Foy
High Wheeler
Somewhere or another, most likely in Tech Talk, I read that legendary mechanical genius and all-around character Smokey Yunick was a Binder guy somewhere in his past.
A couple of weeks back, I picked up the '66 800 from Charles Loyd and my Baltimore friend helpine me (who I failed to convince of the need of a '66 800 in his life) gave me Smokey's autobiography for some favor I'd done him a while back.
Turns out Smokey was a completely self-taught mechanic who taught himself enough chemistry and physics to pass the academic portions of early WWII pilot training, and he went on to become a B-17 pilot who had many combat missions over the likes of Ploesti (the Romanian oil fields and refinery complex where literally thousands of Allied fliers died), Italy, and deep into Germany. He also flew rescue missions in a specially modified B-17 that carried a Higgins boat beneath. They'd drop the boat under cargo chutes to fliers who'd ditched in the Mediterranean.
But I digress.
After the war, Yunick moved from his native PA to Daytona Beach, FL, where he opened a garage and truck dealership. Last night, I turned a page and there was a picture of his sign--a big IH "man on the tractor" emblem, along with Smokey's logo "The Best Damn Garage In Town". Smokey writes that he, at various times, was a dealership for several different makes of medium and heavy trucks, including IH.
My favorite Smokey story, probably to be seen later in this book, is that NASCAR completely dismantled his fuel system following a race in which he appeared to go much too far on a tank of fuel. They cut the tank open, etc, and never found anything illegal. They left him there at the track at Daytona to get his car home whatever way he could. He confounded them by calmly picking up his fuel system parts, stowing them in the race car, and cranking it up and driving it to his shop several miles away. He later said "I could have driven that car all the way to Jacksonville".
Foy
A couple of weeks back, I picked up the '66 800 from Charles Loyd and my Baltimore friend helpine me (who I failed to convince of the need of a '66 800 in his life) gave me Smokey's autobiography for some favor I'd done him a while back.
Turns out Smokey was a completely self-taught mechanic who taught himself enough chemistry and physics to pass the academic portions of early WWII pilot training, and he went on to become a B-17 pilot who had many combat missions over the likes of Ploesti (the Romanian oil fields and refinery complex where literally thousands of Allied fliers died), Italy, and deep into Germany. He also flew rescue missions in a specially modified B-17 that carried a Higgins boat beneath. They'd drop the boat under cargo chutes to fliers who'd ditched in the Mediterranean.
But I digress.
After the war, Yunick moved from his native PA to Daytona Beach, FL, where he opened a garage and truck dealership. Last night, I turned a page and there was a picture of his sign--a big IH "man on the tractor" emblem, along with Smokey's logo "The Best Damn Garage In Town". Smokey writes that he, at various times, was a dealership for several different makes of medium and heavy trucks, including IH.
My favorite Smokey story, probably to be seen later in this book, is that NASCAR completely dismantled his fuel system following a race in which he appeared to go much too far on a tank of fuel. They cut the tank open, etc, and never found anything illegal. They left him there at the track at Daytona to get his car home whatever way he could. He confounded them by calmly picking up his fuel system parts, stowing them in the race car, and cranking it up and driving it to his shop several miles away. He later said "I could have driven that car all the way to Jacksonville".
Foy
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