Thread: Things That Ruined Drag Racing!

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John Force and the boys are about as real as drag racing can be!!!! Not all of them, especially Force, started out with multi-million dollar operations.... Bracket racing is fine, just remember you are racing yourself, the car in the other lane should be the least of your concerns. No limits???? Wouldn't work. You'd be picking up cars and drivers in a big fiery pile.... The nitro limits and cubic inch limits are there for safety concerns... Racing with no limits would leave 99% of us sitting at home on the weekend becuase we wouldn't be competitive. Manual transmissions are inherently faster then automatics based on less drag and less rotating mass. The illusion is that manual transmissions are not as consistent as automatics, but as I've said before then why do the Pro Stockers seem to be able to repeat times to within a few hundreths round after round?????

Racing with the money out of your back pocket makes you no more or less of a drag racer then a heavily sponsored pro car. All it means is that you compete at a different level....

Dave you need to check out the modern day PS tranny/clutch. They have more in common with the typical automatic than one of your M20's.

Originally Posted by Mike in Motown

Dave you need to check out the modern day PS tranny/clutch. They have more in common with the typical automatic than one of your M20's.

Haven't run an M20 in 25 years.... Much prefer Liberty's, Lenco's, the old Doug Nash Comp trannies and the like.... No idea what a PS tranny clutch is..... Many years ago there were Clutchflites, something along that line or?????

Originally Posted by Mike in Motown

Dave you need to check out the modern day PS tranny/clutch. They have more in common with the typical automatic than one of your M20's.

Pro Stocks usually run Lenco, Liberty or G-Force five-speed clutchless manual transmissions. Multi-disc clutch to get off the line and trannys that can be shifted on the fly w/o the clutch. Sorta' like what Dave mentioned.

Originally Posted by pro70z28

Pro Stocks usually run Lenco, Liberty or G-Force five-speed clutchless manual transmissions. Multi-disc clutch to get off the line and trannys that can be shifted on the fly w/o the clutch. Sorta' like what Dave mentioned.

Ya i was obviously overstating the comparison to auto's. Point is they're not quite the bang boxes that are run on the street. What Dave says is true 'sort of'. Theres a few guys at sac that run amazingly consistent with manual transmissions and I honestly dont think I could ever get to their level of repeatability with so many added variables compared to an auto.

Big thing to get consistency in a manual trans is to do the same thing every lap. The same length burnout, out of the water the same every time, etc. Consistency on shift rpm is actually easier with a stick, no converter slippage to worry about, or shifting early to get engagement at the rpm you want. With a five speed, I can also keep the engine in peak torque a lot longer during the run. I always chassis dyno my cars before going to the track so I know exactly what range to keep the revs in. If I want to have more or less time in a particular gear, it's also quite easy to change gear ratios in the transmission. With all the good clutches and boxes, consistency with a stick is no longer the problem it was. I guess it depends on what you get used to and how much practice you want to put in.... Oh yeah, I also run with a pair of headsets and a "beeper box" off the tach that beeps at a preset RPM shift point so watching the tach is no longer an issue. That, along with a two step rev limiter will make any car regardless of trans type more consistent....

This talk brings back memory of an guy at a test day at Famoso back around 1998. It was at the end of the day and this really old guy is making lap after lap without cooling down in a mach 1 stang. Car looked like it wasnt set up too well and launched really violently. It seemed as if he was sidestepping the clutch at full throttle. Front wheels up with a pronounced frame twist and hard landings that seemed to unload the rear tires. The front wheels were bump steered into flapping like wings, all this with a noticeable weave of two to three feet left to right all the way down the track. Im sure everyone has witnessed this scene before but what made it odd was the scoreboard. 11.02, 11.03, 11.02, 11.04, 11.05 all with .010-.020 lights!!!!
Now that right there wins most small time non E bracket races around here.

There ya go Mike....and as they say, "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and exhuberance".........

nothing ruins drag racing. you can have a bad moment but not a bad time.

Im ruining drag racing!

My NHRA fantasy pics last race dropped me from the top ten percent down to the top THIRTY percent. Im now in a whopping four thousand and something or other place.

grrrr.......

Well, better pics this week have me back in the top ten percent, yey.

No offense to the drag racers on here, but it really is getting to close to having the computers actually race the car. All they need is a color sensitive trigger to release the trans brake and just enough control to keep it moving in a straight line, and you could have computer driven drag cars winning bracket races easily.

Originally Posted by Tommycat

No offense to the drag racers on here, but it really is getting to close to having the computers actually race the car. All they need is a color sensitive trigger to release the trans brake and just enough control to keep it moving in a straight line, and you could have computer driven drag cars winning bracket races easily.

Will that be before or after our cars drive themselves down the highway???? There are "non electronic" brackets, too.....

my friend and i raced a 65 stang in G GAS here in the old div 7 in 1975. becouse we had a ford boss 302 in the car we had a weight factor added becouse of the canted valves. so lets see a chev had the nat record and most of the cars were running a chevy engine. yeat the ford had the weigh more. we held our own ran 10.67 on a 10.61 index. until the last race in utah [which we did not go to] we were 7 th in the points in div 7. for a back yard car [most of the cars then] we did pretty good ,we were runner up [first looser] at the div 7 points meet at fremont that year. i think dave preston in a VW beat us in the final. he turned a 10.80 on a 11.20 index. i just did not understand the weight thing on a ford that did not dominate the class. lost interest in NHRA. NHRA made it big time so i guess they had the right idea.

Originally Posted by greanmeany1

my friend and i raced a 65 stang in G GAS here in the old div 7 in 1975. becouse we had a ford boss 302 in the car we had a weight factor added becouse of the canted valves. so lets see a chev had the nat record and most of the cars were running a chevy engine. yeat the ford had the weigh more. we held our own ran 10.67 on a 10.61 index. until the last race in utah [which we did not go to] we were 7 th in the points in div 7. for a back yard car [most of the cars then] we did pretty good ,we were runner up [first looser] at the div 7 points meet at fremont that year. i think dave preston in a VW beat us in the final. he turned a 10.80 on a 11.20 index. i just did not understand the weight thing on a ford that did not dominate the class. lost interest in NHRA. NHRA made it big time so i guess they had the right idea.

They are doing the same thing in P/S Bike right now!