11/21/2023 0 Comments Top fuel drag racingIn the 1950s, very little consideration was given to safety on the drag strip. Garlits established important safety standards for professional drag racing. The Swamp Rat XXX deploying its parachute to slow down Overall, he won 144 races in national events and held 17 world championships. Dominating the quarter-mile drag strips, he became the first to exceed 170 miles an hour and to break speed barriers of 180, 200, 240, 250, 260, and 270 miles an hour. He continuously refined his slender, one-off drag racing machines while pushing the limits of speed. Garlits fell in love with the intense, dueling nature of drag racing, competition between two cars and drivers in the ultimate test of acceleration and speed. Nationals, race announcer Bernie Partridge dubbed Don Garlits the “Big Daddy” of drag racing, and the nickname stuck. A constant tinkerer, he continued to refine engine design, aerodynamics, and driver safety. Over a career of more than five decades, Garlits became a major force in shaping drag racing. Garlits raced Swamp Rat XXX to win that year’s National Hot Rod Association world championship.īeginning in 1950, the Florida native designed and built more than 40 dragsters, all bearing the “Swamp Rat” name after 1956. To compete, the engine had to be rebuilt every three or four runs.ĭuring a subsequent run in Englishtown, New Jersey, in 1986, Swamp Rat XXX almost went airborne but instead stood straight up in a wheel stand, leading to the coining of the drag racing term “blowover.” It sustained only minor damage, and after repairs it returned to competition. At 8,600 revolutions per minute, the engine produced 7,000 horsepower. Garlits usually ran a fuel mixture of 85 percent nitromethane and 15 percent methanol through a fuel pump that fed the ejectors 50 gallons per minute. A Roots-type blower supercharged the engine by maintaining a manifold pressure of 50 pounds at 8,500 revolutions per minute. The power plant is based on a Dodge “hemi” engine, with a hemispherical combustion chamber that offered the least internal surface area per cubic inch capacity and wasted the least possible energy. The Swamp Rat XXX caught in a wheelstand after a blowoverĭon Garlits and Herb Parks built Swamp Rat XXX In the fall of 1985.
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