A rocker-cover race is about to start. Photo: CRAKK Run, Facebook.
The games you can play around cars – or with car parts – are near endless, according to the Canberra Hot Rod Association’s (CHRA) Choco Munday.
For instance, Munday and a few mates were cracking beers at his place one time when it was decided it’d be a great idea to see if they could flip their beer bottle caps through the partly open window of one of their cars, parked a good distance away.
“The window was open about two inches, and it went straight through – so that’s how we came up with the competition.”
This, among others like “piston tossing” and “spark plug races”, has become a regular – and loved – feature of the CHRA’s annual Canberra Rod and Kustom Krooze (CRAKK) Run on the Australia Day long weekend.
Just some of the rocker-cover racer efforts. Photo: CRAKK Run, Facebook.
And as of two years ago, there’s another one – the rocker-cover race. And only a few months out, the club is asking entrants to start work on next year’s entrants.
“We’ve been running games at the hot-rod runs since the 1970s at least – just little things to keep us busy during the event,” says Munday, who’s recently done up a 1949 Hudson (his wife drives a freshly restored 1956 Ford Crown Victoria).
The spark-plug race involves setting up an engine head on a table, and timing competitors as they first remove and then replace each of the cylinders’ spark plugs.
Meanwhile, the piston toss works like discuss, where participants try to fling a piston – using its connecting rod as a handle – as far as possible.
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Munday says they’re fairly old games that trace their history back to the US, but the club decided to add rocker-cover racing to the mix after coming across the perfect ‘track’ in the form of a wooden slide, about 10 metres long.
“We came across this track, fixed it up, and ran with it,” he says.
“The fun comes in when it’s not just who wins the race – it’s how cool your rocker cover has been built.”
The rocker cover (or valve cover, as it’s largely known nowadays) is a metal panel that encloses the rocker arms in internal-combustion engines. Rocker arms are connected to the engine’s camshaft and are responsible for opening and closing the intake and exhaust valves in each cylinder, allowing fresh air to enter and exhaust to exit.
Points for putting drivers in them. Photo: CRAKK Run, Facebook.
For the competition, Munday says participants fit wheels to them and dress them up in all sorts of ways.
“A lot of rocker covers show up in very different shapes – you’ll have a great big fat one from an early HEMI, or just an old red one from a Holden motor, and you’ll set that up with wheels and a little driver in it and a couple of exhaust pipes sticking out,” he says.
“People go to great effort on these things. Some of them are works of art.”
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And looks are important, because a winner isn’t picked purely on how fast his or her effort makes it down the track. The prizes vary each year, but usually include a donation from one of the CRAKK event’s sponsors, like a welder or toolbox.
The main condition for taking part is being an entrant in the CRAKK Run, and while everyone is encouraged to make their own rocker-cover racer, Munday says there are some prebuilt versions that entrants can “borrow” for the race.
F1, or this? Photo: CRAKK Run, Facebook.
The best part, though?
“It’s just a lot of fun. People gather around to cheer on the best-looking car. It’s just having everyone there, together.”
The CRAKK Run is a mainstay of the Canberra car scene, held every Australia Day long weekend since the 1970s. It now involves hundreds of hot rods and other custom cars from across Australia.
Several cars from the club will also be on display at Thoroughbred Park in Lyneham this weekend for Canberra Cars N Coffee, from 8 am, Sunday, 16 November.
