Chassis talk. Out of Top Stories post. (1 Viewer)

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Buzzz Miller

I did not want to railroad the top stories of 07' post, so here it is. (In answer to nunzio's questions about the new proposed certification of funny-car spec.)

1) the current chassis spec is .058 frame-rails with .049 thickness uprights. Around the welds on the .049 crack pretty quickly, so to step up, you use .058 wall.
2) The next step up is to larger diameter tubing. Helps out a ton. If you go hog wild, you go with a larger diameter, .065 wall tubing. (The next step up in thickness of general production tubing.) The man who built Murf McKinneys first race car spoke with me in detail. He says building a car out of .065 rather than .058 will make a funny-car last three to four times as long. Same diameters, just thicker to .065. *I don't remember exact numbers, but something like total weight change in the entire chassis, is something like 6-7 pounds.* When you slip a tube into another tube, an .065 gets a little tight with the next step down. But do-able without problems. *Quick example; Worshams cars that hold up spectacularly are an .065 wall bottom frame rail.*
3) You pass a few other steps of really heavy wall tubing before you get into the 90's. .083 is used quite often. They stated .093, but the next standard tubing diameter is .095. So now we are going to the metal manufacturers to make a specific tubing size? My guess is they will see this error and change the spec to .095 for just that reason. Now the tubing is so much thicker, you cannot step down to the next size tubing and slide it inside. So now you are stepping two and maybe three sizes in diameter down. Taking a 1 1/2 in tube and step down to 1 1/4 is a huge step down in size, and strength. Here is your new weak point.
4) Bracket altereds, match race alcohol, top alcohol, aafa, nostalgia, and top fuel are the same SFI spec. Chage the spec and no car on the planet can re-cert. Not one. Including the new one Scelzi has on the jig. Every car funny-car style car that wants to cert quicker than 7.50 seconds is dead. Nostalgia funnies are dead. CIFCA is dead. Northwest IHRA 7.50 class is dead. Altereds that run top dragster, top comp, Q/16 are dead. Top alcohol is dead. Fuel match races and AA/FA are dead. These framerails cannot be simply altered. We are talking new cars around the horn. We cannot afford that. Some of the fuel teams cannot afford that.
Again. Knee jerk reactions that kill our sport. Larry Morgan looks smarter by the day.

Watch this:
All chassis manufactured after 7/1/08 must have lower frame rail of 1 1/4", .065" wall tubing. (Or if you go CRAZY with the rules and want it ultra strong, 1 1/2", .065".)
Or tell everyone that as of 1/1/2009 there will be two certs. 10.1.e for everyone else, remaining the same. And 10.2.f for cars running fuel funny-car at a national event, of the above stated rule. (Give everyone time to get up to speed.)
I guess I am just a little upset about this deal. I am getting ready to build a new funny-car and now have to be on hold for this CRAP!:mad:
 
Buzzz, thanks for the education! Hopefully, this will get sorted out so that it doesn't obsolete every FC style chassis on the planet. BTW, whatcha building? And are you welding up your own pipe, cuz I know you speak highly of Canode & others.
 
Great read Buzz, and one of great concern to those of us with a current spec chassis.

Rapid
 
Canode is the man. I am building something very similar to the car he built for us.
fchassis.jpg

But a few little different items. Taller cage, more room for a chevy dry sump pump, vacuum pump into the frame rails, more leg room, set for a B&J converter drive, etc.
I have been welding lots recently. Lots of updates, dragster stuff, etc. Time to build my own.
Will be building my own carbon body as well. Should be a good long winter, but I need to get started, and can't wait for this stupid new cert.

And of course, no one asks me, but if they did ask me if I would build this car normalized . . .
heattreat.jpg
 
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Buzz,
you should pay a little more attention to what is out there now and what is proposed. The current McKinney cars have the bottom frame rail made out of 1.375 x .065 already. The increase in diameter to 1.5" comes out of the analysis that was run by both McKinney Corp and Ford. Just increasing the wall thickness (to as much as .120") would not have stopped the Force car from breaking, hence the increase in diameter as well as wall thickness.
This is not a "knee jerk" reaction by SFI. John Medlen and the Ford engineers have done a huge amount of research on this subject.
The new spec will only apply to fuel funny cars so there will be no affect on the sportsman level cars. As I understand it the spec will also not apply to nostalgia nitro funny cars either as they have much less power and have not been experiencing any problems.

Don't PANIC!!!!!!!

Roo
 
We looked all over to get the original shirts, but we could not find them. I hope we did not step on any toes by having those shirts printed up. We figured that just being spectators there was not much NHRA could do to us. We also put Wannabe Racing on the front to take all the blame if there was any to be given.

