Marv’s Garage: Mr Flathead works out how to make gravy

John Bradley was a famed drag and land speed racer, often winding Ford's venerable flathead V8 far beyond its design parameters. Normally with the pre-War design swallowing nitro. Nitro, or "pop", is a fuel that goes bang like few others and is addictive to any racer who runs it. But the NHRA banned its use from 1957 to 1963.

The NHRA, the governing body of drag racing, had dropped the ban hammer on pop and mandated only regular "gas" was the go at their sanctioned tracks. Bradley, the racer known to many as Mr Flathead, piloted the Gene's Brake Shop Special digger on a balmy summer day of 1961. After reaching the end of his smoking, screaming run, the Pomona track officials screeched to a halt and started investigating his dragster.

They checked the fuel tank and dug around the carburettors searching for a whiff of pop, but none was to be found. Y'see, Bradley was a smart man and he worked out where he really NEEDED The Good Stuff was the first 2/3 of the run. So his small fuel tank and float bowls were loaded with regular gas, but the fat oversized fuel lines running down the chassis held pure nitro, as confirmed by the man and his racing partner many years later.

There was just enough gas in the bowls to let him stage, before he'd honk on it off the line and enjoy the sweet horsepower gravy do its business. By the time he was crossing the line, he was burning gas. This story isn't to diminish Mr Flathead's legend - the man ran hard and won stacks of races all over the USA from the 1940s through the 70s and was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of fame in 1994. This is about celebrating a lateral thinker.