Dyno Don: The Cars and Career of Dyno Don Nicholson. Doug Boyce

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      “As far as they were concerned, Beswick and I were just a couple of farm boys who didn’t know what we were doing and if we go out there and beat that big Mickey Thompson Pontiac, we must be cheating.” Don was prepared to sue but eventually cooled off and let it go. Beswick put it all down to politics. “They had their favorite.”

      Rounding out Don’s trip was a match against the East Coast’s finest, Dave Strickler in the Old Reliable Chevy, at York US-30 on September 23. Also making an appearance was Arnie Beswick and his potent 389 Pontiac. It was quite a show put on by the three, with each reportedly making in the neighborhood of 20 runs by the end of the day. The hometown biased–news failed to report an overall winner, but you can be sure it wasn’t hometown favorite, Dave Strickler. Don was clearly the winner, running consistent 13.0s and low ET of the day with a 13.02. Strickler was close behind with a best of 13.05 and Beswick with a 13.09. Don had more than measured up to the best the east had to offer. To paraphrase Julius Caesar from long ago, Dyno Don came, he saw, and he conquered.

      Don campaigned the Impala well into December while the finishing touches were being completed on his new 1962 Bel Air. In one of his last races in the Impala, Don won Stock Eliminator at Pomona on December 8. The Impala clocked a 12.74 at 112.64 mph for low ET and top speed in class. At the same event, Don also drove Dean Lowe’s A/SR in Competition but lost in the first round. At the end of the year, the Impala found a new owner in David Heath. Heath campaigned the car as the Kentucky Colonel, running S/S, B/Factory Experimental, and match racing the car through the next few seasons. The Impala seems to have disappeared after Heath sold it in 1965. It was last known to be in Muncie, Indiana, sporting blue paint.

      Jerry Jardine

      Jerry Jardine was a young teenager in the early 1950s with little more than cars on the brain. He had the ideal after-school job, working at Pearly’s Muffler Shop in Pasadena. It wasn’t long before the proprietor taught Jardine how to weld and he was forming exhaust work of his own.

      Jardine had owned a few hot rods in his teens and by the time he finished high school he had saved enough for a new 1958 Impala powered by the all-new 315-horse 348. The cost was $400 dollars down and $88 dollars a month. On a trip to the dry lake of El Mirage with the Chevy, Jardine topped 140 mph. The first time out to the drags with the car was a trip to the old San Gabriel track, where Jardine defeated a number of the Les Ritchey Performance Unlimited cars, including the bored and stroked 354-ci Chevys disguised as injected 283s. The next day, Jardine drove out to Don Nicholson’s shop (which, in 1958, was located in Monrovia), looking for some help in making the Chevy go even faster.

      Jardine recalled that Don said, “I don’t know why you bought that thing, it’ll never run.” Jardine proceeded to tell him how he just beat all of Les Ritchey’s cars and the 1957 Chevy that Don had tuned for Dave Fenn. “Don’s response was a surprised, ‘What?!’ Don was all over my car after that; rejetting the carbs, playing with the timing so the advance came in sooner, and upgrading the ignition.” This was the beginning of Don’s involvement with the 348–409-powered Chevys.

      Jerry recalled that the only one who ever beat his 348 was Shirley Shahan. “I went up to Bakersfield one Sunday and had the class covered, running quicker than all the other cars. Shirley had a red 1958 Bel Air. I didn’t know they had any women running up there. Over her door was written ‘Red and Ready.’ The car was red and Shirley had red hair at the time. I was busy looking over at the car when the flagger gave the sign. Needless to say, I came in a late second.”

