MEDLEN'S NEW CHAPEAU

In an effort to make a nitro engine idle a lot more consistently, John Medlen has been working on a development project in the CNC shop at John Force Racing. It’s a machined billet aluminum, three-port front for the carbon fiber injector hat and Medlen thinks they can improve the intake of air with this untested piece. “We’ve made something which we think is well within the rules and we are trying to get it approved to try on the dragstrip,” said John.

Medlen added, “The trouble with the carbon fiber injector is that over time those throttle bores don’t stay round, so the engine idles erratically from the time it leaves on the burnout to the time it comes back, the engine idle can vary 250 or 300 RPMs. That’s murder on the clutch and murder on the exhaust gas temperatures, so with the aluminum front it idles the same all the time.”

According to Medlen they have been working on the unit for three or four races and there are some elements NHRA is not comfortable with. Medlen finished by saying, “They said if we changed the length of the front we could run it, so we changed the length of the front and they said, 'Well, we don’t like that.' This injector is well within the confines of all the other injectors on the market, but it looks different.”

While NHRA’s Don Taylor and Ray Alley were viewing the piece in the Force pits at Sonoma, there was no anticipated approval date for the trick innovation to gain a practical test session under power. (Darr Hawthorne photo)

CHECKING FOR WEAR

Goodyear Tire engineers were all over the Sonoma nitro pits. At this event a handful of drivers and crewmembers summoned Goodyear reps to view wear patterns after making a pass on the hot dragstrip. This crewman from Scott Weis' Top Fuel dragster was assured that they were seeing "normal wear" for the current drag slick design as the same wear pattern was being seen on most of the top fuel tires after a lap. (Darr Hawthorne photo)