Old racecar pictures

[bertvorgon]

So gang, that is it for now,hopefully that gives you a sense of that time period and again, how lucky we were to enjoy some of the best tracks around and survived more or less intact to fight again.

[bertvorgon]

I thought also, as someone asked me on this site...who is BERT VORGON...so..I have written the story of where he came from.....


BERT VORGON ARRIVES

Bert Vorgon arrived in Mission, B.C. on October 30, 1993, at approximately 11:00 A.M.. He arrived with a smack and a scream like most newborn’s, as the brake pedal hit the fire wall, and the end of the straight was fast approaching…. at 117 MPH.

The 510 Club of B.C. was some 2 years old at this point and almost at the height of membership, we were over 100 members at one point. I was finishing up my serious attacks at the Solo Series and made my quest for a fast time at Knox Mountain Hillclimb my focus. Our core group of members wanted to have a high speed event and the prospect of track days at Mission Raceway was very easy then, with minimal B.S. and cost.

I had run my car at Westwood Race track many times, where there was ample time to cool the brakes, where I was COMING down from 130 MPH in my car, lap after lap, at the end of the long straight. Mission Raceway was to prove a whole other ball game!

My car always had good top end, but, it really was set up for Solo use, where brakes were not the major component to being fast. At the time I had the 280ZX rotors with the original JFZ Mini GN’s on the front, with the 240Z drums at the back. I did not even have the brake cooling ducts functional at the time. I just used Wilwood 570 brake fluid, NOT the full on race stuff. I did try many different brake pads, but in looking back, that technology was still in its infancy as to compound choice, you either had a street pad or a race pad. You younger guys have no idea how lucky you are in this time period, where you have such a choice of brakes, both calipers and pads.

As I write this now, some 22 years later, I am so glad I kept my log books and wrote everything down, as the memories come flooding back. I can see that in the weeks before the Mission track day, I installed my WINK mirror and re-did my window net mounting. I ran a slalom at Britannia Beach, then got the car into Specialty for a pre-race look. I installed the front brake cooling ducts and checked the back lash in my differential.
I knew there was going to be a good mix of fast cars, one of which was to be the tube frame 510 GT-4 car that Specialty had built and now was owned by Don Nimi. I made a good mix of high octane fuel and planned to install my BP10EV plugs for racing. Hoosier slicks were the tires I used that year. I knocked the boost down to 14PSI as I was not sure how the heat build up would be.

The day could not have dawned better, a nice cool fall day, dry and sunny. I look back at those early days of the Club, so many 510’s, and a competitive streak in all of us, that truly was the Golden Age for the club in my opinion.

I knew Don would be fast in the Specialty car but felt I could stay ahead of him with my power on the straights. The first session was basically just getting a feel for the car and the track, seeing 190F. on the water and 1,400F. on the exhaust, with a top speed of about 115 to 117 MPH on the straight, right before the braking zone. Session number two came along, with everyone ready to give it hammer and tong. As these track days were under our control, they were a full on road race. The nice thing was that you could trust the guy next to you to not do anything stupid. We were doing 20 minute sessions, which was quite a work out. I was JUST staying ahead of Don at about the 15 minute mark, but, I could both see him reeling me in under braking...BIG TIME, and, I could feel my brakes starting to go.

On the next lap, as I saw Don coming hard and fast in my mirror, I went for the late brake, putting some tremendous heat into the system. I made the hair pin and on the next short chute I thought things were really spongy. As we headed down the back section, there are two small stabs at the brakes...MORE heat...then back onto the straight. I was well aware that this was likely it for my brakes, I just did not know how bad it was going to be! I stayed to the right and had some good car lengths on Don. As I hit the brakes, the pedal went to the fire wall with a whack...NOTHING AT ALL....and Don was still ACCELERATING past me like I was parked. I kinda screamed; “Oh S*@T!!!” as I sifted out into the run out area, Don long gone.
I carefully motored back to the pits and parked. Now think about this, I have driven back to the pits, gotten out of the car, calmed down, gotten the jack, borrowed some jack stands, jacked the car, removed front wheels, then, walked over to the Specialty trailer to borrow the brake bleeding kit, back to car, and then cracked a brake bleeder screw. The fluid was STILL boiling in there, shooting out the hose and almost scalding me. It was too hot to even bleed. I had to let it totally cool down and then flushed and bled the system with some Motul RBF 600, 594F. dry boiling point fluid. I was able to get in one more session, but, the brakes were still going soft at the end of the session, pointing out as a no brainer, that my car was too fast for the existing brake set up.

