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History First Drag Racers to Use Nitrous Oxide

Discussion in 'The Hokey Ass Message Board' started by blowby, Aug 15, 2021.

  1. blowby
    Joined: Dec 27, 2012
    Posts: 8,661

    blowby
    Member
    from Nicasio Ca

    Great article

    https://www.motortrend.com/news/the-first-drag-racers-to-ever-use-nitrous-oxide

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    If you were at Famoso Raceway on March 5, 1961, you witnessed history, although you probably didn't know it. That day a bunch of hayseeds running a comically stumpy Top Fuel dragster rolled off the trailer and made an 8.5-second run at 185.58 mph, fast enough to set the track's top-speed record.



    And it was only the start.


    Rain that morning meant only one timing run prior to eliminations. That paired the ungainly Thrifty Auto dragster from Spokane, Washington, against Don Garlits in the first round of eliminations. Garlits threw a belt, which made the Spokane team de facto winners. But belt or no belt, Garlits probably didn't have a chance; on that pass, Thrifty set the track's e.t. record with a blistering 8.28-second run. In fact, the otherwise dependable car made it to the third round of eliminations when its rearend let loose.




    But it was the thing nobody saw that actually made history. Mounted above driver Don Stortroen's legs were two bottles filled with a gas known primarily as an anesthetic. To the best of our knowledge, those passes by the Thrifty team on that rainy March morning were the first application of nitrous oxide in a dragster, a combination that challenges the history of the nitrous-oxide story as we knew it.


    Yeah, that's a big claim. Huge even. And it gets even more incredible: Thrifty was one of two cars from Spokane on the sauce that day. What's more, the two teams had nearly three full years with nitrous under their belts by then.

    The Blower in the Bottle


    Unless you were a chemist or dentist, the most you knew about nitrous oxide in 1961 was its use in aircraft during World War II. But the conclusion of the war and turbine development effectively pulled the rug out from under the mysterious gas.

    In fact, Spokane drag racer Dick Flynn hadn't even heard the term nitrous oxide when he started combing the library in 1958. He was pursuing the next wonder fuel, a time-honored ritual among would-be pioneers like Barney Navarro. Case in point, Navarro injected straight oxygen in his track car's engine.

    Of course, oxygen doesn't burn, but its presence is necessary for combustion. Increasing oxygen's concentration requires a proportional increase in fuel, which of course does burn. So, in effect, introducing pure oxygen and additional fuel to an engine is tantamount to supercharging—think of it as the blower in a bottle.

    But as Navarro learned, there was a volatility issue. Dense oxygen concentrations make fuel mixtures so reactive that even hot spots in an intake tract can cause explosions. Navarro abandoned oxygen injection after a particularly dramatic meltdown that coated the inside of an engine with a Stromberg 97.

    Flynn discovered among other things that nitrous oxide also introduces denser concentrations of oxygen to an engine, but it does so in a far safer way. Nitrous oxide consists of an oxygen atom bonded to two nitrogen atoms. At most temperatures, the compound remains inert; however, the heat and high pressure inside a combustion chamber break those bonds, freeing the oxygen. That saturates the cylinder with more oxygen than is present in air alone. In other words, it feeds the cylinder high concentrations of oxygen without the pesky spontaneous explosions.

    A conversation with friend and fellow drag racer Gary Harms inspired a test. Harms bolted an oxygen regulator to a bottle filled with nitrous and laid it in the tool tray in his supercharged 1940 Ford. A rubber hose ran under the carpet to an air-gun nozzle that he set on his thigh. From there, another hose led to a nipple at the base of a Stromberg jetted extra rich to compensate for the extra oxygen whenever Harms pressed the valve's button. He pressed it upon acceleration and held it there until shifting.

    It worked; Harms won B/Gas at Deer Park on September 7, 1958, the only time he trophied at the track. To the best of our knowledge, it's the first application of nitrous oxide in drag racing—if not all racing.

    Galvanized by this success, Flynn spent the 1959 season researching the applications. The Thrifty crew included an ambulance driver named George Warsinski, whose remarkably gainful employment afforded him a brand-new Thunderbird. The crew transformed the 'Bird to guinea pig, to great success on the track.

