I grew up going to Big Daddies Drag museum. I’ve seen this wrecked car up close, hard to believe he walked away. I spoke with Don Garlits once in the “engine room”, he was cleaning a glass case and I was by myself at age 11 or 12. I thought he was just a janitor or something and he asked me what my favorite engine is and of coarse I listened to my dad growing up and loved the 427 cammer. I love engines even at that age and even knew (basically) how they worked because again, I’d listen to my father. He responded back with a “that’s a great engine” or something along those lines. This was about 1990 there around so a lil kid speaking to an older man in a corner was creepy yet, we chatted a few words back and forth, he put back whatever he’d been wiping down into the display case and left through a door that led to the back. By the time my family made into the room I was more than happy to tour the room again, to read all the plaques again. Some motors were cut a ways that were painted red for exhaust and blue for cool air and I think orange for coolant if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, I told my dad I was just talking to an old guy back here before they got came it. It wasn’t until we were leaving that I saw a poster of BigDaddy DonGarlits by the front door & I said “Hey, that’s the guy I was talking to in the engine room!” To which the lady behind the register said “Oh yeah, Dons hanging around today. I seem to have a knack for meeting famous people without knowing its them & with no one else around.
That's a great story. I met Nick Mason the drummer of Pink Floyd when my father and I were picking up parts from an Aston Martin workshop. Nick let me sit in his car and explained all the controls.
Necessity is the mother of all invention. Many thanks to Don Garlits for helping to make the sport a safer one. He was voted Number 1 on NHRA's Top Fifty Drivers list for a good reason, and his successful debut of the rear-engine dragster certainly shows one of the reasons why he topped the list. One of my more memorable moments was meeting him back in 1991 at Toronto Motorsports Park (Dragway Park, Cayuga, Ontario). I shook his hand, spoke with him, and even took a photo with him. My Hero!
I remember back in seventy-one you can only get this on wild world of sports, tape delay late Saturday afternoon. Or in a magazine a month later. Believe it or not those are good days.
Over 2300 US servicemen killed in Vietnam, sexual revolution, bell bottom pants, muscle cars are defanged, gun homicides are at an all-time high, civil unrest/protests, government lying at their arses...and they were STILL the good ol days!
@@michaelslack5269 ok Mike you got me. I seen my mistake after I sent it 8 months ago. Looks like 32 let me slide . And you couldn't resist being a perfect
"Near fatal"? He [only] lost part of one foot. The kid in the stands that had one arm cut off from clutch debris was more "near fatal". By the way, they both arrived at the hospital at the same time. Don insisted the kid go first, bless his heart!
@@jeffgraham436 Yeah, how narrow minded does anyone have to be to question something by that was in fact " near fatal"? Oh yeah thumbnail name, Yamaha. Some people just don't understand the danger in drag racing, a split second and life could end.
You are exactly correct .Don told that story to my son and I at his museum years ago and he had a poster on display that showed the flywheel in mid air before it struct the guy .Thank God it did nt hit him in the head or chest . Taking the tour with Don was so much fun .I asked him if he ran at Dover Drag strip in NY and he took me by the arm into the gift shop ,opened a book ,and pointed to him there pulling a wheelie . Of course I bought it ,and he signed it ,great memories !
If you've never been to the Garlits Museum, it's a MUST SEE ! Almost all of the Swamp Rats are there. Send the kids and the wife to Disney, take yourself to the Museum. YOUR WELCOME 🇺🇸🇺🇸
True Story. A few years ago, I worked the audit shift at the Sleep Inn at the entrance to the Garlits museum. I checked in a guy from North Carolina who came to visit the museum. We had a great conversation about Big, and I said that I now have no excuse for not going for a visit. He pulled out his wallet, handed me $20 and said, "I'll see you at 9 a.m." It was a blast and worth losing sleep. Especially the dinner at 484 pizza!
You need to go. Take a camera. Call the museum ahead and see if Don is giving tours of his shops. The tours cost a little but are worth every penny. I try to go once a year, and I always stock up on Swamp Rat T-Shirts.
As usual, someone died in a freak accident in a sport that’s obviously dangerous, so we have to change the whole sport around just to pacify the pussies.
@@JerryDLTN Bc they decided it would be good to give them the extra 320 feet to help in slowing down, especially with tracks that dont have room for a full shutdown area
That's not the only thing he invented (hope he got a patent on it). His museum in Ocala Fl. off I-75 is full of ingenious things he tried. He's remarkable. I remember looking at the slingshots back then and thinking, "There's no way I would want to drive that, you got a rear axle in your lap".
