Kansas farmer and inventor Max Walker developed the first production gasoline-powered golf carts in 1957 after growing frustrated by electric carts with batteries that often failed to last an entire round of play. Walker designed a relatively simple tubular chassis with three-wheels and a rear-mounted eight-horsepower four-cycle Kohler engine. He included tiller steering and conjoined controls so it could be driven from either seat, and a tilt-up body for easy access to the mechanical bits. But what set the Walker Executive apart was its marvelous space-age styling, with a sweeping, Vespa-like front end, and skirted rear fenders. I’m currently at a drag race in St. Louis, and I bought this from an old man who bought it at auction many years ago. I’ll be in the North racing for another five weeks, using the cart as my pit vehicle, as I didn’t bring my regular golf cart. However, I’ll be racing in Columbus Oh next week, be in Western New York for two weeks, and then in southwest Michigan the last week of August. I’d consider selling it before I get back home to Texas if you’re up this way. Transporting is never a problem, because it easily fits in a pickup bed. Ushipit has trucks that transport RVs and boats. If they have something going their way, which fits in the bed, it only costs a few hundred. Last month I sold a Cushman Golf Caddy and it cost $500 for it to go from South Texas to Rhode Island. Nicely restored gas models go for $12500-$15000. This is an easy restoration as it runs great, rust free and missing nothing. If I sell quick, I’ll sell for only $8500. If I get back home with it – I’ll strip and paint, detail the engine and Chassis, and replace seats, belts and tires (about $750 and 50 hours) to get closer to the $15k. Been riding around the track all day and it runs great.
In 1948, a Houston, Texas car dealer by the name of R. J. ‘Dick’ Jackson was an avid golfer. He was not only a member of River Oaks Country Club (their old golf course is the oldest in Texas), his home was off one of the holes. Dick also had a severe case of Arthritis, and found it difficult to walk the course.
Another Member of the club was Preston Moore, who is the first cousin of former Secretary of State James Baker. Preston rode a Cushman Scooter and that gave Jackson an idea. Jackson asked Moore where he bought the scooter, and he told him Watson Cushman on Louisiana St.
Jackson went to Watson Cushman, bought a 1949 Model 60, took it to his dealership and modified it with a front bench to carry three (some sources say four, but they’d better be skinny) golfers and four sets of clubs behind them. There is also a holder for a patio umbrella to shade the driver and golfers. He named it the “Arthritis Special” and patented the design. River Oaks gave him special permission to use it because of his medical condition. Shortly after he received permission to use the “Motorized Golf Buggy”, a few other members also wanted permission to use one. Jackson sold the patent to Watson, his company made a few for the other members.
In time, River Oaks’ members complained of the engine noise, kick starting noise, engine smoking, the dust kicked up by the motorized golf buggies – and they were banned from the club. It would be a few more years before motorized golf carts would be sold in design more similar to today (albeit two rear drive wheels and one front steering wheel – often steered by a tiller), most using a Cushman motor.
I bought this 1949 “Arthritis Special” as part if a five Cushman vehicle lot, from an 85-year-old collector, who is liquidating due to his declining health. He claims that serial number 1111 is the first made by Watson. I know of only three other survivors. A yellow one in Canada, a green one in a private collection, and a blue one on displayed at a Top Rated golf club.
Mine is 100% complete, but I’ve not yet had a chance to work on restoring it. It will be many months before I can get to it. Until I do start the restoration, I’m offering this rare piece of history for $10,000. I understand that it will take a special golf fan, or another top country club to be interested, but I thought I’d throw it out there in case. If not sold by the time I can get to it, I’ll take off the market until the restoration has been completed. I have no title to the Golf Buggy – the seller claiming it wasn’t titled because it was never Street legal. It is to be sold on a Bill of Sale.
So I’ve been selling my car collection as part if my life downsizing – and taken a liking to smaller toy – Cushman vehicles. I’ve recently acquired 8 of these vehicles. I’ll tell about each of these in time – but first the Rat bike.
I bought this from an 85-year-old man in north central Texas. He had a couple of shelters (and I use that term lightly) where he kept a collection of rough but Restorable Cushmans and other stuff.
While there I bought 5 of 6 best he had.
I arrive home in the evening, and unloaded my trailer.
The next day, Frankenstein the Rat bike, was the first to have its attention drawn to it.
It is an Eagle frame with some type of 4 cylinder military engine, of which I really know little. The old man had some fun trying to make it look like an Eagle trying to catch its prey. He says its stupid fast, claiming could beat his son’s Harley.
After a couple of hours, the motor was made to run, and appears to run well. I haven’t ridden it yet as it needs a couple of chains and brakes. I have a couple of out of state races over the next couple of weeks, so it will be awhile. I plan to keep it as a Rat Bike, and will most likely flip it after its running good and safe.
