Polaroid?

I have no photos of dragsters

I literally grew up at Lions Drag Strip in SoCal. My Dad was president of the local Lions Club that built and ran the strip starting in 1955. So I got the full access pass to go anywhere I wanted. Got to see and meet all the greats over the years including Garlits. I was there when his front engine blew up between his legs, blowing part of his foot off. Back then there was really no insurance regs, so spectators could get up close and personal with the cars.
One of my favorites was Stone Woods & Cook. One badass 41 Willys.

Some great DVDs available of Lions at lionsvideo.com

As usual, houses were built right up next to the strip and then the homeowners complained about the noise, and the greatest dragstrip closed their doors. More records were broken at Lions than any other track.

Hijacking my own damn post!
 

One of these?



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As a Long Beach native, I can say that most of the houses were already there. A shc!t load of apts were built in the 60's, though. Can you imagine those folks were the ones that shut Lion's down? Especially West Siders!

Anyway, what really happened was that the land became more valuable for Port of Long Beach use and Lion's sold out. Oh yeah, there was some pressure about the noise and somewhat rightfully so. When Top Fuel dragsters ran towards the end of the era at Lion's, you could hear them 3 miles to the East.

Final eliminations at 10 pm Sat night did not help.

They actually did it both ways, as some tracks didn't have rollers. Our local track (SIR) never had them, so they used the push truck. You can see the nerf bar on the back of this car:

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They typically used gasoline only for non-sanctioned "match" races to add to the show. I remember the NHRA always took a very, very dim view of the practice. I'm not sure they ever really "allowed" it per se. Sure was cool to watch, though.

I absolutely loved her rivalry with Don Garlits. Some of his comments were beyond over-the-top chauvinist, even for the day. He didn't think women belonged in drag racing, much less Top Fuel, and made no bones about it. The two fiercest competitors of their day, and held a grudging respect for one another. They wound up good friends in retirement, though.

Notice the name on her car, ol' Connie Kalitta. Father of Scottie (deceased; died in that funny car wreck recently) and Doug. Owner of Kalitta Air, still flying old crapped-out 747 freighters in third world shyteholes, endangering one and all. We've fixed a lot of his airplanes, in those third world shyteholes, because he can't fly them here. Real piece of work, ol' Connie... Oh, and our one and only Normy used to fly for the guy, for whatever that's worth. Shirley was cuter...

Hmm... it's been far, far too long, but I remember it differently. I could be wrong. I remember when the NHRA outlawed hydrazine as a fuel once and for all, but I don't remember nitro ever being outlawed. Like I mentioned earlier, the twin engine cars were typically Top Gas, where the Top Fuel cars were typically single engined. There were exceptions to both rules, of course, but that's how I remember them.

They sure had an elaborate lettering scheme to denote classes in those days. An "AA" prefix, like in "AA/FD" meant it was supercharged. "FD" was "fuel dragster", "FC" was really "fuel coupe" (although they did earn the "funny car" moniker mentioned above), "FA" was "fuel altered" (my favorite). So, the blown nitro classes were AA/FD, AA/FC, and AA/FA. A single "A" prefix meant normally aspirated, so "A/FD" was an injected nitro dragster, "A/FC" and injected nitro fuel coupe or funny car, etc. "AA/GD" was a supercharged gas dragster, and "A/GD" was an injected gas dragster.

They actually used to get enough cars, even at local events, to fill all of these classes (not to mention the lower Super Stock and "gasser" classes). Our own Division 6 up here in the Pacific Northwest includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and possibly Montana (not sure on the latter anymore). Once a month, or six weeks or so, SIR hosted a points paying Division 6 event. Not a "National" by any stretch, but we would fill all of those classes. They would easily draw a big enough field in all of them to send some home out of qualifying, and the field was always 16 cars. "National" events had 32 car Top Fuel, Funny Car, Fuel Altered, Top Gas, Pro Stock, etc. fields in those days. I rarely missed a race as a kid in those days, with dad dragging us all along. I never remember there not being Top Fuel, and I lived for that stuff back then. Still do, kind of.

Anyway, like all forms of racing, times have changed. There is no such thing as division level fuel classes anymore, the victims of spiraling costs like everything else. All of the oddball classes are long gone. No need for the elaborate class designations anymore; it's simple T/F, F/C, and Pro Stock as the three "pro" classes, and they only run "Nationals", and only have 16 car fields.

Most of the heads-up racing in lower classes is gone, with these bullshyte "index" classes of Comp Eliminator, Super Comp, Pro Comp, and whatnot that run on pre-determined indexes of 9.9, 8.9, and 7.9. The trick is to build a car a good second faster, then just "drive" it to the index time, with throttle stops on timers and all sorts of other tricks. It's not racing in the least.

The three pro classes sure put on a show these days, though. Geezus, the Pro Stock cars are quicker than Top Fuel was when I first saw them run. But the money... OMG, the money...

