Here's a question i've had in my head for a while now so i thought i'd post it. If Bonneville racers had rear engine cars back in the 50's what took drag racers (and Don Garlits to lose part of his foot ) until the early 7o's to make the switch to rear engine cars? Was it the steering? Because i know that was an issue.
Actually drag racers were playing around rear engine cars in the 60,s. Bill and Dave Coleman of Maryland’s Coleman Bros Speed Shop ran this rear engine car right around 1960 or so. Why they didn't stay around might be a whole nuther question.
Prolly a combo of goofy handling/steering and a face full of burning nitromethane ...flaming hot oil AND flying debris when an engine grenaded! Discounting the boiling,blinding mask of tire smoke the entire trip down the quarter mile. Not to forget the violent unpredictable wheelstands and tire shake as they 'skated' from one side of their lane into the other guys lane who was doing the same thing! Other than that.............they were "pretty safe"! 6sally6
Either heard or saw Don Garlits say they had a lot of problems with rear engine cars wanting to take a severe left halfway down the track and it took some doing to get it to stop doing that. If he had trouble getting a race car to go straight imagine the problems a regular dude would of had!
I'd say that the primary reason on Bonneville cars was getting weight back for traction and probably having a better all around weight bias in the process. Staying with the front engine diggers was probably more of a case of "we always" than safety or other reasons until Garlits made it work. I remember when he made the switch there were a lot of people who didn't like idea of the rear engine cars as far as those looking on went.
Didn't Garlits tear down his rear engine concept car for all to see how he did it? Was on front cover of Hot Rod Magazine after having built and debugged the car during the 1971 season..The main two things that were a problem was that the wheel base was too short and after they brought wheelbase out to 300" the steering had to be slowed down..Probably a few other things but Don explained it all..
That's what i'm saying, you'd think they'd take a que from the Bonneville guys and all the fire and debris would be behind them. Theirs no doubt the front engine cars DID look cooler though.
Rear engine race cars were a thing in Europe as far back as the early thirties but the most successful ones were low powered jobs with 500cc engines. The Grand Prix Auto Unions with supercharged straight eights, were definitely squirrelly and hard to handle, in the end they hired motorcycle racers and taught them to drive a race car, experienced race car drivers couldn't handle them. By the early sixties weight distribution, suspension design etc had advanced a lot and rear engine cars were winning at Indianapolis as well as in Europe, but still relatively small engine, low powered cars compared to a fuel dragster. It was Garlits who got the rear engine design to work for dragsters but it took quite a bit of work and experimenting. He, and others, had tried the rear engine concept before but always went back to the front engine design when they couldn't get it to work.
Traction. That was about the time tyre treatments and traction compounds started to become a serious factor in drag racing – also in great measure due to Garlits. The amount of available hook increased, meaning that you want the centre of gravity lower and further forward.
Actually, Woody Gilmore built a rear engine car before Garlits. Pat Foster crashed it and was banged up good. Woody figured out what went wrong and built a second car for Duane Ong. Ong won an AHRA event with it. But Garlits was better known (and funded) and ultimately more successful.
The Shoehorn was a rear engine dragster built in the late ‘50s and campaigned in the early ‘60s. Owned by Warren Welsh and Bill Butler, the short wheelbase machine ran in the mid 8s at 180mph. Driven by Welsh, this pic shows an early iteration before bodywork.
A lot of the allure to drag racing back in the 60's was the tires in the air and the awesome smoky tires as the dragsters barreled down the strip, Don Garlits accident ushered in a new way of thinking, and along with Don's rear engine design it pioneered a new way of thinking and speeds increased, then everyone followed his lead. HRP
Actually, SCTA ruled out rear engine roadsters due to the several crashes of them. Lakesters and 'liners still ran rear engines. Only in more recent years have rear engine roadsters been allowed back, But these are much longer then cars used to be and hardly look like roadsters at all.
It's usually the case with evolution; there are a number of dead ends before a new species becomes successful.
Dd dragsters actually move the engine position or just relocate the driver to the front? Seems to me the engine is still ahead of the rear end. Mick
If you mean the '70's, the engine was still in front of the rear axle, but how far varied. And so did angle.
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