Transporting dragster

block or bladder

Something has to brace the car underneath. The surefire way to tie the car down is to build a block to go under the chassis at the motor plate, then strap the car down right over that block after letting the air out of the rear tires. The car still needs to be strapped down the conventional way either using axle straps to the framerails in the rear. One small ratchet strap somewhere in the nose area is sufficient. The car rides on the block this way and is strapped down to that block, eliminating flex.

A lot of teams have went to air bladder chassis savers. When we used one of these on Jason Cannon's car, we had a block under the skid plate under the rear end, and used the bladder right in front of the seat on the x brace there. I would air the bladder up enough to raise the front end a few inches off the ground, stick the block under it to where it was fairly tight to get it in, then let the air out of the front to let the front end just dangle, basically barely touching the ground. We used straps over the rear tires and one strap in the front.

Also a mistake I see made is people tighten the ratchet strap up too much before ratcheting. This doesn't give the strap much 'meat' in the ratchet area and is prone to coming loose. Leave some slack when you adjust your strap before ratcheting and get a few rolls of strap on the ratchet before locking down. This will help greatly in keeping the straps tight.

One thing you have to watch with the air bladder method is to make sure the air doesn't leak out of the bladder and the rear tires stay inflated to keep the straps tight.

At any rate, with any car I don't like going much more than 3 hrs without checking the car in the trailer.