Mark Stahl's 1977 Chenowth 1000 restoration...

[D.G.F]

looks like the vegas guys are coming through with some parts.. this is kind of a odd question but on the wright spindles whats the serieal number stamped on it?

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[Rory]

Devvon, I don't have the spindles yet but will in about 6 days, I will post the # then. I know there is a "W" and a couple "00's". Your right about the Vegas guys, they are coming through so far but ol' Dave Hendrickson seems to think he MIGHT have some parts for me. I should know more next week.....actually next week HOPEFULLY will be a good week for us because we might be able to get this thing close to being a roller or maybe have most of the parts anyways. Thanks for the interest everyone.....it will be more interesting once we start getting some parts in and you can see the thing coming together.

[AZ45]

I put a little time in Saturday getting educated and picking up parts for the Mark Stahl Project. In my 12 hour, 378 mile trip I spoke to 2 guys with 75 years of off road racing experience and picked up 3 parts!

The first stop was at Ron Leagues house who was the second owner of the car with partner Jim Travis from 1983 to 1987. Ron and Jim are the guys that got me involved in off road racing in the early 80’s because my dad used to sponsor their race cars. Jim and Ron have wins in the Baja 1000&500, Mint 400 and many other races in mini trucks and biggies. I’ve got a million stories about my time as a teenager being taught the ropes by some 40something guys in the deserts of Baja and the Southwest, but those will have to wait until the car is done. Amazingly, Ron had the original Mendeola transmission from the car because when they sold it, the 3rd owner wanted to run a 1600 motor and it wouldn’t pull the tall gears. The tranny has literally been in a shed since 1987, luckily it was pulled out of the car in good working order. I spoke with Mike Mendola about the transmission to see if he remembered it and if could still work on it, incredibly he spouted off the specs and part that he used to build it. Mike was pretty excited to have the chance to see one of these tranny’s which he said he only built about a dozen of. Some of them went to Ivan, some back east to the Probst and a few others he couldn’t place. We’re going to send the tranny for what hopefully will only be a freshening up, but either way we want it back in the car to as it was one of the pieces that made this car such a winner.

Also from Ron’s museum of race parts, his son Alan who you may know as a SNORE and BITD 1600 racer, pulled out the original fan shroud. We’d like to have the original motor, but we’ll take what we can get!

Ed Beard was a Chenowth dealer in Phoenix when he had his buggy business and had somehow managed to hang on to a complete body kit for the Chenowth 1000. Ed offered to give the body up at the Parker race when he saw the chassis sitting near Rory’s Racers Only trailer. Ed is a pretty amazing guy and for sure a legend and pioneer in our sport, so spending a couple hours with him and his race/business partner and wife Barbara was time well spent.

One of the side benefits of rebuilding an old race car is all of the people you meet or become reacquainted with.

Here’s the loot-

[560bajamike]

Great find. Is Mike going to go thru the box for you? He is truly an amazing person.
Body panel's look in great shape for the age. Brobably did not see much sunlight.

Mike

[Rory]

"On this episode of American Pickers........."

Jeff and myself traveled up to Las Vegas in search of some race car parts. I had high hopes going into the trip knowing that this individual had a "Plethora" of old race car parts.....the problem was trying to find them. Imagine if you will 30+ years in the off road racing industry and in charge of building and maintaining off road race cars for many people over those years (the owner wishes not to be identifed all though he knows everybody knows who we are talking about). We got there at approx 9am, hoping to be gone by 10:30....11am at the latest due to the fact we had to hit the SEMA show also. Timing is everything, and at first it did not seem to be on our side. We were dirrected to a small part of the race shop (outside) and told "I doubt I have anything your looking for but if i do it would be right in this area". He then walked away, Jeff and I looked at each other, then started "picking". Not much luck in that area, found a couple things but not really stuff we "Needed". We then headed back up to the race shop area and was just shootin the sh&t with one of the fabricators when the owner walked up again and asked how we did. One thing lead to another and we started talking about old school racing and cars he built and maintained (Very good stuff by the way, but another story altogether). The owner then started tearing through the race shop....."how bout this"? This? and this? could you use one of these? I remember this, it was off an old Hi -jumper that so and so........
After it was all said and done, we had crossed off over 3/4 of the stuff we were looking for.....IN ONE STOP! Here's a highlight of some of the stuff.



