I finally dug myself out of the snow up here and went to the shop and found my pictures of the Riley powered track roadster. Here they are.
The story, as I understand it is that the car was built by a gentleman named Carl Dahlen from Minneapolis who was quite successful running a Riley-headed four cylinder Ford track roadster. This car was supposed to be an improvement on that car, but it was not; (Mr. Dahlen proceeded on with GMC sixes after this debacle). If you look at how the input ports are set up, it's pretty easy to see why this engine was down on power. It's interesting to note the difference in the heads between this engine and the one posted by "Uncle Buck". I wonder if that engine is even a Riley; the two period pictures I show have "Riley" on the valve covers, while that one does not. I have not seen either engine in person so I will reserve judgement on this. Anyway, as I understand it, the car was not successful and was not actively raced, if at all.
My source of information for all of this is a guy that I vintage race with who is Carl Dahlen's grandson. If you notice in the close-up black and white photo, the Driver was one "Wayne T. Allison", who is my source's uncle. The family has a bit of history about the four-cylinder powered cars, but nothing about this one. The color pictures of the car were taken after it was restored by Dave Norgaarden of Rochester, Minnesota. Mr. Norgaarden has restored quite a few vintage race cars over the years. The second name on the cowl, "Harvey Porter" was a gentleman who was said to have driven for Carl Dahlen. I have met Mr Porter, but it was a long time before I know about this car, so I didn't get any information from him.
From what I have heard, Tim Ayers is correct in saying that this engine was the one in the AMBR winning car several years ago. An interesting aside is that I was watching a promo for one of the many "Hot Rod" shows on TV and swear I saw this car, stlll with the gold paint and the number "22" on it. At that time, I believe it had a regular '37 21 stud flathead in it. I watched that stupid show for the whole rest of the winter, but never saw that car again.
Sorry to be so long-winded, but I may be the only one left who knows the history of this car and thought I should get it down somewhere. "Once something is on the Internet, it will live forever".
