HOT RODs Thom Taylor takes a vintage Indy Roadster around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway before the 2013 Indy 500. Thom runs with other historic Indy roadsters racing around the track on Carburetor Day before the Indy 500 race.
00:00 Today on Unlimited I get to drive an Indy Roadster at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
00:03 [Engine Revving]
00:10 [Music]
00:17 We're at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to drive a vintage Indy race car.
00:22 I've got the opportunity to take out one of Bill Akin's Indy Roadsters from the 1950s.
00:27 It should be really fun and exciting to actually do it the week of the Indy 500.
00:31 So tonight we're going to meet up with Bill Akin and hopefully I'll be able to pass my rookie test,
00:36 which is getting in his Indy Roadster and taking it around the parking lot to make sure I don't stall the car or do anything else stupid.
00:42 So if I pass my test and weather permitting tomorrow, we'll be taking the cars out for a 20 minute stomp around the racetrack.
00:49 I'm going to be taking out the Quinn Epperle Roadster that ran here in 1959, 1960 and then it qualified again in 1962.
00:56 Johnny Boyd is the driver for both '59 and '60 with this car.
01:01 He placed 6th at the 1959 Indianapolis 500.
01:05 The car is what they call an Indy Roadster. It's got the engine in the front.
01:09 This car has an Offenhauser engine. It's a 4-cylinder engine.
01:12 So this is a very quintessential, typical Indy Roadster.
01:16 This car was restored by Bill Akin.
01:18 And you may remember him from when I drove his '32 Roadster from Nashville to Hot Rod's headquarters in El Segundo.
01:25 Well, he's also an Indy Restorer and he's restored so far 3 cars and he's got a 4th one that he's going to be starting pretty soon.
01:33 I've restored 3 Indianapolis Roadsters because I just like the cars.
01:39 I mean, why does somebody build a street rod as opposed to something else?
01:43 I just like the Indianapolis Roadsters.
01:45 The story behind this car is its builder, Quinn Epperle, had no idea what it would become of it.
01:52 He wound up being in a guy's collection who passed away and Greg Schneider bought it from his estate.
01:59 I had figured out which car it really was and I bought it from Greg Schneider and restored it to the configuration that you see here.
02:07 What it's like, which Tom will learn for himself tomorrow, is that some of us are kind of overwhelmed with the history of this place.
02:16 Here you are out on the same track as A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones, Andretti, a lot of other famous people earlier, Sam Hanks, Roger Ward.
02:26 You're on the same track that they did.
02:28 You get going too fast and the wall will bite you just as hard as it did a lot of people.
02:33 And so Tom needs to do the same thing.
02:36 We've never had any accidents here during this event and some of us have gone faster than we should.
02:42 This won't be a whole lot different for him than a lot of other things that he's done with other cars in other events for Hot Rod Magazine.
02:50 We're going to be meeting Bill in the parking lot of the hotel.
02:55 This is a race car and so the clutch is set up stiff and it's also the gear is set up high.
03:02 So it's going to be like starting a car in third gear basically.
03:06 The point is to be as familiar with the car as I can be so that this goes off fairly smoothly.
03:12 We've only got 20 minutes or so out on the track with the car.
03:17 So I don't want to be killing time having to restart the car.
03:20 Put it in gear. It'll grind a little bit. Don't worry about that.
03:23 And then you will start you start easing out on it and we'll push you and try to get you going. Okay?
03:29 All right. You ready? Yeah.
03:31 [Engine Revving]
03:50 One thing he's finding out pretty quick is when you let out on the clutch you better be ready to start steering because you're going to take off.
03:57 [Engine Revving]
04:01 All right. We're going to push you back.
04:03 It's crisp and it's quick.
04:06 You're pushing your clutch with the heel of your foot and there's a bar right below it.
04:13 And so if your foot isn't high enough, if the heel isn't high enough, then it hits that bar.
04:18 So that's what happened when I was taking off here.
04:21 We're going to get you smooth. Okay? Okay.
04:24 [Engine Revving]
04:34 Now that was perfect. That was great. That's exactly the way it ought to be.
04:37 Of course what will happen is he'll choke up a little bit knowing he's fixing to pull out on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway given the history of that place and all the great drivers that have been there.
04:49 So he'll choke a little bit, but I think he'll get through it okay. I think everything will be fine.
04:54 Thank you very much.
04:55 Okay. Great. Great. Great.
04:56 We'll see you guys tomorrow.
04:57 [Music]
05:04 This is Thursday and we're supposed to be going out for an exhibition run with the cars, but the weather is real iffy right now.
05:12 Reports are that it's supposed to get worse, but we don't know at this point whether we'll be going out or not.