They sat on the rear differential and had the short driveshaft between their legs. They had that big engine in front of them so they couldn't see very well either. The rear engine design was so much safer and opened the door to greater speeds once they figured out the correct rear wing.
A terrible event, Don loosing half of his right foot and the young man loosing an arm at Lyons in 70. I was at Pamona in 71 and saw Don taking his car through the tech line. I am grateful for having been there 50 years ago. One thing seldom mentioned is the tragic loss of Pete Robinson at Pamona that year. My memory is that on Saturday he was making an elimination run and just as he was crossing the finish line the front end of the car lifted slightly and went to the right catching the guard rail. He is one of the few successfully ran a cammer Ford.
An interesting thing is that same year when Garlits rebuilt the car and competed in the NHRA U.S. Nationals, he red lighted in the semi-final in the right lane, so was out. In the final round, Jim Nichol ran in the same lane and clutch exploded, also severing the car in half.
??? Big Daddy has never claimed he built the first RED. There were many RED designs around even 10 yrs. before, but none successful on Top Fuel. He is the first to successfully campaign one in top fuel that's all.
Um HELL NO !! Your talking completely out of your ass about someone you don't even know the first thing about and your attitude towards Big Daddy Don is completely unjustified and uncalled for and extremely disrespectful and extremely pathetic If you actually knew anything about drag racing you wouldn't be making such assnin comments and making such an ass out of yourself
That's all?!? Like, "Oh, there were a bunch of other people doing airplane stuff before the Wright bros. they just actually made one fly. That's all." TWIT!!
As a kid of the 60's, I frequented LaPlace Dragway north of New Orleans. After witnessing more than one engine detonation, I exclaimed " why don't y'all put the engine BEHIND the driver?" And Big Daddy did just that
I have been to the Big Daddy Museum 2 times, im a truck driver who was a drag racer in my time, a must see !!! , They had the cars only roped off and said not to go beyond the ropes or sit in the cars , i had to sit in one of the old swamp Rats , and i did unbelievable the tire's are not 6 inches from ur shoulders & ur sitting right over the rear Axle & your legs are on each side of the transmission right down to the bellhouseing , That's Brave !!!
The first guy who ran them, couldnt get it to go straight. Garlits with his builders advice, slowed the steering down, they were over correcting with the faster steering.
My favorite story about big daddy is when he tore his dragster engine apart for a photo shoot for hot rod mag and put it together in two hours then went out and won the championship
Hot Rod magazine Nov 1964. No racer since has ever had the class to show and tell ALL about a winning race car. www.hotrod.com/articles/swamp-rat-vi-teardown/
Pat Foster and RCE's Woody Gilmore built a back motor car about a year and a half before Garlit's trans incident. But, that car was designed a little wrong (no CAD in those days) and it almost killed Pat on it's first full-on pass. Garlits called Foster while he still recovering for input on how to make the rear engine concept work - which was slow the steering down, don't position the motor too far back, and no wheelie bars.
Concerning a question from "windflags", further down this page, about Garlits' elapsed time in the top fuel final at the '71 Winternationals. Garlits had a 'single', because his competitor, Kenny Safford, could not make repairs to his car, therefore giving Garlits the win. Garlits smoked the tires in the single car pass, and ran an E.T. of 7.03. He had in previous rounds, been running solid 6.70's. ---- "Duckman195".....nobody was running any where close to 6.20 in the early 70's.
Yet despite the advances in safety provided by the rear engine, many of the front engine cars are being built and competed in local events. Just goes that you can come up with a safety improvement but for some, nostalgia is more important than safety
Big Daddy the best he shops at same grocery store my aunt and uncle do in Florida . My uncle says oh yeah we pass each other in the aisle every so often , I said if I was with you I would ask for autograph and ask him if he really did splitfire spark plugs years before it caught on
They had scatter shields, maybe not good enough but they had them. Though on here somewhere is a huge engine/ clutch explosion that near cut the car in half on the hit. So even now they do not work that well! I have seen a speedway sedan that exploded the clutch at about 8000 rpm. Cut the header through as well as the chassis rail. Right hand drive is safer as most of the energy goes left.
We still have a front engine dragster that runs at our local track thing is sketchy as hell. Just looking at it scares me, how safety regulations changed over the years.
