RACE CAR BIO. NUMBER 30 CHEVROLET 1965 CHEVROLET IMPALA.
By Mike Stein
The car was purchased during the winter of 1964-65 as a new car from L.&M. Motors in Blue Earth, Minnesota and never saw a day on the public roads. It was purchased as few factory options as possible Except for the Factory 396 C.I. 425 H.P. and 4 speed, with the intention of running the car in Frank Winkley’s IMCA.
The car was built by Gary and Mike Stein during the Winter and early Spring of 1965. Spring buckets and various reinforcement Chassis welding was done by Rivets Johnson. The Cage tubing was bent by a Steam pipe bender “outfit” in St. Paul, Minnesota from cardboard templates that we had made after removing the interior from the car. The tubing then brought to the car and welded in place. Jim Sauter did much of the cage welding.
In those days the IMCA required that ALL parts on a given Race Car MUST be from the Car Manufacture. No mixing of Chevrolet Cars with Ford or MoPar parts was allowed. However, Mike Hefron, who was the President of the IMCA, and would become the Manager of the Minnesota State Fair later, allowed our request, and granted us a wavier to use a Ford Floater Rear end in our Chevrolet. This was necessary since the 1965 Model had a new type of Rear end design, and there was no way to make a Floater from, and also Chevrolet, historically, had used a 6 holes configuration on all of there racing hubs, and these were very hard to come by, and very expensive as well. The car ended up having 6 hole (Chevrolet) hubs on the front, and 5 hole (Ford) on the back which lead to some rather interesting tire situations during a few races, where we had the correct size tires for one corner or another, but they would be mounted on the wrong wheels.
This waiver allowed us to find racing parts, and Gear ratio’s that would work for competition at all of the various tracks we would run.
The Car was driven by; Sonny Morgan, Harry Kern, Bob Jusola, Dan Prizborowski, John Mickey, Mike Stein, Bill Mueller, And Bucky Peterson, who rolled it over at Fargo in the summer of 1965.
After the wreck, we straightened out the car at Dick Pellow’s Auto Body Shop, which took about 2 weeks of non-stop work.
The car competed not only in IMCA competition from Minnesota to Shreveport, Louisiana, but also in USAC at the Milwaukee Mile where
Harry Kern drove to a top 10 finish, while Jim Sauter, and Dan Prziborowski, were Pit Crew, with Mike And Gary Stein.
The best finish the car achieved by Bob Jusola at DePe, Wisconsin where he placed second.
The car was completely restored in 1991 by Mike, and Gary Stein, Jim Marco, and Dale Vanguilder, with a Quick Change, Fuel Cell, and other safety items.
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