Drag racers blast Cruisin' Grand

By: QUINN EASTMAN - Staff Writer | Friday, August 26, 2005 10:27 PM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- Fire-breathing dragons of yesteryear came to downtown Escondido on Friday evening, in the form of vintage drag-racing cars. Occupying center stage at Cruisin' Grand, Escondido's weekly mobile classic car show, were nine "slingshot" front-engine drag racers from the 1960s, powerful and dangerous.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Pat Barry, an Escondido resident originally from Ireland. "It's amazing the care and attention they pay to detail."

The cars on display were restored, and in some cases reassembled, after their parts were dispersed across the country, said Bill Pitts, the organizer of the show.

Also on hand were a modern rear-engine Top Fuel dragster from the team of racing legend Don "The Snake" Prudhomme and a "funny car." A funny car looks like a souped-up street car with an especially fluorescent and aerodynamic fiberglass shell, but has a huge engine and accelerates almost as fast as the pared-down Top Fuel cars.

"These were the quickest, baddest cars on the planet," said Pitts. "Their history was too spectacular for them to die or even stay quiet."

They certainly did not stay quiet. Although the 1960s' drag racers were not scheduled to start their notoriously thunderous engines until presstime, a preview of the noise to come came at 6:30 p.m., when the engine of the funny car started up. A swarm of people had already gathered and about half of them put their fingers in their ears.

Every once in a while, the driver would tap the gas. Wincing, the crowd was reminded that the combination of blast and gurgle they heard was merely an idle.

"That wasn't hardly going at all!" laughed Escondido resident Bob Coleman.

Beforehand, racers and fans from across the western United States mingled and gawked.

"Stormin' Norman" Weekly, part of the racing group called the Frantic Four ---- along with Ron Rivero, Dennis Holding and Jim Fox ---- met old friends and prepared to start up Weekly's restored car.

Weekly started racing in 1962 and now attends about a dozen vintage drag racing events like "Cacklefest" in Bakersfield a year. This year is the second appearance of the drag racers at Cruisin' Grand.

Not much more than an engine lifted out of a Chevrolet or Chrysler, a transmission, fat tires, and gas tank, the front-engine "slingshots" represent a transition period between the beginning of hot rodding in the 1950s and the modern designs used today.

The front-engine Top Fuel design was mostly abandoned in the 1970s in favor of rear-engine cars because of safety and stability, racers said.

As advances in technology increased the power of the engines, driving a car that put only a few feet between the engine and the driver's crotch became more and more dangerous.

"I preferred driving the front-engine cars, probably because that's how I started out," said Weekly, who drove both kinds of dragster. "But with the rear-engine cars you didn't have to worry as much about catching on fire, for example," he said.

After a 1970 transmission explosion in Long Beach tore off part of respected driver Don Garlits' foot and severely injured some spectators, Garlits introduced a rear-engine design that was adopted by other drag racers.

Top Fuel racers have continued to gain in power since then, according to Rick MacDonald, who maintains the "Magicar," one of the cars in the show.

Today's Top Fuel cars have engines putting out up to 8,000 horsepower, compared with 1,600 to 1,800 in the 1960s. Modern cars use between 14 and 18 gallons per quarter-mile race, compared with three or four gallons 40 years ago, he said.

Both modern and 1960s racers use nitromethane, a fuel made specially for drag racing that costs about $16 per gallon.

Not to be confused with dentists' laughing gas, nitrous oxide, nitromethane provides extra power because it already has oxygen to burn as part of the fuel.

The fire that comes from the exhaust pipes of drag racing cars appears because the special fuel does not burn as quickly as gasoline, according to the National Hod Rod Association Web site.

In engines designed for gasoline, there isn't enough time to burn all the nitromethane between the spark plug firing and when the exhaust valve opens.

So the engine is pumping still burning nitromethane into the exhaust pipe, and out into the Escondido night.

"The old 1960s' engines were basically straight out of someone's car, with some extra parts added on," said MacDonald. "Now, everything is different; every part is optimized."

Contact staff writer Quinn Eastman at (760) 740-5412 or qeastman@nctimes.com.

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