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40
YEARS AGO.....
The
Bradford family started racing in 1946. Brad Bradford and his
father ran roadsters at the dry lakes during the late 40’s and
early 50’s. In 1963 Randy
Bradford (son) started racing with dad.
The first Bradford and Son drag car was a 1940 ford truck that
was 327 Chevy powered. The
next race car was a 1955 Chevy C Gasser that was run 1963-1966. This was
a very competitive car and won many trophies at local drag strips in
Southern California, and won a gold cup race at Fontana Raceway.
Fuel Altered racing began in 1966 with the purchase of a car from
Lee Lebaron. This car was
powered by an injected 427 Chevy on nitro with best times in 1967 being 8.60 ET at
178 MPH. The injected car
was a giant killer and they were runner up at 3 fuel altered shows at Orange
County Raceway in a row and won many rounds at all the tracks. During
late 1967, the local promoters of fuel altered shows put pressure on
injected altereds to add superchargers and so the Bradford Fiat
complied.
This was also a success as fuel altered racing was at its peek in
southern California.
Randy
was given the opportunity to join the Army during half of 1968 and all
of 1969 returning to drive March 1970.
While Randy was in the Army, Frank Harris drove for Brad and they
were very successful winning 3 fuel altered meets in a row and many
winning weekends during the year. They
were runners up for the Bakersfield smokers meet March of 1969 against
the winner Pure Hell. 1969
and 1970 were interesting years as The Bradford Fiat was called to run
the east coast tour with Pure Heaven, Rat Trap, Leroy Chatterton and
Wild Willie Borsch. The team of Bradford & Son raced all over the
country from May to September each year.
In 1969 the race car was re-powered with a 392
Chrysler and with the
use of better tires and slipper clutches the Fiat kept competitive running a best of 7.06
seconds at 209mph winning a fuel altered show at
Fremont.
During 1972 it was
obvious the fuel altereds were fading and funny cars were taking over.
Randy and Brad decided to build a funny car. This car was started
but never finished partly due to the
commitments and demands of family. I
In
1999, Brad and Randy after a
27 year absence returned to their racing roots and began building a new
replica of the original fuel altered. The new car was built to modern
safety specifications, keeping the original classic look of the
old car.
The new car was completed Oct 2000 and first ran at the
California Hot rod Reunion. We
are currently searching to book more races including
match races with other Nitro fuel altereds.
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