06-10-2021, 04:47 PM (This post was last modified: 06-10-2021, 04:49 PM by ted johnson.)
GW, in '60 I owned one of the first '58's we could get in the shop. A white one. Super early motor. Took it to the track and it vibrated so bad I just couldn't drive it. Pop called out to Mr. Mac and had a pre-production Mc5-to-Mc6 conversion kit in our hands in about a week. Never looed back. Charlie had a modified '58 hanging on the seatback of his converted dead axle Bug for a few months. It ran pretty good after my Pop ground a lot of iron off the rod journal cheeks. I doubt I can post a pic, nut I will try. Hey, it worked! Check out that sexy Athan steering wheel and the Dico steel front wheels that came off my kart. Ted
(06-10-2021, 04:47 PM)ted johnson Wrote: GW, in '60 I owned one of the first '58's we could get in the shop. A white one. Super early motor. Took it to the track and it vibrated so bad I just couldn't drive it. Pop called out to Mr. Mac and had a pre-production Mc5-to-Mc6 conversion kit in our hands in about a week. Never looed back. Charlie had a modified '58 hanging on the seatback of his converted dead axle Bug for a few months. It ran pretty good after my Pop ground a lot of iron off the rod journal cheeks. I doubt I can post a pic, nut I will try. Hey, it worked! Check out that sexy Athan steering wheel and the Dico steel front wheels that came off my kart. Ted
funny...I still remember getting that conversion kit..it was a game changer,,,
Gary, Pop was pretty well known by Mr. Mac. When Pop called him to tell him our Mc5 had been eaten by a pre-production prototype AH58, Mr. Mac sent the '6 conversion free. It was so early, it didn't yet have the little paper template to cut the plug boot hole in the inner and outer shroud, so the plug stayed on the exhaust side for all its life. If you look at the third kart back in my avatar picture, that's Lanny Rothery's Jack Rabbit converted dead axle Bug. The pic was taken in '61, and Lanny's kart has that same Mc6 conversion on it. Lanny won a ton of Junior class races with that setup. The darn thing was faster than my new factory Mc6. Mr. Mac was so nice that he sent Pop one of the very first Mc10 stroker kits. Pop was 100 pounds heavier than I was, but that stroked '10 would outrun the '20 that I had on my Go Kart 800. You can believe I was building my own stroker '10 within a week! We sold a bunch of the Mc5/6 kits, as well as the '10 stroker kits.
I remember once in '61 we had a church parking lot race. I had that same GK 800 in my avatar, with the stroked '10 on it. There was a guy at the race with dual '58's on a Hoffco Interceptor. He was a better chauffer than me, but I still beat him the the 800/Mc10. That little beast was a rocket. Ted
GW, I wasn't yet "in the loop" about venues in those days, so I don't know why, but we weren't invited back. The Shriners came to the rescue and built us a nice track. Al Keller, an ex Indy driver, owned the local stock car track, so we got to run there whenever we wanted to practice or have extra race days. Saved us from having to drive all the way to the Orlando area. Al was great. He ended up on the Homelite factory team. Ted