In the subsequent story I wrote about this day, I said the Don had a VORGON DECELERATOR on his car, the way his brakes worked. Vorgon was a character that I told stories to my kids about. As track days looked to be a continuing thing, a major brake upgrade was in the works. It was through this that BERT VORGON and his brother Rimski, were born, coming from Lake Bullshitski in Russia. In 1994 Bert Vorgon installed his VORGON DECELERATOR with the help of Noel Koehn, the founder of the 510 Club of B.C.. We put 200sx rotors on the back with BMW 2002 front calipers as the squeezing force. Up front I made a proper duct for the cooling line to direct air onto the center of the rotor, not just blowing air at it. I put stainless flex lines all around and used the best race brake fluid we could get.

Bert Vorgon became a standing and running inside joke for many years, taking on a life of his own. It prompted a “brake test” of the Vorgon Decelerator, some T-shirts and the decals. As his brother RIMSKI was always working on things in Siberia, his racing Lada being one of them, there were some letters that went back and forth over the years, as we kept the joke going. Gary Koehn actually gave me a large plexiglass box housing the first prototype decelerator, sent over from Rimski in Siberia.

True story here, a bunch of us went to a Vancouver Island car show one summer. On a lark I put the Decelerator in my trunk, with some cool wires running up behind the fuel tank. A couple of guys came along, locals, who did not know me from Adam, and that it was my car. They commented that they had heard of this system and that it had some satellite link as part of the brake system. We almost died laughing when we over heard this.

Gary Koehn helped keep this going, as a fun thing amongst ourselves. One year, just before the infamous Knox walk, he went up there the day before and put a sign up at the top of the straightaway, BERT VORGON DRIVE. The next day as we walked up the hill, I just about dropped in my tracks when I saw the sign. I still have the sign. I snuck out to his place one night and dropped a letter in his mail box, as though it was delivered from Russia. I even got a proper Air Mail envelope and got some Russian stamps from one of my customers. Over the years a few times, new people thought of me as Bert Vorgon, not Keith law.

This all won’t mean much to most of you, but it kept a lot of humour going amongst a core group of enthusiasts.

Back to the real world, my brake upgrades transformed my car. At the next track day I was able to keep ahead of Don and hang in there for the 20 minute sessions no problem. With a whole bunch of other things fine tuned, I could pull 7,500 down the straight, which was about 120 MPH with the short race tires. I had some great races with Jamie Mitchell, Dave Doan, Doug Bailey ( Mustang) and a host of others. I was not the only one with brake issues either, as the original track layout was very, very hard on brakes, no real cool down sections at all. It was standard practice to watch your mirror at the end of the straight, to make sure no one was going to hit you on turn-in, as their brakes went nuclear. At least the end of the straight was the drag strip run-out, so there was ample room to blast off the track.

I did six track days under the 510 Club banner, before our membership fell and the track access got both harder and more expensive. 1997 was the last event, where I raced the 3 rotor Mazda RX7. We had 51 entries that weekend. One of the funniest for me, was a young fellow with an Eagle Talon, running 20 PSI boost on pump gas, stock brakes. He was pretty sure he was going to eat me alive with his 300HP. He was a king at the stop light Grand Prix of course, but, he was about to experience the reality of actual hard, real race driving. I kinda said to him..”Pump Gas?!” “ Did you change the brake pads?”

Off we all went, that “standing” joke was that we would take it easy for the first few laps..yah right...foot to the firewall....! No doubt the Talon had good power on the straight, but, in about 3 laps the motor was GONE and he came in with a brake fire..Done deal! That thing must have started detonating after half a lap and the motor was cooked.