    Friendly Top Fuel rivals in the Kelly Automotive team took note, inspiring Jack Hordemann (the co-author's oldest brother) to conduct his own research. He found an even more detailed account of an aircraft injection system. Hordemann and Flynn pooled their resources and began designing, building, and bench-testing nitrous systems.


    The Thrifty crew tested the latest system on its dragster. Common sense dictated a baseline without nitrous. "We made a run and about half track we broke a wristpin and sawed the engine in half," Flynn says. But it had a silver lining: Nobody could blame the failure on nitrous oxide, which would've certainly killed the experiment.

    During the following winter, Jack Hordemann rebuilt the Kelly car with a nitrous-oxide injector and Flynn built a new nitrous-injected engine for the Thrifty car. The two designs came about simultaneously, but they differed greatly. Flynn mounted two 6-pound bottles horizontally under the cowl as noted earlier. They fed an oxygen regulator set at 12 psi. A line transmitted vapor to a valve adjacent the throttle pedal. From there, another line connected to a bulkhead in the back of the lifter valley, where a small manifold distributed the gas to each intake port. Yeah, direct-port nitrous—hidden, at that. In 1960.

    Jack Hordemann sort of hid the Kelly system in plain sight. An inverted bottle mounted at the fuel tank near the front of the car supplied liquid nitrous oxide to two valves mounted in series on the injector scoop. The first valve turned on the system and the second released the liquid at full throttle. This approach exploited the latent heat of evaporation caused by the change from liquid to gas, which further increased efficiency.

    The Thrifty crew set out to Fremont in January 1961 to test the system. Driver Don Stortroen set quick e.t. at that meet, too, but failed to knock fellow Washingtonians Bob Haines and Jack Cross from Drag News' number-three spot in the Mr. Eliminator list. Success eluded the crew in a second California venture. But at least nobody spotted the nitrous kit.

    The third time—Bakersfield—was definitely the charm. "We were as shocked as anyone else," Flynn recalls of the feeling after the run against Garlits. Jim Hordemann (the co-author's older brother) drove the Kelly Automotive dragster past the Pink's Auto entry, but a clutch explosion put the car back on the trailer. Stortroen in the Thrifty car took out Ward and Cook in the second round, but a broken rearend let Fox and Holding prevail in the third.

    Again, nobody seemed to notice the Kelly car's conspicuous system, probably in part because the car was off pace. Thrifty, on the other hand, received tons of attention. Nobody noticed its hidden system, either, but that was by design.

    Back in Spokane, the Thrifty and Kelley teams paired off in the first round of eliminations at the April 9 meet at Deer Park, to our knowledge the first match between two nitrous-equipped dragsters. The run ended in a dead heat, but Thrifty ultimately took Top Eliminator.

    From there, both crews collaborated on Warsinski's Thunderbird. With a system not all that different from the one in Harms' 1940, the car went from 16.69 seconds at 84.03 mph to 14.86 seconds at 103.68 mph.

    The cat was out of the bag back in Spokane, but the city's relative isolation kept the rest of the country wondering how an unorthodox contraption could kick so much ass. However, a big spread in the May 20, 1961, Drag News explained why.

    A year or so prior, would-be Willow Springs track owner Bill Huth founded Speed Power Suspension to market a fully suspended dragster. Recognizing an opportunity, he teamed with Dick Flynn and Jack Hordemann to market nitrous-oxide systems under the name Second Wind. But poor instructions caused engines using the Second Wind systems to run lean and fail. By extension, so did the image of the gas itself suffer. It possibly set another precedent, specifically the myth of nitrous oxide as an agent of mass destruction.


