Midget Racing

That is a Fontana which an all aluminum Chevy II. Joe Fontana bought the project from Arias who started it. The heads made great torque. You could open the butterflies and see 80% of the intake valve. It made 2.18 hp per cubic inch. That was about 17 years ago. That engine is still out there running. In fact it won one of the preliminary nights at the Chili Bowl a couple years ago. They were always good for left side weight. The exhaust, injection, and all the pumps were left and low.
 
I know Rick very well. He built all of my engines initially and I freshened them myself from there. Rick was at Arias when that engine began and has been with it its entire life. He moved from California to work for Gaerte Engines and continued to support Fontana engines. I would absolutely put Rick in the brilliant category. Rick also has blown alcohol experience with their “Rhino” engine back in the day. Joe Fontana is around 90 now and walks a mile a day and still lives just off the beach in California
 
I know Rick very well. He built all of my engines initially and I freshened them myself from there. Rick was at Arias when that engine began and has been with it its entire life. He moved from California to work for Gaerte Engines and continued to support Fontana engines. Joe Fontana is around 90 now and walks a mile a day and still lives just off the beach in California
Lol, my nephew just loves the guy. His name is Luke Wilson.
 
Well, Ethan Mitchell´s performance this weekend did what they´d hoped. My nephew took a deposit on an engine today and has inquiries from two teams for 4 more. That little Honda is looking good! It is 1/2 the price of a Toyota, btw. He really ought to call the engine something else, since Honda has so little to do with it.
 
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Cool stories. I used to go out to PIR every year for the Copper Classic. Good times. Whatever happened to the Mopar midget engines? They were the hot ticket some years ago along with Gaerte, esslinger and others I forget. Way back in the day were the Edmunds/Sesco...I even remember people experimenting with Subaru/mazda rotary and Kawasaki turbo engines. Back when the rules were a little freer.
 
There are still Mopars around. The Stanton SR-11 is an overhead cam version Gary Stanton developed based on a Mopar bottom end. Gaerte midget engines are pretty rare at this point. Esslinger was pretty popular and ran pretty well but have faded in the last few years. Esslinger were based off of the Ford Pinto. Ron at Sesco developed a bunch of different combinations. First 1/2 of a V8 in line then the 2X4 Sesco which was cut in half to make a V-4. He also made a Motorcycle Siamesed V8. His last engine was an air cooled V4. Dan Boorse drove a car with that engine at Sun Prairie, WI for a few years. Men Kenyon used the motorcycle V8's for a while in the late 70's early 80's. Jimmy Kite ran one of the Subaru engines at IRP. It was mostly stock but showed promise. I believe Duke Nalon the 3rd is working on a new Subaru engine now. I remember seeing a few rotary's and even a couple outboards which always seemed to run warm and melt down. Unless you started on the pole you were screwed with an outboard because the pole sitter would start the race just off idle and the 2 stroke would be loaded up and would get freight trained until it cleared out. You are correct in the rules tightened up quite a bit. $50,000 4 cylinders with a great $700 a night tire bill racing for $1000 to win was the ultimate killer of the pavement series. Midgets got away from 1 car fits all to short track cars like mine, Speedway cars, Dirt cars, then ultimately purpose built large track dirt cars. Then USAC came up with the Focus series. Even before that there was a sportsman series created. At the end of the day you take a finite group of people that are willing to race and keep dividing them and you ultimately ended up with a bunch of 15-20 car finds instead of 60 cars like you would have int he 70's Cosworth was another engine that dominated in the early 90's. Rich Vogler ran those. They ran so good they kept them tied down to 122 cu in. until they ultimately got passed up. There is a really great display of Sesco engines in Speedy Bills Museum in Lincoln. Here is a link. https://www.museumofamericanspeed.com/sescoengines.html

David
 
Cool site. Takes a bunch of engineering and brains to come up with some of these workable engines. That water cooled Honda looked like the jugs off of the old cb500 mid 1980's era.
 
I remember a Midget race at Madera California in the 1990's. USAC/BCRA co sanction. Paved 1/3 mile. IIRC there were 40 midgets in the pits. Out of all the qualifiers there were only two that did not audibly lift circling the track. Tony Stewart was one of them. He didn't win but it may have been some other Midwest guy. I will have to google it.

Think this was the race, early 2000's. Drag getting old and losing the sharp memory of yore...

 
So I would recommend Dirtvision and FLO sports. Dirtvision is twice the cost of FLO but you get the World of Outlaws. With FLO you get the All Stars and USAC plus a lot of vintage USAC. FLO has an app. Dirtvision you will need to use a computer, tablet or phone. They have issues with airplay on an Apple TV for some reason.
 
So I would recommend Dirtvision and FLO sports. Dirtvision is twice the cost of FLO but you get the World of Outlaws. With FLO you get the All Stars and USAC plus a lot of vintage USAC. FLO has an app. Dirtvision you will need to use a computer, tablet or phone. They have issues with airplay on an Apple TV for some reason.

I will check it out. What I really want is a return of Thunder on ESPN.
 
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