Because there is no separate engine class for V8-60 flatheads, Joe runs against cars with much larger engines in the XF class. He's about 100 mph away from the class record, so he runs for a personal best against the record of 130.155 mph set by Alex Xydias in 1948.

Scott Blackburn:

Engine:XF-class 8BA Mercury Flathead V-8

Trans:C4 automatic

Rear axle:Ford Banjo Winters 2.33:1 quick-change gearset

Wheels:15-in Coker wheels

Tires:28-in Goodyear Frontrunners

Record in class:214.317 mph

The wonderfully named Loose Nuts Special is a tribute to builder and driver Scott Blackburn's school days when he was a proud member of his high school's Loose Nuts Car Club in Broken Bow, Nebraska. Scott has been a car freak/hot-rodder his whole life. So when Wayne Litchenwalter, an older hot-rodder with 18 salt records to his credit, asked if he'd like to help crew for him on his '39 Ford coupe at Bonneville, there wasn't a moment of hesitation.

That was back in 2009. Scott spent quite some time in the pit lanes waiting for Wayne's coupe to move up to the start line. During these hours of downtime, he struck up long conversations with Bobby Green and his crew, manning the Old Crow Speed Shop belly tank. On the trip home, Wayne said to him, "You like those belly tanks! You know, I have one in the rafters of my shop. It's yours if you want to build your own."

The tank's provenance remains a mystery. Initially, Scott thought he'd inherited a 165-gallon P-38 steel tank. "Wayne is not quite sure either where it came from or how he ended up with it, but the story goes that in Nebraska during World War II, there were a number of Army Air Force training bases there. In the years after the war, farmers would find these tanks lying in the fields. We think this tank could be one of those."

The tank turned out to be a 175-gallon P-38 jug, which is a little small for a lakester. Scott added several feet and got it into more usable form. "It became a real seat-of-the-pants operation," he says. "We split the tank so we could figure out the parameters of the chassis and put a chassis layout down onto the garage floor in chalk right off the tank. Then we started cutting and bending a mass of 1 5/8-inch DOM tubing. It was all classic eyeball engineering, as none of us had built a Bonneville car before."

The chassis includes a solidly mounted Ford Banjo Winters quick-change rear axle with a dropped Ford axle and buggy springs up front. Coker 15-inch steel wheels and Goodyear Eagle racing tires stand 28 inches tall at each corner. It took Scott a year to build with the help of Louis Maring and the aid of some local hot-rodders.

The engine build was turned over to Louis, who is the team mechanic, crew chief, fabricator, and guru. Louis took a stock 8BA Mercury flathead, cleaned up the porting, and built it up with an Isky cam topped off with a modified 2000 Mustang supercharger, Holley 650cfm double-pumper carb, and electronic ignition.

At Speed Week 2016, Scott ran 147 mph against a 205-mph record, but he's not concerned. "I'm here doing it, and that's way more important to me—just to be part of it—than trying to beat a current record," he says. "We hoped to top 150 mph this year. We came close, so we're more than happy. Next year, given good salt, we can nudge the needle up a few more notches."

For this 57-year-old hot-rodder whose professional world is in medical devices, building a real belly tank lakester was a fine life-changing challenge. Scott is assisted by his wife, Kim; his buddy Louis; and Louis' wife, Louise. They make their Loose Nuts Special adventures to the flats in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert so much more fun.

"Every year we've gone, we have learned something new," he says. "Next year, we will add ballast to the nose after one of the tech inspectors asked us where our ballast was and how much it weighed. Seems that might help stabilize us a tad more at speed.

"We really didn't know what we were doing," he concludes, "but we built it regardless!"

John Neilson: Lakester

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Car# 9030

Class: Gas Lakester

V4/GL:V4 is Vintage Four, pre-1935 American four-cylinder engines up to 220ci. GL is Gas Lakester.

Engine:1933 Ford Model B I-4 with overhead-valve head.

Transmission:Sprint Car modified Falcon/Maverick two-speed.

Rear Axle:9-inch Ford with 2.47:1 to 3.93:1 gearsets.

Wheels:Steel with Moon discs

Frame:Tube

Tires:26-inch or 28-inch Goodyears

Record in class:197.333 mph

John Neilson's gas lakester looks like it suddenly appeared out of our archive photos, circa 1956. Packaging is the trick with successful belly tank lakesters. There is so little free space inside most of them, and when the cars are upgraded to meet modern safety requirements, they usually lose their traditional look and feel. But not this one. John came into the land speed game after burning out on serious SCCA racing. He looked at planes and boats and then ended up with friends at El Mirage. He fell in love with the four-banger Model A gang, and that was it—he was hooked.

