#tune in in five to six business decades to see it all unfold

[surly01]

A Pox Upon Us

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on March 22, 2020

“Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves” ― Albert Camus, The Plague

During the incursions of the Black Death, the bubonic plague that attacked Europe in waves during the 14th and 16th centuries, the rich have always taken pains to insure that sickness remains the province of the poor. Some things never change.

Plague doctors wore a beaked mask and carried a stick. During the 16th century, French royal physician Charles de Lorme is credited with having invented the bird-beak plague mask. The long, beaked mask was typically filled with sweet or strong-smelling herbs, such as wormwood, the main ingredient in absinthe, which were believed to filter out miasma, or bad air, thought at the time to spread plague.

As Jezebel reminds us, Rich People Have Always Been Assholes During Plagues​. In the 14th century Black Death, which wiped out somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of Europe’s population, those who could afford were told “cito, longe, tarde:”  “flee soon, go far, come back late.” As servants were left behind to clean the houses of an absent aristocracy, the swells and grandees got the hell out of town. Reports abound of those left in cities screaming while being enclosed alive in body bags bound for the plague pits.

The 21st century version of retreating to one’s Italian villa seems to be barricading oneself in a Hamptons mansion. The new court physician is the concierge doctor, and the new plague mask is the high-end, sold-out Urban Air Mask 2.0, miasma-blocking herbs replaced by “cutting-edge filter technology with timeless Scandinavian design,” the company’s website reads.  Gwenyth Paltrow recently posted a selfie wearing the $65 modern-day plague mask en route to Paris, though doctors say they’re likely ineffective, as the masks are intended to prevent sick people from spreading coronavirus, not protect well people from catching it.

Our own rich are following the advice to flee and stay away, hiring private planes to avoid the miasma emanating from those who fly coach. The Rich Are Scrambling To Escape COVID-19 On Private Jets. And money is often no object.

The most wealthy among us are trying to get around flight bans with private jet flights as they are desperate to get into or home from Caribbean countries, many of which have partial or full international travel bans. .. These countries are home to many affluent expatriates. The money some of them spend on private jet flights is staggering. One round trip to Europe in a Gulfstream 550 jet from the United States with five passengers can easily cost the client six figures.

With the world being crippled in many ways by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ultra-wealthy still have places to be and airline options are not only becoming restrictive, they are dwindling. Rumors currently abound of private jet pilots, both from charter operations and private flight departments, being offered large bonuses to get into and out of Caribbean resort countries undetected and bypassing customs and port of entry requirements.

Yes, I know you have your so-called "rules," but this is ME we're talking about. And I'll pay you handsomely.

And you might wonder: Why are the rich and famous getting coronavirus tests while we aren't? It occurs to a couch-surfing peasant to wonder how elite athletes on NBA teams, rich actors and well-connected swells can get tested, when first responders and many presenting with obvious symptoms have been turned away.

Just kidding.

While the evasions and lubrications by the rich may stink as much as the flesh of rotting buboes, we'll need a plague mask to mask the stench of corruption emanating from Washington, DC this week.

Virus Vultures

On Thursday, Senators faced a massive scandal after multiple members revealed in public filings that they had sold large stock holdings after private briefings on the coronavirus outbreak.  Senator Richard Burr Sold a Fortune in Stocks as G.O.P. Played Down Coronavirus Threat to the mere public. And Sen. Kelly Loeffler, she of the half-billion dollar net worth (the richest member of Congress), sold off seven figures worth of stock holdings  after the same, private, all-senators meeting as Burr. Then, she bought stock in a telework software company. Later, as March unfolded, fear of the virus hammered U.S. equities for its largest loss in decades.

After they were briefed that the coronavirus crisis would be far worse than was publicly known, they dumped their personal stock market holdings while publicly insisting that things would be fine. Even while privately telling wealthyt constituents that it was going to be ugly.  From the Times:

Senator Richard M. Burr sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in major companies last month, as President Trump and others in his party were still playing down the threat presented by the coronavirus outbreak and before the stock market’s precipitous plunge.

The stocks were sold in mid-February, days after Mr. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote an opinion article for Fox News suggesting that the United States was “better prepared than ever before” to confront the virus. At least three other senators sold major stock holdings around the same time, disclosure records show.

No less a noted socialist than Fox News host Tucker Carlson, called for Burr’s resignation.