Another fellow came out with his Corvette, with allegedly new 400 HP motor. He got tuned up pretty good by a few of us 510’s, sending him back to his engine builder to see.... WHAT THE HELL.

Over this time period my only criticism of my brakes was that the front calipers flexed open too much. The original JFZ’s got replaced with Wilwoods, same mini GN replacement size, but they to flexed open too much. We know for sure as we isolated the front’s from the rear and the pedal was like stepping on a brick. Hooked the fronts back up, soft pedal. We then put a vernier over the front caliper and we could see the caliper spread open. I finally changed up to the BrakeMan billet calipers and now have a fantastic pedal feel.

I also got smart about brake pads, no more race stuff on the street. I got the softest pad that I could for those BrakeMan calipers, and of course the BMW’s on the rear. As the BMW 2002 caliper is from the front of the car, there were a TON of pad choices, which really complemented the front pads. Nothing we ever do on the street gets pads hot like road racing and having grip when cold can be a life saver.

These were some of the best times I ever had, with our core group of 510’ers. We did a lot of hikes together and our “Scenic Tours” became legendary in those early years.

So, that is where Bert Vorgon came from and even though he is fading from our collective memory, I hope he put a lot of smiles on everyone’s face.

Keith Law
December 9, 2015

[bertvorgon]

If I can get Norm to get some video onto YouTube, of our track days, that would be cool.

[funwithmonkeys]

These are some great stories and pictures Keith. I have been reading as you have been posting.

I can probably stop by and see you either this week or next and get started on transferring what you have to digital. I will know Monday if I can make it is week.

[gooned]

Ton of memories in here! Thanks for taking the time to record and share with us Keith.

[bertvorgon]

Meant to go in the rally section. Some of you Candians will recognize the name of Walter Boyce.

Some of you may also remember the SHELL 4000 rally, that was pretty cool in it's day.

This stupid picture posting thing does not let me do it in order, read from bottom up

[bertvorgon]

Also, In regards to Andy Fields 510, here is first mention of it, under the Northwest racing banner

[bertvorgon]

And..I had forgotten this...that was a LONG time ago..

the FIRST Datsun Car club, it had pretty much died out by the time I got involved in the mid 70's in Motorsport, which in retrospect was kinda weird, as the 510's really came back in the late 70's.

[bertvorgon]

And, just a link back to the Great Rolling Dyno thread on this site, some of you may have missed it. Some of those early stories buried in there.

http://www.the510realm.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=5956

Yikes, I have been on this site too long today, at least a got my 510 insurance today so I can drive on Monday and get some more testing in if Monday does not complete things.

[Grinder]

A few times we ( the Specialty Gang) went down to Portland, to watch the IMSA races, where I saw Paul Newman get 4th place in the Bob Sharp 300ZX Turbo, Don Devendorf, John Paul Jr, Al Holbert, Hurley Haywood, and a cast of others, drive some of the fastest race cars I had ever seen. They would just EXPLODE onto the straightaway, still laying a patch of rubber with 14”-15” wide tires and hitting 175 MPH at the end of the straight. Watching them coming into the braking zone really was like seeing multi coloured missile’s coming at you! Devendorf said his car was making close to 600HP.

The car that looks like a 300ZX is actually a V8 turbo charged 280ZX. It seems you saw it racing successfully before it was unfortunately abandoned (but not dead - it has graced many recent car shows)

http://alex62.typepad.com/imsablog/2008 ... racin.html

Awesome posts - it's so cool to see this history so local to us

[bertvorgon]

Here also, are the pictures that had been loaned to me of Bob Stevens car, and a picture of Dave's car, the only other know Bob Stevens built street car that survives to this day, Byron's Bronze being the other.

[bertvorgon]

last

[bertvorgon]

And of course the Holy Grail of 510's.....

Colin and Andy looking at the John Morton car

[510rob]

thanks Keith, that was fun!

[duke]

Awesome Keith! Thanks you for the time and effort you put into posting all of this.