I'm Gonna Build A Dragster!

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24dodge, I'm very familiar with that rail and the owner. He's a good guy and is having a great time with his car.
Earthman, That's a really cool early dragster. Too bad no sanctioning body will let the old ones run.
BH, looks like that one has an updated cage and can be raced. That car is very much faster than the little piece I'm building.
 
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I got the shoulder bar in and the tubes from it to the frame. Then I went to bend the roll bar hoop and got all cocky and didn't review the instructions. So I wasted my last length of tubing. Back to the steel yard tomorrow. I want to thank Terry & Lee (Tator on RRR) for lending their tubing notcher to me. Sure beats the old die grinder method I've used in the past.
 
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The view from the front. After screwing up the top hoop, I started cutting out the boxing plates. A 6 foot cut on 1/8" plate with a sawzall sure gets my ears ringing and my hands tingling. Saturday I went to my friend Farmer Don's to borrow a long tailshaft 3 speed. It was under a pile of snow. After prying and poking and even hitting it with a sledge hammer I had to be satisfied to take measurements off of it. I ain't coming out of there until the spring thaw.:eek:
 
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I got my groove back and correctly bent some pipe today. No scrap! Also got the boxing plates cut out and tacked in place. There is one roll cage hoop to go. If I can't get my snow bound driveline out of the junkyard, I'll be stalled on this project for a while. Gonna go put some pressure on old Al at the yard tomorrow.
 
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Wed. night I finished the roll cage. When I stepped back and looked at it I almost upchucked.:eek: It looks like a cage for a piece of heavy equipment. I thought by making everything vertical it would look like it was done years ago. Just didn't work. So after a fairly sleepless night I went back to work this morning and redid the cage.
 
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I took a bunch of curve out of the back bars and kicked the forward hoop forward at the bottom to get a bit of an angle there. Of course, it meant bending new pieces. I did cut the former front hoop down and used it for the cowl bar.
 
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A closer shot of the cage. I want it to look somewhat vintage but be NHRA legal. It is darn near impossible to satisfy both objectives. This is the best I could do. I think when the body panels go on it will look ok.
 
The cage looks good Bob W. How are some of the HA/GR cars getting away with using a single hoop?

What? You mean this isn't legal? Who knew? :D

 
Gastrick, That is one of my favorite vintage drage race pics.
The guys in the MO, Kan, Okla, Texas area have a number of drag strips that don't strictly apply the rules. The Wisconsin guys have double hoops, but not all the other necessary bars. The SoCal guys have double hoops but don't meet NHRA. They run at Bakersfield and at other locations where the ANRA is sponsoring the event. Because the cars aren't very fast, they have been allowed to run even though not entirely legal. I'll be the only HA/GR car around here and as such, I figured I better be 100% legal so I don't have any hassles from the tech guys.
The way I'm building this thing, I can put my fiberglass Fiat body on it, add a lot of horsepower, slicks and and an automatic trans and run as quick as 10:00, legally.
 
looks great Bob , i`d love to see you put a straight 8 in there.... like this one
 

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Bob,The cage is looking better since you changed it.You are putting this thing together quickly.I wished I had that kind of time.Keep up the good work.
 

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