“He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money, and then he stayed silent,” Mr. Carlson said during his show on Thursday night. “Maybe there is an honest explanation for what he did. If there is, he should share it with us immediately. Otherwise, he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading.”

Three other senators also sold major holdings around the same time.

It makes perfect sense to believe, does it not, that the richest single member of Congress, a former investment banker CEO worth $500M and married to the NY stock exchange president, a Senator with inside knowledge and ability to manipulate markets,  has no idea what her portfolio is doing.

These moves place Burr and Loeffler in direct violation of the STOCK Act of 2012, which specifically made it illegal for members of Congress to trade equities based on any secret information received as part of their jobs.

For their parts, Burr and Loeffler have asked for Ethics Committee investigations to, wait for it, "clear their names." Which, since the secretive committee meets behind closed doors, means waiting until the shitmist from the scandal settles and it's time to start pounding the phones to raise money for re-election.

No idea at all. Baseless attack.

The Times article continues:

In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Burr accused NPR of twisting his comments into a “tabloid-style hit piece.” He argued that the report made him look duplicitous for sharing information at a publicly advertised event that was consistent with the message members of the Trump administration were then trying to promulgate. He did not address his stock sales.

Of course he didn't.

You Can't Have One.

This is the above-referenced selfie of Gwyneth Paltrow, actress-cum-celebrity goopifier, who has built a second career positing that illness can be prevented by cold baths, energy healing and making better lifestyle choices, wearing a ventilator. And not just any ventilator. From the looks of it, an Airnum in Onyx Black. And don't ask, peasant: sold out.

Remember that we pissed away two months of lead time because Trump didn't want "the numbers" to harsh the stock market and thus his re-election chances. For months, Trump has his band of grifters and right wing media enablers have said that it was nothing to worry about, and they had it contained.

Pete Hegseth said “the more I learn about this, the less there is to worry about.” Jeanine Pirro asserted that mainstream-media coverage “doesn’t reflect reality.”  Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham accused the non-cult press as “panic pushers” stirring up “mass hysteria.” And Trish Regan at Fox Business accused the “liberal media” of using the coronavirus “to impeach the president. That last outburst was apparently bad enough to rouse Rupert Murdoch from his crypt to take her off the air.

What a difference a few days, and a few thousand active coronavirus cases in the U.S., can make. Both Trump and FNC have changed their tune regarding the significance of the virus. And Trump, prevented from staging his Nuremberg rallies to bathe in the adulation of his cult, has taken his act of vindictiveness, press attacks, and racism to the White House briefing room. It is a failing of the corporate media that they continue to live broadcast these exercises in propaganda. During a pandemic, disinformation costs lives.

It’s certainly true that health workers and those who have already contracted the virus should be getting masks before celebrities, considering we’re entering into global mask shortage that will make it even more difficult to contain a rapidly spreading public health crisis.

But Paltrow isn’t modeling a mask out of deep concern for public health; she’s posting because she’s beginning to panic. Covid-19 definitely isn’t the end times, but it’s a useful indication of what end times might look like: All our favorite celebrities, like the rest of the idle rich, tossing away their public postures and scrambling to spend as much money as necessary to make sure that they stay safe.

Latebreaking News:

Coronavirus updates: Angela Merkel quarantined, Rand Paul tests positive, Ohio on lockdown

Germany is banning gatherings of 2 or more people to slow coronavirus outbreak

US states report price gouging

A top New York surgeon warns that the coronavirus has 'breached' hospital walls and infections could peak in 22 to 32 days

Italy Tightens Quarantine as It Battles World’s Deadliest Coronavirus Outbreak

In strategic shift, doctors in America's two largest cities are told to skip some coronavirus testing​.

Surly1 was an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone, because he paid full retail for everything he has managed to learn.

[hiddenlevers-blog]

The Spotlight is on HiddenLevers

HiddenLevers is usually the one shining the spotlight on our users, but this week the spotlight is shining on HiddenLevers' co-founder Praveen Ghanta. He was recently interviewed by Manish Khatta, of  Potomac Fund Management, after HiddenLevers was chosen to power their client proposal system. After two years of failed attempts with various providers, Potomac finally found a software who fit the bill!

Background:

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background as our readers try to understand the process behind HiddenLevers?

HiddenLevers isn’t my first tech venture – I started my career in the dot-com boom and sold an internet startup right into the bubble pop in mid-2000. I then landed on Wall St (at Deutsche Bank) and spent many years building credit risk trading and management systems. That fit well with my educational background, as I studied both computer science and economics at MIT – but I always wanted to get back to entrepreneurship.

