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Creative rule stories
- Thread starter M Jones
- Start date
ZWeinstein
Nitro Member
"Creative engineering" stories have always fascinated me. I have not really read too many from the drag racing world but one of my favorties was when fuel teams in the 60s were messing around with Hydrazine. From what I understand that stuff could blow up on its own if it sat in a fuel tank long enough. Well during its heyday there were a bunch of fuelers sitting in the staging lanes when someone went out and oiled the track pretty bad and all you saw in the staging lanes was a mad dash of several teams taking their tanks out of the dragsters, running over and dumping the contents in the grass and rocks next to the staging lanes. I think in the same article is was not uncommon for a dragster to make a run, get to the shutdown area and immediately see the driver dump what little was left over out in the grass as well.
On the NASCAR side of things, Darrell Waltrip was on Dale Jr's podcast several years ago and he went on for about 30 minutes about all of the "creative engineering" that went on when he was driving for Junior Johnson. Stuff like going through weigh-in with radios and helmets that each weighed 50 lbs. Having buckshot in the frame rails that the driver would open on the pace laps to shed extra weight. I think it was Junior Johnson that also used plastic or clay bolts on the back bumper of the car that when it hit a bump on the track it would break off and shed the bumper losing weight and helping with the aero. My all-time favorite was the great Smokey Yunick was getting torn down one time because his car had much better fuel mileage than anyone else by a huge margin. Well they pulled the fuel tank out of the car and were combing over every single inch on the inside and out. The official was scratching his head and could not find anything wrong and said he passed. Smokey laughed at him and before they put the fuel tank back on the car, he fired it up and drove it back to his shop in Daytona down the street from the track laughing and waving the whole time at the NASCAR officials. Of course now the inspector was even more stumped and baffled at what he was watching. Turns out Smokey had a fuel line that was an inch in diameter and coiled up to where he could hold an extra 3-4 gallons. At the time there was no rule on the diameter of the fuel line, only the size of the tank.
On the NASCAR side of things, Darrell Waltrip was on Dale Jr's podcast several years ago and he went on for about 30 minutes about all of the "creative engineering" that went on when he was driving for Junior Johnson. Stuff like going through weigh-in with radios and helmets that each weighed 50 lbs. Having buckshot in the frame rails that the driver would open on the pace laps to shed extra weight. I think it was Junior Johnson that also used plastic or clay bolts on the back bumper of the car that when it hit a bump on the track it would break off and shed the bumper losing weight and helping with the aero. My all-time favorite was the great Smokey Yunick was getting torn down one time because his car had much better fuel mileage than anyone else by a huge margin. Well they pulled the fuel tank out of the car and were combing over every single inch on the inside and out. The official was scratching his head and could not find anything wrong and said he passed. Smokey laughed at him and before they put the fuel tank back on the car, he fired it up and drove it back to his shop in Daytona down the street from the track laughing and waving the whole time at the NASCAR officials. Of course now the inspector was even more stumped and baffled at what he was watching. Turns out Smokey had a fuel line that was an inch in diameter and coiled up to where he could hold an extra 3-4 gallons. At the time there was no rule on the diameter of the fuel line, only the size of the tank.
stitcherbob
Nitro Member
Wild Willie (RIP 1991) on the "Winged Express" Fuel Altered's construction :
"The real reason why professional drag racing has become so dull, so mechanical, so contrived, and so predictable is because Wild Willy Borsch now lives in a trailer behind a Torrance, California, muffler shop doing tune-ups. That figures. Willy has always had an affinity for muffler shops. "Hell, we built our first car out of 'muffler moly' because I would bend the front end every time I hit a guardrail or when I did a wheelie. So all Al Marcellus [Willy's long-time partner] and I had to do when we bent something was to find a muffler shop and gas-weld in the new parts."
"The real reason why professional drag racing has become so dull, so mechanical, so contrived, and so predictable is because Wild Willy Borsch now lives in a trailer behind a Torrance, California, muffler shop doing tune-ups. That figures. Willy has always had an affinity for muffler shops. "Hell, we built our first car out of 'muffler moly' because I would bend the front end every time I hit a guardrail or when I did a wheelie. So all Al Marcellus [Willy's long-time partner] and I had to do when we bent something was to find a muffler shop and gas-weld in the new parts."
M Jones
Nitro Member
George and Willy gave advice on how to drive our car when it was ready, Willy told me if I wanted to be a successful Altered driver and win races I would need to keep winging the motor and keep fuel pressure up if I got upside down because if didn’t hit the guard rail or cross the centerline you could still stab it across finish line first because the other guy will probably be out of shape too, I was sitting on the tailgate of Willys Chevy truck with Willy on one side and George ( the Stone Age man ) on the other, I looked at George and all he said was, he’s not kidding, advice I never forgot
Tony
Nitro Member
Look at the Mooneyes decal on the wing. It's looking in the same direction as Wild Willie is.
M Jones
Nitro Member
George The Stone Age Man once drove the Rat Trap at San Fernando. I have a photo of him racing Larry Dixon SR in the Fireside Inn AA/MFR in a T/F race. If you could run 7.99 or quicker, that put you in T/F. Barry Kaplan in JR/F beating the Snake, when Snake got sideways. Oh yeah.....
M Jones
Nitro Member
He raced Willy in the trap in the final that night, priceless memory
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