I have three perpetual licenses of Vbulletin Connect 5.0, but now only use one. As such I’m selling the transfer on my license in the other two. I will sell/transfer (all 100% legit and legal) a license, install it on my fast server, transfer to you and your site, set up your forums, Create your logo into a graphic, set up the look and feel you want and provide you with a year of hosting for $499. $200 a year thereafter. Always available hourly should you wish more customization.
Vbulletin will only install, upgrade and run only on fast servers that do not limit your resources. I twice made the mistake (2001 and again in 2018) tried on a shared server (the last Go Daddy) – and the frustration was unbearable.
My remaining Active Vbulletin site is www.moparweb.com – if you’re interested in what a Vbulletin site looks like. Perfect for:
Car Clubs
Youth Groups
Sports Teams
Religious Organizations
Sales and Support Boards
Gaming Boards
Artists & Musicians
Cities, Towns, neighborhoods
Hobbyists
Country Clubs
Just about anything with a membership or group of followers
If you’ve ever visited Wikipedia, the software that runs it is MediaWiki. The below paragraph is from their web site
The MediaWiki software is used by tens of thousands of websites and thousands of companies and organizations. It powers Wikipedia and also this website. MediaWiki helps you collect and organize knowledge and make it available to people. It’s powerful, multilingual, free and open, extensible, customizable, reliable, and free of charge.
So while it is free and free to use, it takes some pretty strong knowledge of installing and configuration to properly install. Once installed and configured, it is more complicated than most applications to create a unique to you look & feel and to administer the advance features (because it is so powerful), but there are many good books on learning that. Properly installed, configured, it is very easy for the users/contributors to use.
There are many uses MediaWiki
Encyclopedia
Family Ancestry
Collection and organization of data
Service/Support Infobase
Business information Database…
An example is MoparWiki at www.MoparWiki.com – which is collection of any all information on anything Mopar.
I own a very fast and underutilized web server, which I host my sites (such as this Classified ad web site) and a few select other sites with rational webmasters. If you are looking for a Wiki I can provide you with basic hosting (can be upgraded if your needs require) for a year and install Mediawiki with basic configuration for a flat $250. Annual basic hosting (more than most need) is a flat $199 a year thereafter. The account is backed up nightly automatically – with multiple copies (dates backed up) retained.
At this point you have a workable Wiki that you can use right away if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and install the useful addons and create templates for your redundant tasks. If on the other hand you have enough to do and rather have an expert do that for you – I can do as little or as much as you want at an hourly rate.
If you’re interested in having a Wiki site, email me with what you have in mind and your contact information.
My name is Dave Schultz. In 1990, I started a company from scratch (No Employees – No Customers) with a $75K investment. It was profitable within the first 12 months, later earning an annual profit before taxes in the 7 digits. In June 1998, I sold this company, which employed over 100, for a little over $16 Million. Prior to that, I was an Executive Vice President to two Private Corporations, which under my leadership I took from a handful of employees and losing money to being extremely profitable and employing over 200.
Since, I’ve created (and sold at a profit) three other businesses, which first provided me with a very nice income. For the last few years I’ve been semi-retired and reliving my childhood by drag racing at a National Level. A little over a year ago, I with my 33-year-old son, bought an undeveloped territory of a Franchise – with I putting up the money, setting up the business, and mentoring my son – while he provides the sweat equity. We’ve set new revenue records for our franchise in each of the last three months – despite most of the country being shut down. We’ve done this because we didn’t throw in the towel and freakout, but because we adjusted our strategies and told ourselves that failure was not an option.
I did quite a bit of business mentoring of young businesses and businessmen a few years back – but stopped taking on new Mentees because of my racing schedule. Racing has taken a back seat lately, and I’m ready to take on two select business entrepreneurs to help make and keep their business a success. I starts with one 8-hour visit where we discuss your business and what you’re doing in specific areas. Since all businesses are different, we do this “Free-style”, focusing most attention on the areas of your business that are not structured as well as they could be.
Afterwards, if you wish, I can give you unlimited reasonable phone access to discuss how I would handle any business situation you find yourself in – for a monthly fee.
While I’m strictly an Empire Building Entrepreneur – and neither an attorney or CPA – I believe I have strong knowledge, experience, and or a network of contacts, in the following areas.
*New Business Setup *Hiring *Management *Taxes *Insurance *Accounting Software *Computer Systems *Web Design *Marketing *eCommerce *Graphics *Promotion *Employee advancement *Motivation *Rents & Leases *Retailing *Health Insurance *Employee Benefits *Customer Support *Banking *Funding *Preparing a business to sell *Mergers and acquisitions *Franchising *Virtually all other aspects of starting, growing, and taking businesses to the next level
All of the above is experienced gained through ownership of many businesses. I’m in a position to share that knowledge with only two more smart people.
