[Keith Seymore]

More shenanigans and the Cat gets a rep:

"In August Jim jack knifed the Catalina and bent the front bumper, brackets, valance and right front fender. He also sold his green Bobcat and had a red one done for the rest of the year. All the aluminum parts had been used and nothing was available for the Royal Catalina so Jim went to the Nationals and took B/FX with a bent car. Wangers was sure that one complete set of aluminum had been put back (for a Catalina and a Tempest) but it had disappeared. It is ironic that I was to read in 1991, 28 years later, in a Pontiac magazine about a Pikes Peak car that was built in May of 1963. That must have been the extra set of aluminum and I don't think the car made it to Pikes Peak, either.




"As I said before, there was so much going on: Pontiac sent a set of HO heads to Joe Mondello and had them ported and polished and after they got tired of looking at them they said 'we should see what they will do'. So they told me to put them on and run them. The way NHRA was checking and people protesting there was no way anyone could run a set of heads ported to gasket size and then polished, so I took a 'carballoy' scribe and cut a casting line in the ports and then took the heads to Marsh Monument [a local business that engraved headstones for the cemetery] and had them sandblasted to look 'as cast'. By buying an aftermarket gasket at Kustom [Speed Equipment] it looked stock and I ran all year without anyone protesting the heads.




"When I got the car it had the HO cast iron exhaust manifolds on the motor, they were new for 1963 and a nice manifold for the street, but I managed to get a set of the aluminum manifolds and drove them on the street. It didn't take too many highway miles to burn holes in them, especially the #1 and #2 bends at the very front. They were repaired several times but it just got worse. Pontiac had a set of stamped steel manifolds, but they were used by the Super Duty Tempest and the stock cars. Jess Tyree made headers for the Super Duty Tempest and was sent a mule (Tempest 2 door) and he raced a Super Duty Tempest -was it the mule or was it one of the five Super Dutys? If it was the mule was there five or six coupes? [We now know there were six white Lemans coupes and six white Tempest wagons, plus a blue Tempest coupe and a Silver Tempest coupe].

"After welding the aluminum manifolds several times and not being able to get another set of headers, a friend of mine, Frank Bakos, and I made a set of headers. We made them as short as possible, you could look up the collector and see the #7 or #8 exhaust port. Everyone, except Mac McKellar, said that they would never work, that you needed length, backpressure, long collectors, etc. Mac said 'I like it. I'm going to grind a cam for them'. He did and I was afraid of getting caught, but the Ramchargers tore me down at Ubly on the 4th of July. They put the cam in 'V' blocks with a degree wheel and an indicator and the cam checked ok for lift and duration.

"At the start of the season I bought a set of 9.00x14 M&H slicks from Kustom and they were a wide white wall and I had them mounted with the white wall out. This far into the season my car was becoming known as the car with the big white wall slicks as well as a 'Royal Bobcat'."