No, I never ran any run offs. I was just a club racer and ran at Riverside, Willow Springs and Ontario Motor Speedway.
Yes, Bob Snow, the long time D/SR of Snows Garage in Orange, CA. Orange was my home town and I actually worked for The City of Orange when I raced. I was a low buck racer and used my income tax return, full time school, GI benefits and a $100 a pay day to race on. I took a second out, on my house to get started. Remember, that's when a dollar was worth much more. Best thing I ever did for myself!
My first drivers school was Danny's second at Willow Springs, in Nov of '73. He was starting to get his license for F5000. Carol Smith was the wrench on his Lola 300, both supplied by Parnelli. If you were at the Riverside race, in the Summer of '78, where the tow truck, turned Ted Fields Lola over, on the straight (twin to Danny's car), I was there. I was on the cool down lap, going by, when it happened.
I last talked to Wilbur, when he was wrenching NASCAR Truck's, before he went back East. He wrenched Howdy Holmes F/B car, when I first started. He liked Howdy, a lot and had a few "story's" about him .
The Hart variation took the power levels up a bit...
But from memory there was almost zero clearance as the valve heads passed each other on their overlap. Very touchy to set up and subject to strict rev limits.
Yes, the BV Hart was the top of the twin cam HP level. Chuck dynoed mine at 195 HP @ 8000. Injected ones were suppose to be close to 205 HP. As I said, I had to rebuild mine and I had to make my valves they were made from cut down, Jaguar valves.~1.75 intakes x 1.44 Ex. They did came close to each other and the LSA was 102°. I shifted at up to 8500 in 2nd & 3rd, 8k in 4th & 5th and geared for 8k on the short Riverside straight, same gearing for Willow.
Marc is a workaholic and he worked for a after market motorcycle parts company, in those days. After a practice on Sat and after a race, it was common that he would be in his shop, working on someones broken formula car, into the wee hours and wasn't home much after he got off his job. The wife and kids would bring him something to eat, a lot of times. Also, he built many of the sand bent, F/B and F/A headers for the SoCal guys.