Fast-forward to 2008, and I started to think about trying my hand at another venture – just as the financial crisis was looming…

What was the main reason you started HiddenLevers?

In 2008, prior to the crisis, I became interested in the idea of identifying the relationships between different factors in the economy and investments. If we all look at the beta to the S&P 500, why don’t we also consider an investment’s potential beta to oil, or home prices, or interest rates? The initial idea revolved around discovering the “hidden” economic levers that move your investments – hence the company name.

But I realized almost immediately that if you have analyzed these economic relationships, you can also try to answer what-if questions about the future – what happens to my portfolio if the tech sector corrects? Or if home prices pass their 2007 highs? By the time HiddenLevers hit the ground running as an actual company (January 2010), the demand for better ways of modeling risk was evident, and this kind of forward-looking scenario analysis looked like a great opportunity.

The Proposal System: 

The ability to create proposals was a recent release from HL. Why did you get into the business of creating a proposal tool?

In two words: advisor demand. We got many requests from firms that were dissatisfied with the proposal tools that they saw on the market, and at the same time really liked our approach to presenting risk. Many advisors were already using our reports and other output with clients, and they were hoping to see something more holistic. We’ve focused on making our product development process driven by client feedback, so once we started to hear the requests, we listened. Another motivating factor were the changes in DOL rules – advisors need to be able to present more clearly on both matching a client’s risk tolerance and on the value that their allocations provide.

Being a tactical, unconstrained manager made it difficult for us to find a proposal system? Why do you think Hidden Levers fit the bill?

Potomac cares deeply about risk management, and I think you needed a system that would help you illustrate that. Since HiddenLevers has built a risk-forward proposal which focuses on highlighting that capability, I think it was a natural fit.

Nerd Alert: Maximum Drawdown, Stress Testing and Expected Return:

Can you explain why maximum drawdown is a key part of your system including the client risk scoring?

Measuring a client’s risk tolerance is about trying to understand how they might react when their investments are losing money. Most risk assessment processes try to capture that, but it’s very important to look at tail risks – what might an investor do when their investment is down more than a few standard deviations? Maximum drawdown can provide a good historical perspective on this, particularly when an investment has a real historical track record, and not just back-tested or index data.

Why forward-looking stress tests vs examining the actual historical return characteristics?

HiddenLevers’ forward-looking stress tests are really about taking the concept of max drawdown and attempting to model the risks that might cause a similar drawdown in the future. The stress testing model that we use relies heavily on historical return characteristics, as it uses a strategy’s historical returns to model its relationship to various factors in the economy. But since history never exactly repeats, it’s quite helpful to be able to take the economic relationships that drive an investment’s returns, and then model an economic situation more in keeping with the present.

The next crisis won’t play out just like the last financial crisis – for one we are starting in a much lower interest rate environment. Forward-looking stress testing enables us to look at a large range of different ways that the next crisis might unfold, rather than being tied to an exact repeat of history.

Do you track sample portfolios to see how accurate the forward stress testing has proven to be?

We do track sample portfolios and we use these to evaluate the accuracy of our model across a range of asset classes, including equities, fixed income, balanced strategies, and even tactical funds.

We periodically publish white papers summarizing these results – for instance we published a white paper on model performance in recreating historical scenarios like the 1987 crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2014 crash in oil prices. These studies enable us to continue to tune and refine our model to improve its accuracy. Using these sorts of historical tests, we found that the model projected results within 5% of the actual result in 85% of the cases reviewed.

The proposal shows expected return/drawdown. For the layman, how are those numbers computed?

This concept is based on some long term historical data: since 1900, major downside market events (where the S&P 500 fell more than 20%) have occurred roughly twice a decade, or once every five years. Recent crashes have been slightly less frequent but more powerful, with two 50% declines in the past 17 years.

HiddenLevers measures the risk side of Risk/Reward using its stress testing model, enabling advisors and asset managers to look at a range of plausible downside risk events over the next five years. The potential five-year expected return is calculated by first using the model to project returns in the upside case, where stock markets continue to rise in line with their long-term averages.

This upside case is averaged against a variety of different risky scenarios, with the upside given an 80% chance of occurrence (remember that the downside is roughly 1 in 5 years). Once the average annual return is computed using this approach, it is compounded over 5 years to show a total return projection for the 5-year period.

