And another point I forgot to mention in my last reply is that with a shorter turnaround and fewer oildowns, live TV coverage suddenly becomes more feasible.

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“One day when I was walking through the pits,” Millican said, “Evan said he wanted to talk to me. ‘Do you know how many millions (of dollars) I’ve spent to beat you?’ he said. ‘Since I couldn’t beat you, I’m going to own you.’ "

Thank you Doug,
I wasn't going to voice that out loud... I was waiting to see if anyone picked up on the obvious...

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Not So Comfortably Numb- Fly Navy, Build SEABEES
A friend helps you move, A Real Friend helps you Move Bodies

Do you think making people run the same parts all weekend will reduce breakage?

Seems to me you will have guys who still build a grenade engine....and just hope it lasts. Who wants to see a final where, chances are, at least one car will not make it down the track?

There are two choices to slow the cars down:

1. Increase drag [either weight or aerodynamics]
2. Reduce power

Just pick your poison.

Johnny West & Ray Alley did it with Vandergrift in the late '90s, Had an "A" frame and four long blocks set-up for Sundays.
IIRC they tried it most of the season.?
Johnny told me that the tune-up "moved around" too much even using the same blower and injector.

A couple of Chassis stories in Drag Racing Online today:

Mechanical Engineer on Heat Treating

New McKinney X-member

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Drag Racing Online

Does anybody have the name(s) of the engineer(s) that NHRA has contracted to advise them on chassis specs?

That new X-member doesn't really inspire much confidence in me. I agree, that's supposed to keep the car from coming apart from the vibration of a blown tire going 300+ mph?

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"I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!"

Buell's and Hardley's suck!

Well Brent, if the X-member is not impressive enough- Take a look at whats been done up top-


Blogs.NHRA.com - NHRA Driver Blogs

The can should be just fine now, having some tubing "bolted" over the top of it, and those two small bars "welded" to the cage are supposed to keep the driver with the rest of the junk!! ITO

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theDARKSIDE- TOP ALCOHOL DRAGSTER*

hey Roo.....if you read this, can you post those same pics you put up over on Classic Funny Car for these guys....those were some good pics


and ray.....you have been unusually quiet the last couple weeks???? is the sanding fully consuming??

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August 13, 1973 - March 23, 2007
R.I.P. Eric

Scroll to see pics of T-Ped's ride- Thanks Mike

iB::Topic::McKinney chassis updates

I banished myself to the garage to finish project doh-

I see I should have stayed there!!

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theDARKSIDE- TOP ALCOHOL DRAGSTER*

30 minutes ........that's just nuts.........sorry.

As far as slowing EVERYBODY down??

then I might just start following Ladies Curling and Golf instead of the (at one time) most innovative, exciting, progressive sport on Gods green earth.

Plus, slowing everyone down costs each and every team $$$$$.

And data.

Please don't take it that I'm shooting the messenger, it's the message I don't care for, thats all.

REX

After taking the time to read all the posts and all the information that has been post I keep asking the same question. Is the sky really falling????

It would be my humble opinon that before we go off making a bunch a changes, we take a deep breath and take a closer look at what all the new information is telling us.

I have a feeling and it is just that, there will be a new design of a funny car chassis in the near future. Why? Well cosider this. We have been adding patchs and "improvements" to the chassis for quite a while. Perhaps it is really time to take a clean sheet of paper and rethink what we are doing. Who knows it may come out looking like what we have now or ?????

Just one man's opinon.

jim

This conversation isn't going anywhere but does reek of job security for certain folks...quote taken from Utterback who drives a fuel car....
Bottom line----Only Murf's car are breaking----Bartone had a worse tire failure and they are still using their Plueger Chassis....
I am sure Force wishes Plueger would go back to building him cars....IMO

Originally Posted by Karl Stalcup
Nope, don't give the time to field strip the car... change the oil, Fuel it, Pack the chutes, back in the lanes... then the cars aren't set on kill every pass... yeah, I do remember running 32 car open shows, pop the covers to run the valves hot... throw in fresh plugs, drag it back up to the line...

And really, now we have teams swapping mills 'tween rounds in Neutered Floppers... (P/S)

Bottom Line... Ya break It, Your Days Done... how hard Are you gonna lean on it?


thats how we run on the nostalgia circuit and it's some good racing....you can change a piston or a head
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I take a bit of exception to some of these statments about what happened back in the day. I do know in TF in the late 60s and early 70s we were pulling/changing pistons, checking/changing rod and main bearings etc between every round. And that was on the old cast iron 392s. We didn't always have both heads off every round but usually we would have at least one off every round. That's when we coined the phrase "thrash" because that's what we did between rounds. No generators and very few air tools because our air supply was in bottles.

If you look at the evolution of fuel racing it occurs in spurts. Slider clutches, engine blocks for racing, rear engined dragsters, electronics etc. Now the performance has caught up to the chassis of both classes of fuel and its time for another technology spurt with the chassis.

Chassis changes or not we are way past time for the current tires and its just possible they can't build a tire to withstand 330 MPH in 4 seconds. If that's the case and based on Darrell Russell, Eric Medlin and now John Force it appears it is we/they better do somthing drastic to limit performance.

The only way to make these cars safer is to slow them down. No one want to hear this but if this sport is to survive someone with some large gonads better step to the plate and get behind slowing these cars down. The most effective and quickest way to do that is to only run nitro cars for a 1000 ft. That will help for a couple of years and then they will find a way to make them run just as hard at a 1000 feet as they are now. Hopefully technology on the tires and chassis will have caught up by then. If not then we'll have all this to deal with again.

It is not a speed only issue. Eric was half track and even though John was at the finish line, he was going +/- 312. Not saying that is not fast, but there have been lots of much faster runs.............just sayin