Sprint show at Lake Geneva!!

[PopsGrandson]

I had to show the car today back at the Lynch dealership just outside Burlington. The Speed channel was there with their show trailer that tours the country. Darrell Dodd also stopped in with the #11 Sprint car to help Lake Geneva promote the 1 and only sprint car race to ever run on their asphalt!!!! The show is slated for Thursday night Aug. 3rd.

They also have a dirt late model group going to go asphalt for a night as well. As most know, Lake Geneva is closing their doors at the end of this season.

Think I'm going to have to check this one out!

Dan Erikson

[PopsGrandson]

Had one heck of a time at Lake Geneva last Thursday night. beleive it or not, 2 big time Modified drivers from the IRA Super Mod days showed up to compete! 3 time IRA champ Darrell Dodd converted his sprinter over to run asphalt for the first time since running Mods back in the day. He finished the day with a 5th place finish and looked very impressive! I talked with Darrell earlier in the week and he just hoped to make the show and run competitively. He got that covered!! IRA fans may recall Darrells father Junior Dodd as one of the founding fathers of the Interstate Racing Association.

Jim "King of the Cushin" Moulis also fielded a car. He had an 82 Nance sitting in the corner of his shop for the last 4 seasons and thought it was now or never to knock the dust off his ride!
I contacted Jim 6 months ago and he told me about how he was just thinking about old Pop Kline! Jim had just turned 60 and recalled that was the age Pop started runnin the modifieds. Couldn't beleive the old boy could occasionally steal a checkered flag from all those young guys!

I talked with Kevin Dawson about showing Pop's car in the Grandstand area during the show. He thought it would be a great idea! Had lots of kids and adults jump in the car and plenty of folks checked out my picture board that shows Vintage IRA info and web site info for this site and mine. It was great to see people come out to a mid week show and creat overflow parking at Geneva!!

MJ Both had the popular A-3 Reimer Sedan on hand and did some laps for the crowd!

Plenty of former Vintage IRA Drivers, families, fans and crew members stopped by as well! I saw Johnny Reimer, Junior Dodd, Ken Monroe, Ray Dropp and Bill Portalski!! Bill came over and was extremely excited! He said, "Who ownes this car?" I told him hat I was Pops grandson and that my family and I had just restored the car. He shook my hand and explend that this was just as he remembered it in 1973 when he purchased it from Pop! It was his first Modified! It came with a 301 Cu. In. engine just as we had guessed . Bill dropped a 355 Cu. In. engine in and went racin'. Being a rookie, he said, he never could get the car to turn and bent the front axle a number of time right there at Lake Geneva! He ran the car half a season before he sold it right back to Pop. Pop had her turnin just fine in a week or two!!!

Former race promoter, car owner, Ray Toft also stopped by!

Lastly, this last week we finally were able to fire Pops car for the first time! Unfortunitly between Ken Monroe and I, we just couldn't come up with the right pill to smoothen out the injection.
To rich and then to lean. I talked with my buddies at work in the machine shop on Friday and they made sure I had a handfull of pills to try this weekend. On Sat I finally felt comfortable enough with the way the engine sounded to jump in the seat and pull the clutch back! Doppped her in first and eased the hand clutch out to a nice easy cruise in first gear. Burbin the throttle definitly got the grass flyin!! Second gear inspired a full power tail slid while heading around the back of my father-in-laws shed. Sure hope the grass grows back before tomorrow night when they return home from vacation!

Just wish I had a couple more days to finallize all the little things so I could have made the Slinger show tonight! Maybe it'll rain out and go next weekend??

Dan