Time for another trip through the Insider mailbag, wherein the readers of this column are invited to inspect, dissect, interject, object, reject, conject, redirect, correct, and/or perfect any previous posting, roasting, toasting, musing, finding, teaching, rating, listing, sighting, vetting, blustering, and/or filibustering.

Let's get right to the mailbag …

John "JW" Wilson, part of Don Garlits' Swamp Rat Pack of the early 1970s – which included Connie Swingle, T.C. Lemons, Don "Mad Dog" Cook, and the late "Starvin' Marvin" Schwartz -- dropped me a great note regarding the photo of one of Garlits' 1975 dragsters in Butch Barnhart's Fan Fotos entry. Williams had come to work for Garlits, assisting Cook's work on a pair of 1975 cars, and when Lemons decided he needed a breather from the road during a hectic match race schedule in late 1975, Williams was there to fill in.

In my comments and based on Barnhart's notes, I had surmised that this car was actually Swamp Rat 21, built in early 1975 for "Jungle Jim" Liberman, and not the famous 5.63, 250 Swamp Rat 22 that debuted midseason, but Wilson set the record straight. Wilson confirmed that Swamp Rat 21 was indeed built for "Jungle" in Garlits' chassis shop, but it was built by Slim Werner, who had taken over for Swingle, but that the car in question is definitely Swamp Rat 22.

"Though the roll-cage shape of the Cook-built car was different than Swingle's design, the distinct giveaway is the chrome roll cage on SR22," he reported. "The photo would be the Division 2 points race, in which 'Big' swept the event for all the points during a fierce ongoing battle for the Winston championship against Gary Beck. The following week, we ran the Springnationals at National Trail in Columbus, and the same car was photographed right off the starting line in a power wheelstand against Shirley in the first round."

Wilson went on to laud the car's construction, noting that "at a time when five-second runs only occurred on better racetracks and suitable conditions, Swamp Rat 22 clicked off 34 consecutive runs in the fives without removing the heads."

Because of the heavy highway travel to keep pace with "Big Daddy's" continuous match race dates, NHRA national and divisional events, AHRA and IHRA national events, and performances like setting the speed record to 249.72 during the Popular Hot Rodding Meet, SR 22 ended upping being backhalved at Glen Blakely's shop in Tampa, Fla., immediately before breaking the record at the World Finals in Ontario, Calif.

Steve Scott's Fan Fotos submission also prompted some follow-up, this from Nick Poloson. He referenced the shot at right, a self-portrait by Scott in a mirror that's mounted on the rear of a injector of a dragster, and indentifies the dragster as his own ride, a nostalgia Top Fueler.

"If you can read backwards, you'll see my name," he said. "This car belongs to Floyd Head from San Antonio, Texas, and is a great piece of history. It's Floyd's 15th Top Fuel car, and he had it built in '69. It's a Huszar chassis, Hanna body, and paint from Cerny's shop. It's an absolute survivor. Never been apart (other than normal maintenance), wrecked, or changed: same motor, paint, owner, etc. for the last 40 years. We still take it out and cackle it. We've been to Bakersfield, Bowling Green, and a lot of other places that our schedule lets us go. We went to Ardmore, Okla., a few months ago and made a burnout and launch: That's where Steve Scott took the picture."

Poloson also drives an Outlaw Fuel Altered, Tom Wood's car from San Antonio, and competes on
the Outlaw Fuel Altered circuit in the Texas area.

He attached the photo below of the car as well as this link to a neat YouTube video from a car show at Jack Chisenhall's Vintage Air car show in San Antonio that shows more of the car, images of Floyd, and the car being cackled.

From yet another Fan Fotos column, the Brainerd-based pics of Kent Ewer, came a note concerning the photo at right. I obviously was able to easily identify Roland Leong, center, and his then driver of the Hawaiian Punch Dodge, Johnny West, right, and Jeff Swanson wrote to confirm that the person to the left in the photo is indeed his father, Carl, driver of Al Tschida's Cheetah line of Funny Cars.

"For a brief time, he was the marketing manager for Vericom, an accelerometer-based performance computer," said Jeff. "Roland was one of the earlier users of the computer, and Vericom had a small (front fender) sponsorship of Roland's car. At the time, Dale Earnhardt was a user of the unit, and the consumer version was used by the major auto manufacturers and industry testers for accurate results metrics. The product had promise and was on its way when the company management felt they would be able to manage the chores of marketing. The company went out of business within two years following this decision. 

"During his racing career, he had always maintained self-employment as a manufacturers rep in the aftermarket industry and represented up to 30 given product lines at any given time, including Rocket wheels, Hurst shifters, and Ram clutches. He did this mostly throughout the remainder of his life. He did retire from the auto-parts world for a few years in the late '80s and early '90s. In the picture you see with Roland and Johnny, it could very well be that they were talking about performance computers. He returned to the aftermarket-parts industry shortly thereafter and moved from Minnesota to Jacksonville, Fla., until his passing in 2003. During those years after racing, he was never far from the track due to business and his yearly return to Brained for the national event and the maintaining of a track suite most every year."

