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

Hot Rod magazine,Jan '71...Jim Busby and driver Hank Westmoreland campaigned this wild twin V-16 Indy-motored creation on a 50% nitro load...on motors never designed to run nitro...before it blew up and almost burned to the ground at the Winternats that year...after it was voted the best engineered car.











Musta been quite the earful @ 10,500 rpms...!




Anyone ever remember seeing it run...?

 

great looking setup - sorry to hear of its 'nitro-induced' demise.

dj

 

what kind of horsepower would that thing put out?

 

I betcha it sounded incredible!

 

Twin V8's....and yes I heard it, the sound was "unique"......(only ran twice.)

 

Bet it was unique.

So outside of the '71 Winternats,where else did it run?

 

I rememeber seeing at the Winter Nats., didn't really pay much attention to it until he ran, sounded like a million hornets! So different from all the other cars.

 

Nice. That thing is sweet.

 

What are they?

Twin Indy DOHC engines?


pdq67

 

Exactly...

 

Sorry, have to disagree. Not even close. THIS was the weirdest TF ever built. Unfortunately, mixing wierd and nitro in sufficient quan***y can be fatal. And no, this is not photoshopped.

 

No,you're right...lol...I thought about changing my ***le right after posting.
I should have said "weirdest powerplants" because the ch***is was not unusual...certainly not like the car you posted or some of the other oddballs out there.

 

Yes another 4x4

 

NOT a T/F dragster. This was a Bonneville car, driven by Noel Black, (without body) He did some testing at drag strips, later killed at Bonneville (1970), NOT at a drag race.

 

musclecarjohn-very cool article.What magazine was this car featured in? thank you.

 

That's it! 2 p***es....one half track, and the second run in flames. (fuel leak.)
Engines were sold back to an Indy car team......

 

http://tommyivo.com/Cars/FourEnginedBuick/tabid/490/Default.aspx

4wd with front axle turning knuckles from a 1 ton 4wd WW2 USMC cargo truck, if not weird, unique.

 

It's a shame that T/F racing doesn't have room for much "weirdness" anymore, but for the most part I think I can understand why. Weirdness at 200 mph is one thing, but weirdness at 300+ mph is a whole different ball game!

 

What no pictures of TV Tommy's Show boat yet .

 

Did the the twin Ford cammer fueller run on nitro!?

OK, read it, 50%, geez!

 

Thanks, I would have liked to hear that monster.

 

Well, yes, you are correct, the car was just tested at drag strips, never ran as a T/F car. Gotta admit though, it WAS weird. About the only thing stranger to ever be seen on a dragstrip was that VW wheelstander that did the reverse wheelies...

I have never run there, and never will, so this is just armchair quarterbacking, but building a Bonneville car with such a high polar moment of inertia seems to be a recipe for disaster to my way of thinking.

 

----------------
Sorry, you're wrong about Busby's twin
Indy-Ford engined dragster meeting
it's demise by "blowing up" and "burning
to the ground". Never happened. He did
suffer a small fire (but definitely no engine
'blow-up') - at the Winternationals, that
did some minor damage, but that had
nothing to do with the demise of the car.
What actually did happen to the car is much
more interesting though. Busby built the car
on a whim, from an existing single engine Jr.
Fueler he had, when U.S.A.C. made a rule
change, that suddenly, overnight, obsoleted
a bunch of very high-dollar, 255-inch Ford
DOHC 'Indy' engines that several U.S.A.C
'Champ' teams were running. He caught
a deal on 6 of these now, suddenly "obsolete"
and "useless for U.S.A.C. compe***ion" race
engines, all fresh and ready to run, for
something like 2 grand for the lot. Not
knowing what to do with them, he got the
idea of stretching the wheelbase on his
single engine dragster out and sticking a
pair of them in that. The car was an absolute
sensation when it debuted in Jr. Fuel at the
'71 Winternationals and got all kinds of ink
in the car mags of day. Right after the car
ran at the Winternationals though, U.S.A.C
changed it's rules again - making the Ford
Indy engine once again a compe***ive
powerplant and thus, once again, worth very
big bucks. Busby got a call from the same
U.S.A.C. team that had sold him the lot of
6 engines a few months before for 2 grand
- and offered to buy them all back....for 10
grand each! Busby pulled the engines
from his dragster and along with the 4
spares, he sold them all back to the guys
he bought them from, for a quick, tidy
profit of $58,000. That wouldn't be too
shabby a deal even now, but in '71,
$58,000 would be like a 150 grand or
more today. After that, the now
engineless dragster ch***is was sold
too and has long since vanished.

