Oh man, this is bad ass! We broke the news here about nitro-burning doorslammers, and it’s really going to happen. Header flames over the roof? You can bet on it!
We placed a call to Tom Conway, one of the principles in this madness to get some information on what’s what with the project and what we can expect from the team. Although Tom wasn’t flowing with details, he did provide us some insight on what’s happening. We’re going to hit you with the rich dirt tomorrow but here’s what we’ve learned from our conversation with Tom.
As has been stated, Joe Monden Race Cars of Gainesville, Texas, is building the race cars and Joe will be helping Tom with the tuning duties. We asked Conway if it was as simple as dropping an A/Fuel engine into a Pro Mod chassis and hitting the strip. “The engine combination is close to a typical A/Fuel dragster setup, but there are some differences to compensate for the different nitro percentage and some other factors,” he said. We told you he was holding his cards a little close to the vest right?
Conway, Monden, and the car owner (whose identity we don’t know at this point) were nervous that their cover would be blown too soon and they’d have to shelf the whole idea, “There’s been some talk of other people trying this,” Conway said. “Gene Snow has been kicking the idea around for a while but he never got around to doing anything with it. I’ve heard that there is lots of talk on the internet about it, we were nervous that the cars would be outlawed before they were built.”
So how tough was it to convince the ADRL that this was a good idea? “They were skeptical at first, mainly because of the dangers involved,” Conway said. “If you don’t know what you are doing with this type of setup, it can be very dangerous. There are lots of do’s and don’ts with nitro and the don’ts can result in some severe problems. You really need to pay attention to detail with these cars and I think they (the ADRL) were afraid that if people who didn’t know what they were doing got involved, it would put them at risk.” If there are guys who “know what they are doing” it would be Monden and Conway, grizzled veterans in dealing with our favorite fuel.
Lots of the internet chatter went directly to the fact that previously the ADRL had a rule stating that no competitor could run more than 50 percent nitromethane. That has since been lifted and these injected cars will be allowed to run a 96-percent load of the good stuff.
We’re going to come back at your with some specifics on what the team’s plans are on a modicum of things but we wanted to let the world know that this is a confirmed go and if you were considering attending an ADRL race next year, this should erase all doubt. I mean, we just about break into cold sweats when we think about the sheer awesomeness that these cars will personify on the dragstrip.
It’s the last piece of the door lammer puzzle: nitrous, turbos, blowers, and now nitro. How could this possibly get better?
Stay tuned tomorrow and we’ll tell you.