Paul "M." Miller
 
We looked all over to get the original shirts, but we could not find them. I hope we did not step on any toes by having those shirts printed up. We figured that just being spectators there was not much NHRA could do to us. We also put Wannabe Racing on the front to take all the blame if there was any to be given.

Paul "M." Miller

So, DID you catch any flak over the shirts from NHRA people??? I gotta imagine they weren't happy with them.
 
So, DID you catch any flak over the shirts from NHRA people??? I gotta imagine they weren't happy with them.

Not once. But we did have a high number of compliments from racers and fans alike. We even received a request to make shirts that would have been a slam to a well know trans builder. Needless to say they are not being made.

Paul
 
Paul,
Trust me, your not stepping on any toes............. (except Roos):D I had printed some shirts to take to the CHRR in support of the old chassis builders. Well they went over so well that a top fuel team owner ordered several dozen for his crew to wear at Vegas & Pomona. They were told on Thursday at Vegas that they would not be allowed to leave their pit area with those shirts on there backs. NHRA's official position, real simple, change or go home.
I've been printing shirts for over 30 years and I have never had one stir the pot up like this one has. I guess that sometimes that "POT" needs a good old fashioned stirrin'.

KS
www.hotrodsbystith.com
 
The person that started this post is ill-informed about the current 10.1 E Funny Car chassis spec and has given out erroneous information as to some of the tubing wall thicknesses- best he or she call SFI at 858 451 8868 and spend $35.00 for the current spec or at least call Murf Mckinney for instance at 765 448 4800 and get the correct sizes.
Rather than speculate on the sorely needed future spec, let's all wait and see what the engineers come up with for mid '08, although it really needs to be uprated sooner.

Kevin, I KNOW your shirts would be WAY more ARTZY!

Norm Porter
 
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Norm,
I have to admit I like their flames. I was lazy and just added it to our Chassis Works by Stith design. You would have loved some of the comments we received in Bakersfield. Have you heard anything about Agopian?

KS
www.hotrodsbystith.com
 
We looked all over to get the original shirts, but we could not find them. I hope we did not step on any toes by having those shirts printed up. We figured that just being spectators there was not much NHRA could do to us. We also put Wannabe Racing on the front to take all the blame if there was any to be given.

Paul "M." Miller

Another Paul Miller:D! Don't worry P.J. this Paul and I surely has different views then I have. It is nice to meet another Paul Miller, there are now 3 here at Nitromater.
 
We looked all over to get the original shirts, but we could not find them. I hope we did not step on any toes by having those shirts printed up. We figured that just being spectators there was not much NHRA could do to us. We also put Wannabe Racing on the front to take all the blame if there was any to be given.

Paul "M." Miller

***Mini thread hijack***

Wow! A landmark day, the "other" Paul has posted on the Mater! I sure missed seeing y'all at Vegas this year, hopefully we'll seeya in April. How's the hip?

We now return you to the regularly scheduled thread.
 
Paul,
Trust me, your not stepping on any toes............. (except Roos):D I had printed some shirts to take to the CHRR in support of the old chassis builders. Well they went over so well that a top fuel team owner ordered several dozen for his crew to wear at Vegas & Pomona. They were told on Thursday at Vegas that they would not be allowed to leave their pit area with those shirts on there backs. NHRA's official position, real simple, change or go home.
I've been printing shirts for over 30 years and I have never had one stir the pot up like this one has. I guess that sometimes that "POT" needs a good old fashioned stirrin'.

KS
www.hotrodsbystith.com

I was helping Jim Head in Englishtown in 1984 we were selling T-shirts off the truck. NHRA came up and told us to stop or leave the grounds. The race trailer would not sell his shirts because of what they said.We did stop then.But we sold out at the IHRA races. GIVE ME HEAD TILL IAM DEAD.
 
Buzz,
you should pay a little more attention to what is out there now and what is proposed. The current McKinney cars have the bottom frame rail made out of 1.375 x .065 already. The increase in diameter to 1.5" comes out of the analysis that was run by both McKinney Corp and Ford. Just increasing the wall thickness (to as much as .120") would not have stopped the Force car from breaking, hence the increase in diameter as well as wall thickness.
This is not a "knee jerk" reaction by SFI. John Medlen and the Ford engineers have done a huge amount of research on this subject.
The new spec will only apply to fuel funny cars so there will be no affect on the sportsman level cars. As I understand it the spec will also not apply to nostalgia nitro funny cars either as they have much less power and have not been experiencing any problems.

Don't PANIC!!!!!!!

Roo

Any idea when the new sfi spec will be made available or mandated?
 
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