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

 

I always wondered what happened to that car. Nice to hear the entire story.

Another weird top fuel engine I remember and never heard of again was one that carried high pressure scuba-type tanks as an air supply. Although the engine itself was a standard issue hemi, rather than having a blower, pressurized air from the tanks was metered to the engine via a surplus valve originally built for a NASA rocket engine. If I remember correctly two different cars were built using that set-up.

Another hemi powered but strange car was the one with a sideways mounted hemi between the rear wheels. The axle shaft ran in one end of the engine and out the other, through the valley of the engine. There was a slider clutch. The engine drove the axle shaft via chain. It didn't work out. I believe the chain was the car's fatal flaw. I believe the car was named Sidewinder, and was tested for the builder by Don Garlits.

 

--------------------
I believe the dragster that used the
onboard compressed air tank instead of
a conventional blower was one of Mickey
Thompson's weird and wonderful creations.
I'm not sure if it either didn't work, or if
NHRA banned it, but nobody seems to
have tried a similar set-up since.

About the 'sidewinder' car you mentioned.
A few of that type were built and run by
several different teams in the early and
mid-60's but none of them seemed to work
as well as the conventional front engine
'slingshot' dragsters of the time and the
sidewinders all quickly faded from the
scene. One of the more bizarre set-ups
ever used on one of those chain-drive
'sidewinder' dragsters (I can't remember
which one) used a set of of ch***is-mounted
hydraulic jacks instead of a conventional
clutch to launch the car! To stage the car,
the jacks would be extended to lift the
rear wheels clear of the pavement. The
driver would then hit the throttle to get
the tires rotating and when he wanted to
go, would open a valve to collapse the
jacks and drop the spinning tires onto to
pavement!!!

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

 

This one?

<CENTER>[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Owned by Don Coleman it was built in 1962 by Don & Terry Cook, Jeff Jahns and Pete Hedges. It was powered by a stroked 1955 Dodge (297") and had no clutch, drive shaft or differential. A chain drive directly turned the rear axles. It was held on the line by built-in compressed air jacks, small metal wheels that were released by valve action when the starter dropped the flag. The 12" front wheel was from an English Ford and it had a foot brake for the rear dual discs in the rear. [/SIZE]</CENTER>

 

Yes, and yes. M/T actually tried it on a boss 429 powered funnycar. i have photos somewhere, i will see if I can find them and post them.

 

Here ya go.....(written by Terry Cook.)


<CENTER>[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Throw away your 6-71 blower . . .[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]The Air Force Has Landed[/FONT]