Did not know that how remember watching the snake Shirley and Big daddy Katie Bernstein early 80s it was a good time for dragracing they were trying to run 200 miles an hour didn’t think they could do it it’s amazing where they are now
Back in the 60s and 70s men like Garlits and Evil Kenevil didn't have a way to "calculate" every detail, they had to rely on natural instinct, and coconut size balls....
He didnt invent it. Some one else tried it, I cant think of his name, but he couldnt get it to go straight and gave up on it. Garlits perfected it, actually his mechanic buddy mentioned the steering. The problem was the steering ratio. He slowed it down. The first guy and Garlits were all over correcting and going all over the track. Garlits figured it out by slowing down the steering. Garlits talks about this on a video on here.
Nothing like having a 2000hp engine blow up in your face and shower you with shrapnel and hot engine oil. Better Traction with the engine closer to the rear wheels too. All In all a very smart move Big daddy!!
It did not run in the 6.20s until the wing was added. Later, the car had a best run of 6.21 @ 244 mph. That one came at Indy.....well after Don added the wing,
Ron Harper they did this because cars were constantly passing the turn off so by shortening the race to a thousand feet they have given the drivers an extra 320 feet to slow down its quite logical actually
Think it's time to redesign that old 70s style funny car chassis it's been somewhat the same all these years here in 2019 one would think by now they would have come up with a totally new design
I MET HIM IN 1978,HE PULLED HIS CAR OFF THE TRAILOR and more than 5 participants left,i saw them drive off,he set a world record right there,this was at KCIR and my other home,till they took it apart,now its a field of grass
My uncle used to race front engine dragsters. When they went to rear engine he didn't have enough money to change like a lot of Motorsports. To make $1000000 dollars you have to start out with two million. Lol
I like Don alot but it was not his "idea" to have a rear engine car. A rear engine car won an IHRA event in 1970, a half year before Don built and ran his. Guess you would not hear about that on NHRA site huh?? The steering issue was it was too quick, they slowed the ratio 1/2 and it went straight down broadway.
When drag racing changed daily, seconds were dropping like flies. Drag racing was more exciting do to all the changes. Will always be the coolest sport on earth. Ya BreathDR,To bad for the 1/4. How do you convert from 1/4 to 1000 in yr head? I always think how fast would that have been if it was a 1/4 ?
Don could build cars that do not break in half under acceleration. Hi did flip backwards one though and the car landed on all FOUR wheels. Unlike the modern ones that break in half regularly. Called 'safe'!!!
a little backwards there buddy. If the swamp rat wasnt building junk then he would not have blown off his foot. There is also science behind the cars coming apart these days . They are intentionally made to do so.
The front engine dragsters were a thing of beauty!!!
I grew up going to Big Daddies Drag museum. I’ve seen this wrecked car up close, hard to believe he walked away. I spoke with Don Garlits once in the “engine room”, he was cleaning a glass case and I was by myself at age 11 or 12. I thought he was just a janitor or something and he asked me what my favorite engine is and of coarse I listened to my dad growing up and loved the 427 cammer. I love engines even at that age and even knew (basically) how they worked because again, I’d listen to my father. He responded back with a “that’s a great engine” or something along those lines. This was about 1990 there around so a lil kid speaking to an older man in a corner was creepy yet, we chatted a few words back and forth, he put back whatever he’d been wiping down into the display case and left through a door that led to the back. By the time my family made into the room I was more than happy to tour the room again, to read all the plaques again. Some motors were cut a ways that were painted red for exhaust and blue for cool air and I think orange for coolant if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, I told my dad I was just talking to an old guy back here before they got came it. It wasn’t until we were leaving that I saw a poster of BigDaddy DonGarlits by the front door & I said “Hey, that’s the guy I was talking to in the engine room!” To which the lady behind the register said “Oh yeah, Dons hanging around today. I seem to have a knack for meeting famous people without knowing its them & with no one else around.
That's a great story. I met Nick Mason the drummer of Pink Floyd when my father and I were picking up parts from an Aston Martin workshop. Nick let me sit in his car and explained all the controls.
That’s what you call a PIONEER.
Truly😎😎😎
Necessity is the mother of all invention. Many thanks to Don Garlits for helping to make the sport a safer one. He was voted Number 1 on NHRA's Top Fifty Drivers list for a good reason, and his successful debut of the rear-engine dragster certainly shows one of the reasons why he topped the list. One of my more memorable moments was meeting him back in 1991 at Toronto Motorsports Park (Dragway Park, Cayuga, Ontario). I shook his hand, spoke with him, and even took a photo with him. My Hero!