      Jardine built his first headers in 1959, a pair of fenderwell Tri-Ys welded together on the floor of Don’s garage in Duarte. He adopted the Tri-Y design after looking at a cutaway drawing of a 1956 Maserati. Jardine was doing most of his work out of a sheet metal shop owned by a friend’s dad in Pasadena. An exploding aftermarket eventually allowed him to open his own place in Garden Grove around 1960. At its peak, Jardine Headers were producing roughly 100 sets of headers a day. By the late 1960s, fly-by-night header manufacturers had flooded the market and eventually killed the business. Jardine turned to building headers for motorcycles and saw a major boost in business when Tom McMullen at Chopper magazine gave him some positive ink. The bike business took off and became larger than the automotive business had ever been. By the end of 1972, Jardine no longer made headers for cars.

      “We moved into a new building in 1973, 40,000 square feet and didn’t even put a lift in for cars.” Jardine Headers survives today in Casper, Wyoming, and is operated by Jerry’s son. And yes, once again the company does build headers for cars. Although he’s retired, Jardine likes to keep busy and builds the odd set.

       Why a wagon? With tire width limited by rules, Don was well aware that the added rear weight aided traction. The B/FX winning School Bus, as Don pegged the Chevy II, helped with his decision to run the Comet wagon in 1964. (Photo ©TEN: The Enthusiast Network. All Rights Reserved.)

       1962

      Don had three cars at the first national event of the year, the NHRA Winternationals; a Super/Super Stock Bel Air, an A/FX Chevy II sedan, and a B/FX Chevy II station wagon. It appears that the sedan never competed, but both the Bel Air and wagon came up winners. The Super/Super Stock class was reserved for Detroit’s latest top-of-the-line, showroom-available performance offerings, such as Don’s 409/409 Bel Air. With the issues he had at Indy in 1961, Don ensured his 409 was built to a T; he installed .060-over ForgedTrue pistons with step seal rings, and he mic’d everything before putting it back together.

       The winning records of Dyno’s cars meant that he never had an issue finding new owners when it was time to move them. David Heath of Owensboro, Kentucky, purchased Don’s 1961 and christened it the Kentucky Colonel. Note the Enderle bug catcher scoop still in use. (Photo Courtesy Jack Bleil)

      Don found the opposition a little tougher this year, with stiff competition coming from Les Ritchey’s 406 Ford, the Mickey Thompson 421 Pontiac driven by Hayden Proffitt, and East Coast nemesis Dave Strickler and his similarly equipped 409 Bel Air. It was Strickler who eliminated Dyno Don during Saturday’s class runoffs in the too-close-to-call semifinal match. Strickler faced Hayden Proffitt in the final, losing to an unbelievable 12.52. In Sunday’s 50-car Mr. Stock Eliminator runoffs, Don defeated the Fords of Les Ritchey and Gas Ronda and the S/SA Pontiac of Whittier, California’s, Carol Cox. Meanwhile, Strickler, on his way to a final round appearance, did everyone a favor by defeating favorite, Hayden Proffitt, in the first round. With the twin white Chevys lined up for the final go, the flag went up and off they went on a clean start. Dyno Don took a slight holeshot lead and held off Strickler’s hard-charging 12.55 with a 12.84 at 109.22 mph. As proof that the sport of drag racing was still in its infancy, part of Don’s winnings included a color television donated by Mr. and Mrs. Sopps, owners of Sopps Car Wash in Los Angeles.

      In a 1962 interview, Don discussed his driving technique with automotive journalist Roger Huntington. With the narrow 7-inch tires allotted to Stock, he came off the line at 3,000 rpm. Don stated that the higher (than most racers) revs gave him more flywheel inertia and torque to play with. When the flag went up, Don eased into the throttle and rode out the clutch. For him, this prevented bogging that he felt many cars suffered from. By the time he’s halfway through low gear, about 100 feet out, he was full throttle. Shift points came at 6,000 rpm, 6,500 with the new mid-season factory upgrades, which included intake, cam, and heads. These changes did not change the factory 409-hp rating. Don found that there were no performance gains above this. “Wild 7,000 rpm shift points didn’t do anything СКАЧАТЬ