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The Future of Pro Stock?
During the fifteenth century in England, poet and playwright William Shakespeare changed the world of theater with works such as Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and others. One of his most famous lines came from his play Hamlet: “to be or not to be; that is the question.” For some, Shakespeare can be considered old and obsolete, yet still revered and respected. Along those lines, the same could be argued about the current state of Pro Stock. Instituted as a professional category in 1970, the class was originally seen as Super Stock on steroids. Factory support was extremely heavy thanks in part to the ongoing wars on the track and on the streets between Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. The first Pro Stock cars were purpose built, factory lightweight race cars and rules-beating specials campaigned by corporate supported drivers such as “Dyno” Don Nicholson, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, and the famous Sox and Martin team. When Pro Stock came out, the first cars were just updated Super Stock cars.
Pro Stock has come a long way since Ronnie Sox and his Hemi ‘Cuda dropped the clutch against the big-block powered Camaro of “The Grump at the 1970 Winternationals in Pomona. The class known for the “factory hot rods” is now light years away from the full frame, clutch activated, manually shifted, big-block powered, street appearing cars of the early days. Today, Pro Stock cars are low slung, tube chassied missiles packing engines that tip the dynos at over 2,000 horsepower from race specific, high tech 500 cubic inch engines. No longer is a clutch pedal used to change gears. Today, drivers use the clutch pedal once, dropping the hammer on the starting line. Shifting is as simple as moving a shift lever four times down track to change gears in the clutchless five speed transmission. Yet throughout the entire thirty-five year history of the category, one thing that hasn’t changed has been the induction system used to feed the gasoline-burning engine under the hood. The fact is, the last car equipped with a carburetor rolling off of the assembly line in 1990, and all car manufacturers making electronic fuel injection the induction system of choice, Pro Stock cars are, in the simplest sense of the word, behind the times with the two huge four barrel carburetors being used to feed a Pro Stock engine. “We as manufacturers probably would like to see them go with fuel injection,” agreed Mopar engineer Greg Reeves. “If they (NHRA) changed the rules so that it was allowed, then yes, we would support it. Our teams want to be competitive, and if everybody else moves to that, we would be supportive.” There are advantages and disadvantages to any type of change, and the opinions of those behind the scenes are varied on whether to inject or not to inject.
Advantages of Fuel Injection
With the dawning of the 21st Century, high performance factory cars and super cars such as Chevy’s Corvette, Ford’s Mustang GT, and Dodge’s Viper, as well as all other cars, trucks, and vans, are utilizing electronic fuel injection systems. These cars are making serious horsepower and efficiently knocking down more than 20 miles per gallon. Advances in modern technology has allowed electronic fuel injection to, at the very least, equal the power output capability of the carburetor, thus making it feasible to run an EFI system on a Pro Stock engine. Topping a Pro Stock motor with an EFI system, some say, offers three major advantages over the current dual carb set up. First, there are those that argue fuel injection is a more modern method than carburetors to feed air and fuel into an engine. Additionally, some corporate executives feel running EFI in Pro Stock would make the class more appealing to the younger audience the major sanctioning bodies are trying to draw in, and would also help the cars appear to be a bit closer in relation to their factory counterparts. The general consensus among supporters of the movement is that fuel injection offers a better aesthetic look for the Cobalts, GTOs, and Stratuses that make their way down the quarter mile at every national event when Pro Stock is running, mainly in regards to the type of hood that would be needed. Some racers feel that EFI would make tuning a Pro Stock engine much easier, and the system would make the already tight competition in the class even tighter. “Modern technology is allowed in all other pro NHRA classes, and just about every sportsman category, save for a few carb only Comp classes,” said Simmonds. “High tech is something the OE (Original Equipment) manufacturers can sell to the car buying public. The opposite is true (with carburetors). How do we advertise that Pro Stock cars use carbs in an era of 100% street driven EFI cars and trucks? My 29-year-old daughter has never driven a vehicle with a carburetor. She has no idea what a choke is or what it’s used for.” Since EFI is now the induction system of choice for car manufacturers all over the world, it is argued by some that going to EFI in Pro Stock will help the younger audience to better identify with the cars campaigned in the class. This would, the positive fraternity agrees, help to revive the “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” slogan that has been closely associated with NASCAR and occasionally with the “factory hot rods” of Pro Stock. While Simmonds argues that EFI would make the cars a bit closer to their factory counterparts, Scooter Peaco, IHRA Vice President of Race Operations, disagrees. Peaco believes that EFI would not be a viable marketing ploy for making Pro Stock appealing to those fans that are more interested in cars that compete in other classes such as those contested in the NHRA’s Sport Compact Series. “There is no compelling reason to make a change,” he said. “I don’t see the benefit for current carb cars other than to introduce the technology. The ‘race on Sunday, sell on Monday’ moniker is long gone.” Is Peaco right? True, the days when teenagers could see a Camaro win a Pro Stock final on a Sunday afternoon, and be able to go to their local Chevy dealership the next day and buy are gone. Today, the Chevy Cobalt that Dave Connolly races on Sunday is no where near the car he could go and buy the day after. Connolly’s car is a big block powered, carbureted, rear wheel drive, tube chassied missile, while a stock Cobalt is, with the SS version, a front wheel drive, six cylinder supercharged import fighter.
