Jim Clark in 1963 Lotus
Today is one of the biggest days of the month at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Miller Lite Carb Day. It traditionally is the final practice for the Indianapolis 500 field, the final day for teams and drivers to tune their machines for “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
Back in the day, one of the most important parts of the car that was tweaked for the final time on Carburetion Day was the carburetor, which controlled the gas and air mixture of the engine, hence the name of the day.
But it’s been a long time since a carburetor was bolted to an engine in the Indianapolis 500 — 47 years to be exact! Fuel injection was introduced at the Speedway in the late 1940s, yet the original term “carburetion runs” continued to be used. But the last cars to use carburetors on Carburetion Day were the stock-block Ford-powered Lotus cars of Jim Clark and Dan Gurney in 1963.
Yet the Carb Day name lives on, like so many great traditions of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
[...] the last carburetor was used at Indianapolis. A little Google search tells me that it was in fact 1963. Now, I am all for tradition but I have to [...]
Still like the way a carbureted engine sounds…call me old-fashioned.
Yeah, I still remember spending a Sunday morining trying to balance the Twin Webber Carbs on my old Ford Cortina 1600E..good old days
Great American tradition! Those were the days…
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Yup, they don’t make them like they used to, I can remember as a kid helping my dad tune the carburators of his 66′ Fastback Mustang…..sweet car.
metal roofs
Still have that ’69 Charger with a Hemi, awesome car but getting harder and harder just to get out and go. It used to be fun working on tweakin’ that thing until I got a few hundredths of a second off my time in the 1/4 mile.
Have had a ’66 Chevelle now for a while and just put in a small block 350 – 400 HP. I’ve been tweaking that thing all this summer and have gotten it to go a lot faster since the beginning of this summer.
Fun, ain’t it?