Ok, now for the payoff pitch on the Nitro Prom Mods dirt that we first spilled yesterday. We spoke with Joe Monden, the man who is doing the final assembly on the first of the injected Pro Mods at his shop in Gainesville, Texas, the appropriately named Joe Monden Race Cars. He filled us in on what’s going to happen this season.
“We’re going to try to get out onto the race track to test just after the first of the year,” Monden said. “The owner of the car is a man named Don Wooten. I met Don during my time running an A/Fuel dragster, we had some conversations about doing this deal and here we are.”
The car is an early Camaro (we’re guessing a ’67) that was previously running the ADRL series with a blown alcohol engine. It was originally built by Jerry Bickel Race Cars. Monden said the weight with the driver will be a feather light 2,100-2,200 pounds, basically the same as an A/Fuel dragster.
When asked if they were going to have to make any physical changes to the car, Monden said, “We’re not 100 percent sure to be honest. We think these engines make about 4,000 horsepower, but the big thing is just how much torque they make. It’s a massive amount. There are a lot of dragster people out there who think that we’re just going to tear the car apart and that this won’t work. I think that we can make it work.”
Because of the massive torque, the car will be run in a high-gear-only configuration, with no transmission gear ratios to screw around with. One of the variables to consider is what ratio the team will run in the rearend to best use all that low-end torque.
That grunt is where these cars will shine. It’s also where they can bend themselves up into a pretzel. Don Wooten will be checking the weld quality on that Bickle chassis the first time he hammers the pedal. Count to three and duck!
Monden said that the suspension tuning will be a new adventure, but with this being a four-link style car, the team should be able to find a place that it likes and will bite the track. Like everything else, this is new ground, so the learning curve promises to be very steep.
The team plans on running as many ADRL races as they can, starting with the first one of the year in Houston, Wooten’s home town. Monden said that they’d like to run the whole schedule. We’re guessing that once this thing is figured out, every strip in America is going to be trying to book the car (or cars) in for match races. This is going to be epic.
Monden is definitely a realist and knows that the team has plenty of work cut out for themselves getting this all to work right, but with his and Tom Conway’s knowledge on board, we think there’s a far better than average chance of these guys solving the puzzle.
Monden laughed, “When I approached Bobby Corzine and Kenny Knowling of the ADRL about this, I really talked with them about how the ADRL has really positioned themselves to be very focused on crowd appeal, well, what’s better than header flames over the roof?” He continued, “They had safety concerns and frankly they are not going to let just anyone roll up in one of these cars. They are going to approve who they are comfortable with running a nitro car. People can get hurt if these cars are not handled properly and we know that. We’re just looking forward to bringing something new to the table and trying to make it work.”
We’re already booking our flight to Houston.