Carburetor manufacturer and Pro Stock racer Barry Grant agrees. “That’s a common misconception,” Grant stated. “A good many of your spectators are hot rodders. If you go to a hot rod event, a majority of them (hot rods) are carbureted V-8s. Is that not what we run in Pro Stock? If you want to take that further, we don’t have any V-6s in Pro Stock, and we don’t even have any small blocks in Pro Stock, so why is fuel injection the single thing that all of a sudden makes people identify with it more?” “It’s not a magic potion or magic pill for anything,” Grant continued. “It’s what’s done on factory cars for daily usage, but when you go to a hot rod event, ninety percent of the hot rods are carbureted. We have a lot of customers who are putting carburetors on the Generation III Chevy’s, which were fuel injected originally. They are taking the fuel injection off because the carburetor makes more power and is simpler.” “Most of the fans are so familiar with the way Pro Stock rules are written, I don’t think it makes much difference to them,” says Reeves. “I think they are probably more inclined to like the carburetors than to go to fuel injection. I think it’s a fan preference, in my opinion.” a
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While the EFI marketing issue might be a wash regarding similarity to the street cars as opposed to the race cars in terms of powertrain options, the modern technology that EFI brings could be beneficial in other areas of a marketing plan for the implementation of EFI in Pro Stock, such as emissions. Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com attempted multiple times to interview a representative from the NHRA’s tech department but was unable to obtain a return phone call. Emissions control is not an issue for Pro Stock competitors. However, the better combustion that Simmonds says EFI provides can definitely help the way a Pro Stock engine would perform on the track. “My position would be to support a move to fuel injection simply from the fact that it is more current technologically,” said five time NHRA Pro Stock champion Warren Johnson. “There seems to be an increase in durability, because with fuel injection you can control the air to fuel ratio from cylinder to cylinder much more precisely. Even though there will be a minute power increase, the service life of an engine would be increased somewhere around 20 percent.” Fuel injection would only give an engine a small increase in power output, but according to Johnson, a majority of the power gains seen with a fuel injection unit will come from the aesthetic changes needed to accommodate the EFI system’s plenum, such as switching from a snorkel scoop type hood used now to a cowl induction hood commonly seen in street legal racing. These changes will greatly change the aerodynamics of the cars, making them easier to make a hole in the air as they travel down track. “I know there are some people saying that fuel injected cars will be two minutes quicker and forty miles per hour faster, but I don’t see a lot of difference in performance between the two set ups,” Johnson commented. “We’ve run fuel injected race engines on the dyno and the numbers are not that different. The primary advantage in my opinion is from an aesthetic perspective. I believe it would be a tremendous benefit to get the huge mailbox off the hood and make it look more like a production car, similar to what the Pro Stock Trucks did. Of course, removing the hood scoop will also provide an aerodynamic benefit, because at 200 miles per hour, it takes approximately 70 horsepower to push that box through the air.”
