Thread: Jerry Clayton in scale .........

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Wings-----Hummmmmm----well, I also have a long history of wings

Those basicly are the wings that Don Long built to go on the front axle to keep the car down at speed---only a few people used them---then John Wiebe had put a similar type wing on the side of his car just in front of the rear wheel to lift the air over the tire ---the upswept headers had pretty well streamlined the tops of the slicks but a lot of air was below the header area and they helped him some---Being that John Keeling and I both worked for the airlines, we were around that stuff a lot--

I said that the wings needed to be mounted further forward to lift the air from down low and let the exhaust flow continue the lift and actually accerate it over the tires---Finally came up with a plan with Don Long on where and how to do it----pretty much a secret until we unloaded at OCIR. By the end of the day on Monday, Long had sold every wing he had and had reordered more TWICE before the day was over!!!Before we had set the et record at Orange County(OCIR) McKeon(Mongoose) had held it for 2 years at 6.63 and we lowered it to 6:61---the next trip there(with the wings) was the PDA race(32 car field) which pretty much had everybody at it---we lowered track record to 6:41 in semi final against Don Prudome in his wedge rear engine car (lots of publicity on it as the leading edge of RED) with a 6:41 also(quickest side by side run ever at that time) We lost a blower belt at about the 1000 ft mark and only turned speed of 208mph while he ran 230+!!!

With a new belt for the finals, we were expeted to win over Schulz and Glenn, but we launched the blower because of the steel braid trash in the cylinders from the run before. Its been written many times that we won the race but didn't until the next year with our RED---

Perhaps a trick question!

Did that first ride with the wings feel anything different? .2 is a huge difference!

So neat to hear about the thought behind the action! As a pilot I love to hear about the application of flight dynamics to be the answer to the quest for a quicker ETA! Kind of an original thought at that time...

Must have given you a grin when you saw the rest of the group buying wings!