HAMB drags near miss

QUOTE=milwscruffy;5573914]For this to happen and not check into how things are done at tech and the track would be foolish in my book. You basicly got luckier than hell and all eveyone is worried about is attitudes and damage. If someone would have gotten badly hurt or killed, what would the focus be on then ? You got your one free pass, learn from it and move on.[/QUOTE]


Attitudes are important because they helpdefine who we are & they help shape our actions.

Look into it? This is what we are doing. Discussing this on a public forum to learn & make changes.

So which is it? get it out in the open, or take my "free pass" & move on?



And to the fellow who asked if the driver should "apologize over the loud speaker"?

No, He needs to press the flesh so to speak. Make the rounds. Personally.

I think that most folks here know that I accept the risks of an event like this. We all know that this was an accident, but that thing missed my head by about 5 feet. My (almost imediate) concern (after feeling to make sure my head was still attached & I had no new holes) was for the saftey of the driver. Yet he shows no concern about how others made out in this deal? I am not suggesting he doesn't HAVE the concerns. Just irritated he hasn't expressed it. (I don't mean apologize either, this was after all, an accident.) I understand the driver/crew was likely shaken up, I would assume it would be because they were worried about others. Instead, their attitude was as if this was an everyday thing. I know this because I watched em load the trailer. I was there.

 

Attitudes are important because they helpdefine who we are & they help shape our actions.

Look into it? This is what we are doing. Discussing this on a public forum to learn & make changes.

So which is it? get it out in the open, or take my "free pass" & move on?



And to the fellow who asked if the driver should "apologize over the loud speaker"?

No, He needs to press the flesh so to speak. Make the rounds. Personally.

I think that most folks here know that I accept the risks of an event like this. We all know that this was an accident, but that thing missed my head by about 5 feet. My (almost imediate) concern (after feeling to make sure my head was still attached & I had no new holes) was for the saftey of the driver. Yet he shows no concern about how others made out in this deal? I am not suggesting he doesn't HAVE the concerns. Just irritated he hasn't expressed it. (I don't mean apologize either, this was after all, an accident.) I understand the driver/crew was likely shaken up, I would assume it would be because they were worried about others. Instead, their attitude was as if this was an everyday thing. I know this because I watched em load the trailer. I was there.[/QUOTE]


AMEN.

 

amen.[/quote]x 2

 

I wasn't there. I have built a HA/GR car and ran it a couple times with a 4 speed a cast flywheel and stock clutch. Looking into making it legal and safe convinced me to install an automatic instead. It was much cheaper and faster too.
A tech inspector cannot verify that every car has a s.f.i. flywheel and clutch. I'll bet many of the stick shift cars at the HAMB drags didn't. Nor did they have currently certified bellhousings, etc. Tech inspectors can only do so much in the time allotted.

The owner of the HA/GR car is recovering from a serious illness. The car has been for sale for for a long time and he was not at the event. He hasn't posted on the HAMB for many months. I don't know who drove the car but it is a fair assumption he and the crew with him are not active HAMB members. That would be a reason for not responding on this or other threads.
Regarding the HA/GR rules: The rules made up by the HAMB founder and members do not encompass everything NHRA requires. There are numerous additional requirements to be found in the NHRA rulebook. The HAMB rules are fine in terms of defining the appearance and period elements of the car. The NHRA rules make it legal and safe, and substantially take away from the desired period appearance. That can't be helped.
A home made scattershield in cases where a commercial s.f.i. bellhousing is not available for a given engine, is supposed to be attached to the frame, not the engine, per my NHRA rulebook.
Since I wasn't there I can't comment on the behavior/concern expressed by the driver and crew. 2b Banjo, another HA/GR competitor was there and has espressed how he saw it. If you are intesested in his viewpoint, go to the HAMB Drag Nationals forum. Or, you can just stay here and keep piling up the opinions.