    It was far from the end of the line, though. In 1962 Ron Hammel, a Spokane expat who worked for Tony Capanna at the time, came back to visit. Jack Hordemann gave him a nitrous kit for his 1950 Ford pickup. Though skeptical, Hammel tested the system on the company dyno. At one point he even convinced Zane Shubert to try it on the Chevy Fueler he ran with Chet Herbert. Herbert and Shubert suffered two consecutive blower explosions, but Hammel found relative success in 1964 selling kits through the company he formed, 10,000 RPM Speed Equipment. We'll gladly call that the first successful commercial venture to market nitrous-oxide systems, and it's well documented in the book "How to Install and Tune Nitrous Oxide Systems." "From about 1969 to the early 1980s, we sold a lot of kits," Hammel said in a later interview.

    In fact, one of those kits is partly responsible for the story of nitrous oxide as you likely knew it. Mike Thermos, inspired by one of Hammel's kits, teamed up with Dale Vaznaian to design another system. In 1978 they founded Nitrous Oxide Systems. Thermos and Vaznaian didn't invent the use of nitrous oxide in automobiles, and as noted, they weren't the first to market a system, but without a doubt they perfected it, thereby putting nitrous oxide on the lips (and in the engines) of racers worldwide.

    Dick Flynn and Jack Hordemann remained in motorsports, but stopped pursuing nitrous-oxide development. Flynn quit drag racing in 1961 to build engines mostly for sprint cars. In 1991 he partnered with Gary Harms and the Markley Brothers as an engine builder and tuner for a land-speed racing program. Upon leaving drag racing in 1965, Hordemann briefly worked as a machinist in California. Upon his return to Spokane, he bought a motorcycle dealership and pursued his thrills on two wheels.

    As for nitrous oxide, well, we all know what that turned into. The company that Thermos and Vaznaian founded transformed the image of the gas and created a highly competitive niche market that thrives today. But if they saw further, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants, giants you probably never heard of until now.

    What's Up, Short Stuff?

    To call the Thrifty car's wheelbase short is an understatement. Wheelbase partly dictates stability, so dragster wheelbases increased in pretty much direct proportion with speeds; by 1961 the cutting-edge cars ran about 110 to 115 inches between the hubs.

    The Thrifty dragster? Eighty-eight inches. Know what else has an 88-inch wheelbase? A Honda CRX. Imagine going 185 mph in one of those. On nitrous, no less. But Thrifty wasn't always short; Don Stortroen built it with about a 100-inch wheelbase, a conventional dimension by 1959 standards. So why on earth was it so short?

    Ask Fern Clay. Well, she's not around, so we'll answer that for her. Her husband, Mr. Henry "Hank" Clay, owned Spokane's Thrifty Auto Supply, a garden variety parts store that started selling speed equipment in the 1950s. In fact, you can see a photo of the shop on the June 2012 HOT ROD cover.

    Clay sponsored a string of cars, among them the Hordemann Brothers' mid-engine T and even the Kelly Automotive dragster later in its career. A bit before the Bakersfield meet, the Clays came calling to check the progress and offer some encouragement. But Mrs. Clay couldn't see the digger behind the car as she backed out and ended up driving over the nose.


    Time constraints made re-tubing the car inconvenient. That left two options: cut the car back and run a squirrely car or not run at all. With the understanding that the shorter and therefore lighter nose would make the car more prone to uncontrollable wheelstands, the crew found the heaviest objects they could find to keep the nose down. Initially, they lashed a floor jack to the front axle with a length of logger's chain, but they eventually bolted a lead-filled tube to the axle.

    They say there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution, and Thrifty was a textbook case. A busy schedule and the promise of solving multiple problems by building another chassis kept the stumpy, little digger on the track until a U-joint explosion on September 24, 1961, severely injured Stortroen, ending his and the team's racing days. Stortroen moved to California to work for Vic Hubbard.

    Drag News. In their hasty run to market, they neglected to develop adequate instructions, so most installations led to catastrophic engine failures. Advertising lasted to the May 2, 1961, issue.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2021
  2. Kind of older/semi-modern day, but this is Clayton Harris--Top Fuel
    Notice the spray bar misting Nitrous right into the Injector of his Fuel motor----
     

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  3. loudbang
    Joined: Jul 23, 2013
    Posts: 40,276

    loudbang
    Member

  4. Fascinating history lesson.
     
    chevy57dude and loudbang like this.

