BOGUS NOTES – INNOVATION

BOGUS NOTES – INNOVATION  January  2012

Hello folks, and welcome to another ‘Bogus Notes’. I’ve been reading about the roll cage canopy that Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) engineered and installed on their Top Fuel Dragsters and the controversy that it has created. The enclosure was declared legal by the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) at the beginning of the 2011 season. Legal, that is, until another team complained that DSR had a performance advantage by using this system. The NHRA then declared the canopy illegal and told the DSR teams to remove them. The system was designed to add some protection for the drivers. There is no hard evidence to substantiate the claim that there is a performance advantage. However, just the thought that they might be losing parity between the Top Fuel teams must have sent a chill through the NHRA corporate structure. What a sad statement this decision makes. If there is an advantage, why wouldn’t the complaining team just adapt the system to their own cars and run head to head with DSR while maintaining an edge for themselves on the rest of the competition. Ok, that was a rhetoric question. Our ‘nanny-state’ has created an environment which makes it easier to have others look after you. It’s all about making everyone equal. That is why the NHRA followed the NASCAR lead and instituted the ‘playoffs’. Make all the players equal to create an exciting year-end finish. NHRA Senior Vice President of Racing Operations, Graham Light, is caught in the middle. I feel sorry for Graham. He is an ok guy who worked with me to make things happen on a couple of occasions. He has had to adjust his decision making to suit the values of our new society. That’s Too Bad!

Where it not for men and women innovators we would still be living in a Fred Flintstone world. I thrived on the enthusiasm generated during the growing-up days of drag racing when you could try stuff. And if someone had an advantage, figure it out. To bring something new to the sport today is a bureaucratic nightmare. One of my good friends, who is inducted into the Ohio Motorsports Hall of Fame, told me of his experience with a development in supercharger manifold technology. The sanctioning bodies are stifling our inventors. I’m glad I got to witness Don Garlits and other imaginative racers show us their magic.

You know ladies and gentlemen, I am considered a bit of an innovator myself. There was this one time I thought I was innovating but the NHRA tech guy, Joe Olynik, thought I was cheating. He won the heated argument and my Super Stocker was bounced from competition. We ran across each other a couple of weeks later at another drag race. There were a couple of rows of cars separating us. We both stopped and looked at each other. Joe made his move first. He pointed at me and in a very loud voice for all to hear said “there’s Bob Elliott, … ‘Bogus’ Bob Elliott”. So, there’s the rest of the story, it was a NHRA tech guy that gave me that nickname and I embraced it. However, it was kind of embarrassing because at the time I was President of the Sportsman Racers Association and should have been setting a higher standard.

I had a much better innovative experience one time in Atco, New Jersey, with our Northern Force Jet Funny Car. A month earlier we had crashed the car real bad at a race track in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. I had set the track record in the first-round of racing and then lost it in the second-round. I was determined to head home owning that record. The track was marginal in design and everything had to be perfect to run in the mid 270 MPH range without incident. I took back the record all-right, but when the chutes hit, the car did a wheel stand. The right front wheel landed just off the racing surface and I couldn’t pull it back over. No big deal under normal circumstances, just ride it out. But this track narrowed to accommodate a bridge that went over a stream. When I knew steering the car wasn’t working, and a crash inevitable, I got on the brakes hard but still hit the bridge at around 175 MPH. We took the car to Mark Rowe’s in New Hampshire to be front-halved and a new body mounted.

Mark fabricated a beautiful Nitro Funny Car style rear spoiler with high spill plates on the new body. It was the ‘coolest’ looking Jet Funny Car on the circuit but we had problems. The car was inconsistent and was prone to having the after burner ‘flame-out’. We were one of the higher paid Jet Funny Car teams. When your getting big money to ‘run the numbers’ and put on a show, and the show sucks, your name can quickly become tarnished. The ‘flame-outs’ ended after we replaced all the fuel lines. The impact of hitting the bridge had stressed everything and it was determined that one of the fuel lines was split internally creating a ‘flapper’. With this solved we tried to get our performance back up, but the speed was not there. We went from running mid 270’s to high 260’s. Still better then most, but not Northern Force better!

 We were at Atco for an eight-car showdown and I’m sitting looking at the car trying to figure out what to do when it hit me. We had too much spoiler! I remembered what Ken Veney had told me about spoilers and spill plates and how they worked on our Alcohol Funny Car. My spill plates were good, they acted as rudders to keep the car stable, but I had too much wing. We created down force in our Northern Force Jet Car by installing the engine with 2 degrees of angle. I really only needed enough wing to ‘clean-up’ the air at the back of the car. Our fabricated Nitro style wing was redundant. The tools came out of the trailer and we started cutting her up. My first-round opponent was Al Hanna in the Eastern Raider. He seen what we were doing and cried foul. He said he wouldn’t run me because I was creating a dangerous situation. I told him I knew what I was doing and that we would be going to the starting line with or without him in the other lane. He went off to plead his case with our Pro Jet Association Director, Roger Gustin. By the time they returned to our trailer, the crew and I had the wing reduced to about a two inch wide strip with a twenty degree angle on it. After some deliberation, Roger stated that he felt I knew what I was doing and that Al should prepare to race me in the first-round.

We went out and ran 282 MPH and beat Al. Three weeks later in Englishtown, New Jersey, again against Al and his Eastern Raider, we ran the fastest side-by-side ever by a pair of Jet Funny Cars at over 288 MPH.

 Now it’s time for the dreamers and inventors in your family to participate. To be inspired, take out your Northern Force colouring book and a box of crayons. Put a ‘happy face’ on Bogus Bob and in big bright letters underneath print…. INNOVATOR.

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