Big Daddy Don Garlits

Donald Glenn "Don" Garlits (born January 14, 1932, Tampa, Florida) is considered the father of drag racing. He is known as "Big Daddy" to drag racing fans around the world. Always a pioneer in the field of drag-racing, he, with the help of T.C. Lemons, relating at least in part to the loss of a portion of his foot in a drag racing accident, perfected the rear-engine "top fuel dragster design". This design is notably safer as it puts most of the fuel processing and rotating or reciprocating parts of the dragster behind the driver. The driver is placed in "clear air" and in catastrophic vehicle or drivetrain failure, explosion or fire are almost always fully behind the driver, thus capable of activating a variety of safety equipment. Garlits was an early promoter of a full-body, fire-resistant suit - complete with socks and gloves, often branded as nomex.
Garlits was the first drag racer to officially surpass 170, 180, 200, 240, 250, 260, and 270 miles per hour in the quarter mile; and he was also the first to top 200 in the 1/8 mile. Note that all official NHRA records require a "back-up" (speed and elapsed time within 1% of the record) run to verify the newer, higher level of performance. He has been inducted in numerous halls of fame and has won numerous awards during his career.

The combustion engine!!!

Probably the most important invention of all time, minus the wheel. It is in pretty much any car you see on the road. There are different forms, sizes, and mechanics of them depending on the make. Now the first one was developed in 1608 and ran on gunpowder. Since then they have come along way. The engine works in cycles to turn the crankshaft which turns the transmission that makes your car go. Depending on the engine there are 1000 to 8000 explosions a minute as your engine runs. The cycles are intake, compression, combustion and exhaust. Your engine pulls a fuel/air mixture into the camber in the intake stroke. As its pulled in the valve at the top closes so the mixture can be compressed to about 150 psi. As the piston comes to the top the mixture is heated up and ignited by the spark plug to cause the combustion stroke. The piston is forced downward to turn the crankshaft in a revolution. As the pistons comes back upward the exhaust valve opens and releases the burnt up fuel out the back of your car. All of these things happening over and over again keeps your engine running at about 800 revolutions a minute at idle (the car sitting still). Of course this is only the gist of what is happening. In later blogs I will go into more detail about other parts like the fuel injection, camshafts and oil/cooling systems.

Then we have the very rare but very cool rotary engine which is used in come Mazda vehicles. This engine doesn't use pistons and connecting rods to transfer motion. Its uses a single or dual triangular shaped rotor. These engines aren't used very much because they wear out a lot faster (about 100,000 miles) compared to a piston engine. This engine doesn't have any valves it pulls fuel and air in at one side of the block and compresses and combusts on the other side. Then continues to spin until it spits the the exhaust out on the other side.