  5. Roothawg
    Joined: Mar 14, 2001
    Posts: 24,524

    Roothawg
    Member

    Nitrous was first used in WWII in a few fighters. I believe the Germans were the first to experiment with it.

    neat article BTW
     
    302GMC and loudbang like this.
  6. big john d
    Joined: Nov 24, 2011
    Posts: 366

    big john d
    Member
    from ma

    no body knew how the german dive bombers made enough power to pull out of those dives
     
    302GMC and loudbang like this.
  7. Tow Truck Tom
    Joined: Jul 3, 2018
    Posts: 1,883

    Tow Truck Tom
    Member
    from Clayton DE

    Thanks for the story. In those days there were sounds of racing into the night that I would wonder of. We lived in farm land. There were some makeshift tracks out there. When I had found publications that spoke of these racers I became an ardent reader. Today will be a good day. Thanks.
     
    stillrunners and loudbang like this.
  8. hipojoe
    Joined: Jul 23, 2021
    Posts: 493

    hipojoe

    The pilots on both sides were running nitrous, when they encountered the enemy and a Dog Fight was involved they often hit the scramble button, which todays drag racers use that term to give their ride a health load of the juice. It had been around for decades before common folk figured out how to use it without creating a mechanical bomb. Great Stuff!
     
    stillrunners likes this.
  9. MCjim
    Joined: Jun 4, 2006
    Posts: 954

    MCjim
    Member
    from soCal

    [​IMG]
     
    twenty8, stanlow69, mgtstumpy and 4 others like this.
  10. tbirddragracer
    Joined: Jul 25, 2013
    Posts: 128

    tbirddragracer
    Member

    I have a 300 hp nitrous-oxide kit on my avator T-Bird with a Y-Block.
    Quite a rush, sitting at the line waiting on the lights, trans-brake locked in
    at 3800 rmp's, let go of the trans-brake and the 300 hp nitrous-oxide kit kicks in.
     
    stillrunners, vtx1800, blowby and 3 others like this.
  11. 1971BB427
    Joined: Mar 6, 2010
    Posts: 8,719

    1971BB427
    Member
    from Oregon

    Great history of Nitrous!! I never realized it had been used that early, and surely not by the Thrifty Auto Supply team! Neat!
     
    loudbang likes this.
  12. Very interesting.:cool:
     
    loudbang likes this.
  13. jimmy six
    Joined: Mar 21, 2006
    Posts: 14,802

    jimmy six
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    Built this system from NOS parts in 1980 for my GMC 6. I think is was 100-125 HP according to the nozzle pills. Pushed our 40 Chev coupe to 152. Still have a few blue bottles and solenoids stashed somewhere. As I remember holed #2 twice. Welded one up and ran it for 15 more years..I’ve just got too much s**t…… 6BEC40C5-9CA0-4E9B-B27E-D7C69699F5A7.jpeg 54332699-010C-43D8-9F51-1E25EBDE8749.jpeg
     
  14. How many RPM did that 6 turn? The MPH is amazing!
     
    loudbang likes this.
  15. Rand Man
    Joined: Aug 23, 2004
    Posts: 4,860

    Rand Man
    Member

    I’m pretty sure Don Johnson was the first to use Nitrous. Anybody get that reference?
     
    tommyd and loudbang like this.
  16. jimmy six
    Joined: Mar 21, 2006
    Posts: 14,802

    jimmy six
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    Nitrous is said to be a “blower in a bottle” so I went with a taller gears. I will turn a GMC 6000 but normally keep the top at 57-5800 or lower. With a button held down for a mile at Bonneville my son didn’t turn it over 5200. I guarantee there are no cheap parts on the inside..
    The 152 was at El Mirage and the rear started to lift after 150 because of aerodynamics. It came off after that run. It will run in the 12’s on the 1/4 mile with 4.88’s and a 30” rear tire. A5342578-92E7-48F5-9563-2BD04D7DC5ED.jpeg
     
    1971BB427, egads, jnaki and 3 others like this.

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