Many years ago, one
of the best engine builders was a hot rodder named Gene Adams.
Gene was the “big cheese” at Hilborn Fuel Injection in Laguna
Beach, California (we used to call them Laguna Lean-outs). Gene
was very well known in the Southern California dragster
community. He always had fast dragsters and had some of the best
drivers too. Anyway, he needed some new headers (back then
everybody made their own out of kits) for his supercharged hemi
Chrysler powered dragster, and used the same header kits as
everyone else did in those days. These kits consisted of two
flanges and eight “zoomie tubes”. The flanges in the kits were
typically cut with a square port opening, as this was the normal
port configuration on the 392” hemi Chrysler cylinder head. Gene
was experimenting with some different port shapes and ported
some heads into a rounded port. Now, the header tubes all had a
“square end” to fit into the square hole in the flanges. Gene
cut some new flanges for himself with round port openings that
matched openings in the heads, and instead of buying or bending
all new tubes, he used the tubes he had and simply turned the
tubes around and welded the “round” end into the new flanges,
which left the “square” part at the end of the tube where the
“fire and noise” came out. Can everybody picture this so far?
Wouldn’t you know it, but the next weekend at Lions Drag Strip,
Gene’s new dragster, with Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen in the seat,
won the event (a 32-car field by the way) and set a new track
record.
The very next weekend, there was another big SoCal event, this
time at Irwindale. Everyone was there, and I noticed that there
were three or four dragsters with SQUARE ENDS WELDED ONTO THEIR
HEADERS.
Holy cow, Batman, monkey see, monkey do.
The good news about drag racing is that nothing has changed. You
still have to start from a standing start, accelerate for a ¼
mile, and beat the guy in the other lane. The bad news about
drag racing is that nothing has changed. It’s still monkey see,
monkey do.
Here is an example. I see some of the Pro 5.0 cars with 50 to 60
pounds of lead bolted to the extreme front end of the chassis.
This apparently is used to negate wheel stands and to better
balance the car. These same cars also have a 30 or 40 pound
battery in the extreme rear of the car. Why is this you may ask?
Simple. The car needs a battery and EVERYBODY installs the
battery in the rear. Now, what if, just as an experiment,
someone removed the 50 pounds of lead bars in the front end and
replaced them with…………..the battery? In fact, most of the cars
that I see with the lead weights in the front are usually about
50 pounds over their minimum weight anyway so ditching the extra
lead would make the car lighter.
Here is another example. Let’s say I want to run a turbocharged
Outlaw Mustang, and so, I look around at what the other guys are
doing. They are mounting the turbocharger (or turbochargers) in
the nose of the car, about a foot and a half in front of the
front wheels. Have you ever picked up a turbocharger? It’s at
least 50-pounds. And if I mount two of them up there, that’s at
least a 100+ pounds in the extreme front of the car, in a class
that doesn’t permit much engine setback (stock firewall
location), and requires me to run on a 10.5 tire. To say that
this car will be nose heavy is an understatement, and the only
way I will be able to balance the thing out in order to get down
the track, is to add a bunch of ballast in the rear of the car.
Now, I have a car with a 2500 freakin’ horsepower, that is 100
to 200 pounds overweight and probably too heavy to run any
decent numbers on anything less than a “perfect track”, which if
I’m lucky, will happen once a year.
The reason that I’m going to set my Outlaw Mustang up exactly
this way is because that’s what EVERYBODY ELSE is doing.
Well, maybe not everybody. I’m thinking about a certain black
hatchback that is doing it differently, but I digress.
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is, don’t do what everybody
else is doing, just because everybody else is doing it. THINK.
Think outside the box. Don’t follow what others are doing as if
you were on autopilot. The chances are that the guy you are
following, has been following someone else, who was following
someone else, who was following someone else who once welded
little square tips on the end of his header pipes, just because
Gene Adams happened to have some header pipes laying around and
didn’t want to buy some new ones with round openings on both
ends.
