Bob "Whitey" McDonald

Whitey's best time was 9.45 at 139 mph. He struggled all weekend. He made two time trials and managed to hit the fuel shut off instead of the lean out on both. He also had various holes leaning out while others looked rich and he couldn't find any dirt in the nozzles. On the final against LeJuerrne his neck collar either wasn't on or came off while he was staging. Even with the starter helping him back on with it, it took a long time and smoke started pouring out of the engine. It was obviously hurt and he slowed to a 10.31. When I asked him what happened, he just said "It's time for a new engine."

A little nitro and a lot of experience helps Whitey smoke'm.

Wife Val strapping him in.

Here you see Whitey removing the top layer of his two part heads. He made these heads from aluminum sold by The Yard, a popular Wichita surplus store. The top piece is a layer of thick aluminum topped with some finned pieces cut from a long extrusion. The bottom is a thick piece with the combustion chambers milled in. The head bolts go in the bottom piece (below) and the top piece is held on by smaller machine screws. His idea is to cool the engine by removing the top assembly, soaking it in water, reassembling to transfer heat into the top again, disassembling and dunking again, and so on until the engine is cool. It seems to work. At last year's Heartland Hot Rod Reunion he couldn't cool down fast enough to make the call , but this year it was no problem. Although I haven't seen the undersides of them, Whitey told me these heads are built for compression rather than flow. Also new for this race were the short injector stacks. What is sitting on top of them are clear plastic plates with rubber balls attached to them to keep the junk out of the engine when it isn't running.

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