Simmonds agreed with Johnson on both fronts. “EFI requires a shorter hood scoop, thereby making the car look more like its production counterpart”, he said. “Also, and very importantly, a shorter hood scoop provides a safety advantage in that the driver’s visibility is greatly improved, and the car’s aerodynamic qualities are improved by reducing the current hood scoop.” “It will certainly help with the image of our cars as ‘factory hot rods’, and I believe people will more easily associate with them because everything that’s out there now from lawn mowers on up is fuel injected,” Johnson continued. “Besides, it’s current technology as opposed to one hundred year old carburetors, which should add to its appeal with the fans.” Three-time and defending Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson and his former employer Johnson don’t exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things these days, but this is different. “It (fuel injection) will allow us to use a smaller hood scoop, which in turn will make the car look more like a stock GTO,” Anderson said. Fuel injection will definitely change the type of hood used on the cars, but due to chassis construction of a Pro Stock car, a tall hood will still be required. This wouldn’t help the “stock GTO” image that Anderson envisions, said Peaco. “Whether the cars have fuel injection or not, they are going to have huge hoods on them, either cowl or scoop. There is no way to get that size motor down in the frame rails far enough. Either way, the cars wouldn’t make the connection within the fan’s minds. I don’t see manufacturer support for fuel injection other than Chevrolet and GM in NHRA.” It can be argued that Peaco is wrong in this area as. If a Pro Stock car is looked at from the side with the hood off, the engine is beneath the fender line, and only the carburetor and intake manifold rise above the body line. Therefore, a majority of the engine is, in fact, within the engine compartment, proving in a sense that a Pro Stock motor can be nestled quite nicely within the chassis of the car. Grant offers the other side of the coin to fuel injection and the combustion process. “People think that fuel injection is the magic potion for performance over a carburetor, and it is not,” he explained. “The reason is that the longer the droplets have to move in the air, the greater evaporation they have, which is a cooling effect. They also atomize better as they go through the air and break up into smaller droplets. So while fuel injection is great for cold start up and things of that nature, it is not a guarantee.” a
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There are some racers who are split on the issue of fuel injection in Pro Stock and the types of advantages it offers. Mopar driver Larry Morgan is one of them. According to Morgan, it wouldn’t matter if Pro Stock went to fuel injection or not because the cars would still require a hood that offers clearance for the unit. “We would still have a hood scoop of some type to clear the plenum because the engines are so high,” he said. “We have to have something, though it could be a cowl or a scoop.” Morgan and others agree that the biggest advantage that fuel injection has over the dual carburetor set up is its ability to make tuning a Pro Stock engine easier, which will, in turn, make the competition in the class even tighter. “It would be definitely easier to tune,” he said. “In the IHRA world, there are several motor programs, but not until now has a big cubic inch motor successfully featured EFI,” Peaco argues. “The technology has been there, but the application hasn’t.” The application hasn’t been there, but that could change, and with the NHRA cutting back time between rounds from ninety minutes to seventy-five minutes, the ease of tuning that EFI provides could be beneficial. “Vehicle tuning would become easier for the crew, less time consuming, and more accurate,” Simmonds stated. “If we want to speed up the time between rounds, this can become critical to that end.”
Instead of tuning a Pro Stock engine with screwdrivers and jets, crew chiefs can look at a fuel map and a graph on a laptop screen and, with a few keystrokes, change the tune up for the next round. “It shall make tuning a race car slightly easier with the use of computers,” Anderson stated. “I believe it will even the field. It would be so much easier for everyone to be able to tune their cars to a desired performance level.” “I do believe it would tighten the competition even further, because there are only a few people who really understand how to make a carburetor work, or have enough money to hire someone to make it work for them,” agreed Johnson. “If you have a minimal capacity laptop with a fuel injected system you can map the fuel curve and ignition timing and it will tell you right away if the engine likes it or not. Therefore, it will be a much easier system to tune effectively.” Competition in Pro Stock is already close, and if fuel injection helps to make the competition even closer, it can only help the class become better. Or can it? Disadvantages of Fuel Injection
Just as there are advantages by switching to fuel injection, there are a couple of disadvantages as well, namely tuning, personnel changes, and start-up costs. Johnson commented that teams would have to hire personnel to help understand how to work a carburetor, but Peaco believes that whether or not teams like it, a person adept to fuel injection and its inner workings would have to be put on the payroll. “Laptops and tuning scares some of the competitors,” Peaco states. “They might not be adept to making changes, and would need a fuel injection guy on the team.” Peaco and Johnson may both be right, but in a literal sense, hiring the extra person, whether a carb wizard or a fuel injection guru would make the changeover from the carb setup to the fuel injection set up a wash. Whether a team hires a person to change jets, read spark plugs, and turn a screwdriver or plug in a laptop and press a few keys is irrelevant. It’s certainly conceivable that an additional employee may have to be temporarily added to the team in a consultancy capacity until the rest of the gang understands tuning a fuel injected system. “If you look at the class of racers, the two that are out there,” Reeves stated. “You have the young guys and the older guys, and that’s kind of where it lies. The older, experienced racers are probably more comfortable with carburetors than they are with fuel injection. The younger guys don’t know carburetors, but they know fuel injection.” Simmonds sees only one disadvantage to fuel injection, and that disadvantage applies more to the sanctioning body than it does to the racers. “There would need to be time to train the NHRA Technical Department to understand and be able to properly tech EFI,” he said. Added to the list of items to check at tech would be approved throttle bodies, plenums, injector size, and, with the new NOS system that injects fuel and nitrous into the engine through the injector, a new way to check for nitrous oxide systems. Additionally, with recent rules changes by the NHRA in regards to approved ignition systems, the ability to hide and use a timing retard device in the ECM to use as a means of traction control is something else the tech department would be forced to learn how to look for.
