mabey i have overlooked this but i will ask ..ARE Forces cars built from heat treated tubing, and is it required by nhra in the fuel funny cars or is it a specific way one builder chooses to build his chassis ? sorry if the question was already answered but i have goten lost on a couple of these threads.

Jon Asher has finished our investigation of the Funny Car chassis issue and we will publish our article this week. We spoke to all the parties involved including those who declined to speak to us on the matter. Getting the story out first wasn't important to us as getting an accurate and comprehensive investigative story.

Stay tuned. This may very well be the strongest article that Jon Asher has penned in 40 years of drag racing journalism.

Bruce, I have NO idea what the rules are for Heat treating on these cars. But whatever McKinney was doing on the Force cars obviously isn't working! If indeed Grant Downing's record building these Chassis is what he says it is. I think NHRA needs to look at what's working on his cars and go from there. As Far as NHRA being in Ostrich mode as Jim Young's suggesting, NHRA can't make any rule changes with just 2 races to go. But I sure hope that people like Grant Downing have some imput in Glendora before they mandate the class out of existance!

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Shift for Brains!!!!

Looking very forward to reading it. Thanks Bobby.

Nothing against anybodys chassis building but is it possible that JFR is producing more power and more downforce than anybody else and loading the tires and chassis more? Just seems to me that they (JFR) might have hit the area that things start to fail. Maybe not. Maybe they just have poor quality parts?? Not likely with unlimited funds. I am sure there is lots of testing going on and lots more changes coming.

It would be interesting to see if anybody is going to invest in destructive testing of chassis. Seems like with the right setup, a delaminating outof balance rear tire could be duplicated in a test facility and see what fails first.

Destructive testing was done on two dragtser chassis at great expense with alarming results. It was posted on the Dragster chassis thread. All of the results were of no interest to the rule makers. There is the problem.

i doubt john force's team is making THAT much more power than everyone else. i have been told that most all of the big teams make around the same power, it's just how you manage that power is how you win races.

Excellent post.

Heat treating isn't required for F/C's, and for T/F, heavier tubing can be used instead of the heat treated.
Steve & Grant use .065 pipe in the lower frame rails. Murf uses .058 , the minimum SFI spec. Also the slip tube is what some guys want too!
I hear that Steve has just finished a new frame for Densham , and thats his last modern F/C .
I hope he just keeps building CLASSIC funny cars for years .
" Two mags for too much power" "Kill the down force, Save the tires "

i am pretty heat treated tubing IS required in top fuel dragsters for the back halfs . i remember vandergrif's car couldn't test at vegas last year because the back half was not heat treated.

David - A McKinney chassis failed, seriously injuring a driver. Teams other than JFR run McKinney chassis. I think it would be reasonable for NHRA to determine what went wrong and inform those teams. NHRA is SUPPOSED to be in charge of safety. As far as any of us know, there has been no report on chassis issues from NHRA or any plans for testing or new chassis rules.
Is NHRA supposed to come up with a common chassis? If that is what it takes, yes.

And . . . does anyone know how to actually access the current FC and TF chassis rules? There certainly is a lot of confusion here!

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"The Counterfeiter"

the (SFI) chassis spect are not posted anywhere i know of in the open. you have to buy a copy from sfi.

go here: SFI Web Site
$35.00 and you can own the spec.
God I love this sport, nothing that money can,t take care of, or fix.

With this being said, could it be something done to the chassis after it leaves the builders shop!

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