Gale Banks Interview

Daytona Dayton: Hi I am Daytona Dayton. We are here live at the NHRA museum in Pomona, California. We are at an exciting display. It's the 50 years, the first fifty years at Gale Banks. Throughout this entire clip, you are going to find exactly who Gale Banks is and why he has a whole wing of this museum dedicated to himself. What we are doing is we are in collaboration with MOTORZ TV and Daytona and Friends Worldwide Radio and Mr. Banks at age 18, we are going to meet him live in just a bit. We are back here with Mr. Gale Banks, the first 50 years here at NHRA museum in Pomona. Gale this is exciting to just learn about your display here. Gale Banks: Well, thank you. It was a cool opportunity to bring everything into one room. A lot of the stuff I didn't even know I had. Daytona Dayton: So, they had a collection and they just honored you and then you had some contribution that they already had a collection. Gale Banks: No, no. I had a collection. Daytona Dayton: Okay. Gale Banks: But it was in boxes and had been moved a number of times. Daytona Dayton: Oh, excellent. Gale Banks: And a lot of the stuff that was collected, no one told me they were collecting it. Daytona Dayton: Oh my god. Gale Banks: Thank God. Daytona Dayton: Well, we have 50 years. We are going to start with 1958 and you are going to kind of take us through your life through the last 50 years. I am going to turn it over to you. Gale Banks: All right, well actually it all started in 1954. Daytona Dayton: Okay. Gale Banks: My mother had a Model A Ford, a 31 Ford and I always hot wired it when she was out of town and took it here and there and finally one day, she just gave me the key. Daytona Dayton: Okay. Gale Banks: She says, you know she figured it out. So then I started hot rodding it and by the time I was done, I had taken it from about 40 horsepower to about a 105 horse power. It doesn't sound like much today, but back then it was plenty. It was a lot of fun. That was about 1956 when I finished with that and then I got off into this electronics thing as well. So, really the first vehicle I ever built was a radio controlled three wheel tractor. Daytona Dayton: Oh my gosh, did they make that back then? Did it have the radio control? Gale Banks: oh, absolutely. Well I did. Daytona Dayton: I know. Gale Banks: Here I am at 16 winning the science fair. Daytona Dayton: Oh, exciting. Gale Banks: And there is a picture of the trophy for it down below and a picture of my first business card. This is all from 1958. Daytona Dayton: oh, that's your first business card? Gale Banks: Yeah. So, I wanted to go to Cal Poly. So I kind of adopted the Bronco, which was the school mascot, called my engine's Bronco Power Racing engines. Daytona Dayton: Oh, very good. Gale Banks: And the business was CP's Auto and Marine, because I was into cars and I was into boats. Daytona Dayton: Right. Gale Banks: So, but I was also into electronics, which would really serve me later, you know we weren't running engines with electronics back then. So my first car so to speak was this robot, I am looking at all the guts and all the wiring inside of the darn thing there in the photo and that one made the science fair and then the county science fair. We went all the way to state, but I've been into electronics for the whole 50 years too and computer science. Daytona Dayton: So, that explains the diversity of your company Gale Banks Power. Gale Banks: Yeah, it does, because we do a lot of electronics today. We do a lot of engine management, transmission management things of that nature, but back in the time, I was kind of nuts for going to Bonneville, you know, you want to have the world's fastest car, but you don't think that big when you are 16 years old. I just wanted the fastest car in the neighborhood not even at my school, just in the neighborhood. So, I was kind of nuts for Raymond Loewy's '53 Studebaker. So, at one time I owned three Studebaker's and then I got into a racing partnership with a friend of mine and his Studebaker is here in the exhibit, which we ran together and have ran together for almost half a century. Daytona Dayton: Oh, excellent. Gale Banks: So, but these are mine and we ended up with half mile drag records out of Riverside raceway. Daytona Dayton: Oh, very good. Gale Banks: Which is now gone. Daytona Dayton: Yes. Gale Banks: But that's at the half mile. Went to the Dry Lakes, got the record for C-Gas at the Dry Lakes and went to Bonneville. There is a first place trophy for Bonneville right there. Daytona Dayton: Oh, excellent. Is that your first big trophy? Gale Banks: Yeah it is. Bigger than my science fair trophy. And as the years' evolved and I am going to school, I am building engines and my partner Bruce Geisler or my racing partner, I had a shop with him in the early 60's out in -- Woodier. And met a lot of that crowd at that direction some neat people and then in August of 1967, I was done with Cal Poly. I went full time and this is a photograph of my first shop on St. Gabriel Boulevard in St. Gabriel, California. Daytona