HAMB drags near miss

Did I miss it or did anyone ever say where this happened?
Was it at Yellow Belly Dragstrip in Dallas? Sounds like the kind
of stuff that might happen there. I grew up in Dallas and we stopped going there when we got out of our teens.
There's a lot of arm chair quarterbacks chiming in about how
they would have handled it if it had been them. Most of them
have never sat in a dragster. I owned and drove a Chassis
Research dragster in the early 60's and got away with my life.
I'm not ashamed to say that it's scary even when everything
goes right. Coming within inches of having your legs blown off
is an experience that can humble anyone but the stupid.
Being at racing events is dangerous. Shit happens at races.
Most people know that sometimes people are killed there.

 

Here's 2b-Banjo's account as he posted on the HAMB Drag Nationals forum. He is a HA/GR competitor.

"I was down at the Ha/Gr car when a guy came up and told them about a piece flew and knocked off someone's mirror, then the guy said that the guy wasn't mad at all, like it was not a big deal!!!! And there was deep concern until they heard that no one was hurt. From my observations they had no idea the extent of the pieces flying, the only time they laughed when I was there, was when I asked them how they were going to tell the car owner, he was not there."

(This is me writing now) I believe the car in question has a home made scattershield as required by NHRA since it has also run at KCIR. Also, the written account said that a piece of pressure plate flew by. No mention of the flywheel exploding by any first hand observer. Not saying it didn't explode, but not reported...yet. I can't tell you how many clutch explosions I have witnessed.

Metalshapes...HA/GR cars are dragsters and they race against each other. People want to win. Guys want to go faster. Always have, always will. If these cars were built faithfully to the HAMB rules, ignorng the additional stipualations by NHRA they could be raced hardly anywhere.
Taking HA/GR's out of the realm of pokey curiosities somewhat representing the yesteryear of drag racing and turning them into real race cars has created these issues. I believe SDRA has addressed them well.
I ran my stock slant 6 HA/GR a few times with the cast flywheel and clutch and kept it under 4,000 rpm's. But I wouldn't dare run that setup with a highly modified engine. That's why I put an automatic in it. I didn't trust the flywheel, clutch or the home made scattershield. In order to be safe I would use a small block Mopar s.f.i. scattershield and steel flywheel modified to fit the slant, along with a s.f.i. clutch. That's probably a couple thousand dollars. Inline engines like to vibrate at certain high rpm's and have been known to loosen flywheel bolts, etc.
I would think any HA/GR (or other type or drag car) builder running a modified inline engine that achieves high rpm's should follow a similar route.

 

um hamb drags, in the title
mo kan raceway
asbury mo