#Headergate - NITRO FUNNY CAR LAID-BACK HEADER CONTROVERSY BREWING AGAIN (1 Viewer)

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Nitro Member
Sounds like there's two ways of measuring headers and the DSR cars can't measure their headers the John Force way, so two sets of rules.

“It has been going on all year and it NHRA is finally investigating it,” Venables said. “It should be the same for everybody. It is crazy to have two different ways of measuring it. All any of us is after is just a level playing field. We don’t know for a fact that their headers are any more laid back than ours, but what we do know is they have to change the way they measure JFRs headers for them to be legal. It is not singling out anybody or anything like that, you need one set of rules. We don’t want another run to go by. Every run is important, and it has gone on too long and we need to have it cleared up, that’s all. If they are going measure them, let’s say measure them the JFR way, then we want to build headers to meet the JFR way of measuring them. That’s the bottom line. I’m not one to say, ‘hey their headers are not legal.’ I’m just one to say, ‘hey rules are rules and they need to be the same for everybody involved.”

Venables acknowledged his team did what the sanctioning body asked them to do – regarding laid-back headers in the offseason.

“What NHRA did over the winter, they wanted the cars to stand the headers up,” Venables said. “Make them more drivable and slow them down a little, so we did that and everybody else did that with the normal way of measuring them. Essentially, we could run our headers from last year, which are laid back another eight degrees if we measured them the way they are measuring Force’s. We told NHRA we were going to do that, and they said, ‘no you can’t.’ It’s like well OK. That essentially says there are two ways to measure and it is just bulls**.”

http://www.competitionplus.com/drag...ar-laid-back-header-controversy-brewing-again
 
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If they are enforcing two different ways of measuring the angle, that is no good at all. You've got to wonder if this was something learned by Neff as a result of crossing the street and experiencing a different set of rules between mega teams?

I was hoping Beckman (who has a great way of describing things) would explain this difference. It sound like they are allowing JFR to measure the angle other than in relation to the perpendicular plane created off of the centerline of the car ...
 
"“It seems a pretty straightforward part on the car and protocol for measuring the car,” Beckman said. “You stick a template parallel with the race car because the very term laid back obviously means relative to the direction that the car travels. We don’t care about laid out to the side or offset. Laid back is relative to the direction that the car will go or parallel to the race car. There’s been some talk that when they have measured one team’s headers they had to angle the template to get the header to fit the mold of the template. My understanding was there were several attempts to clarify this and yet we keep coming back with an ambiguous procedure, so I hope (July 6) was the beginning of having one procedure for every race car. It just needs to be one standardized protocol for every car. You will have a template and you will have a manner in which you apply that template to each and every race car. "

It depends on the outward tilt of the ends of the pipes....that picture of Courtney's car leads me to believe that the JFR headers tilt outward more than the DSR ones. The angle is the same as far as rearward tilt, but if you are laying a 40 deg triangle on the ground and measuring both sets of headers you will need to tilt the template to match the outward tilt in order to see if the tips are within the rules.
Not sure if there is any gain, but as long as final tip angle is 40 degrees what's the problem?
 
Laid back and out becomes a compound angle, it will be very hard to come up with a standard template. Each degree change in one direction significantly changes the other one. They are going to have to come up with fixed numbers in both directions or find someone that is capable of doing the math to figure it out.

Ex: crown mold that goes around a ceiling in a house, to get a 45 degree angle you need to set the saw at 31.62 degrees mitre and 33.86 degrees bevel if you change either degree the other changes.

good luck.....
 
I'd be curious to know how the JFR cars were being measured compared to everyone else. If they'd written the rule right in the first place a 'clarification' wouldn't have been needed. It'll be interesting to see if the performance of any of the cars changes in the immediate future.
 
This is dumb. NHRA could easily build a measuring fixture that they roll the cars on to during tech inspection that the headers would have to fit into.
 
I work in an aircraft machine shop and I can tell you measuring the header itself would be easy. Any CMM operator with more than an hour's worth of training can knock it out. But my question is, doesn't it need to be measured relative to the car itself? If they specify header angle, then the crew chief just tilts the whole engine back, the headers are effectively laid back as an assembly. Maybe this has already been touched on and I missed it.
 
my understanding is the center line of the car also it is not as simple as back, they also lean out from the car which creates a compound angle
 
I watched a few years back when the tech dept. were measuring Wilk's header angle but the heads were off the motor.
 
I thought originally the measurement was being taken relative to the ground? So if the angle was 90° it would be perpendicular to the ground and then you'd just use a protractor to measure the 40° angle?
 
I thought originally the measurement was being taken relative to the ground? So if the angle was 90° it would be perpendicular to the ground and then you'd just use a protractor to measure the 40° angle?




its not quite that simple, the headers also lean away from the body which creates a compound angle. it is hard to explain why typing. take a triangle with a 40 degree angle and stand it straight up, it is 40 degrees , now lean it over 20 degrees and measure the 40 degree angle , it is not 40 degrees anymore.
I think the teams are playing with this aspect to twist the rule some and NHRA does not have a firm answer yet.
Personally I think they should make a jig which sits on the pavement and the headers have to match that angle, again depending on how much they lean out will determine how much they are laid back. Might not always equal 40 degrees off center.
 
Although it is not an airplane, they are playing with these forces to get the best result... (the term you are looking for is vectored thrust)

vecthrst.gif
 
where the heck is Sheldon when you need to understand this stuff.., lol do they have a spinning head emogi??
 
its not quite that simple, the headers also lean away from the body which creates a compound angle. it is hard to explain why typing. take a triangle with a 40 degree angle and stand it straight up, it is 40 degrees , now lean it over 20 degrees and measure the 40 degree angle , it is not 40 degrees anymore.
I think the teams are playing with this aspect to twist the rule some and NHRA does not have a firm answer yet.
Personally I think they should make a jig sits on the pavement and the headers have to match that angle, again depending on how much they lean out will determine how much they are laid back. Might not always equal 40 degrees off center.

Ken,

You nailed it. That's exactly what has been done, there is now a jig that is placed on the ground and the headers must fit inside it with the car at ride height and the tires at a specific pressure. It's a simple jig that applies to every car. No more gray area.

Alan
 
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Ken,

You nailed it. That's exactly what has been done, there is now a jig that is placed on the ground and the headers must fit inside it with the car at ride height and the tires at a specific pressure. It's a simple jig that applies to every car. No more gray area.

Alan

Just more gray hair for the tuners!!
 
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