The AIR Cars: James Garner’s

American International Racing

(Part Three - The Restoration)

by: Dave Herlinger, David Reisner and Brent Silverwood

PHOTO # 1

Dave Herlinger (repeat at start of each section)

Courtesy of Dave Herlinger

In Part One and Part Two of this series on the AIR cars, SHARK Quarterly has worked closely with David Reisner and David Herlinger to set out the history of the AIR cars. The story of their racing careers and the search to find the cars is intriguing and has taken some time to tell. Now, we come back to the future and deal with some of the new stories that have come out since the restoration work has begun.

I need to recap to put my own mind in order. Some of the restoration work focuses on how the original work was done, so I have to make sure I make these connections for you.

First, as soon as the Garner cars were delivered in to Gledhill Chevrolet, in Harbor City (CA), the engines were taken to Travers & Coons (TRACO) to be worked over. This was just as Dick Guldstrand was starting his business next door and the building was just a Quonset hut. Still, it was one of the best engine shops on the coast.

PHOTO # 21

The rebuilt L-88 was first re-installed

in the #44 chassis in 1991

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

PHOTO # 22 (alternate to #21)

The rebuilt L-88 was first re-installed

in the #44 chassis in 1991

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

OR

repeat:

Photo # 16

The L-88 hood was a proven commodity

within GM. It would soon become apparent

to others, too

Photo by: Don Heath

Provided Courtesy of:Dave Herlinger

Sidebar on TRAVERS & COONS (TRACO)

Travers & Coons started the engineering business quite early in the sixties. They worked out of the Culver City location for the entire period of the business. Dick Guldstrand setup shop beside them, in a Quonset hut, around 1968.

One of the partner’s son-in-law (Jim Jones) took over the business in the mid-80s. Jim ran TRACO until the mid to late- 90's when it was merged with Dennis Fisher’s Fishers Engineering, another but larger engine builder in the LA area. The new business was subsequently contracted to Richard Childress Racing (RCR) a year or so later to build engines for RCR’s Winston Cup cars. The Culver City local location was closed up and operations were moved to North Carolina.

Dick said they only had a month or so to get the cars ready. They had heard rumors that the Owens Corning team might be coming out with engines at over 600 HP, maybe 650 HP. They just didn’t know how to get that much power out of an engine, so they were really panicked.

They had five engines to rebuild and they just didn’t know where they were going to get the power. But they did what they could and then they sent the cars to the season-opener at the 1968 Daytona. They out-qualified everyone in the GT class. They put two cars on the pole and they were faster than every Corvette there. For the first part of the race, they lead the GT category but part way through the race they started to drop out.

The car that I own (the original # 45 driven by Scooter Patrick and Dave Jordan), dropped out with a blown head gasket and my brother’s car (originally # 44 driven by Guldstrand, Ed Leslie and Herb Caplan) finally dropped out with rear differential problems. I think they changed differentials four times in that race.

The problem there seemed to be too much heat. The team had done everything they could to lower the cars by taking out the rubber mounting biscuits for the differential and notching the chassis, but the cars had to run the spare tire carrier as part of the GT rules. This cut down on airflow and they just cooked. The rear would get so hot they would glow.

There was also some talk about experimental differentials being provided by GM, but that’s not specifically documented. Anyway, I think that Dick Guldstrand’s car finished something like 29th in that race.

Then the cars were sold and in 1973 my brother Jim ended up racing one (#44) for that year. He sold the car the next year and it wasn’t until 1989 that we again set out to find the cars and buy them.

Just as an aside: I had thought about going racing at one time too. In 1974 when my brother was getting out of the Corvettes, I talked with Jerry Thompson and Tony deLorenzo when they had the Owens-Corning team. They had a small business selling roll cages and stuff.

Over the years I had bought some stuff from them so when they were selling off a lot of the team equipment, they knew that I was thinking about racing and they sent me a letter offering this stuff. One of the things that they had been working on with GM was the stock-looking Delco-Moraine front calipers, except cast in aluminum and painted black. They never got this stuff into production but it shows what was going on inside GM in terms of developing the cars.

