Are you ready for an education? Raceline’s Greg Mulkey has more knowledge about tires and wheels than anyone we know. Take a trip down memory lane with Greg and Rich as they share some rad knowledge about the industry. It’s impressive.
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2:29 – Greg as a little whippersnapper
3:23 – selling a box of tear-offs got me a job
7:09 – I was on a mission
12:33 – a beadlock just on the right rear tire
14:30 – I got a meeting with Bill Franz Jr. at NASCAR
21:24 – getting started at Raceline
28:55– working with the Germans
34:14 – stumbling across the OG race
38:19 – it’s a serious business
57:03 – Hutchison and the military
1:08:15 – calculating ET
1:14:02 – dirt track racing with the old man, Don Campbell
1:18:29 –double beadlocks on Ian’s UTV
1:26:35 – showing Steve Kinzer how they worked
1:35:29 – I never intended to be a racecar driver
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:20.510] – Big Rich Klein
All right, on today’s episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Greg Mulkey, I’m going to call Greg Mulkey.At least in off road, the godfather of bead lock rims. All right, there may be some military application or something else down the road that I don’t know about, but we’re going to find out about all about rim’s and Greg’s life and off road and before that big, extensive history in circle track racing and all sorts of racing. So let’s talk to Greg. Hey, Greg, thank you for coming on board today with conversations with Big Rich.I know that everybody’s going to be very interested in hearing what you have to say. So thank you for coming on board.
[00:02:04.950] – Greg Mulkey
Hey, it’s great to be here, Rich, and I know the history of the beadlocks and wheels and Greg Mulkey and racing goes back quite a ways. So this is going to be an interesting conversation.
[00:02:16.560] – Big Rich Klein
Oh, I agree 100 percent. So let’s get started a little bit about where you grew up and what kind of influences you had as a youth that might have gotten you into what you’re doing.
[00:02:29.160] – Greg Mulkey
Well, in younger years, I guess my first big race experience that I remember is watching the Daytona 500 live on TV, on ESPN. I believe it might have been CBS or one of those channels back then. But I mean, I was a little whippersnapper and I can remember kind of a house party and everybody watching the NASCAR, five hundred and Daytona.
[00:02:51.090]
And so from then on, I was kind of hooked on the stuff. One of the classmates that I went to school with, his father was named Lyle Marsh, and they had what was called marsh racing tires.
[00:03:02.670]
And I knew a little bit about it as we went on that at about age 14, I got invited to go to a dirt track race in Van Buren, Arkansas, and I got to meet Lyle Marsh. And at that time, they were just selling tires and recapped tires, they were the big re-capped tire company in the US.
[00:03:23.580]
And I just kept hanging around there. It was just interesting how everything worked over there racing, how everybody was going over there to see what he was doing. And so I bugged him, and bugged him, if I could help him do something. And finally, he gave me a box of tear-offs, which or thin lenses that were stacked upon each other that you stacked on your face, shield your helmet and dirt track race. And, of course, the dirt coming off the racetrack would get on your face and you couldn’t see and you’d rip these lenses off.
[00:03:49.830]
Well, I sold every one he had on the trailer that night and going around to the racers. And I mean, I had a blast. I thought I was on top of the world. And so he kind of got a kick out of it. So he started toting me to race is when I was 14. And then, you know, they always had to sneak me in the pits because I was pretty young. And so I went from that to where I started working on the weekends and during the summers I would go to the races and to the shows, and I was the kid in the back that was always busting down the tires and back before beadlocks. READ MORE