If you got to here, you’re wondering how this works and how much it costs.
In the past, we would have a 15 minute phone conversation discussing you and your business. At the end of the conversation both of us would know if we were right for each other, or need to move on. Assuming we were right for each other, I was either sent a 1st Class Plane ticket and hotel reservation to come to you, or you’d fly down to Houston to see me – and we’d spend the day together diving into your business.
However, technology has made it easier to be more efficient with our (travel) time and money – with Virtual Meetings. We still need to have a 15 minute (free and no obligation) phone conversation to see if we’re a good fit, and if we are, we can schedule an eight hour or two 4 hour virtual meetings.
The cost? The one day of mentoring is only $2000. Think about that. You get specialized to you one-on-on mentoring for less than attending a seminar of canned presentations. Frankly the money doesn’t make much of a difference in my life, but I’ve set it low enough to ensure the two Mentees I select have skin in the game to prove their seriousness, and are not dreamers. Afterward, if you wish to have unlimited (but reasonable) telephone access to me – it is $500 a month for month-to-month as long as we both feel it is helpful. In the past, I was turning down $5000 plus expenses for the 8 hours and $1000 month thereafter. As I said before, I’m not doing this for the money, but for the self-gratification of helping another pair of entrepreneurs become a great financial successes. That said, like John Galt (look him up if you don’t know who he is), I never work free. I can help you and your business only if you are truly an entrepreneur willing to listen and pay attention. Maybe we are the match.
If interested, send me an email telling me about yourself and your business, and we’ll schedule a 15 minute conversation.
We’ve all had them at the track from carb or NOS backfire. The minor ones are put out by cranking the engine to smoother flames by sucking them into the engine.
However, I’ve seen many an engine become toast when that helpful guy runs over and sprays his CO2 fire bottle down your carb. I seen many a race jacket become garbage by throwing it over the engine to smother because nothing else was available. Worse yet, I’ve seen cars burn down while Racers ran around looking for something to put it out.
I’m betting that 90% of the bad damage could have been avoided if the racer had a Fiberglass fire blanket mounted inside his trailer door and/or to the back of his driver’s seat.
Pull 2 tabs and a 3.5′ X 3.5′ fire blanket to throw over the fire. A four pack is less than $40 on Amazon. I have one mount on the inside door of each trailer, and on the back of my driver’s seat on both cars. You might want to consider doing the same. Share this link with your racer friends. I also have a 10 pound fire bottle mounted to my trailer doors if the blanket won’t do the trick. At the least, the blanket will protect the top of the motor from inhaling what your fire bottle is putting out.
Its with a heavy heart that I have to report that my best friend Buster went to the great racetrack in the sky. His health was dropping like a lead balloon over the last couple of years, but in the last couple of months he’d lost it all. I just didn’t have the heart to put him down, but he let me know that he just needed to chase squirrels in the Happy Hunting Ground. The vet broke the (Covid-19) rules and let me be with him as I insisted that I owed it to him to be there to the end.
Superbird
I had someone blowing up my dress that he wanted to buy my B5 Blue, V-code, 4-speed Superbird. So I took it out of the bubble, cleaned it up, tuned her up. Turns out the guy was all talk but too scared to pull the trigger.
I figure as long as I had to bust ass to make it ready, I might as well push hard to sell. If you know anyone interested, information and photos can be found at www.OldHippie.com
Red, White & Blue
Gone through about 35 gallons of paint at my Barnominium/Race Shop. The pictures tell the story.
Magnum
If you’ve been following along Ginger, my 78 Magnum XE, you’ll know that so far I’ve
Put a pump gas drag race big block motor in the car
Street Strip 727 transmission
8.75″ rear end from a 74 Charger, with a Suregrip an 3.55:1 gears
March Serpentine Pulley system
Schumacher headers to dual 2.5″ exhaust, with Flowmaster 40s
Gear Vendors Overdrive to Victory Driveshaft
Brand new Polyurethane paint
And most recently a Holley Sniper throttle-body EFI
The newest update was to take the dull bumpers off the GT I have, have them powder-coated gloss black, and put them on the Magnum XE. The bright chromed bumpers will go on the GT.
And finally, I ordered a pair of new leaf springs and hardware from Espo Springs and Things. She should be finished now.
Sharknose, Step through & Eagle
Many years ago, while racing at NHRA’s Hot Rod Reunion at Bowling Green, KY – I saw one of the Racers running around in an early 60s Harley Davidson 3-wheeled tiller steered golf cart. I decided that would be a natural for a Nostalgia Super Stock drag racer like me, who races a 1960 Plymouth wagon, to have instead of my 15 year old Yamaha golf cart. Then I saw the Cushman Sharknose golf carts made between 1962-1964. I knew that was what I needed as a pit cart.
