Art Arfons, Land Speed Record Holder Passes Away

[Alexamateo]

http://www.nhra.com/content/news/25863.htm

[quote]

Pioneering drag racer, jet car driver, and land-speed record holder Art Arfons died Dec. 3. He was 81. Arfons was a member of the Motor Sports Hall of Fame of

[Alexamateo]

An excerpt from the book The Fastest Men on Earth by Paul Clifton:



Late in 1963 Art got his break--or so he fondly hoped.

The telephone rang in his corrugated-iron garage on Pickle Road, Akron, Ohio. A friend was calling long-distance from Miami, Florida. A J-79 engine was going cheap at a surplus yard. Did Art want it?

The General Electric J-79 jet engine, Art well knew, drove the USAF's F-104 jet fighter at a speed of 1,600 m.p.h. This surplus engine was the only J-79 in existence outside the Air Force. The punch of a J-79 would give him far more power than any other car possessed.

All that was wrong with the surplus engine, he found when he examined the engine himself, was that 65 of its 1,000-odd turbine blades were slightly bent. Otherwise it was as good as new.

The J-79 had cost the USAF something like a quarter of a million dollars. Art picked it up for about $5,000.

When he tested his bargain buy--by lashing it with one-inch-thick wire between two trees in his backyard--its blast was so lusty that windows were smashed a block away, and the police came running.

The hot car Arfons built around the J-79 was put together from odds and ends, mostly surplus parts, in his little garage. The front axle came from a 1937 Lincoln, and the steering box from a 1955 Packard. The mechanism to fire the drag parachutes was made out of sawed-off 12-guage shotguns--cost: $3, instead of $1,000. The chutes themselves were made by a friend's wife on her sewing machine. The car was kept low because it had to fit into an old school bus, also scrounged off a scrap heap and converted by Art, that he used to transport his racing cars. The Green Monster ended up no bigger than a large Cadillac.

Firestone picked up the tab for the wheels and the tires. As Art did not bother with fancy blueprints, he just gave the Firestone engineers a wheel hub, mentioned the car's total weight, and told them to take it from there.

Arfons and his neighbor, Ed Snyder (who worked the night shift operating a molding press at a tire factory and devoted his mornings and early afternoons to Art, snatching what sleep he could in the evenings), put about 5,000 hours into the construction of Green Monster. The total cost to Arfons was about $10,000 of his own money.

The finished Green Monster looked like a jet engine on wheels--and its howl sounded like that of a wild animal. The 17,000-pound thrust of the J-79 gave Arfons a big edge over the 5,700-pound thrust of Craig Breedlove's 1964 version of Spirit of America and the 7,000-pound throust of Walt Arfons' Wingfoot Express. Walt is Art's brother.

Art's ugly beauty was, in fact, the most powerful car ever built.

[jim mcglinchey]

what a guy!

[Magnus]

What a guy; passing out without having posted in my "How fast have you driven"-thread!

[RaceFanStan]

It is truly "an end of an era" ...
just days ago we lost America's biggest daredevil Evel Knievel ... :s
and now we have lost America's 3-time "fastest man" Art Arfons ... :s

[Alexamateo]

Between 1963 and 1965, the land speed record was raised no fewer than 8 times with Art Arfons and Craig Breedlove swapping the record back and forth. (with Art's brother Walt sneaking in to hold the record once for 3 days :D )

The most amazing thing to me is that he did it on the cheap, literally scouring junkyards for parts, and then lucking into the surplus jet engine. (which he actually paid $600 for) He called GE to get a manual for the engine, and was told it was impossible, he couldn't have one and the manual and all info was classified. He got a visit from a government official and supposedly a sharply worded letter from GE, but there was nothing they could do, it was his motor.

He was an everyman who literally built a race car in his back yard and set the world record with it. I know there is a tendency to wax nostalgic about days gone by, and to think they were somehow better, but in this case, I think racing loses something nowadays because you can't just build a car in your own garage, that everything has become so specialized and technical that it's impossible.

[Azumanga Davo]

I'm sceptical about that, I reckon if anyone could replicate Art's luck in parts acquiring and making and putting his driving skill behind the wheel, they could be in with a fair chance.

RIP Art Arfons, a pioneer of the 60s... :(