According to his son, Swanson raced the Cheetah Funny Car into the early 1980s. His last shot was in 1982 when he landed sponsorship from Minnesota parts chain 10,000 Auto Parts, owned by Mike Stigge. The partnership lasted only one race, the 1982 NorthStar Nationals. The car did not qualify due to mechanical issues (a poorly wrenched mag was the culprit). The Stigge-Swanson partnership effectively ended there.

"As a side note, right after the ill-fated Brainerd experience, the small warehouse space at the office of Kelly, Swanson, and Drabzack was used by Gary Burgin in preparation for the then upcoming U.S. Nationals," recalled Jeff. "This was the year Gary was runner-up with Cory Lee as his sole crewmember. I had the pride of seeing Gary's car on TV knowing that I polished every inch of the Orange Baron for Gary and was his overall errand boy while he visited."

Swanson never raced again after 1982. He attempted to gain larger sponsorships to race full time and was very close to closing a few deals, but they were destined to not happen.

After my reprint of the Fun with Fotos columns, Tom Molyneaux of Vineland, N.J., offered more info on Don and Gene Bauman's Vineland Villains rear-engine flathead-powered dragster. His hometown obviously gives a clue as to the origin of the car's name, and he passed along this second image. "I am friends with Gene Bauman and happy to tell you that he is alive and well and still has a repair shop in Vineland, N.J.," he wrote. "Gene loaned me his photo collection, and attached is a sample for your pleasure. Another view of the Vineland Villians dragster and crew. Gene Bauman is second from the left, I never knew his brother Donnie and don't have the names of the other folks in this photo. Enjoy!"

In that same column, I showcased Noel Black's wild two-engine Top Fueler that actually was destined for Salt Flats (and in which he later was killed), but Don Francis also dropped me a note to report that Joe Garcia had Black build a Funny Car for him, the Garcia Bros. Out of Sight Camaro (pictured at right). "Noel was a Salt Flats builder as Dan Tuttle has pointed out," said Francis. "The Salt Flats concepts where quite evident in his chassis design of the Out of Sight. I believe that his design made it possible to break the 200-mph barrier in 1968. Noel Black was a talented budget builder whose life was unfortunately cut short, and, in my opinion, he never got the credit and recognition that I believe was due him."

Why does Francis know so much about the car, which was driven by the late Steve Garcia and was pictured in a four-wide Funny Car race in this previous column? Turns out that Francis has owned the Out of Sight twice for a total of some 14 years. "The Camaro has been a long and arduous restoration process that I hope to bring back to its home track, Sacramento, Calif., and take a pass or two," he said. "Steve Garcia clocked 202.00 backed up with a 198.00 run at Rockford Dragway in July 1968. One of the infamous Isky ads actually proclaims that it is the first ever to run over 200 mph using an Isky cam, of course on that day."   

I also heard from good pal Henry Walther, who reports that Black and partner Bert Peterson turned out a lot of drag racing machinery from their B&N Automotive in South Sacramento.

"He was very helpful to a lot of us Northern California drag racers early in our racing careers," said Walther. "Here is a photo of one of my early rides, a dragster disguised as a Modified Roadster. This car was built at B&N Automotive, the photo taken at the Grand Nationals at Kingdon Drag Strip in the mid-1960s."

And finally, the photo above, of Mike Kuhl's and Carl Olson's Top Fuel dragster in the pits at National Trail Raceway during the 1974 Springnationals, came to me from veteran Stock and Super Stock racer Tom Kasch, who for the last couple of months has been treating me and a few dozen others to a collection of photos from the 1960s and '70s. I thought that this photo, actually taken by his then-12-year-old son Mike, was pretty cool, and I forwarded it to Olson for his enjoyment. What I got back from C.O. was way more than just "thanks."

"There's an interesting story behind this photo," he wrote, and he was right.
 
"You'll note that most of the forward body panels have been removed from the car prior to this warm-up. The reason is that while unloading the car from the trailer and parking it in our pit area, I noticed that it wasn't steering as usual. It just didn't feel quite right. As a result, Mike and I removed the forward nosepiece to take a look at the steering assembly. Something looked funny, so we removed the Dzus fasteners from the front section of the belly pan. As soon as we did, the bottom framerails fell away from the top rails, and we realized that the only thing that had been holding things together where the top and bottom framerails came together at the front of the car was the belly pan. The rails had evidently broken during the tow from California to Columbus in spite of the various safeguards in place, including the air-filled rubber 'pillow' that Mike always placed and inflated under the engine.
 
"Mike quickly found a welding machine, jacked the bottom and top framerails together, and welded them up. (Mike used to claim that he could weld anything, including a broken heart.) As usual, he did a perfect job, and we never had a problem with that part of the chassis again. If I hadn't noticed the odd feel in the steering and we'd have just warmed the car up as usual and put it in line for the first qualifying session, I hate to think of what might have happened." Me, too!

You can find more of Tom's great photos here. By the way, like his pops, kid Kasch has done quite well for himself in racing. He has worked for Jack Roush for the last 12 years and was the NASCAR Engine Builder of the Year in 2000 and runner-up several times for that honor. He works at the Yates-Roush engine shop in Mooresville, N.C.

OK, that's it for the week. We're working on the final issue of National DRAGSTER for 2009, our year-end wrap-up, which should be in the mail to you late next week. Enjoy the weekend. Just 68 days until the Kragen O'Reilly NHRA Winternationals!