage? That's what we have. I can tell you, if you build a bone stock car by reading the rule book, you will run last. Yes, I have done that. We built a street stock car.

We never went to the racetrack. All right, this is how stupid we were. We're going to build a street stock car and race it at Concord, and we never went to the racetrack to look at the races and the cars that were running there. We literally bought it, got a rule book and built the car by the rule book. And when we showed up, we were thinking, what in the hell? And we got our butts kit. And that's when you realize that having that conscience and being able to look at yourself in the mirror

really ain't all that's cracked up to be. You'd rather actually run better. We went to work. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, thanks, everybody. And yeah, good show. All right, have a good week.

We'll see you. Here's another question to think about what is fair play. Do you think that's fair? What do you think? Well, fair play. Check out Dirtymo Media. On Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Thank you.