Originally Posted by interpreter66:
mac
i saw the fike plumbing special at eldora why does it have a 6 cylinder in it?
This car was designed and built according to the specifications of the customer, who paid for it.
It is designed to be as convenient and reliable as possible to run at vintage events. It has a self starter, an automatic transmission and runs on gas. With the limited number of laps available at some vintage meets, we are on the track, immediately, running laps while the "push truck" cars are missing laps, waiting to be push started.
With the transmission, we needed to have space for the bell housing so we used the shorter V6 engine and used the space normally occupied by the back 2 cylinders to locate the bell housing. By doing this we were able to stay with the original "Fike" wheelbase of 85". Other features similar to the original "Fike" include parallel rear torsion bars and cross front leaf spring.
This car has exceeded all performance and reliability expectations and has run many events Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
I like this car, the owner likes it and Parnelli Jones likes it, so, I'm not really that concerned with the opinions of anyone else.
I can assure you that if this customer or any other customer wants an exact recreation of the real Fike Plumbing Spl, we are quite capable of building it.
By the way, I do know where the real Fike Plumbing Spl, is and who owns it. Unfortunately, it will never return to this country and it will never appear in its original Fike Plumbing paint job.
