Talk:1973 Indianapolis 500

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Copy/paste of my "Fuellish" redux from the `64 Indy Talk page[edit]

In fact, tanks indeed hold a maximum of 75 gallons at the time: You can check the race rules that year in any Indy 500 printed program in the `60's & 70's. Also, I know for a fact that (at least) Dave Macdonald's car had a rubber-lined fuel cell, because the late Dave Zieger, who was my late father's co-worker at the RCA color TV plant on Sherman Drive and also family friend, told me he was the one who installed the bladder in the tank — Something which haunted him until his grave.

What happened is that most of the cars were running methanol to get more horsepower; but Smokey Yunick and a few others ran high octane racing fuel, produced at the refinery on the north side of Indy. The problem is, you're "damned if you do and damned if you don't," because while gasoline burns best at about a 12:1 air-fuel ratio, methanol burns best at about 7:1, necessitating more pit stops.

Indeed, gasoline was banned; but kerosene was also allowed, as that is what fueled the turbines starting in 1967.

It was after the 1973 crash at the start of the Indy 500 when starter Pat Vidan threw the green flag a lap early (he was fired and replaced by Shim Malone) when Salt Walther was hit by AJ charging through the field (some accounts said it was Mike Mosley), spraying 75 gallons of flaming methanol into the Track Boxes about 50 yards past our family's seats in Paddock Box 10, Row J, about 100 yards past the start/finish line — The track boxes where we had extra seats in 1971 or `72 (I forget which year we had them for cousins in town. I was not quite 13 at the time; but I'll never forget the blast of heat and the flaming blue fireball to this very day. The crash into the catchfence was so violent, two of the steel stanchions were broken; and as they were repairing them, the rains mercifully came and the race was postponed until the next day.

Incidentally, the 40 gallons of methanol was fun: at the 1977 Domino's 500 at Pocono (which I also attended), AJ got caught cheating when, in post-race tech, he was caught with a 45 gallon fuel tank. He argued (I forgot if he was successful) that the rules stated "a maximum of 40 gallons of methanol," but he claimed that 5 gallons of that was water! I don't know how much after that occurred that they started testing the fuel; but I know when I was a photojournalist 2001-2004 that when I went to photograph the room in the Speedway infield where they tested it, I was quickly shoo'd away. However, from a full-page ad in the race program, Perkin-Elmer bragged that "Once again, we are proud to supply the gas/liquid chromatograph [GLC] for the Indy 500."

If you have any further info specific to the fuel issues related to the `64 or `73 Indy's, please contact me via e-mail at Brakeshoe4515T@gmail.com to discuss it, as our family seats from 1967 to 2008 were in Paddock Grandstand J, row 10; though from 2001—2004 I had a coveted IRL photo hard card. Dan Schwartz, now in Atlanta. Discpad (talk) 20:08, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]


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Start of the Monday race[edit]

/* Monday May 28 – Salt Walther crash */ What I saw from our family seats (1967—2008) in Paddock Box 10, Row J, Seats 1, 2, 3, & 4, approximately 100 yards past the Yard of Bricks, and about 100 yards before Salt Walther sprayed 75 gallons of flaming methanol into the track boxes. What happened is that starter Pat Vidan apparently threw the green flag a lap early, as (unless the starting procedure was modified between the `72 & `73 seasons), the crowd gasped, as they would they had the warm-up lap, the parade lap, the pace lap, and then the green flag with the pace car coming down the pit lane. Parenthetically, after Eldon Palmer's wreck in 1971, Indy went to a specially-prepared Pace Car (with a spare), with the rest of the 19xx Pace Cars like the ones sold at dealers—I had a `79 Turbo Mustang and 1982 Camaro Z28 Indy Pace Cars.


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Jimmy Caruthers[edit]

The statement in the text that Jimmy Caruthers "blew his engine, and a connecting rod flew out, punctured, and violently blew his right front tire" is almost certainly wrong. Given the construction of the Offy engine, and the fact that it's rear mounted, it would be virtually impossible for any engine part to hit a front wheel. Even hitting a rear wheel would be exceedingly unlikely. Officially Caruthers retired due to "suspension", and it seems more likely to me that a failure in a suspension part punctured the tire, and the engine failure is someone's imagination.

According to contemporary accounts ([1]), Caruthers "struck a piece from a blown engine". But it does not say it was his own engine. So that statement in the text was incorrect. But it goes on to say the following..."It happened a couple laps after Wally Dallenbach blew. It was a piece from his engine." So that clears up where the "piece" (it doesn't specify it was a rod either), came from. Section has been updated. Doctorindy↔Talk 14:08, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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