In Memoriam: Scca Racer Frank Webb
Sun May 31, 2009 3:17 pm
Former SCCA, NHRA and stock car racer FRANK WEBB passed away May 27, 2009 at his home near St. Cloud, Florida. Frank was born in Stamford, CT and was a racer for most of his life. He first competed in NHRA drag racing as the car builder and driver for VAST OLDSMOBILE, driving a turbocharged Olds Cutlass of his own design. Frank won many races, and set a number of track records. Frank then moved to oval track racing running with the Southern New York Racing Association at the famous Danbury Speedway. From 1963-1969 Frank competed against some of the best short track racer's of the day including Don Lajoie, father of ex Nascar Busch Series Champ and safety innovator Randy Lajoie. During this period Frank also road raced in SCCA, driving cars for owners of Formula Fords and production cars at Lime Rock, Watkins Glen and others.
When Datsun began their racing program in the United States with the 1600 and 2000 roadsters and later the Z car, Frank took the opportunity to learn the intracacies of the sports cars and became very proficient at building motors, tranny's and rear ends for them.
In the early 70's Frank moved his young family to Winter Park Florida and opened a service station. In 1975 he moved to the downtown Orlando area opening Webb's Garage and operated it there until his retirement. While there Frank built high performance and racing motors for many drag racers, road racers and oval track racers. He was an innovator as well, designing and building a four barrel intake manifold for the Datsun 240 Z cars and later for the 300ZX.
Frank Webb leaves behind his two ex wives: Claire and Linda, son Frank V. Webb, daughters, Robin Kenney, Kim O'Rourke, Tracey Herrera, step children
Missy Tullous, Krista Pletcher, fifteen grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren.
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When my former racing partner Chip Williams and I wanted to go SCCA racing in 1991, we went and saw Frank Webb of Webb's Garage in Orlando.
Frank had a reputation of being able to do magic with Datsun/Nissan's, especially the Z cars. We had decided we wanted to run in the I.T.S. class and felt a
240 or 280Z would be a competitive and cost effective way to go. Unlike many mechanic's, Frank was easy going, enjoyed teaching others, was not bothered by dumb questions, and he loved to tell stories about his past adventures in racing. Frank told us he was sure the Z car could be a competitive platform and layed out the strengths and weaknesses of the cars. Frank had done some work for Bob Sharp back in Connecticut and also had prepared a race winning C Production Z car for a friend back in the 70's. We picked up a 280Z that already had an SCCA logbook, but actually was not much more than a stock 280 with a roll cage. The body was pretty straight and the motor seemed to run decently and the price was right at about $3000. We bought it, and I jumped in it and headed for the 408 expressway with Chip following along behind to block the fact that the thing had no tag, was not street legal, had numbers all over it as well as open exhaust. We took the car to Frank, and he first set about inspecting to see if it was safe. He said the cage was decent, and the suspension was ok but not right for racing. Knowing we had little money to make improvements, he did what he could with what we had. Since we didn't have money for a coil over suspension, he cut down some stock springs, replaced the rear shocks with some he had, installed some racing brake pads, aligned the car, set the camber for road racing. He then set out to get us a few more pony's, he replaced the distributor with one he had built up, tweaked the air flow meter, re-worked the exhaust system and improved the air flow into the engine. We tested the performance of the car right there on Church st near downtown Orlando, accelerating the car up into third gear. We were amazed at how much stronger the car felt.
Chip and I had only some drag racing experience in our past so we both needed to go to SCCA drivers' school. I went first, we loaded up the car on a trailer borrowed from a friend and towed it behind an 1980 F150 Short bed pick up powered by the inline 6 cylinder with the three speed tranny. We set out for Roebling Road. Surprisingly the weekend went well, with no major problems. The car was pretty fast and despite the driver's inexperience, we managed to finish something like fourth overall and second in class in the school "race" out of about 35 cars. When we got back to Orlando, Frank made some more improvements to the car, charging us almost nothing for his time with him supplying most of the parts. Chip did very well in his driver schools and we then made our debut at Daytona. We alternated races, finishing around 10th and 11th out of 30 plus I.T.S. cars. We were both disappointed in our performance, we crazily thought we had a shot at winning. Unknown to us there were some pretty talented racers' in the field including Sylvain Trembley, Cameron Worth, Greg Ditzian, Mark Johnson and more. All had well developed racers that were some of the best in the country.
We raced the 280 from 1992 to around 1997, with Frank continually improving the car. He would build us a "new" motor with the best old parts he could find around the shop. He called them JUNK motors, but they made good power and we outright abused them. He built some very slick shifting Z car tranny's and I don't think we ever had one break. We didn't have money for a limited slip rear end, so Frank would weld up the spider gears to lock them up.
Although we never won in the very competitive Central Florida and Florida Region with the 280, it had a bunch of top 5's in big fields with several third place finishes being the best effort. We finished third one year in the Six hour race at Sebring and that was a highlight.
Wanting a more competitive car, in 1998 Frank gave us a good 240 roller and we stripped it out, swapped in the now coil over suspension from the 280, the fuel cell, the seat, guages and anything else that would cross over. Frank Jr. built the cage and Big Frank built us the best motor we ever had. We spent 2000 dollars on parts and machining and Frank supplied the labor at no charge. The car was 3 to 4 seconds a lap faster at Daytona or Sebring long than the old car.
We ran it several times as an I.T.S. car with a best finish of 2nd. That same year SCCA made the Z car legal for E Production, so we decided upgrade the car a bit more and race in that class. Frank swapped in a Crower .500 lift cam of his specs, changed the exhaust, tweaked the carbs some more, took weight out of the car, upgraded to 4 wheel disc's. We still only had about 6000 dollars in the car but it was strong. In its' debut at Sebring I won the Saturday race handily and on Sunday Chip lapped the entire production car field including 6 other E Prods. We raced the car about 20 times in E Prod and sometimes SPU or GT-2 winning about a dozen times over the next three years. In 2001 Chip was injured on Duty at the Fire Department and has not raced since. He had to retire on disability soon after. The Z car sat in my garage until 2007 when I sold it, the car now resides in NC and was being converted to a full GT-2. I have moved on to GTA and SPO stock cars running with the V8 StockCar group.
Frank Webb thoroughly enjoyed SCCA racing and talked about the great times that he had doing so right up to the last day of his life.
He will be greatly missed by many and Chip and I thank his family for sharing him with us.
GODSPEED, FRANK !
