Tune it up a LITTLE more

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Mopar 151w2
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Tune it up a LITTLE more

Post by Mopar 151w2 »

Drag racing veteran John "Tarzan" Austin tells the story of a man who could'nt leave the tune-up be........
THE STORY OF: TO KNOW ROBERT FRAKES IS TO LOVE HIM


Robert Frakes is a very special guy to me.

I will say this about him; he ran a race car as hard as you could possibly run a race car. I mean it had about everything you could have in it, in it. It just blew up a lot.

I can remember back in 1975, at the race in Ontario where Garlits ran one of those 5.60s out there that nobody had ever run before. Robert had to run Garlits in the semi-finals and headed into the race he didn’t stand much of a chance and in the end, had no chance as he blew up everything big time.

They were so frustrated they had blown up everything in the trailer, that they loaded the burned up parts and left their car in California.

The winter off-season heals all wounds and Robert flew back in January and was ready to have at it again. He was going to rebuild the burned up engine in the car and I helped him to get it ready.

So we get to Pomona, and the first thing that happens is Robert gets into a big fight with a tech guy over his fire suit being dirty.

Of course, quick with the wit, Robert fires back at the unprepared tech official, ‘So what, have you ever seen dirt burn?’ The guy didn’t say anything else, he just stamped the card.

Robert always found a way to get one up on the tech guys. A few years before this incident, when they had a front motor car, it was the same deal at Pomona, everybody came up with Plexiglas windshields on their cars and the NHRA didn’t like that. They wanted you to have an aluminum-framed glass windshield on your car because if the plexiglas windshield caught on fire it would melt and you wouldn’t be able to drive the thing. Of course they had been running them like that for 30 years and it never happened but guys were just taking duck tape and taping up the windshield and they were letting them go through tech like that. So the guy at tech said to Robert, “You have to have tape on that windshield.”

Needless to say, Robert took a piece of duck tape, lit it on fire and it burned like crazy and he said, “You happy?” The tech official told him to get out of there.

That’s just the kind of guy Frakes was back in those days.

So we went on through the tech lane and got back to the pits in Pomona. Dale Funk, his driver, still wasn’t there and Robert said ‘We need to just warm this thing up and he’s not here so you may have to drive this thing.’ I hated driving that thing because it was one of those lay down things and my car you sat pretty straight up and down in.

I was just hoping Funk would show up and he finally did. They bought a new set of aluminum heads for it; Chrysler heads. You had to be real careful with these but Robert was never really careful with anything and he just threw them on there.

We went up there and made a run and it didn’t run worth a damn. We brought it back, got it fixed and went back in line and we waited in line for a long time and the more we waited in line the more Robert got it hopped up, every time he’d walk by he’d do something to it. By the time we got to run it was really hopped up.

Then Dale goes out there, puts everything he has into it and went low ET of the f****** meet. He qualified with the low e/t in the second session on Friday and nobody touched it the whole f****** weekend.

We got back into the pits and they had burnt that son of a b**** into the ground. I was working on one side of the motor and Robert was working on the other side of the motor. On Robert’s side of the motor it burnt four pistons to the rod and of course it just destroyed both of those aluminum heads. One run and those things had already been donated to the aluminum gods.

On my side it burnt three pistons all the way to the rod and one piston it came close but barely missed burning it.

Robert, ignoring his staging lane tune-up adjustments, looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Your side was rich or it would have ran better.”
Mopar 151w2
Posts: 342
Joined: Fri May 11, 2012 9:08 pm
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What happens when you run nitromethane lean?

Post by Mopar 151w2 »

Sherm told me once: The secret to nitro is that it's all about heat! And what do you have to cool it off with? MORE nitro!

This old "war story" from the Competition Plus webzine explains the dilemmas of the nitro tuner - especially mad scientists like Robert Frakes.
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