Jimmy Owens Chassis

[foxfire2dirtracing]

Awesome racing history: “Thanks Guys.”

[pierceFAN]

its good to be able to have a racing convo without all the kiddie games...i enjoyed this thread...thanks guys

[Jking24]

I've always laughed when people said this chassis or that chassis was a copy. The reality is the dlm world is a very small world and everyone has to start somewhere. I can only think of one current chassis builder that didn't actually start his career working for another builder and that's kryptonite but his cars still started out in a very similar manor and it was more out of nessestty than a intentional copy. in the early days he would modify older rocket chassis to his liking mostly because of his proximity to rocket made them more accessible. At one point you could take a rocket car to freddy and he would convert it to a kryptonite. It's hard not to "copy" certain things when your working within the same box. If it's better it's better and at the end of the day I'm pretty sure every chassis builder out their is far more concerned with competing for wins than standing alone on the hill of originality just for the sake of being different. I mean according to cj every car that ever had a double wishbone front suspension just copied him.

[BTExpress]

The DLM landscape is changing. Drivers are no longer satisfied running a Longhorn or Rocket. Look at all the new chassis coming on board to try and get that little edge. Owens, Infinity, Sniper (Weiss), Category Five (Scott), Fusion (Wenger), BMF (Hedgeco*k) and Capital making a resurgence. It seems Bruce Nunnally has his input in a lot of these new chassis, along with working with the McDowall's and the Bloomquist chassis.

[Henry Every]

From a business standpoint it makes sense to start out by copying someones basic layout and then makes changes from there. As to a clean sheet design it seems like Jimmy Mars may have said that they started building their cars from a clean sheet. I myself find inspiration from Rayburn, Barry Wright, Ray Callahan and from my mentor Frank McClendon that built the "Custom Chassis" back in the day. In my early days at Dixie/Rome Speedways it was mostly Jig-A-Lo's and Custom Chassis that were the majority and lots of canti-levers. Then came Rayburn in the late 80's, followed by Bullitt in early 90's. I think Stan Massey had the first Rayburn as well as the first Mastersbilt, RIP. Anywho I could ramble on and on DLM history, but work calls. Later.

[pierceFAN]

in regards to "copycat" chassis...a racer takes a chassis and makes a change here and there to fit his driving style and eventually they've made enough changes that its pretty much a different chassis...then the guy starts building them and people say thats just a (insert chassis brand here) copy

[TheJet-09]

I would have assumed that a Mars car (or MB Customs) was a lot like a MasterSbilt (at least in the beginning), but I haven't seen one from front to back up close.

Somewhat on topic, does anyone know the ballpark number of man hours in building a chassis, start to finish? Could also be why some start with or modify an existing chassis.

[Henry Every]

I would have assumed that a Mars car (or MB Customs) was a lot like a MasterSbilt (at least in the beginning), but I haven't seen one from front to back up close.

Somewhat on topic, does anyone know the ballpark number of man hours in building a chassis, start to finish? Could also be why some start with or modify an existing chassis.

Its possible I'm remembering wrong but I thought in a interview with JM that he said they had been modifying Masters for a while and finally they decided it made more sense to build it how they wanted it from scratch and that the Masters car would not fit into the jig they built for their own car. So at a glance it may resemble a Masters, but they can't wear the same dress. LOL

[66w357w]

Somewhat on topic, does anyone know the ballpark number of man hours in building a chassis, start to finish? Could also be why some start with or modify an existing chassis.

I've built a few cars in the past and if I remember correctly it took me about 40 hours to get a complete chassis bult from raw material off the rack to ready for powder coat.

[pierceFAN]

I would have assumed that a Mars car (or MB Customs) was a lot like a MasterSbilt (at least in the beginning), but I haven't seen one from front to back up close.

Somewhat on topic, does anyone know the ballpark number of man hours in building a chassis, start to finish? Could also be why some start with or modify an existing chassis.

im not sure on the man hours....but when i was about 10 years old i helped my neighbor build a Boyce chassis and i can tell you it must have been at least 960 beers as i constantly heard..."grab me another beer"

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

Its possible I'm remembering wrong but I thought in a interview with JM that he said they had been modifying Masters for a while and finally they decided it made more sense to build it how they wanted it from scratch and that the Masters car would not fit into the jig they built for their own car. So at a glance it may resemble a Masters, but they can't wear the same dress. LOL

I know for sure at one time Mastersbilt sent frames with no pickup points

[Tireguy17]

Jimmy went from MasterSbilts to MasterSbilt from Mars to MB Customs

[Finnfan25]

im not sure on the man hours....but when i was about 10 years old i helped my neighbor build a Boyce chassis and i can tell you it must have been at least 960 beers as i constantly heard..."grab me another beer"

OK, this is too funny to be overlooked...I wonder what 960 beers converts to in fifths of Crown Royal for a Bloomquist chassis?

[Josh Bayko]

Jimmy went from MasterSbilts to MasterSbilt from Mars to MB Customs

The MB in MB Customs originally meant Mars Birkhofer.

[KTMLew]

Owens to top of the board in hotlaps.