In November, 2005 I attended a meeting of the local SAE chapter and the highlight of the event was a tour of John Baechtel's facility where the land speed record car Goldenrod is being restored for the Henry Ford Museum. At this point in the restoration the car has been disassembled and restoration work has begun on the chassis. Below are pictures of the four wheel drive chassis which was designed to support 8,500 lbs., four Chrysler 426 hemi engines producing about 2,400 horsepower, and cover the ground at over 400 mph. The chassis itself was reinforced by eight aluminum bulkheads that also acted as the engine mounting plates. Here's the rear of the chassis with one of the two parachute storage/launch tubes installed. And here is where the driver sits. The car is four wheel drive and has two heavy duty truck four speed transmissions at each end of the car. It was shifted by a specially designed Hurst shifter and linkage that Bob Summers said required two hands to shift. Think about that, he had to take both hands off the steering wheel at 350 mph to shift into 4th gear. Front transmission and the input shaft from the engine jackshafts. Rear transmission. Shifter. Chrysler supplied the unblown 426 Hemi engines that made around 600 horsepower each. Two engines directly powered each transmission and all four engines were connected together by a jackshaft that ran down the left side of the chassis. This was done, according to Ed the Chrysler engineer that designed the driveline, to ensure wheels speed differences were kept under 1%. Each pair of engines were connected together through these custom built drives. The exhaust was handled by four sets of custom made headers. No radiators were installed in the car because their added drag was too great. Coolant was routed through the engines and then through these frame side rails which acted as very large coolant tanks. The body is all hand formed aluminum. Work has just started on the restoration and as you can see a lot of corrosion has to be fixed. Goldenrod never ran again after setting the wheel driven record and spent a few years on a trailer doing tours of the country. After that it sat for a long time in a Fontana, California backyard. Bill Summers eventually donated the car to the Henry Ford Museum and the restoration effort has begun. While at the SAE event I talked with John Baechtel and volunteered to help with the restoration. He gladly accepted and a week later he stopped by the shop and dropped of the front upper control arms. Pictures and descriptions are on the following pages: | Goldenrod UCA Restoration | Back to Bench Racing |