Progress through purchasing

The castle have been working me far too hard for the past couple of months so little actual work has happened to get the slingshot ready to race. However, that hasn't stopped me a) buying stuff and b) kidding myself that I can get it running for the Hot Rod drags on September 18th (for some great pics of last year go here)

Motive power

So I've finally made a start on doing some proper work. A couple of months back I picked up a pair of Chevy 283 V8s for rebuild for the bargainous sum of £200 the pair, plus the cost getting them trucked over to co-conspirator Tim's garage. I'd forgotten to bring anything useful like rags and cleaning agents, but had ordered a sturdy engine stand, torque wrench and socket set from Machine Mart so we could get on with tearing the engines down.

First the good news. Both engines showed very little wear. Bores were useable on both lumps, and there was only a bit of crankshaft scoring on one crank. With a polish, and rings and shells, both lumps looked like they could be running well again soon.

But it's fair to say that we discovered why they were such bargains. The first '283', um, wasn't. As we got it apart and started checking casting numbers it turned out to be a cast crank 307 cube engine, which is largely seen as useless for serious performance as it combines the longer stroke of the 327 with the small bore of the 283. And since we want to put a big squirt of nitrous into our engine, the cast crank wasn't ideal. Still, it is in good nick and could get us on the track if money gets tight. The second engine was a 283, with the forged crank we were hoping for. And it appears, forged rods, seven of which appeared good. I've no idea how one rod ended up looking like this:

My First Dragster

My car isn't a genuine Sixties dragster, which is a relief, as they were mostly deathtraps. As far as I've been told, the car was originally built by Bob Nixon around 1993 as a slingshot, but is best known for running as 'High Fever' in comp coupe guise wearing a steel Topolino body with a long history in UK drag racing. The full story of the car can be found here on the excellent UK Drag Racing Nostalgia site, which is where I nicked this pic from:



The car had a revamp in 2003 - 2004 but after disgracing itself on the UK version of the Monster Garage TV show it seems to have fallen from favour, and by the time I got it was minus the engine, either the steel or glass Topo bodies and many of the detail engine parts. The bodywork was hacked about, the DZU fasteners that held it on had disappeared, the tyres were all perished, the gearbox was held in place with bungies and there was what seemed to be a mixture of brake fluid and oil forming a pool on the floor of the cockpit. So this is what I've got:

Dragstrip Virgin

Hello. This blog is about me resurrecting an old Sixties-style slingshot dragster so I can remedy the appalling situation of having got to middle age and never having been drag racing. I've never even driven a normal street car down a strip. I am, I'm ashamed to say, a dragstrip virgin.

I understand most people would start with something a little more sensible for their first drag car, but after losing my beloved Dodge Dart in a fire I was starting from scratch and wanted something a bit extreme to cheer myself up for my next project. So when an unloved, engineless nostalgic slingshot came up on ebay I set my maximum bid as 'everything I had in the bank, minus a bit for transporting it down to London' and it was mine.

Firstly, what's a slingshot? Basically, by the late Fifties cars were being built specifically built for drag racing rather than being adapted from production Fords. The late Mickey Thompson is credited with the slingshot design, which sat the driver behind a narrowed rear axle in a simple chassis with a light, wider front end, maximising the weight over the driven rear wheels. The slingshot name comes from the impressions that the driver looked like he was about to be fired from a slingshot stretched from the front of the car. The slingshot design lasted until the beginning of the Seventies, when rear-engined dragsters became the way to win races while also staying alive. Although others had built rear-engined cars, Don Garlits is credited with popularising the rear-engined design, after a serious accident demonstrated why having the drivetrain behind you is safer than in front. The excellent book Fuel and Guts by Tom Madigan has many tales of fiery death that convince you that Garlits was right.

















But slingshots just look better. Even when they're crashing.