Drag Racing Online - My First Time

The first manufacturer in our "My First Drag Race" series is Bob Stange, the owner of Strange Engineering in Evanston, Ill. Stange began working out of a two-car garage in the late 1950s, doing rear end and suspension work for local racers. Over the years, his hard work and invention led to the founding of Strange Engineering (named after the tendency of people getting his last name wrong - it's pronounced stang-ee) in the 1960s where Stange and his crew manufactured an unbelievable line of racing hardware. Everything from racing axles, rear ends, spools, rear suspension units, and struts to front and rear disc brakes and billet magnesium blower drives were developed over the next 40 years, much of these items "first-of-a-kind" equipment. In 1983, Stange formed Team Strange, a racing group consisting of Chris Karamesines (Top Fuel), Austin Coil and Frank Hawley's "Chi-Town Hustler" (Funny Car), Albert Clark-Don Coonce (Pro Stock), Amy Faulk (Alcohol Dragster), Fred Mandolini (Alcohol Funny Car), Larry Kopp (Competition), and Keith Lynch (Super Stock), a unit considered by many experts as one of the great manufacturer-backed race teams of all time. Out of this group Hawley, Mandolini, Kopp, and Lynch were Winston World Champions. Over the years Stange has had racers like Don Garlits, Coil, Lee Beard, John Force, and hundreds of others use his products. He also raced himself, mostly on the street, and this memory comes from that period.

I guess it was in the late 1950s, and I street raced a lot. I raced in and around Evanston, and where I ran most of the guys had Fords; there weren't that many Chevys.

There was this one guy named Bob Chapman, who really thought of himself as the Chevy guy. This isn't the Chapman Automotive (a big Chicago-area, race car-backing speed shop in the 1960s) guy. Bob was into security equipment, hood locks, burglar alarms that sort of thing. But anyway, he came out one night looking for me, figured beating me would be a feather in his cap or some such thing. He had a black '58 Chevy Biscayne and I guess it ran pretty good from what I was told.

At the time, I had a '50 Ford with a wide block in it and it ran pretty good. It was powered by a 312-cid engine and I had some seats in there that the old rocket racer Chuck Suba's dad made for me instead of the bench seat. In between the seats, I had one of those old G.I. five-gallon gas cans and on top of it, I had put a sprint car pump. What I used to do was while I was racing, I would pump that thing to force more gas into the engine, you know build up the fuel pressure. It worked great and it's a wonder that I didn't flood that thing and set myself and the car on fire. It wasn't the safest way of doing things, but when you're economically stressed you do stuff like that.

So anyway, one night, I was cruising Gulf Road outside of Evanston and we run into each other. One thing leads to another and we go at it from a stop light. I ate him alive. He wasn't satisfied with that race, so we went to the next stop light and did it again, just ate him up. That really pissed him off.

I was a little pissed off, too, but not at him. The cops stopped us that night.

The powerful sparks of these ignitions will ignite high revving, high compression engines to produce great throttle response, a clean idle and incredible power throughout the entire rpm range!



	Capacitive Discharge design produces powerful sparks through high rpm.
	Every spark is at full power, even each multiple spark, for complete combustion.
	Adjustable soft touch rev limiter for engine saving overrev protection.
	Multiple spark series lasts for 20° of crankshaft rotation.



	3-Step Rev Control.
	RPM Activated Switch.
	4-Stage Retard System.
	Start Retard Circuit.