{"id":75632,"date":"2024-01-03T08:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=75632"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:19:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:19:19","slug":"rare-super-bee-stings-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/gallery\/2024\/01\/rare-super-bee-stings-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Rare Super Bee Stings Again!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They say old drag race cars never die, they either get stuffed in a corner of a shop covered in dust or used as shelving units. Or in some cases, get stripped of their trick, exotic and carefully handcrafted parts to be used on another machine. One could say cars were early adopters of the whole recycling thing. Granted, old Super Stockers didn\u2019t suffer the same fate as their street counterparts that got driven on salty roads through piles of snow and slush that accelerated the death dance of rust. Yes, many racecars were spared that fate of a slow, agonizing death, but still had to contend with abusive owners butchering body parts and the interior, and cobbling up the wiring to keep their machine competitive in the ever-evolving NHRA Super Stock class. Remember, these things were considered weapons of warfare despite the custom paint jobs and chrome mags. After all, these machines were just an instrument of quarter-mile supremacy. The story of this car from its glory days to sitting in a field, to its current caretaker is an interesting twist of fate. <\/p>\n\n\n

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The story of this HEMI\u00ae<\/sup> engine-powered Super Bee begins in early 1969 when it was basically brand new and campaigned for one year only by Detroit area Chevy racer Wally Booth. Yes, that<\/em> Booth. This is a guy who drove his 396-powered Camaro to a Super Stock runner-up finish against the victorious Arlen Vanke and HEMI Barracuda at the 1968 NHRA US Nationals, and years later put AMC Hornets in the Pro Stock winner\u2019s circle. During the US Nationals, Wally was just an independent Chevy racer who had become a perennial thorn in the side of the well-funded Chrysler and Ford Factory Teams. Wally showed the drag racing world what a determined, independent racer working out of a one-car garage in a suburb of Detroit could achieve. So, why would Wally start a new adventure for the 1969 race season and switch over to a HEMI engine-powered Dodge after a successful season in his consistent 396 Camaro SS\/E entry that earned him a runner-up spot against Arlen Vanke\u2019s potent SS\/B HEMI Barracuda at the highly coveted 1968 NHRA US Nationals? <\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cMoney was a major reason,\u201d laughed Walley. \u201cI was approached by Dodge to promote the Detroit Area Dodge Dealers Association and the new Super Bee. The NHRA Super Stock class was a great way to showcase Dodge\u2019s latest muscle car. Once we agreed on a deal, I purchased a stripper 383 Magnum Super Bee with no options from Stanford Brothers Dodge in Lincoln Park. Since they had to order the car, I was able to pick no options and chose green for color. Since my Camaro was green, there was an old wife\u2019s tale among oval track racers that green racecars were bad luck. I wanted to prove them wrong, and I did! I drove the car home from the dealer (Stanford Brothers Dodge) and began modifying it for Super Stock in my one-car garage in Lincoln Park (Michigan). Despite being a Chevy racer, many folks in Chrysler\u2019s Race Group were very helpful, especially Tom Hoover. He gave us tips on building a Super Stock legal Street HEMI. At that time, I was working at Diamond Racing in Detroit and the Chrysler engineers always stopped over to exchange ideas. The Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> folks provided me with all the parts to convert the car to a HEMI, including an 18-spline trans and Dana 60 rear axle and the use of the new Dodge Station Wagon to use as a tow vehicle. My first NHRA event with the new car was the 1969 Springnationals in Dallas. We didn\u2019t qualify, but came home, and went to work. We swapped out camshafts to the Isky 590 flat tappet style, the car picked up almost three-tenths immediately.\u201d Wally ran the Bee until July\/August when he was tapped by Ted Spehar to drive the infamous Iron Butterfly \u201964 HEMI Dodge at the US Nationals. But before the Bee left his possession later that season, Wally ran several Match Races all over the country and made lots of money. \u201cI did enjoy running the Chevys and beating them,\u201d he smiled.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With the advent of the new Pro Stock class beginning in 1970, Wally want to race this new heads-up eliminator and since Chrysler already had its factory deals with Sox & Martin, Dick Landy, Arlen Vanke, Don Grotheer and others, there was no support for him to stay with Dodge. He reached out to Art Evans, the gentleman who bought Wally\u2019s \u201968 Camaro. Wally and Art did some horse trading and Wally got his Chevy back and Art was the proud owner of the Super Bee. While Art applied a custom “lace” paint job on the Bee, he raced it for a couple of seasons. Art eventually sold the car, and it disappeared somewhere in Indiana. How the Super Bee ended up in its current owner\u2019s hands is an interesting tale. Around 2013, Mopar racer Josh King found the car in the town of Connersville, just east of Indianapolis. \u201cI was driving down a country road and saw this green Coronet chained to a truck in a field. I did a quick U-turn and had a closer look. The owner wasn\u2019t quite sure of the car\u2019s history other than \u2018some famous drag racer owned it at one time\u2019 and that\u2019s all he recalled. We ended up buying the car and after doing some research, found out it was Wally Booth\u2019s old Super Bee that he raced in 1969. Wanting to make sure of our findings, we took some pics of unique modifications done on the Bee and met up with Wally (Booth) at the MCACN (Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals) show after we bought the car. He confirmed it was his old Super Bee,\u201d noted Josh. Because of the rarity of the Super Bee, Mopar Collectors Guide did a feature on it and that\u2019s when Dave Belcarz spotted it and reached out to Josh. \u201cWhen I bought the car from Josh, the Bee had no engine or trans, but the body was in remarkable condition and wearing its second lace style paint job.” <\/p>\n\n\n

