Dragster (car)

An early example, a 1958 Fuel rail), on display at the California Automobile Museum

A dragster is a specialized competition automobile used in drag racing.

Dragsters, also commonly called "diggers", can be broadly placed in three categories, based on the fuel they use: Gas (gasoline), Alcohol (methanol), and Fuel (a mixture of gasoline and nitromethane). They are most commonly single-engined, though twin-engined designs did race in the 1950s and 1960s.

The design of dragsters evolved from the front-engined rail (named for the exposed frame rails) of the earliest days of drag racing, into the "slingshot" (with the driver between or behind the rear tires, or "slicks") of the early to middle 1960s, to the "modern" type common in the 1970s

History

The front engine dragster came about due to engines initially being located in the car's frame in front of the driver. They did not use (and current types still do not use) any form of suspension. Because of this, they are prone to becoming unstable at speed. This is due to their making 2,000–3,000 hp (1,491–2,237 kW), plus having poor tire technology, short wheelbases, and very light weight. (This was demonstrated to extremes in the Fuel Altereds.) The driver sits angled backward, over the top of the differential in a cockpit situated between the two rear tires, a design originating with Mickey Thompson in 1954, as a way of improving traction.^[1] This position led to many drivers being maimed when catastrophic clutch failures occurred.^[2]

Introduced with the start of organized drag racing, slingshots were limited by the availability of traction from their rear tires or "slicks". A number of dragsters with four rear drive wheels were attempted as well, including cars by Art Chrisman (along with his brother, Lloyd, and partner Frank Cannon), Bill Coburn,^[3] and Eddie Hill.^[4] (Coburn and the Chrisman brothers used twin engines, also.)^[3]

The slingshot produced a number of fatal wrecks in the 1960s, including Mike Sorokin's and John Mulligan's (months after suffering severe burns in a fire at the Nationals in 1969). Clutches, bellhousings, blowers, and engines exploded, with e.t.s hitting 6.43 seconds by the end of 1969; that record pass was set by Mulligan to qualify #1 at the Nationals. Other accidents included a flip (what today would be called "blowover") by Jim Nicoll at the 1970 Nationals after a clutch failure.^[5]

The slingshot's advantages, putting weight over the rear tires, now served to cause the front end to lift, as tire technology improved, to the point ballast, sometimes hundreds of pounds worth, had to be added over the front axle,^[6] while others, like Ronnie Scrima (on his Scrimaliner) and Tony Nancy, would mount a winglet. ^[7]

The drawbacks led to several attempts at rear-engined cars. On March 8, 1970, at Lions Drag Strip,^[8] Garlits was driving Swamp Rat XIII, also called the Wynnscharger, a slingshot rail, when the vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure, and the car broke in half in front of the cockpit.^[9]

Garlits' accident was like many in the 1960s, and his new design followed several other pioneer designs of rear-engined dragsters (and funny cars, including Doug Thorley's and Dave Bowman’s^[10]), among them Steve Swaja's AA/Gas Wedge I from 1963, Roger Lindwall's 1966 Top Fuel Re-Entry, and Dave Miller's Drag Wedge (for Andy Granatelli, sponsored by STP) and Kent Fuller's fueller Sidewinder III, both in 1969.^[11][12]

The rear-engine design proved its worth in 1970, when Dwayne Ong's Glmore-chassised Pawnbroker won the American Hot Rod Association Summernats in Long Island, New York, the first national event win for a rear-engined car, with a pass of 6.83 at 219 mph (352 km/h).^[13]

Garlits returned to Pomona with a brand new mid-engined car, Swamp Rat XIV, in 1971.^[14] At first, the rodding magazines considered the disadvantages of the new design "obvious". Swamp Rat XIV, however, was so successful in 1971, Garlits won two of his next three Top Fuel Eliminator titles (the Winternats and Bakersfield), and was runner-up at Lions, all in the new car.^[15]

Rear engine dragsters have since become the standard dragster design.^[16]

Depending on the class they run in, dragsters can be injected or supercharged (or turbocharged), with a variety of possible engines. The engines are most often derived from automobiles'; some early examples used surplus aircraft engines. Today, they may also be electric.

Dragsters are distinct from "bodied" cars such as funny cars and gassers, as well as from altereds.

Historic cars

• 

  Smokin' White Owl built by George "Ollie" Morris in 1954
  1954 — first slingshot, built by Mickey Thompson.^[17]
• 1954 — Smokin' White Owl, built by George "Ollie" Morris, first purpose-built rear-engined dragster and first car to use a Chevrolet V8 engine.^[18][19]
• 1962 — the Greer-Black–Prudhomme digger, with the best win record in NHRA history.^[20]
• 1971 — Swamp Rat XIV (or Swamp Rat 1-R), first successful rear-engined dragster, built by Don Garlits;^[21] Ed Donovan introduces the 417 Donovan hemi, an aluminum copy of the Chrysler^[22]

Notes

Source

• Taylor, Thom. "Beyond the Twilight Zone" in Hot Rod Magazine, April 2017, pp.30-43.
• Hot Rod, 12/86, p.29 sidebar