AEROFLOW RACE DIARY

Back in Issue No. 163, I mentioned how I got to drive nitro funny cars and junior dragsters and to crew on Mark Thomas’s doorslammer. Next came our first funny car, ‘ The Hillbilly’. Dad had seen a for-sale sign on it as it sat outside a house at Beach Hop. He came home and was like, “Son what do you think?” It needed some work, but, damn, it was a funny car, and I was all in. So, after a think and a quick trip to have a look at it, Dad emptied out the piggy banks and we returned home with the old girl. The chassis was made from old exhaust tube and illegal, so we knew that that was basically a throwaway item. The injected big block Chev needed a massive freshen-up, and the body needed repairs and paint, but it didn’t matter — we had an ’84 Mustang funny car sitting in the shed. While, in hindsight, I can see that Dad had probably planned to spend a couple of years rebuilding it, unfortunately — or fortunately, depending how you want to look at it — that plan didn’t work for me and Ryan Sheldon. So, before Dad knew it, Ryan had joined the team with a massive parts supply, I had a new chassis built at Horne Engineering in Morrinsville — thanks, Bryan — and we were feverishly rushing to get the car finished for the opening meeting at Taupo International Dragway. While Ryan and I worked on the car, Dad worked on the motor, which, thanks to Ryan, now had a 10-71 blower and injection on top of what was a virtually standard 396ci big block. Between the three of us, we built the entire car in Dad’s shed. Looking back on it now, did we know what we were doing? Absolutely not. Did we mess some things up? Absolutely, plenty of things. But we learnt a lot and, by some miracle (read: a lot of friends bailing us out), we made the test day at the opening of Taupo. Did it go well? Not really, with steering-geometry issues limiting us to a burnout only, but, hey, it was worth it. We did a couple more meetings that year with no real results to speak of, other than broken gearboxes and ignition issues. The following year, after some off-season planning, we returned with the same motor combo but a beefed up trans; a much tidier car; and a new look, thanks to Warren and Craig ‘Ice Cream’ Houston, who had offered to paint the car for us. I’ll never forget turning up to Ice Cream’s — if you know Craig Houston, don’t hesitate to call him that — and the brothers unveiling the rebranded ‘Blast From the Past’ funny car. We spent the year racing round the country being cannon fodder in Top Alcohol. The 396ci cast-iron big block Chev was never going to get even close to the Vincents and Watkins of that era, but, for us, it was the best place to be. Plenty of people asked me why we bothered in Top Alcohol. When you’re 20 years old and desperate to learn everything you can about supercharged methanol engines, you need to hang around with the people who know most about them, so that’s what we did. We had so much fun with that car and learnt so much. I look back now and realize how scary it was, how little we really knew or understood, but I certainly wouldn’t change it for the world. But, like any drag racer, the need to go faster just could not be denied, and, during a few road trips with Ryan, the idea came to put his 532ci Keith Black (that he had owned when it was in Mark Thomas’s ute) into the car and have a crack at the six-second zone. The thought of running a six was of a lifelong dream potentially coming true, but, like anything in life, we quickly discovered some major hurdles. As much as we loved Blast From the Past, it would need some serious upgrades before it would cope with the new power. We had soon figured that, by the time we added a stronger diff and gearbox and made the necessary chassis modifications, it would cost a fortune just to Band-Aid the car enough to handle it. So, with that, Ryan and I decided to team up to find a new car and driveline. Well, before we knew what had happened, I had smashed open every piggy bank and savings account that I had and managed to buy the remains of the Tim Watkins ‘Spider-Man’ funny car that had crashed into the trees in Christchurch earlier that year. And, when one of your best mates is a chassis builder Bob Tynan, you have that car on the jig and front-halved before you have time to second-guess yourself. Next, for $1K, we purchased a Dodge Avenger funny car body in average condition out of the US, shipped it to New Zealand, and we had started our journey. During this build stage, I really learnt how incredible our drag racing family is, as names such as Johnson, Johnston, Tynan, Prestney, Neilan, Vincent, King, and many more, offered us free labour or donated (or ridiculously cheap with payment plans) used parts. There’s more to come in this story, as it is not a short one, but, for now, it’s time to go racing, as we head to a new track in Swan Hill, Victoria with the ‘One Bad Kiwi’ nitro funny car. Let’s hope there are plenty more stories to come from that one!