 

I wasn't there so I can't really speculate, but I sure don't like what I see in attitudes here. Shit happens at racetracks. You look at what happened and learn from it, fix what you can and move on. On BOTH sides. Racer and fan. A flywheel or clutch explosion is a pretty big shock, and knowing shit was flying thru the crowd would tend to affect your state of mind too. By the same token, getting scaired by flying pieces and damage to your truck is a bit more of an experience than you were expecting. Welcome to the real world not affected by the remote control channel changer or the ESPN comentator. Luckily no one was hurt so hopefully people will calm down, see how best to make sure nobody gets hurt in the future and move on.

 

OK, I know it says Newbie under my name, but I'm going to weigh in here. I think the best way...the ONLY way to approach this situation, is to treat it as if it wasn't a "near miss" you have to treat it as if someone DID get hurt. Because let's be honest, if that flywheel had held together a split second longer, it may have been thrown into someone head instead of the truck.

I won't get into the HA/GR Rules, because I respect what Ryan was trying to do, but also understand people's arguements against the restrictions.... There don't seem to be any easy answers, but we're a smart bunch of guys...I'm sure we'll figure something out

 

You said it brother!

 

You can't fault the driver to much unless he built the car incorrectly. What should have happened was the car be inspected after wreck by tech, and if it failed then that person should be fined/barred. If not, it sucks but unfortunately it's a part of racing, and no matter how traumatic is must have been for your truck to get hit.. imagine sitting ontop of the grenade as it exploded. How far were his limbs from said parts? He almost had his legs ripped off. To rip on the guy for clamning up after a near death experience isn't right at all. For those of you that sit on the side lines and don't race it's easy to predict how you'd react..but until you in-case your self in moving parts, and sit your ass on a pumpkin for 1320', only then can you come back and talk about how you would react when you're car rips apart all around you.

Personally I've had stuff go wrong in my door slammers, and that was quit a bit of an experience for me, having things go wrong in a fed.... ...no thanks.

 

Let's face it: when this thing started no one was breaking the sound barrier. Every year the cars are getting faster and faster. I think the rules and the tech inspections need to be stepped up to compensate for that. If you're gonna run like it's the NHRA, you gotta abide by the NHRA rules.

Personally I'd like to see less of the serious race cars and more of the street cars running for fun, but I know I'm in the minority on that one so I say if it's going to be a serious drag race, treat it like a serious drag race!

 

DW & GRITS,

"So which is it? get it out in the open, or take my "free pass" & move on?"

The point i was trying to make is that you already have had your free pass, LUCKILY. Yes, get this out in the open and try like hell to get to the bottom of this. You guys are putting your ass on the line which i respect. I just hate to see a lot of time and effort go down the drain due to something that might be able to be fixed and learned by. I'm not trying to cause a pissing contest here, only trying to show you my perspective. I've had stuff break at the top end and the only thing i cared about doing was changing my shorts and quit shaking. Talking wasn't an immediate option.

 

Exactly no one thought people would get crazy and start throwing thousands of dollars into their motors. The Spirit is broke when people get rods and shit made for the motors. But this isnt about the usual thing that ruins stuff.

All that this thread was for was awareness, and talking about how it would have been nice to have been acknowledged that it happend. And if the driver and crew did hear about it... A man would have at least come over to check on the situation.

 

Bullshit...

That was clear in the very first Thread about these.

( Grimlok's Parasite Thread )

A couple of pages in. the writing was on the wall that this was going to be a class for the Streetrodders.
To re-write history.


Anyway...

If you can afford to make an old inline perform like that, you can afford to have a steel or aluminum flywheel carved for it...

 

I have to agree that these cars don't need to be unsafe to be nostalgic. Hell, I have 3/16" steel plate floors, firewall, and driveshaft tunnel in my street car. There should be no excuse for unsafe equipment.

 

You went to public school didn't ya? Let me explain it to ya in words that a 6th grader can understand. He evidently has no people skills.

Sure I could do the right thing and call him bad names on the internet, but at this point I could do the same for you. But I'll just save it for when I see ya.


