NHRA Bands Hydrazine

TwoFaced,

Yes, Hydrazine is bad stuff. NHRA in the old days put the Yellow dye or what ever it was in Nitro to detect Hydrazine; they didn't want anybody to run it after some bad "Bangs". I remember Leo Payne had one gallon buried in the back of the shop at S&S Cycle, don’t know what ever happened to it.

The first contact I had with PO was from the guy that introduced the stuff to the Drag Racing Motorcycle World, Richie Richards. He had a pint can of it when we were in my garage/shop and he took the lid and filled it with PO and poured it on the garage floor, stepped about five foot away and dropped a lit match on the floor and it lit that PO. I right away started learning about mixing the stuff with Nitro. I found I didn’t need a lot to help the Alkie become a good igniter.

Here’s something of interest. I was at Union Grove on a Match Race with the local big shot fuel bike guy and I needed some Nitro. I went down the Top Fuel Car line asking to buy some and came to Big Daddy Don’s pit area, and he said he would give me what ever I need for the race. Then he asks me what color do you want? He had pure Nitro in Red, Blue, Green and the original yellow. This was during the Hydrazine band time. I took the yellow and never ask about the colors and still don’t know.

NHRA Musuem

This is the Bike that got runner up at Indy, 1973, I had just build this bike, it had a Lenco Trans and a six inch M&H tire, the motor was 102 inches. In high gear it was 273 to 1 ratio. You notice the Sportster Clutch set up including the Sportster Compesating Sprocket. It turned a best of 8.64 at this race.
It's shown here in the NHRA Musuem, it was there for about four years. A guy named Williams of Santa Barbara, CA owns it.

NHRA's Les Lovett

In our day we had a fellow such as Greg Guarinello. His name was Les Lovett (NHRA) so I know what you mean, Les passed on many years ago. Everybody in those days wanted pictures taken by him, every time I needed a new picture all I had to do was call the NHRA office in Hollywood, CA and ask Les and he always came thru. Those kind of shoes are always hard to fill.
God Bless Greg Guarinello and Les Lovett!

Front cover National Dragster