1969 was a very good year!  The car continued to improve in every respect.  This year the big thing was horsepower.  We purchased a pile of 426 Hemi parts form the legendary Colorado top Fuel team of Heath & Thompson.  The switch to the Hemi required little more than a new firewall and headers to get in installed.  The Elephant motor as they became known made more horsepower without trying than the wedge ever could.  I don't remember if we ever got into the 180's with the wedge but we suddenly skipped right past the 190's and straight into the 200's.  Jerry got into the 200MPH Club in '69 at 208 with the B/GR record.

After years of being an ignored also ran as soon as we pulled into the impound after the return record run there were more tape measures on the car than you could shake a stick at.

The two photos above are what I have relied upon during the restoration/ rebuild of the car.  These photos are close enough to being straight on that I was able to draw lines to scale and measure to make sure that the attitude and especially the overall height are as close to 1969 as possible.  The rebuild obviously required a new roll cage which is much larger but I was able to maintain the original height within about an inch.  A new front end was deemed necessary for safety reasons and while at it the new front end is aerodynamically much cleaner.

There used to be enough salt that there was a warm up area South of the starting line and beside Salduro Loop.  Here we are doing something to check the tune up, Michael in the car, Jerry in white pants and long time friend Barc Goodson standing over the engine.

If you are not familiar with how records were set way back when, it used to take three runs.  You had to qualify one day and come back the next morning and make the "down" run heading North, turn around and make the "return" run in the opposite direction within one hour.  At Speed Week cars don't run in this direction any more.  This rare photo of Jerry celebrating with a raised left hand "V" was on our very first record run.  An almost identical black and white photo shot by Rickman appeared in the HRM Bonneville coverage issue.

It was a tremendous surprise to find this in the mail box one day.  It is a huge privilege and honor to be on the cover of the iconic magazine of the sport.  In the '50's there were many HRM Bonneville covers, in the '60's there were only 3 or 4.  To be one of the most famous covers and be the only feature cover for almost 40 years is a great honor.  With this history there is no choice but to rebuild the car as if it were being restored.  Restoration is not the goal, rebuilding and going faster is.  I wonder if HRM would like to do a retake of the cover in 2017?

And while we had the Hot Rod cover, the Holmes & Kugel modified roadster that we built the chassis for was on the Rod & Custom cover the same month, November 1969.