Jim Dunn. -
“[Son] Mike worked on all of my cars probably from the time he was five years old. He got his license in my car, running on alcohol. He was like me, pretty mechanically inclined right from the get-go. He got pretty good and started asking to get paid for working on the car. I told him, ‘I don’t pay anyone,’ and turned him over to Roland [Leong]. I said, ‘Hey Roland, do you want a crew guy who’s 17 but has 20 years’ experience?’ He said, ‘Send him over.’
Mike Dunn -
“I licensed in my dad’s car, which at the time was the Dunn & Velasco Satellite,” he said. “We actually ran it on alcohol first the year before; we had a 6-71 blower and a small injector, and my dad blocked off the port nozzles and bought an alcohol barrel valve. My dad had a spare two-speed, so I spent $600 of my own money to buy a kit that was out there that you could use to bolt together two two-speeds to make a three-speed. My dad was messing around with the Donovan then, but he didn’t want me to ruin his good parts, so he found an old steel Hemi. Pisano gave me a set of pistons and a camshaft, and Valvoline gave me a drum of alcohol. I ran 7.38 at 178. We switched to nitro for a race at Orange County, where I got my nitro license and even qualified for the show. It was kind of funny because he actually was struggling at the time with that Donovan, and I went quicker than he’d run in a while.”
The fun ended there, though, as he broke a rod on his first-round burnout against Dale Pulde, and after “Big Jim” made it clear that Mike wouldn’t be handed a race car of his own, he left to crew for Leong through the end of 1979 before landing his first ride, in Bill Schifsky’s Beartown Shaker"
I have never seen the two of them together anywhere, at the drags or at an interview....