05:17 [Music]
05:30 So I'm all suited up and hopefully, like I said, the rain is going to stay away.
05:34 [Music]
05:43 All right. Let's go.
05:46 Now it's raining.
05:47 [Music]
05:57 They canceled the racing for today because of the weather, and so we're just trying to get the cars in the Indy Garage right now.
06:03 And they'll stay here overnight, and then hopefully we can change our flights tomorrow so that we can be here in the morning and race tomorrow.
06:13 [Music]
06:28 Well, just as the forecast said, today's looking like it's going to be a pretty good day.
06:31 The front has moved out.
06:33 It's a little cloudy right now, but I'm seeing blue sky here and there.
06:36 So it looks like we're going to have a good chance to run today.
06:38 [Music]
06:44 First group, five minutes to start up.
06:47 [Music]
07:14 [Engine revving]
07:21 As soon as I started to take off, the thing started lurching, and it wanted to be put into high gear.
07:27 So I stuck the clutch in, put the thing in high, and took off.
07:32 And by that point, I was probably halfway through turn one and just about ready to go into turn two and transition onto the track.
07:40 All right, guys. I'm on the track.
07:43 We're just going to cruise around here.
07:45 It's going to be a little warm-up lap right now, and then we'll be out.
07:49 [Music]
07:58 After I got out off the apron and onto the track, the car handled really well, and there wasn't a lot of drama or getting familiar with the car.
08:06 I mean, it just, it would go.
08:08 I mean, the main thing to get used to was to not give it much throttle because, boy, it just wanted to go.
08:15 So, honestly, I was trying to kind of pull myself in to realize that I actually was doing this.
08:23 I was experiencing this.
08:24 I was on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track.
08:27 I was in an Indy car that had actually raced there in '59 and just trying to remember back to some of the people that had won
08:35 and some of the people that had lost their lives and just the whole feeling of being at this really historic place where they've raced cars for over 100 years.
08:44 So, I was really trying to be able to take it in and look around.
08:48 Fantastic!
08:49 [Engine revving]
08:57 You just barely, you know, rest your foot on the accelerator pedal, and the thing wants to go.
09:03 And I wanted to make sure that I didn't end up running up the back of some of those cars
09:07 because with those Millers and some of those other cars out there, I mean, you're talking two, three, in some cases, $4 million cars.
09:15 [Engine revving]
09:21 The one thing I learned to do real quick was they had their eyes on you pretty good on the front straight,
09:27 but on the back straight, it didn't seem like there were eyes on you.
09:31 So, what you could do is you could kind of go into turn two and take it easy
09:35 and give yourself some room between you and the people ahead of you,
09:39 and then you could give it a pretty good blast on the back straight.
09:43 [Engine revving]
10:01 On my last lap, as I was on the back straight, I noticed smoke.
10:05 [Music]
10:07 It didn't smell like fuel or electrical or a burn bearing, anything metal to metal.
10:12 It smelled like burning paper.
10:14 As I was in turn three, more smoke started rolling out from under the dash.
10:18 I was concerned. You know, I didn't want to burn down Bill's car, obviously,
10:22 but part of me was also trying to figure out what it was.
10:25 And so that helped kind of calm me down a little bit.
10:28 I killed the ignition, turned the fuel off, pulled in, started to pull into the pits,
10:33 and the car stopped just before the entrance to the pits.
10:37 I waited for the emergency crew to come, but we were able to pull the hood, and that's when we saw the rags.
10:43 They were smoldering rags that had been shoved down against the firewall down at the belly pan.
10:48 I don't know why they were there, but they were in the wrong place
10:51 because it was right by where the header exits.
10:53 I quickly reached down because I had my driving gloves on,
10:56 pulled them out, and threw them down onto the track, and that was it.
11:00 There was no damage. It was just the smoldering rags that had been the problem.
11:04 [Music]
11:06 Surprisingly, they let us out for a second time.
11:10 [Engine revving]
11:13 For the second run, there weren't as many cars out there.
11:17 So on the back straight, on a couple laps, there really wasn't anybody out there with me.
11:22 And so that's when I really gave it the throttle.
11:25 And I know I probably had the thing up to 150 and maybe even faster than that.
11:29 [Engine revving]
11:31 When you're out on the--especially on the back straight,
11:35 when you can really nail it and you get the sense of the speed, it's incredible.
11:39 It's, you know, this historic fast track.
11:43 And you get the sense of the history of it a little bit more when you're coming around turn four
11:48 and onto the main straight and the pagodas there and the grandstands.
11:52 You get a little bit of a sense of it.
11:54 It was really a really fantastic experience.
