Dave Pelczar

Dave Pelczar sitting comfortably on the front tire of the Bahre owned 24 cars at Syracuse, probably about 1972.

Dave “Zeke” Pelczar showed up at Lebanon in the late 60s from Riverside Park Speedway, in this #54 owned by Mickey Barlow.

Even though they were from the Canton, Ct area, they would work on the car at Eddie Waters Garage (The same garage that housed the Water’s family cars just a ¼ mile from the speedway for decades) after the races Sat .night at L.V., they would race the next night at devils bowl in 1969. getting back home at 4 am, if they were lucky, on Monday mornings .

One of the kids on the crew of the 54 at that time was a kid with the last name of Bahre, yeah his dad was Henry...soon to be owner of the 24’s driven to many wins by Dave, Butch Jelly and some guy named Eddie Delmolino.

The cars 24P and 24J driven by Pelczar & Jelley were team cars owned by Bahre that ran together thru the mid seventies starting in 73. The 24P was originally built by Gerald Chamberlain who sold it to Will Cagle. Shortly after the car was then sold to Henry Bahre along with the 24J which was supposed to have been a copy built by Cagle of the original Chamberlain car except for the second side window. Henry even hired Chamberlain to come up and help tweak the 24P back to it's original state as Cagle had made a few changes. They went so far as to even rent Lebanon for a few days during the work week so both Dave and Gerald could work together on setting the car up. Chamberlain won the Valley 200 in 72 with the car as # 76. The following year Dave Pelczar ran it as 24A and came very close to winning the 200 himself in 74. Dave was running second with the late Dick Tobias third with just a handful of laps left when the engine expired. Tobias blew up a couple of laps later and after catching up with Dave the following week at Middletown would push the point that he knew if neither of them had blown up that they would have finished first and second respectably knowing they were both holding back in an attempt to save their engines for the last couple of laps. Tobias was pretty confident and felt that even thou He couldn't get around Dave at the same time felt that the both of them could get around the leader. I think they were chasing Rene Charland who held on to win.
Just a little trivia as what I can remember. Very cool site. Dave's son Terry.

Photo three:

There is nothing more than we appreciate here at LVC, than having a family member, or actual former Valley competitor, submit and share photos and information regarding their time spent on the hollowed grounds we call the High Banks.

After having Zeke Pelczar in the background of one of our Mystery drivers of the week, Dave Pelczar’s son Terry piped in about the pictures we had of his father, correcting a few fine details. After some prodding, Terry supplied us with a bevy of fantastic personal pictures and info from the glory days of his Dad’s tenure at LV , Fonda and Syracuse.

This is his first installment of many more to come, personal, fantastic pictures from the old days that will make you say, “oh wow, I forgot about that car/paint scheme, with a little background of each car.

The car pictured here Terry said this car was his all time favorite, as quoted below:

I'm not sure who took the shot from Middletown of #54 but it is one of my personal favorites. You can't beat the James Dean look from the day. I think it was around 69 or so. Notice the extra large fuel tank needed when they were running injection for the open shows

Dave’s boy Terry added this great photo of the Bahre owned 24 with the proud crew posing in front before the evening festivities get into full swing. Terry noted a young crew member in Barry Cone pictured in the photo (to the left), wrenching for fellow CT runner Pelczar before embarking own his own successful Modified career.

Another nice shot of Dave Pelczar, sent in by his son, Terry. I personally always loved these shots Chuck Ely would get before the races started of the stars in their cars up on top of turn 2. These photo’s often graced the cover of the LV program, and were used often inside the pages of the magazines.

Fantastic Looking #54 coupe Zeke put together for the upcoming assault at the speedway with the best French fries this side of the Mississippi.

Dave represented LV very well on this day in 1974, when he piloted the Bahre #24 to a huge victory at Fonda speedway. Not until Kenny Tremont did it recently, had any Valley regular scored a victory at Fonda. Which in some ways is surprising the amount of quality competitors the valley has had, but in all reality, since they always ran against each other on Saturday nights with an almost similar schedule, it really isn’t that shocking either.

Photo Eight: Dave overtaking Win Slavin. Or was it the other way around. I'll bet there's two different stories here.