CAL KENNEDY

Cal Kennedy joined the DTA way back in 1949 when it was just three weeks old. At the time he drove a '41 Chev coupe with a well-tweaked stock 6 cylinder engine. He worked at the Telephone company. One day, while on the job, he met another Telephone employee by the name of Don Scroggs. They hit it off right away partly because they were both 100% Chev oriented. At that time they were the only members in the DTA who were into Chevrolets. They joined forces and built a hot rod to race. They came across a 1936 half ton Chev pickup which was theirs for the taking. Out came Cal's engine from his '41 Chev. Louie Walker, a well known and respected local engine builder, waved his magic wand over the in-line engine. Louie was known to build engines that ran hard fresh off the engine stand and were extremely reliable. Louie paid particular attention to the cam, valves, head and pistons on the little 221 cubic inch engine. Meantime, Cal and Don were stripping the pickup drastically to get it light. Soon they had it down to a svelte 2000 lbs with a mock up engine. They stuffed the freshly built hot engine into their radically stripped pickup truck and went racing. They were very impressed with the combination of the 2000 lb. pickup and the hard running Louie Walker engine. Their hot rod began doing damage to all of the local flatheads!

One day over lunch one day at work they decided if 2000 pounds was good, how would a much lighter hot rod do? They found a 1934 Chev roadster body for $5 (try that today!) in a wrecking yard located at S. Santa Fe and Hampden. It was just the body, but it was complete even right down to the windshield stanchions. They lightened this body by removing anything not absolutely necessary. It was bolted to their '36 pickup chassis. To make it even lighter, they removed the heavy springs front and aft and ran the car without any suspension! This got the weight down to just 1405 lbs.

They heard about a wrecked stock car which had been racing in the modified stock car circuit in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. What interested them was the engine. It had a 12 port Wayne head on a much modified 248 inch in-line 6 Chev engine. They had to buy the entire wrecked stocker to get the Wayne equipped engine. The engine turned out to be a combination of well mixed pieces from Chev and GMC. It had spent considerable time being built and modified in a Kansas machine shop. The shop had replaced the "splash and pray" oiling system with a full pressure lower end. Cal and Don changed the track grind cam to a more radical one. And they converted the three single barrel Stromberg carburetors to run straight alcohol. But the alcohol only lasted a short time. The engine really came alive when they switched to 100% nitromethane fuel. What engine wouldn't? Top speed was the only racing at the time. Then drag racing appeared. They soon changed to an early Ford rear end simply because they couldn't get the gear ratio they wanted and they were blowing up the Chev rear ends regularly.

They were classified as C Dragster simple because there wasn't a Modified Roadster class. Some handicap for the light roadster.

There was a lot of engine and running gear breakage in drag racing. The drag rules in effect at the time required the eventual class eliminator to make an additional pass, referred to as "the trophy run", to get awarded the class trophy. If the class eliminator couldn't make the required trophy pass, the runner-up would be awarded the class eliminator trophy. Only speed was recorded during these early days of drag racing…… at least in Denver. No one was concerned about elapsed time (ET), but that would soon change. When two cars raced against each other, the finish line would be monitored by an official who determined which lane won.

The NHRA Safari held a meet here in 1955. At this meet the NHRA officials changed the Kennedy/Scroggs entry from C Dragster to modified B roadster. This was a brand new class. The Kenz and Leslie flathead powered '32 roadster, now owned by DTA member Vern Holmes, was the rod to beat and had been for some time. Roy Leslie turned 109 mph….. the fastest speed of the meet. The Kennedy/Scroggs entry was turning speeds in the low 90's. Both were final eliminators in their respective classes. Both had to make a trophy run, but it was getting late as the sun began to set. NHRA decided to run them off together to save time. They were lined up side by side at the starting line. Scroggs was driving the Chev and Roy Leslie was behind the wheel of the deuce Ford. The flagman waved them off. Don buried the throttle in low gear and the soft rear tires lost traction and went up in smoke. Don realized what had happened and jam shifted into second gear. Leslie had gotten a good start and had come out of the hole hard and had a sizeable lead. The Chevy leaped as the higher gear caused the spinning tires to hook up. It leaped forward and pulled alongside Leslie. It didn't even hesitate but kept accelerating past Leslie. It had a good lead about two-thirds of the way towards the finish line.. and then the engine peaked (probably at about 90 mph). As the finish lined loomed, the Kenz & Leslie entry was coming up fast and was quickly closing the space between the two racers. At the finish line, it was as close as it could possible be. Willie Young, who later drove the Kenz-Leslie streamliner at Bonneville, was monitoring the finish line. He pointed the flag to Don's lane! Don and Cal's hot rod had won! It was so close that Cal is not sure to this day if they actually did win.