Just to put things in perspective:

This year at the Nats in Topeka a fella blew up a flopper, about half track.
Parts of the body headed towards the stands. No one whatsoever checked to see if everyone was all right. Not track officials, not the driver, not the wrench that tweaked it in the staging lanes or the owner or the guy selling hot dawgs. Did any pieces make it into the stands? Who knows no one complained.

I'll take it a little farther for ya. I didn't notice the fella out of his car seeing if the driver of the other funny car, the one he banged into was hurt either.

Now you want more from an amature than you would expect from a professional.


That's just the way it is. Its racing.

 

I have been thinking about this since it happened, as I was one of the guys in the mix. This is about attitude. We are all out here to have a good time, see friends we haven't seen, and race. The problem was because rules were not followed (rule #19 in the HA/GR rules in this case calls for a 1/4 inch thick steel scatter shield) which caused a catastrophic failure by the HA/GR car during a race. It would have prevented this whole thing. We were all ignored at the HA/GR pit when we asked questions about car parts, etc. When you ask a man a question and he turns and walks away, ignoring you like you weren’t there, it has the tendency to piss anyone off – as it did us! It was like they were trying to hide something. As far as the mayhem of flying chunks of flywheel in our pit, thank God nobody was hurt. There’s always seems to be more than enough drama surrounding near-misses. And as far as a free pass on this one – we will take it! But Robert did not get one! Thanks to Ryan for stepping up to the plate and everyone else’s concern for the damage caused. But as I know Robert, he will not accept – because of the stand-up guy that he is. We all realize the risks we take when entering the front gates at the track – as we are all in this together. That’s what kind of event the HAMB DRAGS is – GREAT!!!!
Dennis

 

IMHO, Pork'n'Beaner is a voice of reason here.
This incident was an accident and fortunately NO ONE WAS INJURED. At this point this is a given.

So, do we continue to deal with "attitudes" or do we move to a more constructive discussion as to what happened, and why, and how to prevent it from happening in the future where the results might not be so forgiving?

I'm not dismissing the fact that it was a near miss, and I'm quite relieved that DW wasn't injured (nor anyone else), and maybe the driver IS a butthole, but as was said, we've had our free pass and now is the time to make the discussion count for safety the next time.

From reading what bobw posted, the guys running the car prolly didn't build it and more than likely couldn't answer the questions about how it was built and what happened and why. So rather than show their ignorance, they showed their butt.

 

Sometimes you need to step back and see if you figure out a way to make your car safer, for yourself and others using available tech that really doesn't change the car. For example when we built the flathead rail that is my avatar, we figured out how to use a Lakewood SBC full bellhousing scatter shield to mate the flatmotor to a truncated '55 Chev 3 speed (no tailshaft). Didn't require any loss of integrity in the Lakewood and made us feel a lot better with our legs down in that body! Plus it served as motor to trans adaptor. Just some junkyard measuring and discovery. Anyone running a flatmotor who wants to know how we did it, be glad to explain. In fact they ran it as a tech tip in the 90s in Rod and Custom based on our submission of pics. I post this to urge guys with older motors/race cars to look at possiblities of upgrading items like scattershields to later technology, without doing anything to the racecar to change against class rules. I am like a lot of older guys, you get to feel your mortality at some point and safety becomes important. Hell, we sold the car because my arthritis was so bad I couldn't get out of cage fast enough for my liking if I had an alky fire.

 

Would you answer to a bunch of randoms harassing you after you just avoiding having your limbs ripped from you? While everybody was in the benches this guy had a front row seat. Only person that guy should have been answering/talking to was the track tech, and the guys putting on the event. Not other racers/spectators. To get upset because he didn't respond to the lynch mob make no sense.

 

You are not going to be able ro real these cars back in, as long as some of the owners think they are building top fuel cars on white walls.

The template for these cars was supposed to be Dick Kraft's bug.




In appearence, performance, and cost, they are about a million miles away from that...


