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Photo: Courtesy of Sharkman
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A New car for 2005 including new PSI blower and fuel system, change of ratio’s in the Lenco and that new body?
History broken Steph Milam now fastest female in UK.
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In basic terms, a drag race is an acceleration contest from a standing
start between two vehicles over a measured distance at a specially
designed drag race facility. The accepted standard for that distance
is either a quarter-mile or an eighth-mile.
These contests are started by means of an electronic device commonly
called a “Christmas Tree.” Upon leaving the starting line,
each contestant activates a timer which is, in turn stopped when the
same vehicle reaches the finish line
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Standing
start between two vehicles.
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clocking is the vehicle’s E.T. (elapsed time), which serves to
measure performance and often serves to determine handicaps during competition. |
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The
funny car’s roots go back to America in the ‘sixties’ and
the short lived involvement of the major car manufacturers who,
at one time, realised that success on the drag strip sold cars to
the public. Fierce competition on the match race circuit (a nationwide
tour of drag strips) led to the construction of more and more outrageous
machines, to the extent that they went beyond the existing rules
and eventually received the FX or ‘Factory Experimental’ designation,
although by this time the factories had ‘officially’ withdrawn.
The cars, although still using steel body shells (albeit the outer
panels only) had evolved through tubular chassis, injected then
super-charged motors and exotic fuels and sometimes blatant body
modifications which earned them the title ‘funny car’
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The
mould for Funny Cars was cast in 1965 with the introduction of the
Chrysler
built altered wheel base Dodges and Plymouths.
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The
first car we had was an Austin A30 into which we shoehorned a 390cu
Ford engine (about 7 litres). We raced this from 1985 to 89 and
had limited success and ran a best of 11.86. |
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We
then purchased the old Ratcatcher front engine dragster from
Kev Perkins and Rob Loring. Our spare Ford 390 engine was fitted
and with new paint work the first She Devil Car emerged.
It
was about the time we bought the funny car chassis, l know the
year was 1988 but whether it was on Dave’s Birthday or our
wedding anniversary? I can’t quite remember.
The
dragster did us proud for many years but we decided as the times
were coming down the chassis needed updating, so we built a new
longer one, still fitted with the faithful 390 Ford engine. But
we just couldn’t get it to run in the 8’s it did a
best of 9.019.
Over
the years we accumulated loads of parts for our “Fuel Altered” yes!
that was the first idea but it sort of went out of the window
during the nineties and Methanol Funny car seemed more appealing,
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of the items we had bought was the ex Turner Racing 392 Chrysler
Hemi from their altered, Dave and crew man Martin did loads of
work and put that in the dragster. That made it run in the eight’s,
a best ever of 8.22 at 167.99 mph. |
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Then
began the biggest step of our lives the Funny car! We
had thought that it would be as easy to run as the dragster.
How wrong can you be? A Lenco and clutch is a very different animal
to a Powerglide, and as at the time the only other methanol cars
running in the UK were
dragsters (and cars really do know where the engine is!) we were in for
a very long hard learning curve.
We
did get a lot of advise some good, some bad and some that made
a big difference, like when Lex Joon walked into the pit and took
one look at the clutch set up and said that won’t work,
and proceeded to give us a baseline to work on. Eventually after
analysing all the information we set about working on our own
tune up and
hopefully, have started going in the right direction.
But
we are still learning how to improve performance, how to drive
better and how the crew work together on the servicing of the
car. |
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