After deciding a lakester was the way to go, John went in search of parts. Unlike the other guys' stories of dusty rafters, John got his tanks in a most modern place. He found a pair of 300-gallon aluminum F8F Bearcat cells for sale on eBay. He bought them and had them shipped to his shop. When he unwrapped them, he found that the tanks were both brand-new and still filled with a cosmolinelike preservative.

With frequent checks in the SCTA rulebook, John built the frame using a full-width 9-inch Ford rearend solidly mounted to a front straight tube axle placed so the axle sits forward of the spring and rack-and-pinion steering. Within six months, he had the 122-inch wheelbase frame mostly done and cleared by tech inspection. Inner and outer Moon discs complete the package.

The body is now painted in a Navy-inspired flat blue. John had the help of Ken Jeffries in fabricating the fiberglass engine cover. The rear hood stretches back to the aluminum parachute tube with its four openings for the velocity stacks to poke out and grab air. He matched up the body color on the new rear body and added a polished aluminum star to the nose for style.

John wanted it to be safe and fast, so he paid close attention the rules. But he also wanted the vintage look. He selected a 1933 Model B inline-four with a trick overhead valve head conversion. He built it up with a five-main-bearing girdle running a dry sump, which he topped with a one-of-a-kind Moller head that had been cast in the '70s but never machined. He worked this into the assembly by adding custom Sprint Car-style 2.4-inch fuel-injection stacks and his own custom electronics FI control pack. John built the rest of the powertrain using a modified two-speed Ford Maverick/Falcon transmission and using just first gear and final 1-to-1 gear ratio, a common trick.

John started on the building process in mid-2010 and was ready for his first event in May 2013 at El Mirage. It sailed through tech the first time out and managed to hit 90 mph. He's now made 20-plus passes in the lakester. He has pumped up his maximum speed (so far) to a healthy 157 mph.

Class Wars The current SCTA rules and records book classes streamliners as body styles with fully enclosed wheels, but lakesters are "special cars constructed in which there is no streamlining, fairing, or covering of the wheels or tires."

E.J. Kowalski:"Four to Go!"

Car#7231

Classes: V4F/FL and V4F/FS

Kowalski Racing Lakester

Engine:1932 Ford flathead I-4 Transmission: Chevy S10 five-speed manual

Rear Axle:Ford ¾-ton rear quick-change conversion.

Wheels:Weld spindle mount front wheels/custom steel rear wheels

Tires:17-inch Top Fuel front, 28-inch Goodyear Frontrunners rear

Records Set:V4F/FL: 143.053 mph, 2016; V4F/FS: 143.869 mph, 2016

Pass a quick eye over E.J. Kowalski's raw aluminum lakester, and you know this is a weapon with a purpose. It's a different shape than the more common rounded belly tanks with the body and cockpit fully enclosing the car. The rear bodywork is peppered with scoops, intake ducting, and aero aids.

E.J. comes from a long line of racers. He first came to Bonneville in 1988 with his dad to race a 1929 Ford highboy. "We ran that roadster in C/GR gas roadster and still continue to race it today," he says. "I was hooked and decided to build a lakester about 10 years ago. I finally got to the salt with it for the first time in 2009."

Building this car was like trying to fit a ship in bottle, E.J says. The Kowalski Customs team split the tank in half horizontally, stretched it about 12 inches, and lifted the cockpit and center section a little. They spent the rest of the time configuring the frame and packaging everything needed into the shoebox-size space. The frame is suspended off a solidly mounted rear axle with a quick-change gearset; up front it runs a Ford Anglia axle with steering from an old gasser.

1949 F 86 Saber jet auxiliary fuel tank belly tanker

"Our car is configured from a 1949 F-86 Saber jet auxiliary fuel tank," he says. "It was built for fun out of parts laying around the shop. When we first built it with a Model A engine, I was excited to go 100 mph, but now I want to go 150. Bonneville racing is kind of an addiction that has a Desire Syndrome inducing you to keep going faster and never be satisfied."

In 2016, the team picked up two records, first for V4F/FL fuel lakester at 143.053 mph and second in V4F/FS at 143.869 mph. That was a 20-mph bump on the standing record.

And yes, that's a streamliner record accomplished by simply adding fiberglass rear wheel fairings to cover the front and top of the rear wheels. This is a traditional Bonneville class change method that's a significant game changer.

E.J. 's lakester is powered by a Model A engine that runs a Donovan aluminum head and a single 500cfm Holley carburetor on gasoline. This is backed up to a traditional flywheel and clutch assembly running a Chevy S-10 five-speed transmission, allowing the lakester to be either a drive-off-the-line or push-off-the-line competitor.

Kowalski Customs usually runs several cars at the salt, but this year it was just one. "It's a real kick to drive this thing," E.J. says. "You sit up front like you're driving a fire truck where you really can't get a feel for what's behind you. It needs immense concentration to make it stay on track."