teardown photos from BG in the 70's

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Robert Swartz

Lyn,

That was Kenny, Toby's little brother, he was the driver. I haven't talked with him in at least 15 years, he took a job up in Chicago. After they quit racing, he lost the drive to keep working on race stuff.

Yeah, Rayburn's was a neat shop to hang out at until he finally hit it big in the roundy roundy cars. The whole atmosphere changed. I spent a few late nites at that old shop. I recall one nite helping to adapt a set of Hemi heads to a wedge block.

Rayburn eventually got to the point he wanted little to do with drag racers. He commented that circle track racers "payed" but drag racers wanted everything given to them and then wanted it fixed for free when it broke! The man was trying to make a living so can't blame him for wanting those with the serious dollars. I haven't been to his shop in over 20 years, he has a complex of about 3-4 buildings now.

Robert Swartz

I was last at CJ's place about 4 years ago. When the PRI Show was at Indy, CJ had an open house the weekend of the show, on Friday night. It was always a lot of fun. CJ is the only guy I know who can throw a party and have two or three of his ex wives show up, and everyone still have a great time. One of my customers is real tight with CJ, in fact CJ keeps a picture of my customer's car on his desk a lot. I can remember being at CJ's party and seeing Tony Stewart, Kenny Schrader, and a 1/2 dozen other big time circle track guys, and they were all a lot of fun.