Tony Nancy ran a rear engine drahster seven years before Garlits...
I remember back in seventy-one you can only get this on wild world of sports, tape delay late Saturday afternoon. Or in a magazine a month later. Believe it or not those are good days.
Over 2300 US servicemen killed in Vietnam, sexual revolution, bell bottom pants, muscle cars are defanged, gun homicides are at an all-time high, civil unrest/protests, government lying at their arses...and they were STILL the good ol days!
It's WIDE World of Sports!!! Not wild...smh.
@@michaelslack5269 ok Mike you got me. I seen my mistake after I sent it 8 months ago. Looks like 32 let me slide . And you couldn't resist being a perfect
@@havefaith3213 You could have edited the post, dumbass.
@@michaelslack5269 "The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat"..
"Near fatal"? He [only] lost part of one foot. The kid in the stands that had one arm cut off from clutch debris was more "near fatal". By the way, they both arrived at the hospital at the same time. Don insisted the kid go first, bless his heart!
If it severed an artery, it coulda been near fatal, or even fatal.....
Any time something explodes with that kind of force and you are that close it is near fatal friend. Think grenade.
@@jeffgraham436 Yeah, how narrow minded does anyone have to be to question something by that was in fact " near fatal"? Oh yeah thumbnail name, Yamaha. Some people just don't understand the danger in drag racing, a split second and life could end.
You are exactly correct .Don told that story to my son and I at his museum years ago and he had a poster on display that showed the flywheel in mid air before it struct the guy .Thank God it did nt hit him in the head or chest . Taking the tour with Don was so much fun .I asked him if he ran at Dover Drag strip in NY and he took me by the arm into the gift shop ,opened a book ,and pointed to him there pulling a wheelie . Of course I bought it ,and he signed it ,great memories !
@@jeffgraham436 Or Giagantic Carnivorous Saber Sloth
I was there for both events.... Heck I have home videos of all the greats at my fathers house...he saved a lot of lives with that one thought!🕊🙏🏻😎
Post them on CZcams.
We Miss both Dave and Steve as announcers
Big is a pioneer in the sport and has seen everything.
If you've never been to the Garlits Museum, it's a MUST SEE ! Almost all of the Swamp Rats are there. Send the kids and the wife to Disney, take yourself to the Museum. YOUR WELCOME 🇺🇸🇺🇸
SARGE BULLDOG
Been there. Talked with Big for 45 minutes.
It is on my bucket list. But the damn virus has messed it up for this year.
My wife and son both want to back again
True Story. A few years ago, I worked the audit shift at the Sleep Inn at the entrance to the Garlits museum. I checked in a guy from North Carolina who came to visit the museum. We had a great conversation about Big, and I said that I now have no excuse for not going for a visit. He pulled out his wallet, handed me $20 and said, "I'll see you at 9 a.m." It was a blast and worth losing sleep. Especially the dinner at 484 pizza!
You need to go. Take a camera. Call the museum ahead and see if Don is giving tours of his shops. The tours cost a little but are worth every penny. I try to go once a year, and I always stock up on Swamp Rat T-Shirts.
Big Daddy is KING !!! GOAT !!
I wouldn't have been comfortable stradling the diff pumpkin. Fluids got all over the drivers too. Garlitts is a genious!
upside downdog he and bill maverick were very safety and did not like seeing being being burned or killed. He always said we lost a lotta good men.
My Dad and I were standing on the starting line that day. He introduced me to Wild Willy also.
My first drag race I went to was right after Big Daddy's accident... at Lions Drag Strip when I was 10. Its been my favorite form of racing ever since
Remember....This was a full 1/4 mile run as compared to 1000' today.
LOL!!!!
Today was the first day that I learned it's only 1000' now. Why?
As usual, someone died in a freak accident in a sport that’s obviously dangerous, so we have to change the whole sport around just to pacify the pussies.
@@JerryDLTN Bc they decided it would be good to give them the extra 320 feet to help in slowing down, especially with tracks that dont have room for a full shutdown area
Englishtown
Thanks Big Daddy & NHRA
That's not the only thing he invented (hope he got a patent on it). His museum in Ocala Fl. off I-75 is full of ingenious things he tried. He's remarkable. I remember looking at the slingshots back then and thinking, "There's no way I would want to drive that, you got a rear axle in your lap".
