 Fifty years ago today, 1972 AAR Eagle #7228 was running third with 20 laps to go in the 1974 Indianapolis 500 in the hands of the Commander Motor Homes team and driver Lloyd Ruby.
A few laps later, the #9 Eagle sputtered to a halt, out of fuel. It was credited with a 9th-place run, completing 187 of the 200 laps. In doing so, Ruby would be the last driver to ever compete at the Indianapolis 500 wearing an open-face helmet.  It's time.
Our 1968 AAR Eagle that spent one day as a racecar in December 1968 is getting a lot of attention at the shop. Lots of sorting, qualifying parts and getting things prepped for plating while PJ works out his plans to make a SB Chevy fit back into it as it had that fateful Goodyear test day in December at Riverside with Bobby Unser at the wheel. After the wreck, everything aft of the rollhoop was removed, including the rear bulkhead and interior engine bay skins, which would have been modified to fit a Chevy. In the 66 years since the accident, new panels were fitted in, and a new rear bulkhead fabricated, but the panels in question were to original 1968 Eagle speedway spec, not for a car with a wider stock block engine. And how do we know it had a Chevy in it? Our friend and Eagle lover Ian Blackwell forwarded to us two photos from AAR alum Terry 'Bones' Malone of the car. The first photo was of the Eagle at AAR in October, 1968, fitted with a Chevy motor with Hilborn or Kinsler Crossram injection. No paint, a black rollhoop, and a fiberglass nose section. The second shot was after the accident, the car stripped of its front suspension. Thr damage matched the earlier photo Allen Brown sent us of the tub in a garbage dumpster - a shot Unser used for a Christmas card there after. The damage also matched the way the car was when previous owner Bryan Jedniak had the car in Ohio circa 2010. The story is what we thought it was. A one-day Eagle Indycar that came to life with a Chevy. It had a serial number on it that day, but it has been lost to time. There are several working theories as to what the serial number really is, but it is either 407 or 408. The Eagle that was cubed after Mike Mosley's accident in 1971 would be the other car. Perhaps if the new owner of that cube would like to pull it apart, we can solve a serial number issue. Regardless, you've probably never seen a baremetal Eagle roaming a track in your lifetime. We hope to have it purring at Road America in 2026. Be there.  Sometimes, you just need to make a tool out of something. This is not the tool, but the part that had to go off of the something.
Dennis Eade passed away.
The man from Zenda who ran Comprep came into our lives back around 2010 because he wanted to rebuild the shocks on AAR Eagle #8101, formally driven by Chip Mead, who Dennis once ran in Formula Atlantics. There was no charge. If it was for Chip's car, there would be no bill, he insisted. We made sure to drop off some Chip Mead White Castle Racing shirts the next time we visited, and they meant the world to him. Granted, he said we shouldn't have, but after I said the same thing about the shocks, he came around with a tear in his eye. When we ran the Eagle DGF in SCCA Nationals, he maintained our Fox Shox, and always was thankful we were irking as much as we could out of the vintage car among modern machinery. He did a lot to keep many people on the track, and was an absolutely delightful character. He will be greatly missed. |
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Kettle Moraine Preservation & Restoration
[email protected] Hubertus, Wisconsin 'Where History and Integrity Meet' |