Over the next few months I’ll present a history of the Northwind Top Fuel dragster of the 60s and a progress report as the rebuilding of the car continues for a Pomona debut in November.

I had followed drag racing since I was in the eighth grade and by the time I was 22 in 1965, I found myself heavily involved. Most of my learning experiences were crafted through trips to places like Aurora and Scappoose, Oregon, as well as Shelton in Washington state. Back then, I had hitch-hiked or bummed rides in order to get to the races. I wanted to learn more.

Most of my time was spent photographing every car that traveled down the drag strip with my Brownie camera. I spent many an hour standing in the grass alongside the track. My insatiable desire for cars, and especially drag racing, grew until I was able to get in close contact with the sport through a neighbor of mine in North Portland.

The dragster that put the Northwest on the drag racing map

Over the next few months I’ll present a history of the Northwind Top Fuel dragster of the 60s and a progress report as the rebuilding of the car continues for a Pomona debut in November.

Jim Rockstad

I had followed drag racing since I was in the eighth grade and by the time I was 22 in 1965, I found myself heavily involved. Most of my learning experiences were crafted through trips to places like Aurora and Scappoose, Oregon, as well as Shelton in Washington state. Back then, I had hitch-hiked or bummed rides in order to get to the races. I wanted to learn more.

Most of my time was spent photographing every car that traveled down the drag strip with my Brownie camera. I spent many an hour standing in the grass alongside the track. My insatiable desire for cars, and especially drag racing, grew until I was able to get in close contact with the sport through a neighbor of mine in North Portland.

Jim Albrich lived at the end of the block. He had a store in the front of his house which was ideal for his specialty of machine work. In these early years I spent many days just hanging around to see the latest engine part produced at Jim’s place or the chance to see his latest dragster that was garaged at his house.

My involvement in the sport grew and 1965 was a huge year for me. Jim, along with Earl Floyd and Wayne Harry, had established the new Columbia Racing Engines in a large store front building in Northeast Portland and I was hired as the counterman at this new location. Additionally, Ed McCulloch, a farmer from Forest Grove, Oregon, had arrived on the scene.

Ed had been racing Chevy dragsters throughout the Northwest and had put together a partnership with Jim for the Northwind Top Fuel dragster. Ed and one of his cousins were going to purchase a brand-new dragster and Jim was to supply the Chrysler powerplants. I’ll have to say when I saw Ed wearing cowboy boots I kind of wondered how this farmer and these city slicker folks were all going to fit together. Little did I know at the time that this whole race team would rise to incredible heights in just a few months.

I pursued my dreams a bit further and ended up on the crew of the Northwind. This was the life. I was the counterman for Columbia Racing Engines during the week and then on the weekends I was the push-car driver and general donkey for the team. All I could do was learn more about the sport by traveling with the team and living the sport 24 hours a day. What a huge, big-time opportunity for a 22 year-old, bleached blonde kid with zero responsibilities in life. I was ready to go for the big-time and 24 hours a day of racing was just what I wanted.

Ed purchased a Kent Fuller full-bodied fuel dragster late in 1964 to activate the partnership for the 1965 racing season. The car was revolutionary for the time, and it earned the nickname “Majicar.”

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The rear-end was not solid mounted like the standard fuelers but had small coil springs. The motor had an internal frame of its own similar to the ladder bars used under “door” cars which was mounted to the
rear axle housing. Its front axle didn’t have a standard torsion bar set-up, it was mounted on a small rubber biscuit in the center with zero spring or torsion action at all. You could pick up one of the front wheels 3 or 4 feet in the air without lifting the opposite wheel. The rubber biscuit in the center of the front axle just allowed a pivot to take place.

Kent Fuller was certainly a genius. This design allowed the torque of the motor to drive the rear wheels into the ground, giving better traction. At least that was what I understood about the way the chassis worked. Of course, I was only 22, and although I had been around lots of dragsters I had never seen anything like this car. Was it a huge risk or would the car work beyond all expectations?

This new partnership was labeled the Albrich-McCulloch-Krieger Northwind. Albrich was Mr. Horsepower and loved to run the big numbers in Top Fuel. (Ironically, the motto for Columbia Racing Engines was “Horsepower - Our Specialty”). Earlier in his career he had cars which had run big speeds, and this became his trademark in the sport. As the car was being assembled in the spring of 1965 there were many questions to be answered. Would this revolutionary car work well or would there be a time to work through this new “sprung rear end” system? Another question was - who was going to drive the car? Ed had been driving Chevy-powered cars and had crashed in the previous year and didn’t want to drive this new car. Bob Haines, the previous driver for Albrich, had moved on to another team. Floyd drove many of Albrich’s previous cars, but this time he was driving for Whipple and Goodell, another local Top Fuel team.