R K T...Stone, Woods and Cook's Willies is in the NHRA Museum at the Pomona Fairgrounds. Remember Wild Willie Borsch's driving "style"? One handed in those wild uncontrollable machines.

AA/FA's were not only crowd pleaser's, but record setters: 1st into the 8's, 1st into the 7's and first to exceed 200mph.

I was at the 1969 Winternationals, when Wild Willie raced and beat Don Garlit's and qualified the "Winged Express" to race in the Top Fuel Eliminator round....all dragster driver's had a meeting and refused to race against the Wild Willie and the Winged Express....The NHRA reinstated Garlits.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1286498822.jpg

One of the guys out in a tool fabrication shop that builds some of our stuff owns one of the old Nanook AA/FA's. He runs it at nostalgia events locally.

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Then there were the Jet Cars, and the other great "show cars": remember the Backup Pickup,http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1286499526.jpgHemi Under Glasshttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1286500187.jpg
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And all the great SoCal dragstrips: Lions, OCIR, Irwindale (the REAL one), Fontana, San Gabriel Valley Raceway and San Fernando Raceway...those were the days....sigh

Forgot all about Nanook..that was one beautiful car. How about these guys?http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1286501201.jpg
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Panella Bros, one of the VERY FEW 4 speed stick gassers, everyone else ran the B&M Hydros and the Art Carr Torqueflights

Here's old "WILD" Willie Borsch at his best.....notice his left hand on the top of the doorhttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1286501915.jpg

Went to the finals in Pamona back around 87 or 88 with Don 'Curly' Moore who used to wrench on the "Blood Sweat & Nitro" dragster. That car was driven by Gary Ritter to get the quickest time in Cragar's TF 5-second club. I got to meet Frank Bradley, who is also on the list. Also met Connie. What a weekend for a 23 year old car nut.

Yeah, I miss the old Fuel Altereds. I always thought the Anglias were the prettiest, but the open T buckets took a special kind of lunatic to drive. Wild Willie was the best. He died too young...

It was rare to see two of these make it all the way down the track side by side without something happening, usually just the guy who hangs on the longest winning.

Remember the Pure Hell? Great name for one of these cars. Probably earned it (and several more) every time it ran.

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One of my most memorable days at the track was with my then six year old son; must have been '94 or '95. It was Saturday qualifying for the Northwest Nats at SIR, and it started raining cats and dogs. A definite no-go for that day, so we were walking around looking at cars before we were going to head home.

"Hey, you guys wanna get in out of the rain for awhile?" It was Eddie Hill, standing under his awning, hot dog in hand. This was when he was at the top of his game in the old "Nuclear Banana" Pennzoil Top Fuel car. We wound up spending the whole rest of the day with him and his wife, eating hot dogs off their grill and listening to "war stories". He could sure keep a disappointed six year old entertained, along with his dad...

Cool, great story. Something straight off of a TV commercial or something.

I didn't even have a camera back in high school, but we went to see Don Garlits run at a local track in Helena, AL in the late 50's. At that time 200mph was a big deal. For some reason he was not driving that day but his car ran 203, the chute didn't open and it broke through a barbed wire fence at the end of the strip and stopped safely in a corn field. Some 20 year old kid driving named Connie Kalitta.

When I was a kid, we lived in Indianapolis (Speedway, actually) for a couple of years. My Dad and I were driving home one day and there was a top fuel car sitting in the parking lot of a motel with a couple of guys working on it. My Dad pulled into the parking lot and we got out and went over just to take a look at the car and a grease-covered guy looked up from working on the car and it was Don Garlits himself - covered in grease, working on his own car in the parking lot of a run-down Holiday Inn...

Don Garlits is from here in Tampa. I grew up going to his speed shop and seeing him working the counter on Saturdays. Seemed funny to see the guy that was on the cover of the Hot Rod magazine sitting on the counter to be selling a guy a set of piston rings. After this wreck he walked with a limp as he lost half his foot but he went on to build his rear (actully mid) engine dragster.



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Sunset Drag Strip
 

I spent a lot of time during my high school years at Sunset Drag Strip just outside of Sharon, PA. Sunset was a one fifth mile – not a quarter mile – strip. Never could figure out why that was.

Most of the entrants were locals that were racing their own cars in the stock classes – including me. I actually won a D/SA class one Sunday with my dad’s 1962 Buick station wagon that had a 325 hp engine and a dynaflow transmission. Worked my way through three ladders to finally beat a 1958 Edsel for the trophy.

A friend of mine’s brother went off to college at Whittier College in SoCal and came back to Warren, Ohio, with a bright red 1962 Chevy 409 SS with American mags, headers by Doug, an Isky 505 cam, and lots of other goodies that most of us had only read about in HotRod magazine. The summer of 1963 had us campaigning that car every Sunday at Sunset – stopping on the way to fill coolers with ice from ice machines in various motels so that we could cool down the engine between runs.

Even though Sunset was not an NHRA sanctioned strip, I did see a lot of the greats race there as well as stuff like Art Arfons Green Monster, and a jet engine powered motorcycle.