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THE A / GAS DRAGSTER The Acceleration Archive: In 1977 you bought an A/Gas Dragster, can you tell us more about this? Pelle Lindelöw: Well Janne had dropped out of the team in 1976 and Gunnar and I had a plan to use the Renault engine in a dragster frame and continue the 4 cylinder way. We contacted Bengt "Bengan" Stafberg from Uppsala, north of Stockholm and asked him if he was willing to build us a chassis. Bengan had some experience after building his own Stripduster look-alike, a couple of altereds and finally a funny car (he was later joined in the 'Tingbrands team' by Leif Helander). Well Bengan did build the first dragster for us but as none of us had any ideas of how a rear engined chassis was designed we copied a Revell model car (Tony Nancy's think it was) and tried to keep the proportions right and to put a Renault engine in the back. While Bengan was in the middle of the building work he offered us a Chevy 402. We realized that this was a chance to be as noisy as the rest of the bunch and to save a few bucks at the same time, so we purchased the V8. But suddenly the chassis now had to be wider to be able to fit in the big block engine. The whole thing began to look an abomination. Luckily that first attempt never saw the asphalt, because race fans would have died laughing or the car would’ve killed one of us with handling problems. AA: So who were your competitors at this time? PL: Well Knut Söderqvist, for one - before he got his royal title. AA: And your best ET was 9.003 at 154mph? PL: We tried our utmost to run an 8 second run, but that bunch of iron tubes just didn't want to co-operate with us. After every run it cracked behind the roll cage. We knew about the problem so we brought a welder (no electric welder, we used a real oxy-acetylene welder but it made hot work...). We were glad to eventually sell the motor and chassis and get rid of all those bad memories and plan our next entry. The years with Ernie didn't give us any payback if you measure success on the track, but to be fair we gained loads of experience from that time. Working in a strong headwind for three years gives you a certain toughness if you survive. Either you go bankrupt or get fed up. Or you come out stronger on the other side and that's exactly what we did. Our wish to go racing seriously was so strong that we didn't mind taking risks or waiting an extra year. Next time we should have a car where we knew we had only the best of everything. © Andy Barrack 2005 |
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