Wheelie Bars are not needed for Safety on Stockers!

[Bruce Noland]

Originally Posted by Todd Geisler

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here a little.

My own car is a heads up, N/A car. Car weighs 2960 with driver and has 54% of the weight on the nose. It's got a conventional headed BBC that makes between 1100 and 1200 hp. The converter flashes to 7000 rpm, 4.57 rear gear on a 275/60 DOT drag radial tire which is 28" tall and has 10" of tread.

The car runs 5.0's at 137 mph and has 60'd a best of 1.129.

I'm just sharing this as there has been some misinformation when the heads up stuff was brought up.

I have used bars for several years, but when I started running this new class they are illegal, so I was forced to figure out how to run the car without them and keep the front end down. No it's not easy and if you make a bad tuning call it will go up (much quicker and more violent than a stocker).

Now, last I knew stockers weren't allowed travel limiters, but S/S was correct?

I'll also concede that lower HP cars need some weight transfer to get up on the tire where a higher HP car can plant it with power.

I will say this, I'm glad I no longer use the bars. They were a PITA as far as I'm concerned. It also makes you work harder to find the right setup for the days track/weather conditions as well as the tuneup you have in the car. That to me is a fun challenge even if I fail to get it right.

I would ask this. If bars were suddenly made illegal on stockers, would those who run just park their cars, or would you buckle down and figure out a way to make it work without them?

Stock and S/S are great classes, some of my favorites by far. I kinda treat mine as if I was running S/S on small tires & stock suspension as far as running as hard as possible to the 60 & 330.

And I do understand you can't easily compare low & high HP cars when it comes to some of this stuff.

Being the Devil's advocate is cool. You listed several important reasons for the the use of wheelie bars and then implied (knuckle down) that racers were taking the easy way out by using them. The builders and racers use them because they offer substantial protection for driver and race car. Wheelie bars have worked for years and will continue to do so even if there are a few people in the tech department who don't understand their importance. And that is the reason I started this thread - the huge disconnect between the rule book reading tech department staff and the racers.

So your question of either parking the cars or changing them is based on something that will never happen and offers a false premise. No, I don't think you are trying to be tricky. But, the executives at nhra would never ever take away a piece of safety equipment that could result in serious legal exposure for injury or death. Remember this safety equipment was openly supported and approved by nhra personel and then published in the Dragster when accepted..

Another point to remember is that many of us build and work on our own cars and for some the wheelie bars offer a greater amount of protection. The legal folks at nhra know this as well.

[Chad Rhodes]

I think using small tire, heads up cars in a comparison of safety is a bit of a bad idea, especially when talking about an item that is primarily for crash avoidance.