As Murphy stated,  “The old system is somewhat constricted, especially in the area of dumping the oil into the frame rails. There are slips joints and stiffeners in those rails which cut down on the flow of oil into the puke tank which causes back pressure and forces the oil and pressure to go the path of least resistance.” 

In essence, that currently means past seals gaskets and out onto the track. This new design will allow for better evacuation of this pressure and in theory should result in less oil being dumped onto the track.

It is safe to say that there will be a number of competitors in the nitro camps who will look at this new development. If there are positive results and it works as designed, some Big Show cars might be looking at Murphy’s development. In addition it is good to see that racers are taking action and moving forward in an attempt to get more Top Fuel cars back to the track, and more importantly to make for a better show for the fans.

AFTER THE MARCH MEET

Outside of the winners of the March Meet, one of the most talked about items happened in the first round of Top Fuel in the second to final pair of cars when Rick Williamson and Ron August faced off.  Williamson was out first by a country mile and was never to be headed -- until the thousand-foot mark where a couple of burned pistons and an over pressurized oil tank led to twelve quarts of synthetic oil being slung all down the remaining 320 feet of racing surface plus the remaining distance of the shutdown area.

It was over an hour and twenty minutes to clean up and made quite an impression on the Bakersfield Californian sports writer Michael Griffith who felt it necessary to write a separate article to his race coverage about the oil down and clean-up for Monday’s newspaper. Unfortunately, Mr. Griffith attributed the oil down to Rick McGee not Rick Williamson.

Not trying to spin away from the core of the matter, the Top Fuel class had dug themselves quite a hole at last Fall’s California Hot Rod Reunion causing nearly three hours of delays due to oil downs, and this oil down at Bakersfield on Sunday made that hole much deeper.

Jim Murphy, with help from Jim Head, is working very hard on containment of oil in the motor when there is catastrophic failure, and the new larger tire should also help keep the engine rpms down which should also help. In addition to the Top Fuel cars being able to run the two speeds with points mag set up which is another option open to Top Fuel teams.

However, the questions that are on many people’s minds are what are the Top Fuel car owners, tuners and drivers going to do to repair this damage?  With only thirteen cars showing up for one of, if not the biggest races of the year for the class, plus with two of the remaining four races requiring West Coast teams to travel over ten thousand miles round trip, is the writing on the wall for nostalgia Top Fuel as a class?

It is going to take some very serious work, in a very short amount of time by these Top Fuel team owners to right a very badly listing ship. This work must be done as a cohesive, collective unit.  All the owners and crews must buy into a plan to save the class, or watch it wither on the vine and slowly fade away.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, would be a tragedy.