Gotta be one of the weirdest Top Fueler ever built...!

He was just one of many that tried jacks.....

 

True, there were on the Jahn's Bros car, as noted, but the first guy who ran them was Creighton Hunter, with his sidewinder slingshot, called the "slice of pie" because of its pie-shaped body, unfortunately it crashed and Hunter spent some sheet time.

Busby was often the innovator...he lived down the street from me in Pasadena, and I went to Pasadena High with Hank Westmoreland...Busby also ran the former Stellings and Hampshire "Red Stamp" car, after re-framing it.

 

I'm thinking that Art Malone played with a compressed air car somewhere around 1972

 

What happens if you backfire a compressed air set-up?

 

Any worse than sneezing on nitro? Don't know, and since it was banned, we'll
never find out.

 

------------------
Nothing. Air isn't flammable and unlike
inside a Roots blower case, there's no fuel
being mixed with the compressed air inside
the storage tank. Besides not having to use
power from the engine to drive a blower to
compress the fuel-air mixture, safety, due
to the elimination of blower explosions was
one of the claimed advantages of the set up.

Mart3406
========================

 

I see Hank Westmorland occasionaly and will have to ask him about this car .

 

Guess I dont need to dig out those pics now...

 

Jack Chrisman also raced a sidewinder, cammer powered funnycar in '71, think there was a challenger sidewinder F/C around the same time. Tony mopar might be right about Art Malone too, I seem to recall him playing with the compressed air thing.

 

Around 1970 I saw E.J. Potter run his SB Chevy powered bike. My friend and I talked to him a little. No surprise that he looked at the world a little different than most, but he also seemed to be a really nice guy. Although there was some sort of clutch on the bike, he launched as you described. The rear tire was elevated on a center-type stand located at the rear, the tire was spun up, then the the bike was rolled off the stand. Potter relied on wheelspin and said the bike got scary anytime the tire started to hook up.

I wouldn't have remembered it, but that sounds familiar.

 

---------------------
With a Hilborn injected SBC in a bike
frame, I don't doubt that one bit!!!!
Scary spinning and *even more scary*
whenever it threatened to hook!

Mart3406
========================

 

I thought I had that posted in the very beginning but if not,it came out of the Jan '71 issue of Hot Rod.

 

Awesome update...thanks for that information!

 

heres another M/T oddity, from an earlier era.

 

I saw E.J. Potter here in CT in the early 70's..He used a G60 street tire, said that a slick would only last one run and the street tire would do four but I imagine there was more chance of a "hook"..He would get tow started, disconnect the drive and roll into stage deep so that when he put it up on the stand [slight roll back] it would be staged with both lights on..He would connect the drive and bring the R's up, the lights would come down and he would roll it forward off the stand and away he'd go!! Smoked the tire pretty much the whole quarter, high 140's @ low 10's...What impressed me was that he staged about a foot from the edge of the track and ran the whole quarter there; next three p***es were a tire width over..Just something to see, there's got to be a video somewhere..I believe HRM did a story on him in the 70's..

 

That thing, Garlits car, had more gears hanging on the side of it LOL nope no chains

 

""Just something to see, there's got to be a video somewhere""

http://www.google.com/search?source...-8&rlz=1T4GUEA_enUS405US405&q=ej+potter+video

 

An interesting thing about that bike; there were conventional drag bikes that were faster. They just weren't as exciting, awesome, or outrageous. A friend of mine was running a nitro burning dual engine drag bike in the late 60s at a track where Potter was appearing. The track owner tried to set-up a race between my friend and Potter. Knowing his bike was slower, Potter wisely declined. There would be nothing gained for him to have holes poked in the aura and mystique surrounding his bike.

When I talked to E.J. he mentioned a time the throttle on his bike stuck on. The incident was also mentioned in a book he wrote a number of years ago. To avoid going even faster, and eventually going into the woods, he rolled off the bike onto the track going 120MPH. Although that was his only good option, I doubt a lot of people would have had the balls to do it. You would be inclined to ***ume he was a high energy maniac, but he was actually soft spoken, introspective, and somewhat shy.

The one I am thinking of was built by a school as I remember. I'm pretty sure Garlits test drove it. It definitely had a big, wide "silent" cam drive-type chain. If I remember correctly the clutch was on the axle shaft instead of on the engine.

 

Garlits "Sidewinder" 1982.....

 

Thanks for the pics. I don't remember that car. Per my earlier post, the one I remember had the axle shaft running through the valley of the engine!!

 

Did a google search, apparently Art Malones air car is in the Garlits museum.

 

Wow, I learnt much more than I expected from this thread. Thank you very much to those who put in such informative posts.

 

Rad thread. Cool info that I didn't know about on here.

 

This car showed up at the 2000 CHRR at Famoso with twin SBC,,,,YUCK

 

------------------
Hmmm?? I wonder what the going price is
for a matched pair of 255-inch Ford DOHC
Indy V8s nowadays??? Anybody here with
*really deep pockets* wanna' track this car
down, buy it and "restore" it??!!!

Mart3406
=====================

 

About 15 years ago I bid on an Offy engine that was for sale. I didn't get the engine, but I learned a little about old race stuff. At one time obsolete race stuff generally wasn't worth much. Nostalgia and vintage racing changed that. Due to rarity, today people fix things that would have been discarded years ago. And in some cases expensive but available replacements are now available for parts last made many decades ago. Based on all that I would guess a Ford/Foyt Indy V-8 would be pretty expensive these days.

 

I'm serious...the knowledge here on this board amazes me.

 

Why we're here ain't it?

 

The Art Malone compressed air car is in Garlits' museum. It is also a sidewinder, with the axle through the engine. Regards, Chase