Word: dragster
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This is the reason Garlits, also known as Big Daddy, showed up recently at the National Hot Rod Association Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., in a new $100,000 dragster with no front tires at all. What he had instead, under an aerodynamic wraparound front end of his own design, was a couple of machine belts barely thick enough to keep the thing from running on its wheel rims...
...transmission troubles, concluded that drag racing would be safer, and also faster, if the engine were behind the driver rather than in front--a crazy idea that is now standard.) Post edits Technology and Culture and is also a curator at the Smithsonian Institution. The fine points of dragster design have moved him to write: "I have found no human artifact that pleases me more than an earthshaking, fire-breathing 'digger,' blown and on fuel . . ." What counts in drag racing, he says, is individual ingenuity. The people who have it aren't just hot rodders but a variety of that...
Garlits and his competitors build and drive a class of dragster known as the top fueler--rail thin, about 20 ft. long, with big, sticky rear wheels and a high wing in back. Behind the driver, the engine throws flame from its exhaust headers and makes a noise that starts like a garbage truck under heavy gunfire and increases rapidly to an apocalyptic roar. "It'll blow your nose for you," one fan declares...
...that power puts intense strain on the hardware. (One crew sells souvenirs: "Burnt pistons, $10.") Surviving the succession of runs needed to win a four-day event requires ingenuity on the fly. Driver and crew get as little as 75 min. between races to strip down a devastated dragster and make it run faster than it did before...