LENCO PLANETARY TRANSMISSION

By early 1969, some of the Top Fuel dragsters were experiencing clutch explosions as the 230-mph entries were pushing past the 10,000 rpm mark. A number of drivers started to think that being able to shift on the top end would improve the situation. In the spring of the year, the late Leonard Abbott (and to a large degree Byron Blair) came up with a successful two-speed transmission with one of his first notable customers being Don Garlits.

"I had known Leonard since the early 1950s. We both lived in Wichita, Kansas in the middle 1950s and in 1955 we entered a blown Chevy-powered MG and won our Sports Car class at the 1955 NHRA Nationals. Over the next few years, we both relocated to San Diego, California and he opened an auto parts store and I ran the machine shop in back. Sometime in the early to mid-1960s, Leonard built a Junior Fuel dragster and I tried to get him to put a transmission in it back then. The way I saw it, with those big blown Chryslers boiling the tires the whole track, a swift lightweight shifted car might be able to take them on.

"Our big breakthrough came with the Abbott & Lee "Shifter" fuel dragster in the late 1960s. Leonard and I and driver Joe Lee ran the car a lot in the Southern California area and the thing wouldn't leave the line, so we put in a transmission.

"We welded some pieces together, no special shafts or anything, put''em together and put them in the car. We broke on the first run, but Joe said the initial launch was great and that this was the way.

"Leonard and I differed on certain things technically. I wanted to keep the transmission a gutted hydramatic and make a two-speed, low and direct. He wanted an overdrive transmission.

" Either way, he wound up building transmissions and I wound up building complete race cars at Byron Blair Race Products. Guys like Tommy Allen, Leroy Goldstein, and Bob Williams all drove my cars." - Byron Blair

TUBE CHASSIS PRO STOCKER

NHRA introduced the so-called Pro Stock class at the 1970 NHRA Winternationals and from that race until the 1971 Supernationals, the class did showcase cars that were more "stock" than "pro." That changed in 1972 when Bill Jenkins' legendary "Grumpy's Toy X" Vega emerged on the scene and clobbered the competition. It was the first truly successful tube chassis Pro Stocker and it changed the face of doorslammer-type cars forever. Jenkins' car was hatched in his brain, but constructed by S&W Chassis in Spring City, Pa. You've heard Jenkins' version many times, after all, he raced it and won with it. IHRA Funny Car champ Scott Weney, and son of S&W founder Walt Weney, was just 12 years old when Jenkins came into the shop with his blueprints in late 1971.

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