17 April 2011

Sounds like something the NHRA could use? Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Pomona.

Story by Susan Wade (Compeition Plus)

Not every drag-racing fan in the United States is familiar with Terry Sainty. But in his native Australia, the popular Top Fuel racer is known for being frontman to a relatively small family business that’s synonymous with speed and engineering excellence.
 
Sainty, who first started racing in his mom’s old car, is the son of Stan Sainty, a master machinist whose innovative skills took him from dirt-track racing to drag-boat and water-skiing racing. Once Mom Margaret’s car hit the dragstrips, the family concentrated on the world’s quickest and fastest sport.
 
Conducting their own research and development, Stan Sainty and his brother Norm, with the help of Denis Macann, designed what’s called the Sainty Billet Three-Valve engine. It has the distinction of being the only non-Chrysler-configured engine in the world to have won a Top Fuel race in the past two decades.
 
Tucked inside a Sainty-branded chassis equipped with an in-house driveline, the motor was the first with cylinder blocks carved from a 400-pound hunk of aircraft-quality billet aluminum, and it sports an overhead camshaft with three valves per cylinder. Its purpose was to be powerful and sturdy, as well as economical. It was built to save on repair jobs and to prevent oil downs.
 
“We tried to improve. We repair a lot of cars back in Australia, for Graeme Cowin, Santo, and Jim Read, Darren Morgan. So we know where the shortfalls are and we try to design around that,” Terry Sainty said.
 
Sound like something the NHRA could use? Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Pomona.
 
 “We built it to the NHRA rules at the time, which was big-block Ford bore spacing. It could be multi-valve mix with two sparkplugs. We built it for all that,” Terry Sainty siaid, “but after that year they banned it.
 
“The way the rules read now, you can’t run a Chev or a Morgan (Britain) or an Aries (France) or any Japanese, German, Australian or anything but a Chrysler. It has to be Chrysler bore spacing,” he said. “That ruled out our motor straightaway, because we made ours a big-block Ford. That’s what the rules were at the time. But once we made that bore spacing that big, we can never really change that.”
 
Something similar happened about a decade ago to John Force Racing. And as Sainty said, “They were never allowed to go down that path.”
 
Knowing his family wasn’t the only one caught in the changing-ruled trap offered only a little consolation. Sainty said he thought that ended his notion of racing in the United States.
 
“When I first started racing, in ’92, I thought maybe one day I might go to America. We built our new engine on the Sainty [family-owned] car. After they banned the Sainty motor, the Sainty Three-Valve, I sort of thought I’d probably never go there [to the U.S.]. So here I am doing it, with an American car,” he said.
 
The NHRA is trying to curtail oildowns. And Tony Pedregon, for example, is an owner-driver who’s trying to scrape together every dollar he can, but had his third qualifying session at zMAx Dragway discounted Saturday and lost a precious $1,000 because of an oil spill. So is it time for the NHRA to consider allowing an engine that in Australia has proven to be effective?
 
Moreover, has Sainty Engineering considered  partnering with a U.S.  team or manufacturer to lobby for the NHRA to allow the Sainty Three-Valve — or at least permit some testing here with it?
 
“I haven’t put any thought into it, to tell you the truth. We wouldn’t have the budget to make it in any of that sort of quantity without an infusion of cash,” Terry Sainty said. “My mum and dad have a machine shop, and it’s just a small business in New South Wales. It’s basically an out-of-control hobby.”
 
He has thought about a full-time racing deal in the NHRA but said, “We have our family business at home [to consider]. It’s the old cliché — you can’t do it unless you have a sponsor. I’m just taking it one step at a time. It would be really nice to be able to qualify this weekend. It would be good for the morale, to say, ‘Yes, we can do it.’ “
 
Sainty remained unqualified for the VisitMyrtleBeach.com 4-wide Nationals after three rounds Saturday.