Fred Carrillo
Connecting rod king exemplifies value of asking friends what they need
09/23/2018
One would have assumed some progress was made in connecting rod design before 1963.
After all, the only part transferring the force of thousands of explosions from the piston to the otherwise nearly immobile crankshaft (and then reciprocating that force on the compression stroke) is that thin piece of steel or iron. As compression ratios increased through the middle of the century, both in race cars and in the average commuter car, pistons and crankshafts correspondingly increased in strength. But the connecting rod still represented the weakest link. No surprise, then, that the phrase "threw a rod" became a euphemism for a busted engine, regardless of the point of failure.
Enter Fred Carrillo, who said it was actually "kind of a fluke" that he became the largest connecting rod supplier to the automotive aftermarket.
Like many American performance pioneers, Carrillo, born in Los Angeles in 1926, traced his gearhead tendencies to the Model T roadster he bought for $5 toward the end of the Depression. Also like many American performance pioneers, he soon afterward enlisted to fight in World War II, ending up in the Army Air Corps as a radar operator with a wealth of technical training. That training served him well when he returned to civilian life and found a job as a mechanic rebuilding Ford flathead V-8s for eventual resale in the Sears catalog.
After hours, though, he built another Model T, a 1927, with a Winfield-equipped flathead for time trials at El Mirage, where he attained speeds as high as 123 mph. He followed the hot rodders from the dry lakes of Southern California to the salt flats of Bonneville, Utah, in 1949, and successfully raced there until 1953, when a failure in one of his magnesium wheels at nearly 300 mph destroyed his race car and forced the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
Down, but not out, Carrillo enrolled first at Pasadena City College to study mechanical engineering and metallurgy. "After the crash, I found out I wasn't as smart as I thought I was," he said. "I found out there was a lot more to learn than just about going fast." He soon signed up with Aerojet for its 20-20 program--20 hours of study and 20 hours of working for the company per week--and later finished his studies at UCLA.
Though he worked as an engineer for Aerojet for the next several years, in his spare time, he developed and patented a small two-cycle engine that incorporated a positive displacement supercharger in its bottom end. "I quit my job and built 10 of these little engines and raced them in go-karts, but they were a little too expensive," Carrillo said. In the process of trying to sell the engines, he went broke, so to feed his four children, he went back to his old racing and hot rod buddies and asked them what they needed.
"They all said they needed a good steel connecting rod," Carrillo said.
Only one other company was offering a stronger-than-stock connecting rod at the time, though that company had simply made patterns from OEM I-beam rods and cast new ones in 4130 steel. Carrillo figured he could develop a stronger rod not only by using better alloys based on 4340 steel, but by using a forged H-beam pattern for the rods. So in 1963, he formed Carrillo Industries to produce the rods.
According to Carrillo, one of his first connecting rods appeared to fail, but he later discovered that a wrist pin broke instead, leaving the intact rod to spin on the crankshaft journal and slice through the engine block. That incident alone was enough to secure Carrillo's reputation.
Carrillo, however, attributed more of his success to his old racing buddies.
"(Founding the company) was enough to get me started, keep us from starving," he said. "My friends, guys like Dan Gurney, were the ones who took the rods all over the world and promoted them. They then got my rods into NASCAR and Indy, which was a real big boon to me."
Carrillo himself went on to own several Indy cars during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and remained with Carrillo Industries until he sold the company to Performance Motors Incorporated in 2001. Earlier this year, Pankl Racing Systems, another company that produces connecting rods for the performance and racing industries bought Carrillo from PMI. According to a news release announcing the latest purchase, Carrillo Industries employed just 65 people, but had revenues of $10.7 million in 2007.
Carrillo remained a consultant for PMI for five years after the sale of the company and now considers himself retired, though he still occasionally visits his son's machine shop, located in Oceanside, California.
Ten years ago Brian Fahey was alive and well, enjoying his drive to the Syracuse Nationals in New York when he saw his first gasser-style Ford Falcon parked by the road at NYS Fairgrounds. At the time, gassers were relegated to hipster meets at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank or racing in tightly knit gasser associations. Neither were inviting to the curious or uninitiated, so the build style was still a novelty at huge mainline shows like the Nats. Still, the car had Fahey’s attention. “It was an early ‘60s Falcon with a tunnel ram, and a straight axel,” says Fahey. By the time he had entered the fairgrounds, he had a lead on a base 1962 Falcon stashed away in a garage close to his house, and a plan to build one for himself.