This was the first time anyone had witnessed a much slower rod win over a faster rod. The Chevy was turning in the low 90's and the Ford was running 109 mph, but the slower car won due to it's lower ET. This got them thinking about ET and not just speed. Cal said he thinks this was the first time the flathead powered Kenz-Leslie roadster was ever beaten!

This race resulted in Cal and Don being invited to go to Bonneville as part of the K&L team. The next 4 years Cal drove the push car for the K&L multi-engined streamliner. At first they ran two engines, but later on went to three engines. All were flathead Fords.

Cal related the following: The entry to the first trap at Bonneville was 2 miles from the start line. The first trap was 1 mile in length. The streamliner had to reach 225 mph inside this first trap in order to have enough distance to accelerate to maximum speed in the second set of traps. The push car was the Kenz & Leslie '32 Ford roadster. It ran the 304 cubic inch full house flathead drag engine on nitromethane. Even with this much engine, they had trouble pushing the streamliner fast enough to get the multi-engines started quickly to allow time for the streamliner to get up to speed before entering the first trap. The engine(s) had terrific drag as they wind-milled (magneto and fuel shut off) to clear the cylinders and combustion chambers. The rear engine would be engaged at 60 mph. After the rear engine fired and began running clean, the front engine(and later engineS) would be engaged. And therein was the rub..... the speed had to be increased (while the rear engine was still attempting to run clean) to about 100 mph in order to fire the front engine(s). Consequently the distance to get up to speed in the first trap was severely decreased by the limits of the push car. More push power was needed, but how? Bill Kenz came up with a workable solution….... they would use 3 to 4 push cars in line to get up to speed quicker! The roadster was the fastest and it pushed directly against the streamliner. Then the next fastest car would line up to push against the roadster. Then the next fastest would push the one pushing the roadster…. and so on. Must have resembled a unique Congo line!!! They would all start pushing when the starter gave them the go. As soon as the rearmost push car ran out of power, it would peel off. Then the next would peel off when it ran out of power. This went on until only the roadster was left. This got the streamliner up to speed a lot quicker and was used whenever the streamliner ran on the salt. Cal said he'll always remember how the streamliner would absolutely disappear when the all of the engines were fired and the streamliner began accelerating. He said it was awesome to see the rear of the car get so small in such a short period of time. The first time this happened Cal was unaware of his speed and turned off the course. He was still over 100 mph and the deuce roadster did some 360 spins. Nothing was hurt, but it Cal said his shorts needed emptying when he got back to the pits!

At the last drag meet held at the Colorado Springs dirt strip, the Wayne powered Chevy turned the fastest speed ever run at the strip..... 116 mph. Some run since it always ran about 104 mph on asphalt!

Don had to get out of racing due to family considerations. Cal continued running his roadster and soon teamed up with fellow DTA member and engine guru, Warren Folkers. Personally, I think Warren was the best mechanic I've ever known. Warren put his horsepower genius to work on the heads and valve train and super-tuned the Wayne. The speeds quickly went to a consistent 120 mph. Warren was also wrenching Chuck Kirgan's Cad powered '34 Ford coupe at the time and Cal joined up with Warren and Chuck as they toured and raced at strips in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. They often ended up being pitted against each other for top eliminator.

At one meet Cal ran off against Freddie Kemp's Lincoln powered immaculate dragster and beat it. Freddie was very impressed with the Wayne engine's performance and soon the Wayne resided in Freddie's tricked-out frame. Cal drove it when it debuted at the Continental Divide Raceways (CDR) at Castle Rock. There was some transmission problems and Cal looked down to see if he could see anything as he approached the finish line at speed. He didn't look up in time to see the finish line go by. Cal just kept his foot in it. He saw what he thought was the finish line.... but it wasn't! It was the last turn-off at the very end of the strip! And a healthy chain link fence across the end of the strip was quickly getting bigger and closer in a hurry! Well, Cal went through the fence at about Mach I or so. He holds the dubious honor of being the first one to go through the fence at CDR. It tore the front of the dragster up pretty bad. The Wayne was pulled out and retired. It still resides in Cal's garage and is still complete.

Cal recently purchased a restored 1935 Chev roadster... sort of a reincarnation of his old roadster, but it sure doesn't run nearly as good as the Wayne. So far it has remained completely stock. But who knows when, and if, he'll get bitten by the speed bug and put the Wayne in it? Sure would make a neat street rod Cal.

.......rumble seat