Friday, May 26, 2006
First Taste Of Nitromethane.
Years ago, I took a close friend, Paul, to Brainerd International Raceway for the Northstar Nationals. Now while he knows a lot about cars, he'd never been to a nitro race before, and I told him nothing about what he might expect.
The first car he experienced was Al Hoffman's BDS Thunderbird. (This is when they were still driving the tow truck with the BDS blower sticking through the hood. '88, or '89, I believe.) We came upon them as Al was mixing up a load of nitro. He took a can of green stuff, poured some in and swished it around, than poured some clear stuff in, swished it around some and started to pour it in. He stopped before he began, thought for a minute, set the jug down and grabbed a can of red stuff from the trailer (Fifth wheel type.) and poured some of that in, thought for another moment, shrugged his shoulders, and poured the remainder of the can in. He dumped all of this into the fuel tank, capped off and made ready to start the car. Al climbed into the seat while his crew guy walked around and checked everything on the engine and made sure everything was buttoned up. He put the starter onto the blower pulley and grabbed the squeeze bottle of alcohol. With a nod from Al, he squeezed the trigger and spun the motor over for about 10 maybe 12 seconds and quit. (I assume to bring the oil pressure up.) He disconnected a jumper on the ignition, Al got a firm grip on the brake handle, nodded one more time and the crewman proceeded to squeeze the trigger again while holding the bottle to the injector opening. This time the engine coughed to life, and immediately settled into that throaty high RPM sound blown alcohol motors make. Everyone on the crew looked around for leaks, and upon a thumbs up from everyone, the crew guy reached down and pulled a lever on the fuel pump. All hell broke loose. The engine took on it's Mr. Hyde personae as the sound level immediately jumped down two octaves and up a couple dozen decibels. The car was rocking side to side on the jack stands snapping, spitting and popping, and Al had hold of the brake lever like a Cowboy has hold of the reins of a bull at the rodeo just before he gives a nod for the gate to open. The exhaust headers started spewing clouds of noxious fumes, and the weaker amongst the fans started scattering. Fine with me, I just shoved Paul up closer to the car. Al got one more grip on the brake lever, gave another nod, and finally gave the throttle a whack. The engine immediately responded with a really loud and sudden WHUFFFF!!!! and the car jerked on the jack stands like the rodeo bull had just had a hit of the electric cattle prod. It sent pit ropes flying, and even more noxious fumes erupted from the pipes. When they whack the throttle like that, the sound level makes an instantaneous jump a couple thousand decibels, and your ears pretty much say "Sc**w it!!" and quit working. You just don't HEAR the sound. You FEEL it. It's like you take your balled up fist and hit your chest bone. More weaklings scattered, and I held a firm grip on Paul so he couldn't get away. I told Paul later I was certain, his fingers firmly in his ears, he cleared 12 inches easy on that first hit. Al cycled the reverser, whacking it a couple of more times. More fumes. More cackling. More noise. You swore the car was trying to leap off of the jack stands. Then the crew guy stuck the alcohol bottle back in the injector hat, and shut the fuel pump off, and the engine regained it's Dr. Jekyll personality, going back to that alcohol sound, which seemed tame now, before finally chortling to a stop. There's always a few moments of stunned silence afterwards, before the fans start chattering and laughing with each other, along with some cheers and whistles. The die hards amongst us scattered off looking for the next car getting ready to fire up. My friend Paul turns around, tears streaming out of his eyes from the fumes, and asked "Good Lord, why didn't you TELL me it was going to be like that?!?!?!?" I just told him "Paul, there's simply no way I could have prepared you for it. You just have to do it." He turned into a junky after that. Couldn't get enough.
And that was just the warm up!!!
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..."
Isaac Asimov
