The Madness
of youth.
I blame it all on Don Garlits and Dean Moon, they visited the UK in the early 60's, I saw them demonstrate their dragsters at a Church Lawford sprint meeting put on by the Allard Car company, and I was hooked.
It all started back in 1965, myself, (Ray Archer) and a very good mate, Colin Shervington. We formed the 'Highwaymen Drag Raceing Team, the result - 'BlunderBus', a class CD dragster, (3 to 3.5 litre engines). That's a Jaguar 3.4 engine.
Pictures - Back in May 1967 - in the garage access road,
(middle of Rugby town centre), we didn't run the engine
for too
long when the town was busy, but when we did, Oh what a
lovely
sound.
At a later date a Wade supercharger was fitted in front of
the
engine, but virtually no improvement was found, plus it
was the
only time I felt vulnerable, the damn thing sprayed me
with
petrol on one run when the manifold extension failed.
Colin became interested in another hobby, so we decided to sell the 'BlunderBus', less engine, as I had a need for it.
Go it alone.
So then insanity took over, and I decided to go it alone
and
build a dragster myself, (and a trailer), the madness of
youth!.
I liked the looks of an American dragster called 22Jnr.
and based
'The Crab' on it, (The Crab?, well it's my Zodiac sign,
Cancer
the Crab, also the shop didn't have much in the way of
those
stick on letters).
So it's now 1971, it was one of the first rear engined rails in the UK, if my memory serves me well.
Tucked behind, was my push car/towing car, a Ford Corsair,
some
good memories.
I can't remember the elapsed times or top speeds,
probably
don't want too, it was not particularly fast, just damn
good fun
at the time, also a great bunch of blokes in the early
days of
Santa Pod.
But then like most fledgling sports, people with money
get involved and the 'sport' started to revolve round
their
requirements, and complete cars were being bought and
imported from the
States.
Still, was one of the best times of my life.
Then I got married.
Link to a few more pictures of Blunder and Crabby - Dragsters2