Chassis/Rollcage

In January of 2008 Mike Spitzer, a top builder of professional drag racing machines since 1971, was commissioned by Gale Banks to build this "rail."  The proposed use was extreme enough to warrant a complete NHRA-Certified Top Alcohol Dragster frame.

The Banks Top Dragster is constructed from 4130 chromemoly steel tubing. Long and lithe, the unclothed chassis most resembles a bridge girder ready to be swung into place.  It is super strong, yet meant to flex in just the right way, just the right amount, winding up on the starting line and then releasing the horsepower back to the track as the dragster speeds down the track.

From the driver's seat forward, the Banks Top Dragster has the needle-nosed silhouette the world's largest lawn dart, only this one is swathed in tight-fitted carbon-fiber bodywork.

The final drive bears testimony to the (very) long wheelbase approach to traction in the "top" divisions.  Its an integral, bolted-in, solid part of the main frame.  No provision for any kind of suspension of any kind is even hinted at here.

On the other end there's really no "front axel" as expected, but a framework that terminates and ties the chassis together and sprouts two solidly bolted up axel arms.  The dragster's slip-jointed chassis give all the suspension flex that the car needs for its quarter-mile catapult shots into the 200 mile per hour territory.  In this machine axel arms are actually supplied in a couple of set-backs to adjust the wheelbase on the side of the dragster that's closest to the timing beam.

Viewed from the side the front wheel hubs show a huge degree of positive caster.  This is done to keep the vehicle tracking in a straight line.  On the Sidewinder there's something like 35 or 40 degrees of what you might call "sweepback" of the center line of the hub.

For contrast, a stock, street driven car might have anywhere from three to five degrees of positive caster at most.  Increasing the caster increases the stability, but also increases the steering effort that's needed to turn the wheels at higher speeds.  Both factors that would not work very well on a street machine, but that will come in very handy on a 200 mile-per-hour blast down a dragstrip that looks six inches wide at that speed, especially when you've accelerated to that number in something less than 7 seconds.

Two hundred and seventy-two inches separate the front wheels from the rear ones (that's  22.66 feet)

• Slip-joint construction
• Rigid-mount differential housing
• 272-inch wheelbase
• NHRA-certified top alcohol dragster frame