The biggest disadvantage of a changeover to fuel injection would be the start-up costs. Changing over would mean purchasing a complete fuel injection system and shelving all the carburetors and intake manifolds associated with the current set up. “All Pro Stock teams currently have many sets of carbs,” Simmonds said. “Yes, there are start up costs to deal with, but these were the same kinds of start-up costs with the bead lock wheels and tires mandated by the NHRA.” Instead of having multiple carburetors for different engines, different track conditions and, of course, varying elevations, according to Morgan only one system will be needed with fuel injection. “We could run one throttle body or different size throttle bodies, but for the most part, we would use one unit all year,” he said. Any way you look at it, Pro Stock racers would have to spend money to make the switch, and for Scooter Peaco, that is one of the main reasons why IHRA isn’t currently supportive of a changeover. “There has to be a compelling reason from the IHRA side of the table to make the move,” Peaco stated. “We are currently researching a turbo program, but it doesn’t cost the current competitors money. A move to fuel injection creates a financial burden for teams to be competitive.” When change occurs in racing, there always comes with it a price tag. Some believe that after all is said and done, fuel injection will, in a sense, eventually pay for itself. “Overall, it would be more cost effective,” Johnson explained. “One set of race carburetors currently runs between $5,000 and $6,000, while a complete fuel injection system is approximately $4,000 or $5,000. Naturally, each system requires an intake manifold, so the cost of that aspect would be a wash. You then have to tailor the carburetors to an engine combination, dedicating them to that engine. Meanwhile, you can map a fuel curve for each engine and download it into your ECU, so all you’re talking about is some programming changes between engines. In the long run, it should be far cheaper to run fuel injection.” The advantages and disadvantages of switching over to fuel injection from the carburetors seem to cancel each other out. Keeping that in mind, the largest obstacle of a possible changeover from one to the other would be timing and feasibility of implementation. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t When and How
When and how a possible debut of fuel injection in Pro Stock is seen is dependant on how hard the issue is pushed and how it will be originally implemented. “It’s hard to say eventually,” said Peaco when asked when a move to fuel injection could be seen in Pro Stock. “I don’t see it in the next three, four, or five years.” Morgan, who is on the fence as to whether he supports a move to fuel injection, agrees with Peaco on the time frame. “It won’t for a while, though it may (happen sooner) because so many people fool with it at this point,” he said. “Ten years ago I would have said yes, but today not so much.” How well fuel injection works in Pro Stock Motorcycle will play a major role as to when EFI could debut in Pro Stock. With fuel injection debuting in Pro Stock Bike for the 2006 NHRA season, it would give NHRA a chance to look at what fuel injection can do for a previously carbureted category. “Although the NHRA is using the inclusion of fuel injection to help level the playing field in Pro Stock Motorcycle, I also believe it will be an ideal test bed for their tech department to evaluate its feasibility in Pro Stock car,” Johnson explained. ”By taking the scooters and putting fuel injection on them, it will give them a much better page of information to apply to our cars, and to help them decide if it will ever happen. With only fourteen races, they will have time to evaluate the information after every event and watch the evolution of the bikes that have been converted from carburetors to fuel injection. Whether it happens or not remains to be seen.” Anderson also thinks that fuel injection will eventually make its way into Pro Stock. “There have been lots of people talking about it for a very long time,” he said. “I believe it will happen someday, but I’m not sure anyone knows exactly when.” Grant disagrees with Johnson as to the effect Pro Stock Bike will have on the issue. “I don’t see that it (Pro Stock Bike) has anything to do with it,” he said. “At this point there is no intention (to go to fuel injection). They (NHRA) are plenty happy with us and our program. I think it opens up a lot more things to police.” The best way to answer the question of when would be to answer the question of how first. The total changeover might be too overwhelming for competitors, but a gradual move could also raise some issues surrounding parity and equality between carbureted cars and fuel injected cars. If it does turn out that a phase-in of fuel injection is chosen over an immediate changeover, even though they would be pushed out of Pro Stock completely a few years after the introduction, what would NHRA do to help out carbureted cars if they are at a disadvantage? These types of issues and their respective solutions will have to wait until the time comes to deal with them. “Our opinion is that EFI could be phased in over one race season, and be made mandatory the next year for all Pro Stock competitors,” offered Simmonds. “The final result would be that EFI would be the only induction system in Pro Stock.” Anderson agrees with Simmonds that one setup would need to be chosen, though he leaves the decision up to NHRA. “In order to keep the field even, I think you would have to choose which setup you wanted the field to use,” Anderson said. