For the last three months, well-respected chassis fabricator J. Ed Horton has been re-creating history.
More specifically, Horton has been building a Top Fuel front-engine twin-engine dragster as a replica to the one Chris “The Golden Greek” Karamesines ran back in the early 1960s. Horton Race Cars is based in Belton, S.C.
According to Horton, renowned NHRA world championship crew chief Dale Armstrong is building the motors for the car.
“This is a Nostalgia-type of a car,” Horton said. “The prime car back then was a chassis research what they called a K-88 (dragster frame). This car is built similar to those cars, but it has two motors. The group called Gotha built the Gotha twin drive and they made the hook ups to hook the motors together. The rear-end is way off set to one side and then it had an Oldsmobile rear-end in it and that has been assembled.”
Bob Stange, the owner of Strange Engineering, is buying the twin-engine dragster Horton is building, and he is giving the dragster to Karamesines. The dragster is expected to be used for Cacklefests.
For the last three months, well-respected chassis fabricator J. Ed Horton has been re-creating history.
More specifically, Horton has been building a Top Fuel front-engine twin-engine dragster as a replica to the one Chris “The Golden Greek” Karamesines ran back in the early 1960s. Horton Race Cars is based in Belton, S.C.
According to Horton, renowned NHRA world championship crew chief Dale Armstrong is building the motors for the car.
“This is a Nostalgia-type of a car,” Horton said. “The prime car back then was a chassis research what they called a K-88 (dragster frame). This car is built similar to those cars, but it has two motors. The group called Gotha built the Gotha twin drive and they made the hook ups to hook the motors together. The rear-end is way off set to one side and then it had an Oldsmobile rear-end in it and that has been assembled.”
Bob Stange, the owner of Strange Engineering, is buying the twin-engine dragster Horton is building, and he is giving the dragster to Karamesines. The dragster is expected to be used for Cacklefests.
“Chris is aware of it (the dragster being built), he is involved in it because he had a lot of the parts, and he was a lot of help to me as far as pointing me in the right direction,” Horton said. “It is amazing he had that twin drive thing otherwise the car could not have been built. It was a real challenge to build the car. We had six (old) pictures of the car and it was kind of hard to pull the car together, but it looks real close to the original car.”
Karamesines is scheduled to race in Gainesville, Fla., at the Gatornationals March 8-11 in his Top Fuel dragster. He is then going to Belton, S.C., to pick up the twin-engine dragster and take it back to Chicago.
Master fabricator J. Ed Horton recreated the legendary dragster.Karamesines is a longtime independent driver who has been racing since the 1950s, and has won numerous national events in the ADRA, AHRA and IHRA. Karamesines lives in Chicago.
“I’m not sure when Karamesines will bring out the twin-engine dragster, I would assume they will bring it out at the big (NHRA national event) race in Chicago (June 28-July 1),” Horton said.
In the late 1950s, early 60s the twin-engine cars/dragsters started appearing on the drag racing scene.
“The difference with this (dragster) we built for Karamesines is the motors are side-by-side,” Horton said. “There were a couple of side-by-side (motor) cars back in the day and this was one of them. It was a challenge (to re-create this car), the thinking process was a lot greater than I anticipated.”
The toughest task for Horton was re-creating the chassis.
“The challenge was wrapping the frame around the motors,” Horton said. “It is a lot wider than a Funny Car. It is 30-something inches wide, and you had to narrow it back down for the rear-end. The bottom frame rail is a snake, it literally wraps around the motors.”
Horton said the re-created twin-engine dragster doesn’t have the original tires the car had, but has tires that “are 40 years old that were the same tires he ran.”
According to Horton, the body on the twin-engine dragster will not be painted.
“It will just be polished,” said Horton about the body. “That’s what they did back then. It’s just polished aluminum.”