Years prior to that, I dreamed about some day finding a nice 40s or 50s Step through Scooter, like I saw in my Archie comic books in the mid-60s. Jughead rode one.
Well a couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto a lot of Cushmans that included a 1961 Sharknose with the high speed rear axle, three speed transmission. The original 8hp motor had been replaced by a 23hp Vanguard. The step through scooter is mid-50s Model 70 Turtleback. The other bike is a 58 Cushman Eagle.
I ran up to Tulsa last week and bought them back. The scooter is pretty quick, and the golf cart will hit an incredibly unsafe 60 mph. I really haven’t played with the Eagle yet. I have big plans for all, but that’s for another day.
Mailster
I’ve also been looking for a Mailster from the Late 50s and Early 60s. While your standard mailman’s leather bag was limited to 35 pounds when I was a kid, the mailman with a Mailster had 500 pounds of mail on board. They were later replaced by little Jeeps – as they weren’t very durable – and a little snow crippled them. There were mainly two different manufacturers of Mailsters. The Cushman above, and the Westcoaster below.
I just bought a very rough Westcoaster Mailster that I’ll pick up Wednesday. I’d prefer the Cushman, but the price was right so I’ll decide what I’ll do with it when I get it home.
Allante
I have two Allantes. The blue one I bought new in 93. It’s had an AC leak. It was finally fixed by first replacing the evaporator, which required dropping the engine cradle, then it wouldn’t charge – requiring replacement of the compressor. That was an equal pain in the ass to remove and replace. Now its all converted to R134 and I hope will last as long as I last.
I also have a Polo Green 93 that had been in storage. I brought it to the shop to be gone through, so I can sell.
Black Bettie & Billie Sue
As Buster got too old to go racing anymore, a new race dog was going to need to be groomed. Buster was a huge (135 pound) English Lab. My wife doesn’t like male dogs because of their size and independence, English Labs because they shed, or labs in general – because they shed. She wanted me to get a Labordoodle, because they don’t shed – but they’re two time Poodle and one part Lab. I don’t want a freakin homo dog! We finally compromised on a female American lab, as they’re smaller. So January a breeder with litter born on Christmas let us check them out. We did and put a deposit on one, to be picked up in February.
In February we went to pick out a female. Since this was to be my dog, I picked the biggest female – who came right to me. However, my wife had her eye on a different one. The breeder said she could have a second for half price, and that’s how no labs turned into two.
Having two Lab pups is very challenging, but also fun. They’re now 5 months old, have been to a race, hang with me at the shop, and love to swim. They’ll be much like Buster, especially Black Betty, the one I chose. Below are some photos as they’ve grown.
Trailer Work
On the single enclosed trailer I’ve been outfitting, I wired a roof fan,
Mounted a pair of batteries to power all of the DC power, and an inverter
originally 1 battery
mounting a pair of batteries with cut off and management
getting it all wired up, along with a track radioCharging lugs
I still have a little work, like an inverter and a charger for when I run a generator.
Also made some backing plates to mount a very secure puck lock for the door.
I’m downsizing my life. No better Dippy out there.
I’m the second owner of this spotless E58 (High Horsepower 360/4bbl) !978 Dodge Diplomat Coupe. I Think I’ve had over 15 years now.
When the last time you saw one?
You’ll never again see an original paint, original motor/transmission, and original Boat Tail in nicer condition. Not a spec of rust. Never in an accident. Always had best of care.
The AC didn’t work when I bought, so I fixed – converting to R134. It needs to have a can added every couple of months, so there must be an o-ring needing to be replaced,
The original “Plastic Fantastic” Thermoquad was warped, so I converted the lean burn to Mopar Performance E-Ignition, the boat anchor iron intake with an Edelbrock Perforner and the leaky carb with a 600cfm Edelbrock Performer. The car runs like a Raped Ape on Super.
I detailed and shampooed everything and car looks great in its 70s Aztec Gold. Driven regular, it has just turned 100K – but runs great – with nothing except very slow AC leak needing to be fixed. Engine has great compression and burns no oil. Transmission was Serviced and shifts chrisply.
I Love this car, but need the cash, and am downsizing my life by selling everything I don’t need. I have over $10K in Making sure everything works and that I could hop in and drive to Alaska if I wanted. A true fly in and drive home car.
$7900 wired or $7500 in Dead Presidents FIRM. I do have a few things I might consider trading for, and they’re listed in the Wanted Section of oldhippie dot com – as are all other cars I’m selling.