The Future: What’s on the Roadmap?

What’s next in store? Any new and exciting improvements coming up?

We have had numerous requests to include additional components in our analysis and as proposal modules – analytics like sector, style, region, and credit quality breakdowns are planned for later this summer.

HiddenLevers is also augmenting its Risk Monitor capability to monitor clients’ status throughout their whole life cycle – has a prospect completed their questionnaire? Now that they’ve closed, does the risk of their new holdings match their risk assessment?

How about integrations with our software partner Orion Advisor?

HiddenLevers is planning to start sending more data back into Orion, so that advisors using both platforms can see HiddenLevers risk/reward and other metrics inside Orion and in Orion-generated reports.

Will you add the ability to add contributions or distributions to past or future scenarios?

This is an area of great interest for us – we do have it on the roadmap, but when we tackle this feature, we’d like to really address the idea of scenarios occurring at any point during a client’s financial plan. What if a particular downside scenario occurs tomorrow? Five years from now? Six months before retirement? How does the timing impact their financial plan? We are working on that concept – stay tuned.

Click here to read the original interview

[itsworn]

The Iconic Ike Iacono Dragster From 1958

This is one of the longest continually run dragsters of all time; the infamous Ike Iacono rail, originally featured on HOT ROD’s January 1959 cover. That’s one of its HOT ROD connections, but a more important one is that former HOT ROD editor Pat Ganahl restored and owns this magnificent piece of history. What started as an 11-year-old boy’s attraction to the orange dragster in HOT ROD led to him ultimately acquiring the still-running rail almost 30 years later, then putting it on hold for another 20 before bringing it back to its 1959 cover status, with help from some amazing friends and craftsmen.

Acquired from former owner Tom Taros in 1988, Pat had been after it for years. Built for a stab at the very first Bonneville meet in 1949 by Laird “Lefty” Pierce, with Ford flathead power and an aluminum streamline body, it was a homebuilt effort from the remnants of a Miller Indy racecar back when such provenance meant nothing. Purchased by 17-year-old Raul “Sonny” Balcaen in 1953, he configured it to its unique identity by swapping out the Ford for a 302ci GMC straight-6, also banging out a new body from magnesium with a hand-formed aluminum nose. The body featured doubled, riveted edges, and was young Balcaen’s first attempt at gas-welded metal fab.

Ike Iacono in his Jimmy-6 dragster sitting at the almost unrecognizable Pomona Fairgrounds drag strip, from July 1958. Notice the unusual multi-piece steering linkage hooked to the Franklin steering box. Also note how clean and tidy the rail is. Iacono was interested in safety way before racing organizations started requiring things like scatter shields and chrome-moly roll bars, all of which can be seen here.

The Mercedes silver dragster ran both stock and 12-port heads with three or five-carb induction. On gas, its best times were low 10s at 136mph.But the rail was known to have set 4-banger records in 1955 fielded by Ed Donovan and Frank Startup running a Fargo four-port head topping a Model B Ford block. Pat says around this same time it was seen with a Hilborn-injected small block Chevy V8, establishing its versatile pass-around workhorse status. Also at this time it received the first Donovan double-disc clutch. After shattering its Model A Halibrand quickchange, Balcaen upgraded the rail with Hilborn injection, a 1937 LaSalle transmission, and V8 Halibrand quickchange rounding out the drivetrain. In 1957 at Colton the dragster hit 151mph at 9.6-seconds. Also during this period Iacono was having much success running his 1933 Ford coupe, helping to develop the first Wayne 12-port head ever made in the process. He was consistently hitting over 130mph in quarter-mile blasts, but slowly feeling the need to go even faster.

By 1957 Balcaen was working for Jim Hall in Culver City, with the dragster collecting dust in a far corner of the shop. Hearing the car was for sale, Iacono paid $1500 for the engine-less rail, spending the next six months filling over 120 holes in the chassis and reconfiguring the roll cage. It also received its George Boskoff aluminum tail. Refinement and an exceptional display of craftsmanship and detail marked Iacono’s ownership, with aircraft fasteners and scattershields for both the bellhousing and rear being just some of the attention paid to both safety and craftsmanship. Resplendent in the bright orange and black the coupe was known for, and with the coupe’s GMC-6 now housed in the rail’s rails, Iacono was rewarded with “Best Appearing” and also Top Eliminator awards in its first showing at Pomona, with a 10.83 et at 126.93mph fastest run of the meet.

