{"id":18309,"date":"2015-09-15T11:14:32","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=18309"},"modified":"2015-11-11T09:03:52","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T17:03:52","slug":"wisconsin-midget-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wisconsin-midget-racing\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Midget Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wisconsin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ed Kramer of Wausau, Wis. got into racing in 1950. \u201cWe started a club\u2014just a group of fellows who were enthused about\u00a0\u00be-midget racing,\u201d he said during the Iola Old Car Show\u2019s Pace Cars and Race Cars exhibit. \u201cWe came from all walks of life; there were guys in the car business, guys who owned gas stations and fellows who had retail stores.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men had an idea to form a club and each one built his own car or had help building one. The club lasted four years. \u201cSome of us got hurt doing it and others lost interest,\u201d Ed recalled. Out of 15 or 20 cars that were involved, mine is the only one left in the city [of Wausau].<\/p>\n

\"Wisconsin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ed\u2019s car – built in 1951 – is made from parts of different cars.\u00a0 The axles are cut-down Model T Ford units. The engine is a 45-cid V-twin from a 1943 Indian Sport Scout motorcycle. A Model T Ford axle is also used up front. All the gears in the rear end were taken out and Kramer put a sprocket on the solid rear axle shafts and a motorcycle chain runs from the transmission to the differential.<\/p>\n

According to Kramer today, the cars were built to specs set forth by the northern branch of a national organization for \u00be-midget cars. The wheelbase, length, height, and weight all had to conform to the group\u2019s regulations. The engines had to be below a certain number of cubic inches. \u201cThis one was all according to the rules,\u201d Kramer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never went out for real racing,\u201d Kramer explained. \u201cWe never had purses of things like that. We did it as a group to put on demonstrations during intermission at the old stock car races in Medford. During a break in the real racing action, the 3\/4-midgets would do as little as two laps around the track. \u201cAll you did was you tried to get around the guy it front of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wisconsin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kramer said his father was a Packard dealer until the company went out of business in 1958. Then, they got a Studebaker franchise and that lasted until 1966. After that it was service work and used car sales until the city forced him out of his building to make way for a downtown shopping mall that\u2019s in trouble now. Maybe the city should be building a racetrack that Kramer could race on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A racing club in Wausau, Wisconsin built \u00be midget cars.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3447,17],"tags":[687,3398,3397,1606,225,2170],"class_list":["post-18309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic","category-guest-column","tag-classic-cars","tag-classic-race-cars","tag-midget-cars","tag-midget-racing","tag-nostalgia-racing","tag-throwback"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/DSC_0369.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-4Lj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18313,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions\/18313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}