They sat on the rear differential and had the short driveshaft between their legs. They had that big engine in front of them so they couldn't see very well either. The rear engine design was so much safer and opened the door to greater speeds once they figured out the correct rear wing.
A terrible event, Don loosing half of his right foot and the young man loosing an arm at Lyons in 70. I was at Pamona in 71 and saw
Don taking his car through the tech line. I am grateful for having been there 50 years ago. One thing seldom mentioned is the tragic
loss of Pete Robinson at Pamona that year. My memory is that on Saturday he was making an elimination run and just as he was
crossing the finish line the front end of the car lifted slightly and went to the right catching the guard rail. He is one of the few
successfully ran a cammer Ford.
An interesting thing is that same year when Garlits rebuilt the car and competed in the NHRA U.S. Nationals, he red lighted in the semi-final in the right lane, so was out. In the final round, Jim Nichol ran in the same lane and clutch exploded, also severing the car in half.
??? Big Daddy has never claimed he built the first RED. There were many RED designs around even 10 yrs. before, but none successful on Top Fuel. He is the first to successfully campaign one in top fuel that's all.
The RED goes back to the late-1940's. Don just perfected it. (form "1001 Drag Racing Facts")
I remember!
Don didn't invent the rear engine car any more than Edison invented the light bulb. But they both made 'em work properly.
Um HELL NO !! Your talking completely out of your ass about someone you don't even know the first thing about and your attitude towards Big Daddy Don is completely unjustified and uncalled for and extremely disrespectful and extremely pathetic If you actually knew anything about drag racing you wouldn't be making such assnin comments and making such an ass out of yourself
That's all?!? Like, "Oh, there were a bunch of other people doing airplane stuff before the Wright bros. they just actually made one fly. That's all." TWIT!!
Garlits is genius, period. Always has cogs turning in his mind, ever the innovator.
He changed the history of drag racing by his design
I'd never take anything away from Don, but he did NOT invent the rear engined dragster. He DID perfect it, though.......
Don is great an all but a rear engine car won an IHRA event in 1970. The year of this accident.
As a kid of the 60's, I frequented LaPlace Dragway north of New Orleans.
After witnessing more than one engine detonation, I exclaimed " why don't y'all put the engine BEHIND the driver?"
And Big Daddy did just that
Go Big Daddy, Don Garlits and the Snake Prudhomme I used to watch on TV on Sunday. My two favorites
Iron American Dream on CZcams.
BIG Brainstorm by BIG Daddy, Al Vanderslice & I hitched a ride and came up with the 1st Backmotor Comp Eliminator car. 1 year later.
Thankyou mr Garlits for making this sport safer
Front engine racing at 1/4 mile can still be seen and enjoyed at the March Meet every March and other nostalgia races nationwide.
That front engine rail looked pretty slick.
I have been to the Big Daddy Museum 2 times, im a truck driver who was a drag racer in my time, a must see !!! , They had the cars only roped off and said not to go beyond the ropes or sit in the cars , i had to sit in one of the old swamp Rats , and i did unbelievable the tire's are not 6 inches from ur shoulders & ur sitting right over the rear Axle & your legs are on each side of the transmission right down to the bellhouseing , That's Brave !!!
Garlits wasnt the first one to make the rear engine dragster but he brought it to popularity through necessity.
The first guy who ran them, couldnt get it to go straight. Garlits with his builders advice, slowed the steering down, they were over correcting with the faster steering.
My favorite story about big daddy is when he tore his dragster engine apart for a photo shoot for hot rod mag and put it together in two hours then went out and won the championship
Hot Rod magazine Nov 1964. No racer since has ever had the class to show and tell ALL about a winning race car.
www.hotrod.com/articles/swamp-rat-vi-teardown/
It was not all that long until Top Fuel engines were torn down and rebuilt after each RUN
Pat Foster and RCE's Woody Gilmore built a back motor car about a year and a half before Garlit's trans incident. But, that car was designed a little wrong (no CAD in those days) and it almost killed Pat on it's first full-on pass. Garlits called Foster while he still recovering for input on how to make the rear engine concept work - which was slow the steering down, don't position the motor too far back, and no wheelie bars.
I used to walk past his house on the way to school in Tampa. His neighbors must have been saints.
