NITROUS ROUNDTABLE
lockup, the idea of the Turbo 400 and the Lenco/Bruno. The development
of it over the last four or five years has just made leaps and bounds with
what you can do with a transmission.
CB: There’s been a lot of development in chassis technology, as far as the
cars themselves and the way they were built. Shock and strut technology
has also made leaps and bounds in the last 10 years.
Tire technology: it used to be that everybody used to run one tire. Now,
it seems like we’re changing to a new tire once or twice every season be-
cause the companies that build the tires, typically Goodyear and Hoosier,
they’re evolving. One gets ahead a little bit and it just drives the next one.
Motor stuff has come a long way. The nitrous cars and the blower cars
have been beat on for the last 30 years or however long it’s been. We’re
pretty close to tapped out there. The turbo cars came along and they’ve
only really had like six years of real work on the Hemi combination, so
they’ve still got a ways to go to find the end of their game. They’re learning
stuff pretty quick and they’re doing a great job evolving. Now, before ‘18
most of the blower guys ran a 4.800 bore space motor. They’re allowed to
run the 4.900 bore space motor and you’ve seen a lot of evolution in the
blower deal with the 4.900 motor. It’s helped them drastically. We run a
5.300 with the nitrous deal and we’re pretty much out of room without
making big, drastic, expensive changes.
Switching to the lockup automatics from the clutches has been something
pretty significant in the nitrous world that’s not engine-related. At the
end of 2017, NHRA made it legal to run a lockup automatic transmission.
They did not allow a lockup clutch. All of the nitrous cars at that time ran
clutches. The lockup automatic, everybody felt, was faster than a non-lockup
clutch. It was probably three hundredths faster, maybe four on a good day,
so we all made the swing.
(NHRA) gave us that to try to help with parity. I think they felt it would be
a larger gain than it was. I think they thought it was five to six hundredths,
but it wasn’t. It was a lot of expense for us. We spent about $100,000
on transmissions and torque converters converting the car and putting
it together. But it’s another technological advancement and at times it’s
90 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
a tuning tool because we can manipulate where we lock up the torque
converter for different spots on the racetrack. If the track’s really good,
we can lock it up sooner. If the track’s really bad, we can stretch it out or
get past the trouble area.
Pat Musi: I would have to say – and I guess I have to take credit for
it – but when we brought fuel injection in, that kind of changed the whole
deal. I personally couldn’t get a motor to run over 900 cubic inches on
carburetors. You’re just wasting your time. So the fuel injection deal was
probably one of the biggest advancements.
The lockup was a big deal. I think Lizzy’s car was the first car to go over
200 and that was a lockup, so we started seeing some of the advantages.
Last year, NHRA let them in and it’s let us get closer. But it’s still a knife
at a gunfight with a nitrous car over here with the turbos and blowers.
BS: The switch to fuel injection and people getting a handle on that has
probably been one of the biggest things. When the lockup converters came
out, they kind of intermittently helped a bunch. There’s three things: fuel
injection, switching to automatics and torque converters and the lockup
torque converter.
SJ: Probably the largest single piece of technology is the Neal Chance
lockup torque converter. When we started running Pro Nitrous, we ran one
of the first lockups that they built in 2012. Since then, the advancements
in that piece have come along so fast. There’s many other companies that
are making lockup torque converters. The most widely used one, I think,
is Neal Chance.
The ability to keep that big nitrous engine in its power curve is how you
make it run. Without a lockup torque converter, that’s not possible. The
bigger the engines get, the more specific the torque range gets. The more
specific the torque range gets, the harder it is to keep the engine in that
window. I would think that’s one of – definitely not the only – but one of
the single largest contributing factors.
On top of that, power management through various different manufac-
turers. We run Holley EFI and MSD to manage power. That technology
has grown in leaps and bounds.
Issue 144
Chris Bell tuned Bob Rahaim to a 5.713-second blast to qualify for a cutthroat
NHRA Pro Mod field at the Gatornationals in March. It was the second-quickest
quarter-mile nitrous Pro Modified pass of all time, sandwiched between Khalid
alBalooshi’s 5.710 and Chad Green’s 5.718, which were both set that weekend
as well. Still, those runs ranked only No. 7, 8 and 10 on the qualifying order.