John Machaqueiro
Based on the description of the car he heard over the phone, he made a deal to buy the car sight unseen. “The car was completely stripped, the fenders were zip tied together, and all the parts were unlabeled in boxes,” Fahey says. “I don’t care what kind of cars they are, I only see what I can do with them.” In his mind, he saw a nose-high Falcon gasser, just like the one in New York. After calling a friend with a trailer, he drove the 15 miles from his home in Old Forge, to Dallas, Pennsylvania to gather the parts and get them home.
After sorting through the bins, he called painter Carl Lucarelli of Lucarelli Paint and negotiated a color. “I suggested Hot Rod Black from SEM and Carl said, ‘anything but Hot Rod Black,’” Fahey says. They agreed that Wimbledon White was era-correct, and the fenders, doors, and hood would be painted while Fahey prepped the body.
The body was clean with only a small amount of rust near the roof, but otherwise was rust free. Fahey blew it apart in his garage, ordered a gasser kit from Speedway Motors, and sent the engine out for a rebuild. Fahey was looking for fenderwell headers that fit an early Falcon body when he found a set of Schoenfeld headers designed for circle track racing that looked like they might work for the project. He got the manufacturer on the phone and had a pair sent out for fitment. Since roundy-round guys build asymmetrical cars, one side fit, and the other did not. Back on the phone, Fahey talked them into building a mirror image set that he bolted to the 302.
Back at the paint shop, Lucarelli suggested radiused wheelwells to fit the 15x10-inch Rocket wheels and 29x10 piecrust tires. Using ½-inch tubing and some metal-working kung-fu Fahey developed in the Navy and later as a professional machinist and welder at Owens Illinois, they added subtle flairs to the job without using filler or anything other than sheetmetal and welding rod. Since this was to be a fairgrounds build, he used a set of 165 VW skinny tires in front on 15x4.5-inch rims.
Behind the 302, Fahey kept the C4 and added a 9-inch on leaf springs with Monroe “overload” shocks. While looking for more suspension goodies, he ran across a guy on the internet selling homemade ladder bars from a '70s Studebaker drag racing effort. Weirder than that, the bars fit the car, requiring that Fahey only add shackles to the front of the suspension to let it move. He added frame connectors and completed the roll cage with crossbars that connect both sides of the cage, and provide mounts for the Jeep CJ5 seats. Using the original steering column, Fahey used his Jeep-building experience to set up a rear-steer linkage system that utilized the original steering box. Under the hood he cut out the shock towers for the headers and downbars and fabricated a pair of shock mounts. In the rear, he kept the factory fuel tank in its stock location and built an 18-guage rear firewall and deleted the rear seat.
Once Fahey finished the fabrication and assembled the roller, it went to Lucarelli who finished the paint in one week. Fahey picked up the car and had it ready two weeks later for the indoor car show nationals in Oaks, Pennsylvania, and the Motorama in Harrisburg. There were no gasser classes at the shows, but that didn’t stop the car from getting both attention and offers to buy it. Fahey made a splash for three or four years with his gasser build. Things were good, he had built a winner. Life was good. Then he died.
“I was dead for 30 minutes,” Fahey says with a weird gleam in his eye. “I had 100-percent blockage of the widow maker and went down at work.” The EMTs brought Fahey back during the ambulance ride to the hospital, and Fahey woke up with several broken ribs and a new outlook on life.
“I met a girl who asked me why my cars looked like race cars when I don’t race them,” he continues. “So I invited her to the Jalopy Showdown at Beaver Springs and ran 13s. On the last run I killed a lifter.” He pulled out the 302 and bought a 416-hp 347 from BluePrint Engines, additional safety gear like certified belts, a new helmet, and slicks, and continued to race. He swapped the stock tank for a fuel cell and mounted the battery in the truck. At Island Raceway, the car went 12.01 before the transmission gave up. Despite the minor setbacks, the suspension he built for the street worked well on the track, and the car was fast. He ran the car locally for four years, consistently running 12.01 in the quarter mile.
