By the early '30s, the lakes were humming most every weekend with hot rods, Depression be damned. Speed activity had spread to the streets as well-the beginning of a poor public image of car tinkerers that would last several more decades. The number of clubs and disparity of rules finally led to the establishment of the SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) in 1937 to come up with uniform safety rules. By the time of our program, the association consisted of more than 700 members in some 37 clubs. That's a lot of plaques and jackets!
At this point, the business of speed equipment was far from being an "industry." There were a host of high-compression flat aftermarket heads for Ts and As, several popular overhead conversions, a few one- and two-pot downdraft intake manifolds, and some improved magneto ignitions. Some names produced less than a dozen parts, others hung in and had limited popularity. At this juncture, it took a war (and once again, Henry Ford) to spur real development. In the pivotal year of 1941, the hot rodders were chased off of the Muroc dry lake to make way for a military facility (Edwards Air Force Base). Like most other young Americans, hot rodders enlisted in droves and, while in the service, often improved their mechanical skills and learned new ones that would serve them well in peacetime-like machining, casting, and metalworking. The boys itched to get back to their cars after the war ended, and lakebed racing really burgeoned from then on. We don't know what nature had intended for these lakes, but for those individual hot rodders who saw needs for new equipment, they became virtual dynamometers and testbeds.
When a guy went fast with some new piece of equipment he had made, his friends wanted one like it and new manufacturing skills led to some kind of production speed equipment. Ol' Henry's unwitting contribution to all this was again mass production of affordable cars, this time with the first cheap V-8 engines. Although it had been out since '32, the Flathead didn't really dominate the lakes until after the war. When the first Flathead V-8s began appearing at the lakes, they could hit the "century mark," but modifieds with four-bangers were 30 mph faster! By the time of the SCTA program we're examining, everybody was trying to make that bent-eight lump of iron go faster, and many now-famous companies owe their start to those days. In our program, the listing of the race entries considered the engine equipment very important information, and included in each car's stats: engine, head(s), manifold (intake), camshaft, and ignition system. These categories of equipment were the weak points of the Flathead when used for higher rpms and consequently were the most studied and improved avenues for speed equipment.
Intake Manifolds
You didn't have to be a genius to guess that the parallel mods of whacking the muffler off the bottom of an engine and installing something on top that put more fuel into the engine would make a car go faster. Adding a bigger carburetor was probably everyone's first engine mod, and there were a wide variety of aftermarket choices. Arguably the first hot setup was a simple, bolt-on adapter, either welded up or cast, that allowed you to install two carburetors where the engine had originally only had one. When that proved helpful, real genius was then actually needed to find out how to make these two carbs flow better. Listed in our program were the now-well-known names of Edelbrock, Weiand, and Offenhauser who established their credibility in this hotly contested arena.
Vic Edelbrock Sr. bought a Deuce roadster in '38, and he and Tommy Thickstun (who later made his own speed equipment) designed a two-pot manifold to try at the lakes. Like most of the other young men, Vic would strip off the fenders and windshield when he got to the lakebed, then go for it. Vic later made an improved manifold design of his own called the Slingshot. His racing success and selling 100 Slingshots led to the start of one of the biggest companies currently in our industry. So rich is the history that Edelbrock currently has a book for sale ("Edelbrock, Made In USA," by Tom Madigan) documenting the story.