NHRA's weight on the A/Fuel cars

It's almost official, 2100lbs min, 5.0 per cid.
1 year freeze on rules....Any blown cars for sale yet?

Keeping it SOLID!
A/FRO wins again!

 

Bad form Rob, TAD needs to win, A/FD & B/AD. JMTC Kim

 

I'm almost shocked that he didn't say "nanny booboo to you"...

 

I would expect no less, from mr. wendland

 

For somebody who used to race a blown car, you don't have problems slamming those guys do you Rob? Oh well, if NHRA wants to see blown cars go extinct, that's their decision!

 

Rob-
Okay, I want your real opinion on the class and where you want it to go- no smiley faces or comments that are "just kidding". You are the "leader" of the AF guys so come on and give us your true feelings - if you do not care if the BAD's go out of date just say it - if not, say it.

 

lmfao

 

I can stir the most amount of shit. Matter of fact, when I was a youngster, my father built sewer plants and in the summers I helped.

I post my opinions with truth, personal feelings, and they don't take a pair of high persciption glasses to read...

No one who ownes or drives an a/fuel car wanted to see their cars slowed down....Weight now does affect that. At first when the break was 2.8 it was a little off. Now, it makes a difference. How much, we don't know..NHRA is not willing to test this to find out either. We petitioned for that to happen. We also asked for how much they wanted to slow down the A/Fuel cars...No answer, no testing...So don't blame the A/Fuel guys!

It's O.K. for everyone here to bash a/fuel cars...Most of you have done it, but the minute someone says something that doesn't go your way, you ALL cry.....It really pisses me off but I have just learned to except it.

As soon as NHRA goes public with their decision, A-Fuel.com will go public. You all can see what we have been doing to try and help the sport.

"leader of the a/fuel guys", I'm not....I just helped in getting them together to voice their opinion.

My REAL opinion of where the class is going? Like I have stated before:
90% of the oil downs this year alone have come from blown cars. NHRA hates oil downs. It costs them money, they lose fan interest and it's not the show they want to put on. An oil down cost the racer money for sure. So if I had to spend my money in this class, I would have an A/Fuel car. What do we do with the blown cars then? RPM is what kills them in general. We would have to find a way to help this situation out. Everyone says to give them the OTHER blower then...You can't tell me that the BAD cars wouldn't still RPM them. That's bullshit...I think by 2005 you will see 60% a/fuel cars and 40% BAD...Slowly, we are seeing a trend towards a/fuel. What will NHRA do to help the blown cars? Only time will tell. Personally, if I owned a BAD and wanted to keep my blower, I would shove it in a funny car. Fields are low. I would have a Lenco-drive and ask Mitch and family for help. They have well proven what can be done. They started the funny car deal in July? Simply awesome!

There you go.

TJ only one face and no "Just Kidding"

 

Rob,

I thought your initial message on this thread was great. If I was an AFD guy, or gal, I would be excited also. The "un-offical" new weight break for the AFD's will likely do little to their performance, and will not cost much to implement. What does a chunk of lead cost these days?

When NHRA said that they wanted to look at the parity in TA/D, we were hoping that they would make some efforts to close the performance gap between the two types of cars. What that performace gap is can be argued until the cows come home, but I think that, on average, it is about a tenth in ET and 8 to 10 MPH.

Will the extra 75 pounds make a difference?

I went to www.quarterjr.com to see what thier "drag strip dyno" thinks and was not surprised by the results. They have a sample program on the web site, so go there and give it a try. I punched in a weight of 2025 and a horsepower of 3200 and it calculated an ET of 5.31 at 265.4 MPH. Change the weight to 2100 and the ET drops to 5.36 and the MPH goes to 262. A change of about a half a tenth, and a couple of miles per hour. Then I changed the horsepower 3300 and the ET difference was almost cut in half or eliminated. Seeing that an AFD can smoke the tires at the hit, just about anywhere, it does not appear that they are short on power, you just use as much as you can for the conditions. If you can get the extra 75 pounds to help plant the tires, you have the horsepower to make up the added weight. If the added weight is not overcome by the 2nd or 3rd qualifying run, I would be surprised.

I know, I know, this is just a computer program, and it is not "real world", but I would be willing to bet that it is not far off, it might even be less than the half a tenth to start with.

The real question is, was NHRA really serious about wanting to make a change to help correct the problem? Or, were they interested in making a small change, and then stand back and say "hey, we made a change, what more do you want us to do?"

I agree that oil downs are a problem, but I do not think that the best way to handle them is to gradually eliminate the "group" that might be causing the most of them. Gunderson has blown up his share of stuff in AFD, so it is not like they do not have problems. Miersch had quite an oil down in Seattle and I heard Bradshaw had a good one at one of the other races this year.

I am not into bashing AFD racers, in fact I think most of them, just like the BAD racers we compete with are great. This is not suppose to be an us vs. them thing. I don't want to see the AFD killed, just like I do not want to see the BAD killed. Each of us should be able to decide which type of car we want to race, and if we did the very best job possible with that type of car, we should have the opportunity to compete with whoever is in the other lane. The class will not survive at its current level if people are required to change from one type of car to to the other because the sanctioning body has let the rules get out of hand, and one type of car has an overwhelming advantage.

Len told me yesterday that more AFD's have come out in the last couple of years, and that is something that NHRA does not want to harm. I wonder, if the AFD did not have such an advantage, would that be the case? Bradshaw and now Shields have both said that the reason for going to AFD is because of the performance advantage.

I have to go back to the question, was NHRA serious about making a change? Looking at what they have come up with, I doubt it.

