Wife Fran gets a “new” dragster

6/9/03

Dale Wilson is a bracket racing "retiree" who was editor of Bracket Racing USA from 1991 to its demise in 1998. His latest dream is to return to racing in either a front-engine dragster, a slow motorcycle or the family Mazda wagon. Everything else he has is for sale.

ow Fran has her dragster. She has patiently wished and waited for more than 10 years to get it. And a 1990 Richard Earle/Suncoast Race Cars 210-inch-long dragster now sits in our garage, awaiting tricks, tabs and updates.

Ironically, it was in a Suncoast dragster that Fran first got her racing license, at about the same time as the one she now has was being completed. She got it at a Super Chevy weekend show at Atlanta Dragway. Her license has since expired and she must be recertified. But that's okay. The dragster is hers.

It all started out innocently enough. We were having a Saturday night dinner at a Cuban restaurant in Buckhead (that's the rich part of Atlanta, folks, but they still let guys like us in from time to time) -- Fran and me and racers Tommy and Diane Motes and Eric and Kim Ellington. Casually, out of the blue, Tommy let it be known that an employee of his, John Hobbs, had this Suncoast dragster that he wasn't happy with, he being a died-in-the-wool doorslammer type of guy who preferred the outlaw tracks around Georgia as opposed to those carrying racing association memberships, and the necessary 8.90 licenses that you must have in order to complete on their surfaces.

"Mmmm," Fran said between bites of aroz con pollo (chicken and yellow rice), "Maybe he'd like to trade. It would be my ('71) Nova (a former Bracket Racing USA/Drag Racing USA project car; don't forget, I used to be an editor) for his dragster."

Two days later, it was a done deal. Hobbs, favoring a 400 Chevy small block for power over our 355, said he'd make the necessary engine swaps himself. By Tuesday night, he and Tommy had both motors in the air, and by Friday we had the dragster in our 24-foot trailer. By Saturday, Hobbs was racing the Nova at a Super Chevy show at Atlanta Dragway, and by Sunday morning, the victim of a first-round loss, he was on his way to the outlaw Headhunters Club/Putt-Putt Bush eighth-mile strip in Eatonton, Georgia. By Sunday evening, Hobbs was $500 richer. "I love this car," he said later.

John, the feeling is mutual, although we have yet to make a pass it in.

The 210-inch car fit nicely into our 24-foot trailer, and our Monaco Monarch 32-foot gas motorhome nimbly towed it home, the less weight -- 1,400 pounds lighter than the Nova --- making the difference.

We called up Richard Earle at his Suncoast Race Cars shop in Homosassa, Florida the following day about the "new" dragster. Richard told Fran he remembers building the dragster and that there is now a kit available to narrow the front end a bit from its 1990 days. "Have fun," he said.

So now the dragster sits in the garage, its body stripped of its all-black panels (another irony -- good friend Tommy Motes' digger is also painted black, and it looks like Fran's twin). During its dozen or so years on Georgia drag strips, the Suncoast car received a frame painting of a dull red color. That's the first thing we'll change on it.

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