Drag racing was born in the US during the 1950s and typically involved a mahoosive engine, a pair of pram wheels up front and spectacular crowd cheering on burnouts. Out of that tradition came this retro looking VW powered flat-four ‘slingshot’ dragster. A masterpiece of fabrication, a thing of beauty in its own right and lightning quick to boot, we called up its owner to find out more…
It’s the work of master technician and VW Heritage customer Graham Rawlings from Rawspeed Tuning. Graham is an engine builder and tuning expert by trade, running a rolling road and using his knowledge to extract power from Volkswagens, American V8s and everything else in between.
Graham’s been involved in drag racing for ages with his street legal Ford Pop which runs a quarter mile in 13 seconds. He said “I didn’t have a massive budget to play with, but that only added to the fun of the challenge.”
Wanting to do something totally different and virtually unique on the European drag racing scene, he decided to build an air-cooled front-engined or ‘slingshot’ nostalgia dragster, where the driver is sat behind the rear axle. A rolling chassis was purchased from Johnny at Stamford Speed Shop and Graham started thinking about the rest of the build. “In tribute to the ‘crackle fest’ burnouts which started back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, where the whole rear end of the car would be engulfed in flames during a burnout, I wanted to created a retro look,” explains Graham.
The engine’s crankcase, crankshaft, barrels, pistons, pushrod tubes, rockers and various other bits all came from VW Heritage, though Graham sourced the Street Eliminator cylinder heads and the Weber 48IDA carburetors from swap meets. Capacity is 2276cc, and when first built Graham had 202 horses at his disposal, just waiting on that green light. The engine itself is bolted to a VW Type 2 camper van bell housing. The gearbox is Ford derived, but a special spacer had to be custom made out of CNC alloy to accept the VW’s stud pattern. Graham’s developed a method of flat shifting, so he doesn’t need to take his foot off the gas while changing.
As you might imagine running at full gas is a pretty exhilarating experience, sitting just 3in off the floor with the main diff and axle right between his legs! There’s two foot pedals, one for the accelerator and one for the clutch, with the brake lever being a hand operated affair. There’s only braking to the back wheels, so stopping in a hurry is totally out of the question, and there’s no suspension! As Graham puts it, “As long as nothing goes wrong, it’s fine!”
Making its debut at this year’s Volksworld Show and scooping ‘Car of the Day’ at Santa Pod’s Cal Look Drag Day four weeks later, the dragster’s going through constant evolution. “Because I’ve built it myself, I’ve got complete confidence in what I’ve done. It ran a 12.0 second quarter mile on its first time out, the following time out an 11.6 and now a a personal best of 11.3 at 118.5mph. My aim is to get it to run a 10 second quarter mile. I’ve just fitted some new cylinder heads and with some time on the rolling road it is now making 219bhp. I am now replacing the original rear tyres (which are 60 years old) with high crested drag slicks which are lighter, and that will help.”
Against big budget builds, what Graham’s managed to achieve with limited funds in such a short space of time is nothing short of miraculous. And given his technical prowess and motivation to constantly improve, no doubt we’ll see him go even faster in his VW powered missile in 2016…
Ian
The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of VW Heritage.