NITRONIC RESEARCH AA/FUEL DRAGSTER LIST NOTES:

by Cole Coonce,
Nitronic Research AA/Fuel Dragster Mojo Wire

ITEM: Dramatic theater was provided by Fuller & Dunlap (#7 on the List) during the 1st round of eliminations: after claiming the #1 qualifier spot, Bill Dunlap squared off against Dale Pulde and the Ground Zero entry; Dunlap had problems finding the groove and the sticky parts whilst backing 'er up from the burnout... it turned out the steering linkage was broken. Impromptu steering repairs commenced, first as chassis builder Davey Uyehara and then beefier members of the crew took turns jumping and kicking on the broken link like Yosemite Sam having a temper tantrum. Finally it was hammered into reasonable (?) shape by a swift, methodical kick and to the disbelief of the assembled, they staged it! Some of us wondered if the dragster had any steering at all and at the green light Dunlap picked up the front end and drove the tar out of it, carving s's like timber rattler... Pulde took the win with a 6.16, 237, while Dunlap gave brave pursuit with a 6.23, 219; Dunlap's tire tracks were anything but a parallax view... Dunlap on his ride: "The steering arm on the spindle was bent out of place...it was okay according to Uyehara...(after the quick fix) the steering wheel was 90 degrees from where it sits normally so I could not push the button to advance the mag at half track and then it laid over. I had steering," he continued, "and I had no problem...it carried the wheels and I had the wheel cocked (to compensate). It was all second nature." Uh huh.

ITEM: Come Sunday morning #1 List dwellers Champion Speed Shop were awarded with a check for 1000 clams worth of hardware from Titan Engineering (http://www.nitronic.com/titan/ ) in appreciation for their dominating performance in Y2K. Never ones to sit idle, over the winter the Champion bunch refined their approach to thermodynamics, swapping the Brodix sprint car heads formerly used to propel their bored and stroked Chevy mouse motor for a state of the art set of Alan Johnson billet heads that were developed for Pro Stock Truck (!). Team leader Bob McLennan anticipates "less boom boom" with the new heads, as they do not feature that delicate (and volatile) siamesed exhaust ports of traditional small block Chevy heads. McLennan cites safety issues as much as anything for parts swap and then admitted that the Johnson heads "flow 10 percent better than the Brodix heads." He also said they "don't flow as well as Hot Heads (used by some of the Chrysler teams)." So there.

ITEM: After making hardware changes over the winter, #2 List member Jim "Holy Smokes" Murphy and his WW2 team feel very confident about their chances in 2001. The digger ran quite well but lost to Champion in a first round barnburner of a drag race(6.04 to 6.07). With that being said, after a blinding top end fire Murphy feels compelled to lengthen the fuse another couple hundred feet or so... against Champion, Murphy was riding a missile off of the pad, but then boomed it in the lights after the WW2 mill starts spitting out sundry stuff at the big end... nonplussed, Murphy said afterwards that "She's gonna' run. We're struggling with brand new stuff. We have way more boost with this new blower (SSI) so we will slow the blower down." When asked about the run itself, Murphy said, "it was nice, smooth run, not violent, a little soft, and around 1000' the motor starts coming up and I say to myself 'do I get out of this thing'? It burned two pistons and blew the bottom of the blower out. There was a big round fire, I reached over and pulled the chute, changed hands and came over and clipped the guardrail...I could see through the oil, but I just saw light because of the big ball which was wider than the motor and very high." About the different tuneup: "We are on the right track. It is rich to 900 feet but the blower goes up so much. The old blower was 33 pounds of boost, this thing is making 46..."

ITEM: John Eirich's "Ground Zero", the #8 entry on the List, was unable to defend their March Meet Title, but they did go a couple of rounds. New driver (and former funny car hero) Dale Pulde says about his initiation into driving the 21st century AA/Fuel Dragsters, "There is a learning curve because it is different...the little tire (12 inch) means you have to finesse it and hope that the tire doesn't get you in too much trouble..."

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