Thinking back on the health scare (he was dead for 30 minutes) he decided to get serious about the future. Currently, Performance World in Moosic, Pennsylvania is bolting together a Windsor-based 408 with a “big” solid roller cam and “big” AFR heads that should make 700 horsepower. Jack Sepanek from Sepanek Racing Transmission is bolting together a healthy Powerglide to take some violence out of the launch and prevent any oildowns. We met Fahley running 12.01s at Hemmings Musclepalooza 2024 at Maple Grove Raceway in Pennsylvania and plan to see him again when he is trying to handle 700 horsepower on leaf-springs and living for the day.
Joseph Tegerdine, an 18-year-old Springville, Utah, teen is living his life to the fullest, driving his new 2020 Ford Mustang, a dream car that he was once working to save up to buy for himself. In a twist of fate six years ago, his dad decided to make the purchase happen sooner so his son, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, could squeeze every ounce of happiness into his life while he still can.
"I've just liked Mustangs for as long as I can remember. Six-year-old me liked it, the headlights looked cool, and I stuck with it," Joseph told the Detroit Free Press. "I used to drive this Ford Bronco. It was a big truck, basically. I'd get compliments and I'd feel so manly. We sold that and I started driving my mom's minivan, a Honda Odyssey. I felt like my testosterone was being drained away. Not great."
He laughed, continuing: "In a Mustang I feel like a man again. It's the silliest thing. When you get in and start it, the car just rumbles around you. It's not a noise, it's a feeling. When you take corners, you can feel you're being pushed through the corner from the back. I like the way rear-wheel drive feels. When you turn the (steering) wheel, what I feel are cleaner turns."
When his dad made a post on X about his purchase, he had no idea about the offer his son was about to receive.
"For those wondering why I’d buy my 18yr old son a 330hp Mustang, well, he’s been given months to live and can’t work long enough to buy one himself. His comment on the way home, 'Dad, I’m going to squeeze a few extra months of life just to be able to drive this.' #cancersucks"
As of this writing, the post has over 13.8 million views.
For those wondering why I\u2019d buy my 18yr old son a 330hp Mustang, well, he\u2019s been given months to live and can\u2019t work long enough to buy one himself. His comment on the way home, \u201c Dad, I\u2019m going to squeeze a few extra months of life just to be able to drive this.\u201d #cancersucks— (@)
Joseph Tegerdine, Joe’s son, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, in 2018, after severe knee pain caused him and his parents to seek medical attention. After the diagnoses, the then seventh grader underwent chemotherapy treatments. Treatment also included a rotationplasty, a procedure where the compromised bone is cut out, the lower leg rotated, then tibia and fibula reattached to the femur.
In reply to the heartfelt post, Ford CEO Jim Farley replied, “Hi Joe, I’m so sorry to hear what your family is going through. Please let me know if you and your son would like to attend @FPRacingSchool to experience a @FordMustang Dark Horse on the track. DM me and we’ll make it happen.”
"It was really crazy. That tweet was just kind of random," Joe Tergerdine told the Free Press. "He sent a direct message to me, saying, 'Hey, you want me to do this?' If it's OK, his guys would get everything set up ... at the Ford Performance Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. They're flying us out there. It's just really cool, and we'll stay in Charlotte for a couple of days. There's a big dinner before school. Then Joseph will be on the track with the (Mustang) Dark Horse."
“I get to drive one of the most powerful Ford track Mustangs there is. This is going to be sick," Joe commented.
"You have to live day by day because, day by day, if you look at my life, it’s actually fantastic. I'm in Japan right now. I've got a car of my dreams, I'm surrounded by tons of people I absolutely adore and I'm going to driving school," he told the Free Press. "Then you look at the future, and it all starts to break down. I don't really need to look at the future. Morbidly, I don’t really have one. I can’t be, like, 'In a year —' If I get a year, I’ll be extremely lucky."
Joseph will continue radiation and chemo treatments while living his best life, checking more dreams off his bucket list with his family.
Source: The Detroit Free Press