Don assisted in building three identical small-block Chevys for the Bonneville streamliner of Chet Herbert. He crewed on the car and warmed it up, but, because he had a wife and daughter, it was felt he shouldn’t make the timed runs, which were handed to Dave Ryder. At Bonneville, Mickey Thompson’s twin-Chrysler Challenger, which clocked 294 mph, overshadowed it. Ryder was the second fastest, hitting 267.359 on his first pass. Any hopes of surpassing Thompson that weekend were dashed when, according to Don, on the return run “Ryder got it all ‘loaded up’ with fuel and blew the engines.”
Don purchased this house in Duarte, his first, in 1950. By the middle of the decade, he had added this three-bay garage. Working without the luxury of a lift, the far-left bay (partially hidden) featured a pit so that Don could access the underside of cars. Cindy Nicholson recalls with a sense of pride that “we were the only family in Duarte with a paved backyard.” The Nicholsons lived here through mid- 1962. This was also where Jerry Jardine built his first set of headers in 1959. (Author’s Collection)
Further dry lake ventures for the brothers included running a roadster in conjunction with Don Blair out of his speed shop in Pasadena. With his own shop just down the road, Don regularly relied upon Blair’s to perform machine work. A number of trips to El Mirage followed for the Nicholsons, as Harold ran a Coupe on the dry lake bed. It was at El Mirage where Don first met 14-year-old Earl Wade. Wade tagged along with friends, the Price Brothers, who themselves ran a Fuel Coupe.
Tragedy struck the Nicholson family in November 1959 when Harold, driving the Akins and Hawkins dragster at San Fernando, was killed when a front wheel broke loose at speed. Don, racing elsewhere at the time, had told Harold he thought the car was unsafe and recommended not driving it. Needless to say, the loss hit the Nicholsons hard, Don especially. He lost a brother who was also a dear friend. Don rarely spoke of the accident and, more than likely, it’s why his parents never took a keen interest in his career.
In 1959, Don went to work for C. S. Mead Chevrolet, handling high-performance tune-ups and operating the Clayton dynamometer that was brought over from his Monrovia shop. He buried himself in his work, and his reputation as a master tuner exploded. It was while at Mead’s that the legendary nickname “Dyno” Don took hold. You want to talk about a man in demand? Some mornings when Don arrived at work, cars were lined up waiting for a dyno tune. And not just local racers, Don had customers coming from as far away as Ohio.
The Nicholson brothers, Don and Harold, flipped a couple bucks for this advertisement in the 1954 Arcadia High School yearbook. Customers’ cars ranged from hot rods to salt-flats to circle-track cars. If you Google the Arcadia address, you’ll find that the building still stands.
Don raced a tri-powered 348 Biscayne in 1959 and out of approximately 75 races that year lost just 2. Recalled Don in a 1990s interview with Robert Genat, “Beyond a ‘trick’ valve job, I never had the engine apart. I pulled the front end off and built a set of over-the-frame wheelwell headers for it. Nobody built headers but Hedman and they were the conventional inside-the-frame type. Everybody wanted me to build headers for them but it took me two weeks to build those. I didn’t have the ambition to build headers. It was a pretty good art to cutting and fitting. I did it all with a hacksaw. I built those headers on the floor of my home garage in Duarte. Jerry Jardine came down and started building headers there. That was the start of Jardine Headers.”
With the new free-flowing exhaust in place, Don’s Chevy had pretty much everyone covered. He entertained the thought of attending his first NHRA Nationals at Indy, but after putting his Chevy on the dyno, he felt the car just wasn’t making enough power. On September 12, Don raced eventual NHRA World Champion Bruce Morgan at San Gabriel and defeated him with a 14.10 at 99.55 mph. I guess he should have put a little more consideration into that trip to Indy.
In February 1960, the NHRA was holding the predecessor to the Winternationals at Pomona and Don was making an appearance in his 348-powered B/S 1960 Chevy. Don’s lightweight Fleetmaster grabbed Top Stock with a 13.69 at 101.01 mph by defeating 15 competitors, including the Plymouth of Allen Villa Dyno tuner and future Stock and Super Stock legend Dave Kempton. Dyno’s record with the car equaled that of his 1959.
Don ordered his 1960 Chevy with a tri-power 348 and BorgWarner 4-speed. The Fleetmaster was a no-frills model that lacked deadweight such as a rear seat, radio, and heater. The trophies lined up here were won by a proceeding owner; Don garnered his share running B/S with the car. (Photo Courtesy Gary Smith)
Butch “the California Flash” Leal remembers Don well. “I was quite a bit younger, and he took me under his wing after I raced him with my 348-powered El Camino one day at Lions. He beat me by half a car length and said it was the quickest 348 he ever ran against. When it came to the 348 and 409s, Don was the man everyone turned to for guidance.”
C. S. Meads became Service Chevrolet in 1961 and it’s where Don first teamed up with Earl Wade. The pair complemented each other well, with Don working his magic on ignition, injection, and carbs while Wade specialized in work on heads and fuel injection. Don had stated that, “We had guys who wouldn’t run on weekends unless we tuned their cars. I had a system where I’d loosen the distributor a little bit. I’d power time it while Earl was running the dyno.” Wade became Don’s right-hand man, doing most of the Corvette stuff while Don focused mainly on the 348 and 409s. Eventually, the dynamic duo moved on from Service Chevrolet. Wade had been splitting his time working alongside another finer tuner, Dick Bourgeois, and the pair operated a successful tune-up and speed shop business. As for Don, well, the 1960s were underway and his storied career was just taking off.
CHAPTER 2
A BEVY OF CHEVYS (1961–1963)
One of Don’s fondest memories was winning his first national event, the Winternationals in 1961. He recalled the thrill of coming down the return road that passes by the Pomona grandstands and seeing everyone standing and cheering him. Rather than towing the car to the track (as his competition did), Don drove his Impala as a way to heat the oil in the driveline to create less friction. (Photo ©TEN: The Enthusiast Network. All Rights Reserved.)
Although Dyno Don has been claimed by Ford and Mercury fans as one of their own, his roots were firmly planted in Chevrolets. Yes, his greatest success came while running Fords and Mercurys, but he ran Chevys for a longer period. There’s a good chance that if General Motors hadn’t ceased all racing activity in 1963, Don would have stuck with Chevrolet. In the period between 1961 and 1963, few enjoyed the same level of success as Don, regardless of the brand they drove or the category they raced. Even Patty got in on the action, racing her Chevy Corvair and winning more than a dozen races.
1961
Don established his reputation nationally by taking Stock Eliminator at the 1961 NHRA Winternationals. He managed the feat in his 409-powered 1961 Impala that was built in a marathon three days. Don received the engine even before he had a car lined up. Bill Thomas, who had worked at Meads as the service manager before contracting with Chevrolet (and opening Bill Thomas Race Cars), arranged a pair of 409s to be shipped from Daytona where NASCAR’s Speedweek was being held. The second 409 went into the Roman Red Biscayne that Frank Sanders was preparing. Even though Service Chevrolet in Pasadena employed Don, it was Don Steves Chevrolet in La Habra that provided him with a 348 Impala to build on. Service Chevrolet wasn’t prepared to cough up a car. “They weren’t interested. Don Steves was kind of into performance at the time.”
As described in an old Motor Life magazine article,