BLAZE OF GLORY

If your hair is thinning and you’ve been involved in hot rodding all your life, you’ll probably remember the name Glynn Hurley. Glynn is an old mate of mine from Whanganui days many years ago, and he’s built some top cars in his time. He left New Zealand for Australia well over 20 years ago, and I don’t hear much from him these days. However, he popped into my head recently when I was talking to someone at the racetrack about spectacular engine blow-ups. The conversation reminded me of an astonishing engine explosion Glynn had in Aussie back in the 1990s, not long after shifting over there. He’d built a very cool ’34 Ford coupe–based streetable hot rod with a tough blown small block Chev engine, but, once it started shaping up to be a quick car and difficulties started mounting up in getting it road registered in Queensland, he decided to go all-out with it and build it up as a dedicated drag car. The new car had a tricky start to life, because, as good as it looked, resplendent in dark metallic blue paint and sporting ‘ Team Kiwi’ signage through the sides, it seemed to be something less of a hit with Willowbank Raceway’s officialdom, who required Glynn to fit a different driver’s seat, safety straps for the four-link rear suspension, and different wheel nuts. It also took three driver’s window nets before the scrutineers were finally happy with the car. Glynn’s day in the sun finally came, when, after a couple of sort-out meetings, he had the hot rod coupe sounding like a Top Alcohol dragster, poking out awesome horsepower for a small block Chev, and using up his whole lane on every pass. His third meeting was both his best day and his worst day in the coupe. With the engine barely tuned and still running ‘soft’, and a massive lack of traction from only nine-inch-wide slicks, the Team Kiwi coupe slammed down an easy 9.3-second pass at more than 150mph. Don’t forget that this was the mid 1990s, when Top Alcohol cars in Oz were still running in the mid sixes and you rarely saw a hot rod running high nines let alone aiming at the eight-second zone. During each burnout, the car smoked the slicks like a funny car. As Glynn pulled into stage each time, the engine ‘hunted’ in the blown engine style of the day, which, together with the wild passes from the over-powered chassis, soon had the Aussie fans loving the blue coupe despite its ‘ Team Kiwi’ signage. Glynn was loving it, too, having the time of his life driving the wild little car, but, right from the start, the cost of running it was proving to be painfully high. However, the agonizing decision as to whether he could afford to keep running the car was taken away from him on the last pass of the day, when, just past the 1000-foot mark, at around 140mph, something let go inside the screaming small block Chev, and caused one of the most devastating engine explosions I’ve ever seen. The crankshaft was smashed into four pieces, with every section of cast-iron Chevy block that the main-bearing caps bolted into torn completely out of the block. Every connecting rod was bent or broken, the pistons were beaten up, the oil-pump housing was smashed into rubble, and the oil pan was stretched and torn beyond repair. Along with the engine, the Powerglide transmission housing was also beaten to death, as was the driveshaft, and even the floor of the coupe was badly damaged from the flailing driveshaft. I saw the remains of the engine laid out on Glynn’s garage floor one day, and can scarcely imagine what kind of oily mess must have greeted Glynn and the clean-up crew once the car came to rest. That was the end of the original Team Kiwi within Australian drag racing — gone in a blaze of glory, though not forgotten by those who witnessed it. Glynn mixed it well with the Aussie hot shots, and waved the Kiwi flag over there for us briefly with great pride and style. On a lighter subject, there’s a rather bizarre little footnote to a funny story I told you last year about the guy I watched many years ago who snorted the condom up his nose and out his mouth. My very worldly big brother, Paul, who was a proper hippy back in the ’60s, told me that Indians, as part of their spiritual enlightenment and personal hygiene, would — using something akin to dental floss — apply exactly the same technique to clean their nostrils. Except that they didn’t think it was funny. Finally, while I’m thinking about people doing funny shit like the condom-up-your-noseand-out-your-mouth trick, I once saw something else — it wasn’t as funny, but it was even more bizarre. It was, I think, sometime during the late ’80s, in Auckland. It was a similar environment: a hot rodding event, late at night, with just the hard-chargers still going — the usual scene for the memorable stuff that happens now and then. We were inside a hall, and this bloke propped himself up against an inside corner where two walls intersected. He stood upside down, on his head, and balanced himself with his elbows and his legs against the two walls, like a proper headstand. “So what?” I hear you say. OK, so here comes the cool bit: he drank a jug of beer. No shit — I saw it happen. Don’t ask me how that worked. His stomach was higher than his gob, but he did it. The whole damn jug. Pretty cool, huh?

EVERY SECTION OF CAST-IRON CHEVY BLOCK THAT THE MAIN-BEARING CAPS BOLTED INTO TORN COMPLETELY OUT OF THE BLOCK