Dayton: You still have the same business card? Gale Banks: Still the same, but now with a different address and a nicer looking card. Daytona Dayton: Yes. Gale Banks: And I started advertising in the yellow pages and various things like that and I had my little '56 Chevy 150 Station Wagon with a L88427 Corvette engine in it. Daytona Dayton: Oh my god. Gale Banks: That was my part's car, I wish had a complete picture on it, but the lettering, this is kind of an interesting deal. There's a very famous automotive artist. His name is Kenny Youngblood. The lettering on the side of that '56 Chevy was done by Kenny Youngblood who gets thousands and thousands of dollars to do art for a car. He did the side of my station wagon. Daytona Dayton: Yeah, it is too bad you don't that panel with him having it signed too. Gale Banks: I do have it, I'll get him to sign it, but that was for a six pack of beer. So his price has gone up. Daytona Dayton: Yeah, a little bit. Gale Banks: Behind my desk in my office, is a painting of the '87 Pontiac GTA that we ran in 85, 86, 87 was the world's fastest passenger car for 11 years. Daytona Dayton: Oh my god. What a record. Gale Banks: And that was the third one we had. We were first with the Studebaker at 217 then somewhere in 220's and then in '80 we ran the Sundowner Corvette, went 240 with that. Then we ran the Firebird the first time and ran 260 with it. Daytona Dayton: Climbing the ring. Gale Banks: And then we went to 267 with one way of 277 and a best mile of 283. This is with a car with power windows and -- wheels and the stereo system worked everything. Daytona Dayton: How did you trim that thing? How did you trim it and what did you put under? Gale Banks: Well, you will get a look at that car as we go on. Also, the boat side of things got very heavy. Once I had my shop, then I started actually the first thing I had in the shop window was an Austin Bantam Roadster, a drag race altered that I had built; I did chassis for a number of years also for drag racing. So it kind of evolved. So, we get into late '60's and Oldsmobile approached me to do a marine program for them to win a national championship boat racing with their 455 engine and we won that championship for them in 1970 with a boat called Nice and Easy number 455. Daytona Dayton: Was that your first major sponsor on a program? Gale Banks: Actually they weren't my sponsors. Daytona Dayton: Oh my god. Gale Banks: They hired me to develop the engine into an endurance racing engine for boats. Daytona Dayton: So that takes your name off, you take off with that, your name on a champion. Gale Banks: Here I am with the driver getting our national trophy, which is full of champagne, that's why it's so frosty and here you see the shop in St. Gabriel. We'd now evolved from a 20-foot wide thing with a barber shop next door to the whole thing in the barber shop, the barber moved to another building down the street. Daytona Dayton: There was no intimidation for him to do that right? Gale Banks: Not at all. In fact his son worked for me. Daytona Dayton: There was intimidation god we need the space, okay. Gale Banks: One of my early employees, now it's Gale Banks racing engine. So I have evolved now from CP to earn my school money, now it's Gale Banks racing engine. Daytona Dayton: Your name is out there. You are proud. You can deliver. Look at that, Gale Banks delivers. Gale Banks: Well, that's some more boat racing. You see here into the early '70's, what happened was, I became a marine engine manufacturer and the engines I used as a basis were 454 Chevy's out of the Tonawanda New York Engine Plant, 350 Chevy's out of the Flint Engine plant and I twin turbo charged virtually all of them. Daytona Dayton: Excellent. Gale Banks: I have literally built tens of thousands of turbo charged engines in my life, in my career. And you see the various series of 455 Olds' twin turboed, 460 Ford. I also worked with Ford and then the, there is a bunch of 454 Chevy's up here with turbos on them. The whole point was, no one else was doing turbo charging. Daytona Dayton: So, you had the edge. Gale Banks: This was started in the late '60's into the '70's. And I have screwed with turbo chargings all my life. Daytona Dayton: So, you were the leader, leader of the pack. Gale Banks: Well, I wanted, you know Stu Hilborn. I was a fan and still am of Stu Hilborn. Stuart Hilborn was the fuel injection genius and still is the fuel injection genius and you didn't say fuel injection, you said, I am running a set of Hilborn's. So I wanted the name Banks associated like Stu's was with fuel injection, I wanted Banks associated with the term turbo charging. Daytona Dayton: Excellent. Gale Banks: And I think I pretty well succeeded. Daytona Dayton: Yes. You have a whole museum here telling here you did. Gale Banks: Most of the engines in here -- we continued racing, I like drag racing a lot. I like distance racing even more and endurance racing, I just, that's it, because you get an adrenaline rush for hours and hours and hours in an endurance race. So, we started