Elder Hoovers in Fast Lane : Drag racing: At 84, Grandpa George stays on road with Grandma Ruth and son Tom’s funny car dragster.

On his birthday two weeks ago, George Hoover spent the afternoon working on his son Tom’s Pontiac Trans Am funny car in 30-degree weather in Minneapolis.

George Hoover is 84.

He is crew chief and head mechanic for the car, which Tom will drive this weekend in the Chief Auto Parts Winternationals at the L.A. County Fairplex track in Pomona.

George, with his wife Ruth, drove the family station wagon from Minneapolis, pulling a fifth-wheel trailer. They traveled with the 18-wheel cab and trailer that carries the Showtime funny car.

Tom, 49, who drives the race car, flew in and will fly out Monday while his father heads for Houston and the next race.

“I don’t think I could race if it weren’t for my folks,” Tom said. “They’re indispensable. Dad keeps care of things on the road so that I can fly home to be with my (wife and two daughters) and run the business.”

Tom, who lives in Maple Grove, Minn., took over the family’s Hoover Wheel Alignment business when his father retired--but only as a businessman.

“I put in nearly 30,000 miles chasing around with that race car last year,” the elder Hoover said. “It’s nothing new. The wife and I have been doing it for 25 years or longer.”

Tom Hoover won the Winternationals in 1979.

“I had a younger crew chief then,” he said. “Dad was only 73.”

When the Hoovers began following the national drag racing circuit in 1965, George and Ruth were known as Ma and Pa Hoover. Now they’re Grandpa and Grandma Hoover.

George has undergone two eye surgeries and a colostomy and wears two hearing aids.

That hasn’t slowed him down. George, with crewman Geoff Henke, does all the work on the car. “Tom helps me take it apart sometimes, but when it comes time to put it all back together, he lets me do it,” George Hoover said. “That way, he’s sure it gets done right.”

Hoover had an added problem during the off-season, as did many of the funny car and top fuel dragster owners. NHRA officials banned use of electronically controlled clutch management systems in favor of a pneumatic system. The change was made to reduce costs in keeping up with electronic development, and also to make the system easier to monitor.

“The changeover cost us about $5,000, and that’s a lot of money when you don’t have a sponsor,” George Hoover said. “I did the whole changeover myself, so we’ll see what happens the first couple of times Tom makes a pass.

“Some of the fellows, like Ed McCulloch and Mark Oswald, ran with air systems last year, so they might be a little ahead of the rest of us this week.”

High winds caused Thursday’s first round of qualifying to be postponed. They will try again at 2 p.m. today.

“That was a bad piece of luck for everyone because we all need as much practice as possible before the first race,” George Hoover said.

The Hoover odyssey began in 1963 when Tom brought home a wrecked dragster that a friend had crashed at Minnesota Dragways, and asked his dad, who was working as a Willys-Knight mechanic, to help him fix it.

“I’d always been a mechanic, so it was easy for me to give him a hand,” George said. “I was sort of involved until I went to watch him race one night. That got me all excited, and I’ve been his crew chief ever since.

“I wouldn’t be out here, though, if Ruth didn’t come, too. She usually stays in the trailer parks until the weekend, when she comes out to watch the racing. She’s a good talker; she knows just about everybody at every track we visit.”

Tom Hoover’s first major victory was in the 1965 American Hot Rod Assn. Winternationals in Phoenix. Later, he won the 1973 Bakersfield March Meet, then won the 1977 NHRA Grandnational in Montreal and the 1979 Winternationals.

Hoover’s career bests both came last year, when he finished seventh in the Winston standings. They were a 5.358-second run in the Chief Nationals at the Texas Motorplex near Dallas, and 273.72 m.p.h. in the Summernationals at Englishtown, N. J. His best finish was runner-up to series winner Bruce Larson in the Springnationals at Columbus, Ohio.

“That wasn’t bad for one of the little guys against the big-buck operators,” said Henke. “We showed that we were players. Now, if we could just get some sponsor money to help buy some new pieces, Tom could really show them.

“This is an expensive sport. We figure it costs about $16,000 to run one event, and we’ve got 19 of them.”