: What happened then?
AC: Well, in the course of trying to learn how to run a stick shift Hemi car -- which in that era, there weren't too many people that were convinced that they could shift the transmission -- I met some guys on the south side of Chicago that had a four-speed Hemi car with a blower on it. Those guys were John Farkonas and Pat Minick. They were actually running with a little sponsorship from Sedlak Motors and turns out their (Farkonas and Minick) clutches were built by the same outfit that did the machine work on my engine.
: Do you remember what kind of speeds and ET’s your stick car ran?
AC: Best I ever ran with it was 10.93/131 mph.
What company did the machine work on your engine?
AC: (name garbled in tape) Automotive in Chicago, and they also did my clutches and their clutches and we got introduced and shared some information on how to make the transmission. They were friendly enough for a guy to deal with and that started a friendship between myself, John Farkonas and Pat Minick.
How did you guys end up in partnership on the Funny Car?
AC: After trying to race the Plymouth as a Super Stocker or AFX car, I discovered that it was genuinely breaking me financially. I found that a mechanic working at a dealership couldn't afford to run a Super Stock stick-shift Hemi car as a hobby, and I also noticed that in Farkonas and Minick's endeavors racing their supercharged, altered-wheelbase car that they were sorely in the need of somebody with just general mechanical abilities. There were too many things that just kept falling off (the car) that could've been prevented. So, right after Minick made a burnout in my AFX car in reverse and destroyed the transmission, I went racing with them for awhile with a blown car just as free help on the weekends. Over the winter Farkonas and I pooled our resources, became partners and built a tube chassis funny car and that was the birth of the Chi-Town Hustler.
: Did you guys weld up the tube yourself?
AC: Absolutely. I did every bit of the welding and it was built in Farkonas's mother's garage. We mounted a body on it and went racing.
Did you burn nitro in the car from the beginning?
AC: Yes.
What track were you racing at in Chicago?
AC: My favorite track was Union Grove, Wisconsin. I knew Bob Metzler and liked him as a guy. I run into him now and then and he talks about me being camped in front of the gate at 2 o'clock in the morning waiting for the place to open up. If you were ahead in the line you could get in a couple more test runs than if you were back farther in the line. That's kind of how it was in those days.