Top Eliminator awards were given for the fastest car at each meet, regardless of class. Competing against the stout V8s and twin-engine cars of the day, Iacono was piling up Top Eliminator awards from virtually every meet he attended. And then in late-1958, it was recognized as significant enough for HOT ROD to feature it and place it on the cover.

Pat has always had an affinity for Chevy straight-6 engines and variants forever, so it was serendipitous for him to end up restoring and owning one of the most famous racecars featuring the GMC version of the Chevy-6. This 320ci Jimmy features a 4 1/8 Bore and 4-inch stroke, with 10 ¼:1 compression. Bob McKray in Mission Viejo, California, gets the nod for building the engine. The valve and side covers are Don Ferguson castings from the Wayne original patterns.

By the end of 1959, the stronger Hemis and lighter Olds and Chevy V8s were gaining on the Jimmy, and so in 1960 Iacono parked the dragster to dive into his new tune up and brake service business located near the LA Harbor in San Pedro, California.

A young Tom Taros started working at Iacono’s shop in 1961, and soon convinced his boss to take the old rail to Lions Drag Strip, tip some nitro, and let Tom see what he could do with it. Hitting almost 160mph in the low-9.7s that first race, it would become a consistent 10.50 winner, which was timely as e.t. bracket racing was just unfolding in southern California. It wasn’t long before Tom was racing the digger every weekend, presenting Iacono with a winners check on Monday.

It took a few years to finally convince Tom Taros to swap my dragster for his straight across” – Pat Ganahl

Within a year Iacono got an offer for the GMC 12-port he couldn’t refuse, and so the dragster was again idle until a friend of Taros’ loaned him his small block Chevy engine. Back on the strip, the LaSalle trans and quickchange could not withstand the launches and higher rpms of the V8, and so Taros installed a narrowed Pontiac rear end and 4-speed he massaged. A new pickle green color and Taros-fabb’d fuel injection system, along with Iacono retiring and handing ownership of the rail to Taros, it was the beginning of a whole new chapter in the dragster’s storied life.

Taros built an ever-faster series of small block Chevys, improving his fuel injection system while experimenting with nitro. He ran the “Green Pickle” across the Southland at Irwindale, Lions, Orange County, and Palmdale for the next 25 years. With nostalgia racing taking place at Fremont in the mid-1980s, Taros still had an outlet to continue experimenting to see how much faster he could go as one strip after another closed down operations.

After building a Fuel Altered for a series in HOT ROD in the early 1980s, Pat had gotten the nostalgia race bug and commenced building an A/Fuel dragster teamed with iconic engine builder Gene Adams and Hilborn master Don Enriquez to reincarnate the old Adams and Enriquez A/Fuel dragster. Reconfiguring an old Woody Gilmore 180-inch chassis, Gene supplied the Hemi, and Don drove and helped tune. They even won back-to-back March Meets proving to be an unbeatable combo. As the nostalgia zeitgeist multiplied, Pat continued to chase the ever-escalating safety rules changes instituted by various nostalgia overlords. While Taros continued to race, he fell behind the safety changes, hitting speeds of 200mph with virtually 100-percent pop in the antiquated and outdated dragster. He was running a fine line between getting caught and getting hurt, or worse.

From HOT ROD’s 1958 photo shoot for the January 1959 issue, Iacono and neighbor friend roll the iconic rail into the sun for Eric Rickman at Ike’s dad’s home garage. By the end of 1959 Iacono was seeing less success with the six as V8s, and in some cases twin-V8s were taking over. He parked the dragster in 1960.

Eventually Pat ran out of both time to devote to the A/Fueler, and money. Pat’s desire to give up racing, and Taros’ desire for quicker times finally converged, resulted in them swapping dragsters. It took a while for Taros to see the merits in giving up his old digger, but to continue his addiction to drag racing and love of chasing ever-increasing speeds he needed a better vessel.

About to embark on a re-launch of Rod & Custom magazine, Pat had no time to build anything other than an audience. He knew he wanted to restore the old dragster to its HOT ROD cover status, but for the next 20 years he did little more than score various pieces to put it back to 1959.

Pat preparing to fire up the dragster for the first time in front of his Glendale, California house before teardown for final paint and assembly. He finished the restoration in 2012 after 20 years of on-again, off-again spurts of activity. Pete Eastwood had new rails bent after determining the originals were too warped and damaged to repair, but the rear kickups, front crossmember and body attachment hoops are all original.