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t From the sanctioning body point of view, Peaco says that IHRA, and for that matter NHRA, would need to keep things in check by picking and choosing what components, such as ignition systems, would be allowed for use. “We would probably go to one supplier that made the ignition control system,” he said when asked about what IHRA would consider doing to police the change over to fuel injection. “It would be the only approved system, similar to what NASCAR has. The more variables that you have, the more it becomes an impossible task to police. We need to limit the options.” Morgan thinks that variety would spice up the category. “It would probably be more interesting and be better to have fuel injected cars and carbs cars,” he said. Grant is against that idea. “I have never seen a case where you could mix two different technologies, of any kind, and have what is perceived by the racers as a level playing field,” he argued. “Whether it is level or not, it would not be perceived as such, making for a lot of angst because in (certain) weather conditions, a guy that’s dominant may be dominant with one technology or another because he just happens to be a good racer. Of course as soon as he has something different than somebody else has, that becomes the issue. All that does is make for a lot of name-calling and finger pointing. I mean, look at the deal with Top Alcohol Dragster and the nitro cars.” Johnson offered a solution that he thinks would be the best way to cut the initial start-up costs of switching over to fuel injection and how to make it easier to introduce fuel injection into Pro Stock. Running along the same line as Simmonds’ idea of a phase-in period, Johnson points out some obvious facts that makes the how situation quite simple. “I believe we would have to have a transition period,” “the Professor” said. “Give competitors a year where they could run either setup, after which fuel injection would be the only option. It would be a phase-in period, allowing people to get rid of their inventory of carburetors, selling them to the Comp Eliminator racers and others who might use them. I believe most people would switch over before the year was over because they would see that the new system would be more cost effective and may even have a slight performance improvement, which all of us would gravitate towards.” “The only obstacle in maintaining the competitive balance would be if fuel injection turns out to have a significant performance advantage,” he continued. “In that unlikely event, I still don’t think the NHRA would have to do anything because the competitors themselves would realize they would have to get on the band wagon as soon as possible.” Fuel injection and Pro Stock is an issue that has been discussed among the rank and file troopers for a while. The advantages and disadvantages are always being weighed against one another, and neither side seems to be able to prove their side over the other. The major hang-up with an institution of fuel injection in Pro Stock seems to be simply how to change over. Once that’s solved, the question of when fuel injection will be utilized in Pro Stock will be closer to being answered. In the meantime, the debate will continue. Is fuel injection the right way to go? In the truest sense of the word, it is a toss up among those we interviewed both on and off the record.
While fuel injection does have its proponents and its advantages, it also has it retractors and its disadvantages. Keep in mind the changes made to Stock eliminator a few years ago, however. In an effort to keep older carbureted cars equal to the newer fuel injection cars, NHRA split up the classes within the category in half: those cars equipped with carbs run under the normal Stock classifications (A/SA) while the fuel injected cars now ran under a classification all their own (A/FIA). Why did NHRA do this? The NHRA changed the classifications to allow parity within the category and fair heads up class runs. There were a few instances in which a carbureted car was a disadvantage in a class run against a fuel injected car. The driver of the EFI equipped car could change programs on the laptop, switching from bracket mode to fast mode in a matter of second. For a carbureted car, it is much harder, thus the carb car often was behind the eight ball. Can there be a successful mix of both carbureted car and fuel injection cars in Pro Stock? If the situation in Stock eliminator is any indication, then there will be one set up that will be better than the other. How the NHRA handles it and how the racers handle it will determine the outcome of whether or not the change will go smoothly or not. The debut of fuel injection in Pro Stock Motorcycle this year will undoubtedly help the cause of running that set up in Pro Stock. Only time will tell, however, if and/or when fuel injection is phased into the “factory hot rods”. Until then, the ultimate question remains: to inject, or not to inject.
Got a comment? Drop us a line at comppluseditor@aol.com.
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