Hey guys, looking at jumping into a fed to do some bracket racing and nostalgia style racing with. Car i'm looking at is a '60's Mark Williams chrome moly car, currently 174 inches. It currently is not NHRA certified (no second head loop, kidney bars, unknown what else..) but runs local tracks and is a fast, straight car with an alcohol small block. I guess my question is what do I need to get it certified? Does the welder need to be licensed or something? Is it just a matter of finding an NHRA representative to inspect the welds and approve the added bars? Do you have them inspect it first to tell you what to add, or just get a current NHRA rulebook, some tubing, and a TIG welder and get to work? Also, do I need to worry about buying an older car and having money into something I won't be able to certify? A lot, I know, but thanks in advance.
They will ultrasound the car and make sure the tubing is thick enough in different spots and make sure you have all the bracing being enforced. Get ahold of someone that runs weekly and ask them who to contact.
Go to NHRA.com and drill down to your local division. There should be someone you can call and ask these questions directly. I personally would take it to a ch***is builder (with good references) in the area. They will 'see' things a general welder might miss on the ch***is, and they probably have a working relationship with the people that certify.
Make part of the purchase the condition that the car be certified. DO NOT-DO NOT put any money into this before knowing if it can. Being and older car the rails could be O-TOO-THIN and thus require too much effort and cost to replace them. I bought a car once with .035 rails- but lucky for me this was for a cackle/resto/display. Many a time I have had a customer come over and show me what he had just bought and then had to tell him the cost of his mistake.
Most high quality race car shops can tell what tubes you'll need, do the sonic test on the existing tubes. ***uming you've got something to work with they'll guarantee certification when they finish - depending on where the tech guy is located he might well come to the ch***is shop.
X2 Alot of good advice^^^^^^! Most ch***is builder do not have a sonic tester. The person who is selling the car should have it checked to see if it can be certified without major work like replacing the main frame rails.
my 2 cents, build a new one that will certify. with the age of the ch***is it will more than likely need most of the ch***is replaced to certify and at that point it will be more expensive to rebuild it. the tubing has probably scaled off on the inside and may have lost enough thickness to fail. also, when the updates are complete it will no longer resemble its former self anyway.
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