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The Oddy Boys
Story by Dale Wilson
1/7/05
  ook
at many successful Pro racing efforts and you’ll often
see the hubby’s wife standing squarely beside him. And
maybe the kids, too. So it is with Jim Oddy, successful and
legendary engine builder who has fielded a whole series of
Pro Modified Corvettes and other fast-goers. His wife may
be gone in this case (divorce), but his two sons, Dave and
Dan --- 26-year-old twins --- are right there with him, doing
every racing chore from cleaning up the car’s trailer
to pulling down the Oddy engine’s bottom end to performing
intricate head work and monitoring runs on the cars’
Race Pak computers.
Dave and Dan, who both live near dad’s Oddy’s
Automotive shop in Elma, New York, will be there with papa
through the whole 2005 16-plus race season while the Oddy
2005 Dodge Stratus, to be driven this year by P/M veteran
Al Billes of Canada, carries the Summit Racing colors through
this year and the next. They will attend IHRA and NHRA events,
match races and even double-field the team’s Outlaw
Pro Modified 1953 Corvette. Summit Racing, the giant mail-order
shop located in Ohio, has been the Oddy’s main sponsor
for the past four years, and Oddy cars won Summit two points
championships in those four years, in 2000 the IHRA Pro Modified
crown, and in 2003, the NHRA Pro Modified championship.
We’re talking a tight racing family here. The Oddy
kids were into gymnastics through their early years, Jim says,
but when they turned 12, Jim built his infamous black-primered
Top Sportsman Corvette called the “Black Mariah,”
his first step towards Pro Modified stardom. The boys suddenly
got interested.
Both earned their bachelor’s degrees, in physics and
mechanical engineering, from the University of Buffalo close
to home. They even attended some classes together. Both are
now married. And both are committed to the family’s
Pro Modified efforts, signing on with
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papa Jim for two more
years under the Summit Racing banner.
“They always had a job to do, whether it was unloading
the car to cleaning it to maintenance, both at the shop and
at the races,” Jim Oddy says. “We pretty much
put our heads together every run to come up with a tune-up
that we all like.”
Dave and Dan are in the Oddy shop during racing season about
every night, doing all the disassembly, all the inspection
work, field-stripping the car and checking everything, and
showing the old man what they have and what they don’t
have for racing. They’ll then reassemble everything
and get the cars ready for the next race. Surprisingly, both
boys --- heck, they’re 26 years old --- don’t
race themselves. Davey has a primo ’71 Chevelle and
Danny has an ’89 Camaro. “They don’t race.
We keep them busy with the race cars here,” Jim says.
Dave is an electrical and quality-control engineer who works
for Danaher Motion in Buffalo, while Dan works for Fluidampr
as a product engineer. Dave and Dan have been there with papa
all the way. “If it weren’t for Dave and Dan,
I wouldn’t do it,” Jim says. “I ask them
every year if we’re done or not, and every year, they
say no. We’ve been sidekicks for so long … we
see each other every day and work side by side, go to the
races, travel to and from, and I think that’s pretty
special. If they weren’t doing this, I wouldn’t
be doing this.”
Dave’s main jobs on the cars is as the bottom end man,
checking and changing the main and rod bearings, plus doing
a lot of stuff with the fuel and ignition timing. “My
brother works on the cylinder heads. Plus I do a lot of the
computer stuff. The Race Pak we have is more complicated this
year, so we spend a lot of time comparing graphs. But we’ll
switch off depending on what’s going on. Both of us
are capable of doing double duty,” Dave says.
“And that comes from years of experience, years of
being together,” Dan says. The Oddy team’s first
race is in San Antonio, Texas, in April, an IHRA race. They
spend from 15 to 20 weekends during the season on the road,
hitting IHRA, NHRA and match races across the country.
How do each feel about racing with such a famous father and
working on a successful drag racing team? “It’s
a great thing to do this with your father AND your brother,”
Dave says, “and to have such a serious project, it’s
more than just a hobby. It takes a lot of dedication. I don’t
have my own race car because this one takes up so much of
our time. And Fred was such a good driver, there was no need
for one of us to jump in and drive.”
What have each learned from their father? Dan has the ready
answer. “Attention to detail, take your time and do
it right the first time, a lot of the old cliches you hear,
but they’re true. We approach it like a job. It’s
not as much work as a Top Fueler, but we can do the minor
maintenance at the races and keep going rounds,” he
said. Winning as a family is also a part of that equation.
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