PHOTO # 23

The original roll cage design was replicated, this time

using correct gauge metal

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

PHOTO # 24

The new cage installed

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

I have some novel clutch packs from those days too. The parts are a special set of parts that have ears and notches on each piece, effectively locking the positraction. I’ve never been able to find them in the books. Of course, all of these parts are described in Paul van Valkenburgh’s book “Chevrolet - Racing..? Fourteen Years of Raucous Silence” where he describes some of the stuff they were doing while the racing ban was in effect.

Chevrolet was pretty upset when he published that book because they still had to maintain the corporate adherence to the racing ban. But, I guess that at a lower level you would have to be pretty naive to not know that some of the engineers were trying to help. Once they retire, and their friends are out of the firing line, they tend to come out and tell the real stories.

Status on # 44 AIR

Now, when SQ visited with us in May 1997 the #44 car was largely restored. We had done the chassis, rebuilt the cage, and painted the body. The car wasn’t lettered just yet but the engine had been completed and dyno-ed. We had hoped to be able to take it to Steamboat Springs that Labor Day, but it didn’t happen. Maybe next year…

PHOTO # 25

The newly painted # 44 car has been allowed

to cure, before applying decals and lettering

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

PHOTO # 26

The AIR hood logo is faithfuly recreated

for authenticity

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

Status on # 45 AIR

Now, when SQ visited here, I have to admit that the work on my own car had slowed down. Still, just talking about it was enough to get me going again. I completely disassembled the Alaskan car (#45) into its thousand parts. They are spread out between my shop and my house, so only I know where everything is now.

PHOTO # 27

I was able to recover my original M-22 and

differential for # 45 (VIN 50120), plus I had

kept the original L-88 motor from the # 44 car

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

I’ve bought and stripped 12 “totaled” 1968 cars just to get all the interior nuts, bolts and parts that we need for both cars. I had already found the original transmission, differential and J-56 brakes for my car. We also still had the original blown L-88 motor for the #44 car that we could rebuild. That part was rebuilt back in 1991 and was put in the car at that time.

I got another L-88 for my car and it will be ready soon. I will start rebuilding the frame and assemble the chassis soon. It’s pretty neat. As usual, I don’t have a specific timeframe in mind, but now that I’m rolling I would like to get it finished. When we did the original research on the cars, we got quite a bit of information about the previous owners. I’ve met just about all of them; all that is except for Jerry Gregory who bought it from James Garner.

There are quite a few stories about the car but one that was probably the most interesting was the one about the cage. Essentially Dave Cormany’s dad was a little insensitive to some of the more basic safety issues. He had raced Cobras and such; so he was from the school that said a racecar had to be light.

Well, he had cut out the original roll bar and replaced it with a cage. It had the inspection hole and all the SCCA inspection labels on it. But when we got the car back for restoration, it turned out that the whole thing was 2 1/2" exhaust tubing. My brother and everyone who had raced it in between had all been running this car with just exhaust tubing as their protection. I cut out the piece that has the SCCA stamp and the inspection hole and saved it.

Another little side light about this car involved Gene Cormany’s son, Dave. When Dave crashed his 63 roadster in the 1971 series, he bought in to the #44 car. I mention this because his girlfriend Phyllis Coleman (later his wife) at the time was featured in Playboy with the car, in the August 1973 issue. This was probably the best publicity it got, although I don’t know if anyone was actually looking at the car. I saved that article along with the piece of cage...they’re both collectible.

END THOUGHTS:

I’ve always been a big Corvette fan. So when this new book, All Corvettes Are Red, came out I read that. That was interesting. But I don’t know about some of this stuff, you know, like how they say the Corvette is so important to them but then you don’t see the same effort as you find with some of the other brands. Take the interest you see at Pontiac, in terms of the old documentation. I know that they are trying to get what they can into the National Corvette Museum. But, as a guy on the street, I’d like to see them do a bit more. One day I’m going to get to the museum, too.

Oh yeah, a little commercial... I have another (claimed) L-88 car that I picked up along the way. It had been stolen and the motor was subsequently replaced. The guy claimed it’s an L-88 but he had no documentation. It’s for sale

PHOTO # 28

Customized and un-documented, this alleged L-88 is for sale

Photo Courtesy of: Dave Herlinger

For more information:

Dave Herlinger

Herlinger’s Corvette Repair,

1230 Pear Ave.,

Mountain View, CA

USA (415) 969-5351 (T)

94042 (415) 969-0344 (F)