This is everything we got: 1.5" front trailing arms, wright spindles (+ 2 spares thanks Jeff Carr), a set of Airheart dual rear caliper brakes (wow), set of Chenowth front disc brake hubs, set of AMS front disc hubs, 4 Airheart reseivors (brakes/clutch) with a spare WITH BRAND NEW REBUILD KITS (from 30 years ago), AMS steering rack, tie rods with steering dampner mounts, Set of type 4 stub axles, a Chenowth CHROME front bumper (unbelieveable), a front Jackman w/Sandblaster Jr tire (Thanks Lucas) and 2 ALMOST brand new Sanblaster 915 tires with no weather cracking to either tire....could probably run the NORRA race on them...but we wont. GREAT DAY!



Here's a pic of the State-of-the-art (in 1977) dual rear brake set up for the Chenowth 1000's. Basically you would use one of these on the front and double them up on the rear. These need to be rebuilt and the company is still around....and I'm not 100% sure but I think they still make these calipers but they are used on Harley's....I'll find out soon.



This is the drivers side just mocked together to see about the fit. Everything looks very good and is bolting up pretty good, although all of this stuff needs to be sand blasted, but that will be done a little later, I need to make sure everything fits first. After closer inspection, it looks like one of the upper arms is a little bent so we will continue to look for another set of arms or a spare, but this one will do for now as we piece the car together.

After picking our way through 30+ years of off road racing history, we headed off the SEMA to talk to some people of interest about this car. Companies like Bilstein, Scat and Sway-a-way were very interested in the build and wanted some additional information, i'm pretty sure they will be able to help us out. As a matter of fact, Doug Robertson from Bilstein thinks he still has the paperwork and knows the valving for each shock that was on the car.....AMAZING!

The next couple weeks will involve putting the front end together and ordering parts like front leafs, bearings, link pins, tie rod ends and hopefully shocks. Once everthing seems to be the way it needs to be, we will take apart the front end, clean it up, magnaflux, paint and reassemble. Keep checking for updates, if you have any questions about the build or any input, please ask.

[michael_loomis]

Looking good Rory!!

Just bought an old Raceco 1600 car from the mid 80's. Its got an AMS rack... I can't believe how small those things are!

[D.G.F]

i think i know where you were.... by the way did you ever get the numbers off of the spindles?

[560bajamike]

HOLY SMOKES, I have those brakes on my car now!!!!!!
I did update the front to single wilwood.
I spent just over $400.00 to rebuild them about 15 year's ago. (I did not really know what I was doing at the time) (NO COMMENT) LOL
I have some part's here and I know of more my friend Todd has.
Let me know if you want or need them.

Mike

[AZ45]

HOLY SMOKES, I have those brakes on my car now!!!!!!
I did update the front to single wilwood.
I spent just over $400.00 to rebuild them about 15 year's ago. (I did not really know what I was doing at the time) (NO COMMENT) LOL
I have some part's here and I know of more my friend Todd has.
Let me know if you want or need them.

We could use the front and rear caliper brackets if you still have them. Let us know what parts you have left over, I'm sure we'll need something.

And Yes, Mike Mendeola is going to go through the transmission as soon as we can get it to him.

[Rory]

i think i know where you were.... by the way did you ever get the numbers off of the spindles?

We have 2 sets of spindles but it seems that while looking at other spindles they also had different #'s. What I'm saying is if you were looking for a certain part # i'm not sure there is a standard....but I could be wrong. Anyways......

Drivers side
Link Carrier- M0662
Spindle- W2248

Passenger side
Link Carrier- M1549
Spindle- W3113

Both are Porsche spindles and link carriers, just modified.