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After swapping hands and owners over the past five decades, this Super Bee finally ended up in the hands of Dave Belcarz. He did own it years ago but like many of us, he regrettably sold it but always kept track of its whereabouts. When the opportunity popped up to own the rare Bee once again, Dave didn\u2019t hesitate and captured it before it flew away. Before you think he\u2019s from the “Boomer Generation”, think again. Dave\u2019s only 39 years old and his youthful looks still get him carded when he’s picking up a six-pack of his favorite brew. He\u2019s been a devotee of vintage Mopar vehicles ever since he could walk. Blame his love for these tire-burning, fuel-gulping, brightly colored machines on his father who passed on his DNA of the high-horsepower Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars into the fibers of Dave\u2019s brain. A full-time technician at the massive Marathon Oil Refinery in southwest Detroit, Dave began stalking this Super Bee while thumbing through an old copy of Popular Hot Rodding Magazine<\/em> from 1970 and it had a really nice article about this Super Bee. \u201cI was always enamored with this car. A 1969 HEMI Super Bee with a four-speed racing that was built to race Super Stock. The fact the car sold new at a Dodge dealer in Lincoln Park (Michigan), the area I grew up in, combined with the fact my dad also had a green 1969 Super Bee when I was a kid, made me want this particular one even more. It was the best of both worlds, to have a car that looked like my dad\u2019s, but was also a local racecar,\u201d exclaimed Dave. The icing on the cake that fueled Dave\u2019s quest for this particular Super Bee is it was owned by a legendary Detroit racer Wally Booth who burst on the national scene in the late 1960s and early \u201970s. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Now in Dave\u2019s hands for the second time (and hopefully the last), he began a full-on restoration of the Super Bee. While any restoration on a vintage muscle car is a daunting task, racecars are even tougher. Searching out era-correct mags and aftermarket parts like tachometers, shifters and even vintage decals to bring the car back to its “as-race” condition. It\u2019s like the quest of Indiana Jones as he searched for the Lost Ark. One of the biggest challenges for Dave during the Super Bee\u2019s extensive restoration process was locating the correct Fenton Shark front wheels. \u201cWhen Wally ran the car, it had a sponsorship by Fenton Wheels out of Gardena, California. Unfortunately, the Fenton Shark front wheels went out of production in 1971 and the company folded decades ago. They\u2019re nearly impossible to locate used and it took me about two years to find two different wheels just for the correct center section and in the Chrysler bolt pattern. We had to do some serious modifications to make these wheels usable and had to be creative in restoring them. I also had to get creative on the rear chrome reverse wheels. I also found some of the vintage speed equipment on eBay of all places,\u201d said Dave. <\/p>\n\n\n

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To make the debut at the 2023 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals (MCACN),<\/a> Dave just mocked up an engine, but future plans call for a big-inch HEMI engine built by Dave Dudek to give the car more attitude and sound nasty. But for this project to come together in record time, it takes a village. \u201cMy mom, dad, older brother and girlfriend gave me a lot of support while Todd Hansen did the awesome gold leaf lettering, and my longtime friend Tony Moore did a lot of mechanical work. If it wasn\u2019t for these folks, the car would not have made it to MCACN, and I owe a lot to them,\u201d said Dave. <\/p>\n\n\n

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This Super Bee may have flown off and escaped Dave\u2019s custody years ago, but he retrieved it and will never let it out of his sight. Check out cool pics of this badass Bee from its early day until now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They say old drag race cars never die, they either get stuffed in a corner of a shop covered in dust or used as shelving units. Or in some cases, get stripped of their trick, exotic and carefully handcrafted parts to be used on another machine. One could say cars were early adopters of the whole recycling thing. Granted, old Super Stockers didn\u2019t suffer the same fate as their street counterparts that got driven on salty roads through piles of snow and slush that accelerated the death dance of rust. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":75609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2621,2622],"tags":[2948],"class_list":["post-75632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gallery","category-heritage","tag-dodge-classics"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/RareSuperBeeStingsAgain_Feature.jpg","social_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/RareSuperBeeStingsAgain_Social.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75632"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77804,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75632\/revisions\/77804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}