Concerning a question from "windflags", further down this page, about Garlits' elapsed time in the top fuel final at the '71 Winternationals. Garlits had a 'single', because his competitor, Kenny Safford, could not make repairs to his car, therefore giving Garlits the win. Garlits smoked the tires in the single car pass, and ran an E.T. of 7.03. He had in previous rounds, been running solid 6.70's. ---- "Duckman195".....nobody was running any where close to 6.20 in the early 70's.
Yet despite the advances in safety provided by the rear engine, many of the front engine cars are being built and competed in local events. Just goes that you can come up with a safety improvement but for some, nostalgia is more important than safety
They didn't move the engine, they moved the driver.
An American Icon.
I was lookin at that thumbnail pic good and hard to try and make sense of it. No luck. Pushed play to see what was up. That's crazy!!!
ahhhh loved to see " Big Daddy"... race.... wonoderful
Made perfect sense and worked.
Nice history lesson we can believe.
Wow Never Knew This! Drag racing made Safer👍👍💛
Big Daddy the best he shops at same grocery store my aunt and uncle do in Florida . My uncle says oh yeah we pass each other in the aisle every so often , I said if I was with you I would ask for autograph and ask him if he really did splitfire spark plugs years before it caught on
Clutch came apart, and cut the car in two. This brought about the scatter shield.
flying clutch disc also cut a kids arm clean off...
They had scatter shields, maybe not good enough but they had them.
Though on here somewhere is a huge engine/ clutch explosion that near cut the car in half on the hit. So even now they do not work that well!
I have seen a speedway sedan that exploded the clutch at about 8000 rpm. Cut the header through as well as the chassis rail. Right hand drive is safer as most of the energy goes left.
Many think that it was a clutch failure, but it actually was a two speed trans that let go.
We still have a front engine dragster that runs at our local track thing is sketchy as hell. Just looking at it scares me, how safety regulations changed over the years.
He was called Big Daddy for a good reason.
But you just called him Daddy
Did not know that how remember watching the snake Shirley and Big daddy Katie Bernstein early 80s it was a good time for dragracing they were trying to run 200 miles an hour didn’t think they could do it it’s amazing where they are now
Back in the 60s and 70s men like Garlits and Evil Kenevil didn't have a way to "calculate" every detail, they had to rely on natural instinct, and coconut size balls....
No shit ! didn't know he invented the dragster we see today thanks Don !
I love rail dragsters
He didnt invent it. Some one else tried it, I cant think of his name, but he couldnt get it to go straight and gave up on it. Garlits perfected it, actually his mechanic buddy mentioned the steering. The problem was the steering ratio. He slowed it down. The first guy and Garlits were all over correcting and going all over the track. Garlits figured it out by slowing down the steering. Garlits talks about this on a video on here.
@@rchydrozz751 there were more than one rear engine dragsters before Don's.
Revolutionary guy right there!
Never will see a 32 car top fuel field again
32 cars raced in 1 day???
Ive been to dons museum here in florida. There's a drag strip next door of course
It’s amazing how much faster things are now. Nowadays, a kid on a bicycle could beat those 1970s dragster times.
Ya, I don't think so...
Kaiser brothers were the first to build a rear engine car. Garlits figured out the steering problem. Give credit where credit is due.
yes but garlits gutter builds put him at the right spot at the right time.
Rear engine cars were built in the 50s
Nothing like having a 2000hp engine blow up in your face and shower you with shrapnel and hot engine oil. Better Traction with the engine closer to the rear wheels too. All In all a very smart move Big daddy!!
The Swamp Rat XIV, while I don't know the exact E.T. of that final run at the 1971 Winternationals, it was somewhere around the 6.2's.
It did not run in the 6.20s until the wing was added.
Later, the car had a best run of 6.21 @ 244 mph.
That one came at Indy.....well after Don added the wing,
As I remember, he let everyone leave on him, then ran them down by a car length in the lights, awesome performance.
IMO...they have ruined Drags by NOT going a FULL 1/4 mile.
I agree with you 100%! They lost a long time fan when they dropped the fuel cars to a thousand feet, I think it was a stupid idea to do this.
Ron Harper they did this because cars were constantly passing the turn off so by shortening the race to a thousand feet they have given the drivers an extra 320 feet to slow down its quite logical actually
Just make the track longer..what idiocy. Wally Parks cannot DIE soon enough, the asshole.
If you have the money go for it..... Drag racing is a dying sport mean and it sucks
I still like it, and HAVE Drag Raced before.