In a strange occurrence we’ve seen over and over with vintage dragster restorations, slowly the parts used on the car originally that have scattered over the decades slowly found a home back with the car they came from. And so the first ever 12-port Wayne head, the original Hilborn injection components, and other small pieces ended up right where they started. Big items like the one-year-only 1937 LaSalle transmission, NOS government surplus 302ci GMC short block, new Vertex magneto, quickchange, and countless small parts slowly came together as the years progressed.

Eventually Pete Eastwood in Pasadena, was contacted to replace part of the wasted frame, engine, and trans mounts; make an adaptor motor plate and motor mounts, narrow and mount the rear end, and other fabb’d pieces needed to make it a roller. Bob McKray refurbished the Wayne head, making custom valves and seats, and then assembled the Jimmy. Don Enriquez rebuilt the fuel injections system including the pump originally on the car in 1959, and a batch of small stuff came from Keith Young that included the original Chet Herbert cam used in the car, the original Iacono handmade water neck, and he loaned Pat the original Wayne front cover to have copies made since finding another one was impossible. Joe Umphenour, Bill Jenks, Bill Akin, Doug Robinson, and Derek Bower all contributed either un-obtainium parts or invaluable services in the restoration.

By 2006 it was completed, with Pat finding places few and far between to be able to run it, which he does as often as possible. On 50-percent nitro he’s hovering at the 150mph mark.

So after all of these decades—almost seven, this singular example of what drag racing is and where it came from still plies the quarter mile, a lasting tribute to all of those involved both with the dragster itself but also all of those participants that created these racing machines from scratch in an effort to have some fun and thrills racing in a straight line.

Among the safety enhancements are a bellhousing and rear end scattershields, visible where the handbrake is attached. Pete Eastwood made the “ball protector”, shifter and linkage from photos, while Derek Bower fabb’d the pedal and steering mounts; and also the mounts for the 1920s Franklin steering box. Pat says he made few accommodation concessions for his 6-foot 5-inch frame, but the steering wheel has been raised from its original location. Upholstery by Gabe’s in San Bernardino.

AN hoses are as Iacono originally built the car. That Wayne water pump is a casting from the original on this car, now owned by collector Keith Young. Pat had a few extras cast up, machined them, and also fabb’d the idler pulley. The Hilborn pump was a prototype with no serial numbers purchased from Al Teague, who ran it on his12-port GMC dragster in the 1960s. He had purchased the pump from Iacono back in the day. The degreed crank pulley is also a genie Wayne part.

Other than the hood sides all of the body panels are original, though while the historical record indicated everything but the nose was magnesium, only the belly pan is actually mag. All paint is by Pat, including black frame. The front end including crossmember and tapered Model A spring was fabb’d by Balcaen in the 1940s. Iacono made the aluminum friction shocks.

Doug Robinson at Horsepower Engineering in Pasadena, recreated the headers, surrounding a Ronco Vertex magneto. The aluminum Wayne Horning head is the first ever 12-port he cast. A McGurk roller cam and lifters bump stock GMC steel rocker arms and Isky V8 valve springs and retainers on stainless steel valves. Cam drive is a Cloyes aluminum gear set. A stock GMC oil pump hides inside the 228 GMC “Flat” oil pan, with trap doors fabb’d by Pat.

The cast aluminum Moon pedal was drilled and polished by Pat to recreate Iacono’s original go pedal, with Derek Bower recreating the mounts and linkage.

The new Moon vertical water and fuel spun aluminum tanks recreate the originals seen in vintage images, with the drilled mounts by Bower. Hidden behind the water tank is a vintage fuel filter that took a bit to track down.

Pat was also lucky to get Ike Iacono’s original racing helmet, but it was so beat up that he chose to restore it to the same condition as the car, with Von Dutch striping recreated by Lil’ Louie in San Bernardino.

A great shot from 1966 at Lions in Long Beach of the Green Pickle version of the Iacono dragster, as owned and driven by Tom Taros. At this stage a Taros modified 4-speed and Pontiac rear end back the Taros built small block Chevy. Taros ran a succession of small blocks for the next 25 years featuring his own fuel injection setup made from a tunnel ram and two flow-through 4-bbl. carbs. The wire wheels and magnesium rears were the last ones Iacono ran in 1960. Taros worked at Iacono’s shop until 1972, which explains the lettering.

The post The Iconic Ike Iacono Dragster From 1958 appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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