</CENTER>


[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]While the performances of today's Top Fuelers and Funny Cars are truly impressive, often the problems encountered have been solved by simply using a bigger hammer to pound the square peg in the round hole. Take the ever-present GMC 6-71 Rootes-type supercharger for example. Originally designed to operate at low rpm as a diesel exhaust extractor for buses and the like, it was pressed into service by drag racers when they found that it was commercially available at a tolerable cost. Where centrifugal superchargers, turbochargers and the like all had an undesirable lag in terms of throttle response and low-end boost, the 6-71 offered an immediate pressure boost.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]But the 6-71 had a few shortcomings which drag racers, to this day, have either overlooked or not cared to admit. While the Rootes-type blower works on the positive-displacement principle, with lobes stuffing the air down into the engine, it is also "friction city." The heat of compression and friction caused by the impellers s****ing against the inner case wall raises the temperature. Heat-sensing thermocouples mounted in the intake manifold of a 6-71 superchraged engine have recorded temperatures in excess of 250 degrees F.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]We know that the amount of horsepower an engine creates is directly proportional to the amount of fuel/air mixture it burns per minute. It follows that if the fuel/air mixture is heated and expands before entering the combustion chamber, it becomes less dense, which means that the engine burns less fuel/air mixture. This, of course, means less horsepower.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Another discouraging aspect of the 6-71 blower is that it takes a lot of power to spin the rotors. Accurate estimates peg a 6-71 blower with 33% overdrive, mounted on an engine operating at 8000 rpm, as requiring between 250 to 300 horsepower to spin those rotors around. This power is sapped from the engine. And when you go to higher rpm ranges of the 6-71 blower, its efficiency takes a dump. In effect it requires more power to spin the blower than the blower is adding to the engine.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Detonation is still another bad feature of today's nitro-burning supercharged engines, although it doesn't necessarily have any connection with the 6-71 blower. For one reason or another the charge of fuel in the combustion chamber is ignited at some time prior to the instant the plug fires. This detonation literally plays havoc with the bearings, rods, rod bolts, wrist pins and pistons, generally messing up the otherwise smooth, ideal rotational operation of the engine.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]So what would you say if we told you there was a way to provide a boost for the engine without creating heat, which eliminated detonation, and which didn't require one horsepower of the engine's output to operate? Well we wouldn't lead you down the primrose path if we didn't have some sort of punch line.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]It seems that aerospace engineer Bob Keane of Keane Engineering in Fullerton, California, has been working for the past three years to develop a system of pressurized air bottles to replace the 6-71 blower. The idea is to supply all of the engine's air needs for a run from a number of scuba tanks filled with 2200 psi (pounds per square inch) of normal air. The tanks are secured in the ch***is in a location where the weight is desired for additional traction or front-end ballast. The entire system, complete with bottles, doesn't weigh much more than a complete 6-71 blower setup. Each tank contains approximately 80 cubic feet of compressed air.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Since the desired boost on a blown fuel engine varies between 14 and 22 psi, you can see that in order to make the concept feasible, the pressure in the bottles must be reduced to match the needs of the engine. To accomplish this, the key component of the system is an air pressure regulator which controls the reduction of gas pressure from 2200 psi to 15 psi or so. This flow control valve was originally built for use in ground systems tank pressurization (fueling) of ***an and Saturn missiles, and was developed by Keane for that purpose. The pressure regulator keeps the outlet pressure at the desired preset level with an accuracy of plus or minus 1 psi, even though the inlet pressure is falling from 2200 psi to 200-300 psi as the air supply is depleted at the completion of the run.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]<CENTER> </CENTER>[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Other components in the system in addition to the scuba bottles and the air pressure regulator include a special high pressure Enderle fuel injection "bugcatcher" unit (which also doubles as a plenum), an engine-driven fuel pump with 10% overdrive, and a fuel-control valve which was also developed by Keane for aerospace applications. Patents are pending on both of Keane's valves, as well as on the entire system. All of the components in the system are functioning below designed operating pressures and provide a maximum safety factor. As an example, the bottles are capable of containing pressures of 8000 psi, or four times the working pressure of Keane's system.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Initial testing of various forms of the system was done on three different dragsters and one of Mickey Thompson's Ford Funny Cars, but in all instances, no full quarter-mile runs were attempted. Recently, however, Keane got together with Mickey Thompson and, utilizing Thompson's exotic dyno facility in Long Beach, accomplished an exhaustive testing program. The results were phenomenal. Where a 6-71 blown Boss 429 Ford engine on 20% nitro had produced 1360 horsepower, the same type of engine equipped with the bottled air system in place of the Rootes blower, burning only straight alcohol, produced 2400 horsepower at 6000 rpm! On gasoline, the system made about 1550 horsepower. This success was not easily achieved, as in one week of testing, Thompson reportedly ran 150 gallons of alcohol through the dyno engine.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]<CENTER> </CENTER>[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]If those horsepower figures sound a little too incredible for you to believe, understand that there are several factors working in the bottled air system's favor. First is the fact that the 250-300 horsepower previously required to turn the 6-71 can now be put out at the flywheel for the driveline to use. Secondly, because the thermal characteristics of alcohol are better than those of nitromethane and the air fuel mixture is much cooler, detonation is reduced to the point where it is almost entirely eliminated, making for a smoother-running engine that produces more power.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]Most important, however, is the fact that the engine will consume as much alcohol as a 6-71 blown engine would consume nitro (remember that business about horsepower being directly proportional to the amount of fuel/air mixture consumed). In a normal 6-71 engine, not nearly as much alcohol would be used as nitro during a quarter-mile run, but because the fuel/air mixture is considerably cooler with the bottled air system than with the 6-71, the charge is much more dense.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv]The reason the charge is cooler with the bottled air system is twofold. First, you don't have that firction-producing air pump to heat the air up to 256 degrees. The air in the bottles is at room temperature. Secondly, when the air is released from the bottles into the system and p***ed to the engine, it encounters such a steep pressure drop (from 2200 psi to 16 psi) in such a short period of time that the temperature of the air actually drops anywhere from 70 to 100 degrees below the ambient (room) temperature. So where the air coming out of a 6-71 is above 250 degrees F., the air from the bottles is anywhere from 0 to -30 degrees F. It is this densely packed charge of air/fuel mixture that provides most of the extra power.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Swiss, Helv][/FONT]

 

System on a SBC, 1971.......

<CENTER></CENTER>

 

Sneaky Pete Robinson had the jacks under his car. I don't remember it being a sidewinder though.