Group,
I thought you guys might get a kick out of what happened to me 40+ years
ago while attending California State Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo,
CA.
During the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years at Cal Poly I
built a 120" wb front engine dragster chassis for my trusty fuel burning
"side-valve". We ran the thing at San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Madera, and
Bakersfield for a season, finally breaking the engine during the traditional
"push" startup for Top Eliminator one Sunday at a Santa Maria Dragons meet.
It had 4 fuel-converted Stromberg 97's and we had 85% in the tank. In those
days nobody had a hydrometer. We just measured by volume.
The fuel delivery system consisted of a fuel tank that was pressurized by
a hand air pump like the old sprinters and midgets used. Being a little
excited at the time, I probably gave the pump several extra strokes as we
pushed down the track and made the "showoff" 180 deg turn in preparation for
firing the engine as we headed back to the starting line.
As I made the 180 deg turnaround I reached down to turn on the fuel, and,
guess what? It was already partially on, probably from hitting it with my
foot as I got into the car. By then there was no time to stop the process and
"back-down" the engine in high gear. The other car was at the line running
and waiting.
I swallowed hard, crossed my fingers, and flipped the mag switch. The
trusty H&C mag fired right on time and there was a sickening metallic
breaking sound. Fuel had puddled in one intake port and when the cylinder
fired it bent the rod double and ventilated the cylinder wall.
Later that year my roommate from LA had just finished building a 283" SBC
with an Isky E-3 cam and a Crower U-Fab 6 carb intake manifold that he'd
welded up. By the time we got down to finding 6 usable Stromberg 97 gas carbs
we were financially "tapped", so we were really using "floor-sweepings".
We knew that the throttle linkage would have to be progressive so we
built our own out of welding rod scraps. It was so flimsy that we had to make
the whole thing to work in tension only, no compression or the rods would
bend.
The roommate had a new Vertex mag that we couldn't for the life of us
make fire or throw a spark. Finally one night we figured out that Vertex had
sprayed some kind of preservative inside the mag cap that was insulating the
spark and preventing the fire from getting to the mag cap from the rotor.
Anyway, late one night we were pushing the dragster all over the Cal Poly
campus trying to get it to fire. I was in the push car, my roommate was in
the dragster, and Gary Boerman (later to work as Chief Of Metallurgy at FMC
in San Jose) was riding on the frame rails in front of the engine, reaching
around the SBC and twisting the mag to find a spot where it would start.
Just as we passed the poultry unit and all of the therein roosting
chickens the beast fired with the throttle WFO. No problem, just hit the mag
kill switch. Guess what, it wasn't connected.
To make a long story short, Boerman finally got the throttles un-stuck,
the roommate got the fuel shut off, and the only damage was three college
kids with some messy laundry.
Oh, I almost forgot. I'll bet those hens produced some bloody eggs for a
while. We couldn't see the hen house, but I'll bet there was a "fog" of
feathers and a lot of excited cackling.............Ardun Doug King
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