And again, it was clear from the very first Thread that they were going to go that way.

( the only thing that was surprising to me was the lack of restraint, and how quickliy it happened...)

 

wow! did anyone get it on video? glad no one was hurt.

 

This other incident you cite is likely the rule & Not the exception (sad to say) & I am not suprised it went down like that.

I guess most of us ARE suprised that it went down like that at this event because 90 percent on those in attendance know each other (even the hawt dog vendor haha). We aren't just a bunch of strangers gathering for a drag race.

Like you said though, it does put things into perspective. And you are correct, that IS just the way things go, it's racing, & not everybody is gonna be 100 percent golden all of the time.

I guess I'm just naive to expect better behavior from people. Even at an event as great as this.

 

Thinking maybe he had a little talk thanking the big guy upstairs. I know i would have.

 

was there & iam like everybody else .... Safety first . Thank god nobody got hurt or killed.
no way should a car run without the shield & more.
the end.

 

Mr. Beaner, you missed the whole point. Any one with a concious would have wanted to know if anyone was injured. BTW, I learned that way before the 6th grade.

 

Grits,you speak the truth.Anyone with common manners would have walked over to see if everybody was ok,and then asked if any damage had been done.FALFA

 

Let me see if I remember the history of this Class correctly....


- A Old School HAMB Guy came up with a cool idea, and started a Thread about it.
( maybe he was warned by how that Thread went, and he ended up not building one )

_ A School Teacher in Ca. drew up a comprehensive list of requirements.
( that was the extent of his involvement, he was not even there the first event to see them run )

- A group of Streetrodders took the class where it was never intened to go.



Based on that, and the willingness to pass the blame on to rulemakers and /or to move the class even farther away from its original intent ( Dick Kraft's Bug )

I'd turn my back on the whole deal.
( tell them to go play somewhere else.
Or at least untill they get serious about Policing themselfs...)


In my personal opinion, these things are not cool
not Traditional.
and not worth the Hassle...

 

I would imagine that "template" wouldn't be safe in the 18's @ 50 mph...

Mr. Kraft's car wasn't the end of evolution in drag racing, and neither would it's predecessors be in the reinvention of them. Here is why classes are born and die, and racing carries on. Does it honestly surprise anyone that racers want to go fast?!?
It's all fun and games until somebody wants to go faster...and faster, and...
but then, that IS what racing is. Time to step up the rules, or impede the cars, or destroy the class.

 

Just for the record, automatic transmissions can also throw shrapnel.

 

Yeah, yeah...

We've had that discussion already.


Many times...

 

i just sat here and read all this bullshit.

i see it really simple.

the guy was driving a race car at a race track. Robert and us all know damn well shit happens. i don't think the issue is that his car was built wrong, shitty parts, etc, the issue lies in the fact that after the accident, when approached by others he and his crew acted like dick heads. fuck the "lynch mob" scenario, I'm so shaken up. if a grown man asks you a fucking question you answer him, or expect more problems. I'm really glad that i wasn't there with dw and Robert when that went down, because they are my friends and i wouldn't tolerate bullshit like that.

people where standing in Robert and dennis's pit all day long , enjoying some fine fajitas along the fence. thankfully one was hurt.

as dw mentioned also, this event is alot different then a nhra event. and yes im sure if john force sent a part flying into capps's pit, at some point he would have gone over there.

again i don't think the issue was about the door, money, etc. more about sportsmanship, or lack of.

Robert and dennis's are both class acts and serious drag racers. they do this more then once a year at the hamb drags!

like stated in previous posts, the HA/GR idea was a good one with the base line rules laid out, but like anything it one takes one person to get outta hand and everyone has to keep up. the cars are too advanced for the equipment that they are allowed to run. so should Ryan change the rules, or should they follow them as guide lines? i say fuck em', if you cant follow directions , then you don't play. i personally would rather watch some more street cars run then those things anyways. let them do there own event, all 3 or 4 of them.