running the Parker 9-hour enduro and running Grit, we took first inboard two years running. Then we went in running what's called a Tunnel Boat which is this yellow boat with a brown trim and we ended up destroying that boat, then we went to the boat there marked ET107 and we were national champion with that three times. We won the Parker 9-hour once, sold it and our customer, we maintained the boat for our customer and he won two more national championships. That was a good setup, 398-inch big block Chevy, very short stroke, turning about 8,500 rpm for nine hours. Daytona Dayton: What type of seater is that with the nine hour and that's just singular. You don't take, you don't stop. How do you do that? Gale Banks: Oh, you do stop for fuel. You have pit stops and driver changes although Lu Brunet who drove the tunnel boat and it was Brunet and Banks, so to speak us together. He would drive the entire nine hours. Daytona Dayton: oh my gosh. Gale Banks: That guy was absolutely stunning. Daytona Dayton: Oh, that's why you win, you don't quit. Gale Banks: And here is the start of the nine hour race. All the boats are sitting with the engines off and there are probably 75, 80 of them up there wind up along the river facing out at Blue Water Marina and you see me leaving the water and Grit is the first boat out. You see he is almost swamping the boat to the right. you see the water coming up over the top of the boat. That's why you want to leave first. Daytona Dayton: Oh yes. Gale Banks: So, we worked on making that engine start instantly. Daytona Dayton: Oh, excellent. It gives you that edge. Gale Banks: And we raced APBA circle racing with the SK66, it's about firepower, won everything we ran with that. We started racing unlimited jet drive boats as well. And there is more of that as we move down here. Daytona Dayton: So, overall with your electronics, with your turbo charging, going into the racing and then marines. Would you say the marines as your main plant? Gale Banks: No, actually I did. Daytona Dayton: Well, that is because you are so talented? Gale Banks: Well, it's not. Turbo charging is a continuing theme, starting right about here '73, '74. We also had an oil embargo. So it really pushed me to look at, for the street scene, what's more efficient and we got a hit from Caltec. They had won a $400,000 grant from the Ford foundation to study future engines. This was in 1974. Daytona Dayton: That's a lot. Gale Banks: And it was then they assigned it to JPL. The guys at Caltec and JPL, I had number of friends, physicists who frequented my speed shop which is a whole another back story. So those guys engaged me as a consultant, supplier of goods, tester of engines, things of that nature and the study was to look at what should we do ten years out, which should be like 1985. The study was finished in 1975. Daytona Dayton: Oh, excellent. Gale Banks: And they came up with an engine called the Brayton as their recommended solution. Well that never went anywhere and they were wrong. Daytona Dayton: You know it's interesting in that. Gale, with you starting at age 16 and 17 years early with this you have physicists that are coming to get your knowledge and you were hands on application making it work. Gale Banks: Well some of them were into cars. Some of these guys from JPL and Caltec were into cars. Daytona Dayton: But that's a compliment. That is a great tribute to you with your hands on education and knowing how it works and ticks so that you can actually get out there and help these physicists because they need your help. Gale Banks: Well, the whole deal, a little bit of back story. I entered summers with Dale O'Donnell, a cousin of mine who was a physicist. Daytona Dayton: Oh, excellent. Gale Banks: He worked at Allison Sound Labs out in Turnbull Canyon and I interned in their lab where they designed audiometers to test your hearing. It was pretty cool. I got a job there. This whole thing with the science fair Dale O'Donnell kind of fed me, he got me into this when I was like 14 and 15. Daytona Dayton: Excellent. Gale Banks: And I designed a little deal for a jet engine mechanic that went in this pocket, it was about the size of a seashell flashlight and it had a mic on one end and a TV meter on the other and he could check when the engines were running to see if he needed hearing protection. Daytona Dayton: Oh my gosh and you designed it, how old were you when you designed that? Gale Banks: I was 15. Daytona Dayton: Oh my gosh. Gale Banks: But it's a pretty simple device. It's not a real super complex electronics, but you know. Daytona Dayton: It was like the paper clip. It took someone to think about. Gale Banks: It's like your microphone what's called a polar graph of the sensitivity of the mic from all angles. I did a polar graph of my mic at the Altec Lansing's Ancchoic Chamber down by where they built Disneyland. Daytona Dayton: Oh my gosh. Gale Banks: Which was being built while I was going down there testing my mic. Daytona Dayton: I love this. 50 years' and a lot of happenings right here around Gale Banks.