Gerry, I don't remember Harold Bull. (Could I get away with saying it was before my time? :shrug
That was a slick, wee car, though.
Bob, it was interesting to note the X1 races were always from a rolling start. Apparently there is a weak link in the driveline?
Gerry, here's an oldie but goodie from the U.S. Nationals. We had to run another V-6 car, and you can certainly tell they're not big-inch V-8s on nitro!
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I can't recall what year that was, but from the appearance of the cowl, I think that was the car we built in 1997. I was working at McKinney Corp. Race Cars at the time. If it was 1997, that was my last race with the car. I've been to the track 4-5 times since, but I quit traveling with the car in '97.
The '97 car was a good one. We debuted the car at a race in Bowling Green, KY. NHRA decided they would allow us to set 1/8 mile records that day, although we were running 1/4 mile. On our very first qualifying attempt, I told Brian to try to hang on through 3rd gear. We had no idea of how the car would react, but I was confident if we could get computer data through 3rd gear, we would be able to tune from there. The car left on our best 60-foot time ever and I knew he was going to drive it to the finish line. It reset both ends of the 1/8 mile record and reset both ends of the 1/4 mile records, on its maiden voyage, no less! I made a tiny clutch change for the second pass, which we felt would be quick enough to back up all four records. Well, it reset all four records on that pass and we used the first pass to back those records up. I always wondered how many cars have ever set all four records on their first pass down the track.
A couple months later, the car was selected as Best Engineered Car, at a points race in Cleves, OH.
What was really funny about that day in Bowling Green, I had crawled out of bed early and was down in the trailer in the motel parking lot, finishing up the car. There were some odds and ends that we needed to finish up, installing the windshield in the car, etc. I managed to get everything ready to go, so when we got to the track, we unloaded the car and I towed him over to the tech lanes. Brian stepped out of the car, walked up to me with a big grin and said, "This car is faster than anything we've ever had before." When I pointed out he was being towed in the car and I had never exceeded about 10 MPH, he told me to wait and see. I guess he knew what he was talking about! Earlier in the year, we had made a pretty drastic change in how we were building the Top Fuel cars, there at McKinney's. On paper, it looked like the change might be beneficial to our Comp car, as well, so we made the same change when we laid that car up. It turned out the change let us turn the corner with our clutch tune-ups and the car just kept getting faster and faster. The car could run 7.50 @ 175 MPH in '97 and now holds the record at 7.14 @ 185.77. The car has actually run as fast as 7.10, so everything is there to run 7.0s. It's pretty crazy, because I clearly remember trying to get the car to break into the 7 second range. Heck, I can clearly remember when even the A/Ds were struggling to get into the 6 second range and now here is a car with 265 cubic inches, knocking on the same door.
Another pal and I had built an A/ED, back in the mid-70s. And I do mean we built it. How long should an A/ED chassis be? Well, we measured from workbench to door in his one-car garage, figured the radius of the front and rear tires and that is how long we built the car. Chassis jig? That was a plumb-bob and some chalk lines on the floor. :shrug: Heck, we had no clue what we were doing. We built the car with a TH400 and ended up putting a shorty 'Glide in the car. When we made the change, we back-halved the car and scooted the rear forward. We did use a jig that time around. Another buddy used to build racing go-karts and we tied the rear of the car to his go-kart jig to lay out the tubing. Talk about cob-jobs. We had the kingpins laid back so far, the car would almost drive itself down the track, but backing up from a burnout required some serious arm strength. (And don't ask about the steel-bodied, flip-top Corvair B/A we had built before that!) We did manage to set an NHRA 1/8 mile record with that car, but it was never a giant-killer. The quickest that car ever ran was at Indy in 1983, where it went 7.70 at 174.70. Back then, that was a pretty fast Comp car. It was a 429 CID Chevy that we had bought second-hand from Lingenfelter. So it still awes me that a 265 CID motor can run six tenths quicker and 11 MPH faster.