Several discussions among the team members resulted in Dave Jeffers, a respected driver of the era, being named to shoe the radical new car. The new Albrich-McCulloch-Krieger team had limited dollars and Dave Jeffers lived in California at the time. Although Dave drove the car at Bakersfield and some early races in the Northwest, the expense of someone from outside of the core local team driving was overwhelming. It just made more sense for a team mamber to take the wheel, and after Ed made some successful shake-down runs at Woodburn Drag Strip he accepted the job and became the team's driver from that point on.

With Top Fuel dragsters racing nearly every weekend, the Northwind went from Lions to Bakersfield, Riverside, and Carlsbad in southern California. In the Northwest, it was Woodburn and Balboa in Eugene, Oregon to Puyallup, Arlington, and Pacific Raceways in Washington state. At the time the Northwind was the baddest of the bad. The car was awarded the Drag News No. 6 spot after running 204 miles per hour and gaining the national attention that it needed and deserved.

In those early years, Drag News, a drag racing publication, had a top ten list for the fuel dragsters around the country. Match races were commonplace and to move up on the list you could set up a match race at an agreed-upon drag strip with someone higher on the list and then race for the spot. The requirement was the best two out of three runs; beat your opponent and take away his spot on the list and he gets yours.

With Ed driving, the gold metalflaked Northwind beat Sid Waterman in May of 1965 at Woodburn Drag Strip while running a new Northwest record of 206.88 miles per hour. According to Al Beachell, strip manager at Woodburn in 1965, “That performance clinched the challenge for the number 1 spot in the nation.”  The holder of the number one spot up until then was “Sneaky” Pete Robinson, of Atlanta, Georgia. His "Tinker Toy Too" fuel dragster had held off five previous challengers since he was awarded the coveted top spot in September of 1964.

After several phone calls to Pete Robinson by Al Beachell a deal was set for a match race on Sunday, June 13th, 1965. The best of three match race would be a huge step for Northwest race fans as this national caliber event would take place on Oregon soil. Team Northwind called Pete and offered him use of the Columbia Racing Engines shop so he could come early and work on his car. You see…Pete, “Sneaky” as he was, did use two different engine combinations in his car. A Chevy small block and a Ford "cammer" motor were used at different times and Team Northwind would have liked to have gained that knowledge prior to the big showdown.

Not only didn’t Pete Robinson show up at the shop, but he didn’t call and no one had seen or heard from him at all. When the Northwind left for Woodburn Dragstrip the morning of June 13th the big question was, “Where is Pete Robinson?”  Upon arrival at Woodburn, just 30 miles south of Portland, a trailer and tow rig were sitting at the front gate of the track. Sound asleep inside was Robinson, waiting for the event to start. He had driven from Bristol, Tennessee, after participating in the NHRA Springnationals the weekend before. The Northwest rain was coming down but only in shower form, stopping from time to time. The crowd numbers for the day are a little sketchy but one local newspaper listed the attendance at 10,000. To say the least, Northwest race fans were ready for the Northwind and this showdown for the number one spot in the nation.

As the intermittent showers came and went that day, the track was dried, thanks to a few slower cars. About 1:30 in the afternoon, the main feature was ready for round one. They both pushed down the track in preparation for fire-up.  Making the turn around at the top end, it set the stage for an epic battle. When both cars fired, the huge crowd pushed forward, some near the edge of the track, in anticipation and showing support for the Northwestern car.  McCulloch drove right on by Robinson's Chevy car at a 7.62 at 199.54 miles per hour in true 60s style, smoking the tires all the way through the lights. The Chevy car was well behind at 7.95.

Round one was in the books and the Northwind had outrun the number one car in the nation. One round later, the Chevy car of Pete Robinson red-lighted away the number one spot.

Ed ran 7.50 and 206.42 mph to take the coveted spot in just two rounds of the match race. There it was. The Northwestern region had finally broken through to the big-time in the sport of drag racing as the huge crowd gathered around the two cars with excitement in the air. The car that was a huge question mark to its performance potential had just knocked off the top spot in the country in a few short months. It was an incredible achievement, to say the least.

As the summer progressed for the Northwind team, the wins kept coming, including two unsuccessful challenges for the number one spot from TV Tommy Ivo. As the car ran quicker throughout the summer months, the handling became a question mark. Could it be that the car couldn’t handle the faster and quicker runs? Some felt that the steering link was too long and would bounce at big speeds, causing the
car to handle poorly. Whatever the case, the fabulous gold car was sold to Terry Major of Longview, Washington, later that summer.  All in those few short months, the car that performed at a huge level, winning almost every run, was sold. It was a remarkable time for Northwest drag racing and for a 22 year-old kid who was sleeping, eating and living the sport.

 

COMING NEXT INSTALLMENT – Jim and the group begin the arduous task of restoring the original Northwind front-engine dragster.

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