Carl doesn’t take himself too seriously as you can see from his hand-out, but he does take his racing very seriously. His current ride is the fourth in a series of altereds he had built and driven since 1960. He crashed the car before this one making a pass at his home track of Byron Dragway a couple of years ago, putting the altered over the guardrail and destroying the car.
“They banned me from racing at that track after the accident,” says Johnson, “I’m not sure why.”
The altered has a 104-inch wheelbase and with Hoosier tires on Weld wheels on the rear and Mickey Thompson’s on rare American Mag spokes on the front. The paint was done by Dominic Paris of twin-engined Top Fuel dragster fame. A Crowerglide clutch set-up is backed by a Lenco reverser.
He went to work and welded up a new chassis and built a new car. “I have an aluminum block and a set of aluminum ‘hot heads’ cylinder heads and I was going to put together an all-aluminum motor but it cost me so much to build the new car that I didn’t have the money to build the aluminum motor.”
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| Dave Larson and Denny Graff tend to the car after Carl is strapped into the T-bucket. | Carl tightens up his gloves and puts his game face on in preperation for a pass. |
The new car weighs in at 1875 lbs without the driver, which is not all that heavy considering that almost everything in and on the car is made of steel or iron.
So these days you will find Carl, his crew Dave Larson and Dennis Graff and the “Why Not 4”” running at most of the Nostalgia races in and around the Midwest.
The best laps on the car currently are a 7.48 ET that he recorded at Martin, MI, and a 204+ speed clocking at Bowling Green.
So, if you really want to see a vintage fuel alt like the one your dad talks about, make a point to see Cannonball and his 23-T at a track near you. It will be the one towed in on an open trailer with the guy with the big grin sitting behind the nitro-gulping Hemi.