 

Rob,

One other thing, about changing to TA/FC. If someone is a Blown Alcohol Dragster racer now, and the message that they get from NHRA is "we really do not care about this issue, and you as a racer in this class". What makes you think they will care anymore about you as a TA/FC racer?

All of the TA/FC's in Seattle lost their last qualifying run due to 1 or 2 racers.

 

Why do you think the blown cars have been creating so many delays with oil downs? The popular response from most people would be beause of the RPM's that us blown cars run it up to, but why is it that we have to do this?

It's simple in my mind, we run our stuff so hard because we have to keep up to the cars that are killing us in performance, even when running the quickest and fastest we can with what we have. My team isn't a high-dollar deal, so the a-fuel contingent and a lot of the BAD guys are way ahead of us, but all I'm saying is that I can understand why there are so many upset by the rule changes or lack-there-of.

Just my personal opinion, not meant as a bash, just kind of wondering why no one else has said it...or maybe someone has and I just didn't see it?

 

Sitko,

Thur my many years with BAD's, running them hard or not, they still spin more RPM than an A/Fuel car, which causes problems. You can not read anymore into that. By the way, Wells at Joliet ran very well and without breakage once they found the loose baffle in the fuel tank.

Nathan, how fast do you guys think you are capable of running with your budget? I ask this in a non-discourtious way.

 

Scott

Thanks for the reply. I disagree with you Scott on the performance gap. It really depends on what the conditions are. Hot, cold, track and so on. The last 10 or so races have looked pretty even. Don't forget we have to look at round wins and not just quailifying orders. Will 75 pounds make a difference? Yes, more than likely around what you have stated in good air. More in bad air. We really have to consider that.

Is NHRA taking actions that will cure are problems? No....

Oil downs. Did you know that Gundersons motor breakage did not cause an oil down? The breakage was at 4500 rpm and not 9800 or 10000 rpm which tends to open holes up. It is still only 10% caused by a/fuel cars......

Performance advantage.....That goes a long way...More money to spend on your car is a performance advantage. As racers we all want as many performance avantages as possible, thats what helps us become #1! So if people are switching because it is a performance advantage, that my friend is just another cycle of life...who do you think has more of a performance advantage, General Motors or Bob's Used Cars?

 

Rob,

I don’t know if you're trying to get at something by asking that question or not, but it doesn't matter to me.

We run our car on a very small budget as we're a family operation with no money sponsors, only a few product sponsors such as fuel and oil, etc...all the small stuff.

We run a "competitive for our area" TAD, with the races we go to, we don't need to set the world on fire or try to rotate the earth. We do mostly match racing and a few "big" races such as the AHRA races in Spokane. Our best run with this car is a 5.988 @ 227.23 mph. Keep in mind this is a roots-style blower car with a 511 cid engine.

A good guess at what we could run at a sea-level track such as Mission raceway in B.C. if we really wanted or had to push it, would be a high to mid 5.8 something at around 230 mph. We ran a best of 6.001 @ 222.93 mph there earlier this year with lots of room left.

We have one complete engine, and one spare block with a bunch of other things lying around waiting to be used. It is rare that we buy anything big new except for safety related parts and other smaller parts, because we have our own machine shop, and dad is a machinist turned mechanical designer. We buy blown up blocks and machine and weld them to be just like new....the block doesn’t know that it's got patches...

[ October 11, 2003, 02:34 AM: Message edited by: Nathan Sitko - 625 TAD ]

 

Nathan,your operation sounds just like our deal,keep on keepin on!

 

Nathan,

I think I sold you guys a wing years ago....What I guess I'm getting at is that the a/fuel proposed rule changes will not really affect you guys. Most of us started racing in some form of that and still race that way today. The class 15 years ago we all could cook hamburgers in between rounds and go again. Today, it is how much money you are willing to spend. Class A tuners, parts and help. (I fall under the Class F tuner, I pay the team to go with them) If anyone says its not about the money, they are fibbing. If you guys were given a nice, cool amount of money to go racing with, what would you build?

 

TA/FC for me,but that's because we have run them for 25 years,but If i had to go dragster racing,it'd be one of those nasty ole nitro cars,I love em.

 

Nathan,

It's George that I know also. He built some drives for me on Hynes Fontana deal in 96'. Dual mag pointed straight out. Doesn't he work for Banks?

 

Rob,

In your opinion, what is "good air" and what is "bad air"? Can you give me any examples of National Events that were held in each of the conditions?

Like I said, we can go round and round about the performance gap. The numbers speak for themselves, and I am sure you know what they are.

Your comparison between GM and Bob's Used Cars is amusing. Are they competing against one another in the same "class"? Do they belong to the HNRA (Hoopdee National Retailers Association) and does the HNRA have specific rules for each, which are intended to allow each to compete with one another? Did the HNRA come out and say, HNRA believes it is important to continue to preserve the two types of automobile sales applications for fans and competitors alike, while maintaining fair competition between these distinctly different sales combinations?

Or, is your analogy more along the lines of GM being a huge corporation with significant financial pull with the HNRA and can therefore dictate what the rules are going to be? Bob's Used Cars does not have the same financial "clout" with HNRA, and must obide by the decision that HNRA will not make any changes that allow Bob's Used Cars to sell any more cars than they currently do, nor can they sell new cars, like GM. Unfortunately, because Bob must only sell used cars, some of them leak a little oil. Some of the new cars at GM might leak some oil, but not nearly as many. So, with that, and the upcoming GM commercial, it is time to get rid of the used cars, and buy a new GM model.

Dang, I am starting to write like The Blond Crew Chief?!?!?!

Lastly, as easily as you can say that qualifying positions and wins do not matter, I can say that they do. If you would really like to discuss round wins, I would be more than happy.