Think it's time to redesign that old 70s style funny car chassis it's been somewhat the same all these years here in 2019 one would think by now they would have come up with a totally new design
This is why funny car is more dramatic to watch they still deal with the danger.
Here in feb 2021 the funny car still uses that 70s platform one would think they would have come up with a new design by now
My dad was there at Lions when that happened
Duane Ong= First rear enging dragster to win a national event.
A number of people had run RED cars prior to Garlits accident. But when he went RED, everybody went RED.
I think his chassis builder Connie Swingle figured out the steering.
Saw that car in person! It's pretty sick to see
His success with the rear dragster came with problems, steering ratio was a headache.
Big Daddy was the bomb 💣!!!! 😎💰🏆🥇
Correction, still the bomb.
G.O.A.T.
Argue that point.
I asked Don if I could have one of his spark plugs at Dover drag strip in the sixties. His answer was, go away kid.
The thrill of victory... the agony of defeat.
I got some of his spark plugs and a used oil can out of a trash barrel near his trailer. I was 13 then, but I still have them to this day.
My great uncle 😁
Run what you brung
That was a damn good era.
Somebody give a CHEESE BURGER.
Long live Daddy O!!!
I wish I could have seen him race at a track once.
I MET HIM IN 1978,HE PULLED HIS CAR OFF THE TRAILOR and more than 5 participants left,i saw them drive off,he set a world record right there,this was at KCIR and my other home,till they took it apart,now its a field of grass
you an see a lot of his cars in Ocala, Florida at this museum > 13700 SW 16th Ave, Ocala, FL 34473
roaringleo57
You can see him and speak with him as well.
I remember his explosion if I remember right I think he lost some toes .
My uncle used to race front engine dragsters. When they went to rear engine he didn't have enough money to change like a lot of Motorsports. To make $1000000 dollars you have to start out with two million. Lol
I like Don alot but it was not his "idea" to have a rear engine car. A rear engine car won an IHRA event in 1970, a half year before Don built and ran his. Guess you would not hear about that on NHRA site huh?? The steering issue was it was too quick, they slowed the ratio 1/2 and it went straight down broadway.
That's impossible. Ihra wasn't formed until 1971.
What ever happened to "Flash Fry" the worlds first front engine jet dragster?
Gosh, if only Lions Drag strip was still open!!
Been there!
Looks odd without the wing...
Saved a lot of legs a feet
Technically fist was the explosion proof bell housing. At the cost of his left foot.
Is that the guy who lost half of his foot when that engine exploded
Yes.
I would like to go to his museum one day
@@theflashdunkracin5179 Definitely worth the trip, Dude!!!
Alright now I really wanna go
When drag racing changed daily, seconds were dropping like flies. Drag racing was more exciting do to all the changes. Will always be the coolest sport on earth.
Ya BreathDR,To bad for the 1/4.
How do you convert from 1/4 to 1000 in yr head? I always think how fast would that have been if it was a 1/4 ?
what was his et?
Don could build cars that do not break in half under acceleration. Hi did flip backwards one though and the car landed on all FOUR wheels.
Unlike the modern ones that break in half regularly. Called 'safe'!!!
a little backwards there buddy. If the swamp rat wasnt building junk then he would not have blown off his foot. There is also science behind the cars coming apart these days . They are intentionally made to do so.
Big Daddy put Gainsville on the map and that is a mid engine rail.
ninja turtels
Farr out 🤠
This is like a Chapelle when keeping goes wrong video
Top Dog....
I believe Big Daddy lost a toe when that clutch went
And a boy in the crowd lost one arm from parts of his exploding clutch in the same accident i believe.
Well, slap me and call me "Wing Chung," tonight.
Does anyone else remember Paul Longnecker?
Yes....I do. Recall he had a bad "blow over" back sometime in the 70's.
he went so fast,his eye doctor told him he was going to blind,,,,Chrysler HEMI
GermaniaSuperiori you're my brother lol
Safer? Yes. Cooler? No way in hell!
Anyone know what he was running back then?
Everybody copies Volkswagen's lead.
i tough it was that they didnt like the tunnel ram blowing up in face
Blown engines and oil fires in the face. A change was coming. It just took the accident and Garlits in the hospital to get the ideas going.
Your forgot the great moments in Pro Stock in 71?
Technically - MID-ENGINED -- but typically referred to as REAR-ENGINED.