If you read our blog last week you know that Robert Hight gave Gilby a call looking for one of our custom-built tanks that most of the nitro teams use as a solvent sprayer to clean parts.  Hight's team was looking to use it for another purpose, warming up the car on methanol for two reasons, first because of the nitro shortage and secondly save some $$$ as the price of nitro is going up at what seems to be every race.

Gilby has been building these tanks in one form or another for over 15 years.  When Hight called, Gilby decided to give the tank a tune-up and dress it up a little bit as a lot of people would be seeing it in action at the track.

Behold the "NitroSaver."  Built out of the same aircraft quality aluminum that TEMCO uses for all the air and fuel tanks they build, it's a money saver if you burn nitro.  It holds seven gallons and has a siphon tube that goes down to the bottom of the tank.  With 10 lbs. of air pressure it will run a nitro engine for four or five minutes before the crew chief switches over to nitro to check the idle saving, let's say, five gallons of nitro, about $250.

So if a team warms-up their car four times during qualifying and then goes to the final, another four warm-ups, that's a savings of approx. $2,000 or a drum of nitro.  Now if we could get NHRA to mandate that nitro teams have to warm up on alky we'd be set...LOL

In other news I took a drive out to the site of the new dragstrip and let me tell you, it's spectacular.  They're way ahead of schedule and they're planning on hosting an open house sometime in early September before the inaugural Carolinas Nationals on Sept. 11-14.  When I find out the actual date I'll let you guys know so that if you're in the area you can stop by and see the "Belliago" of drag strips before it opens.

Well that's all for now, we'll type at you L8R.

BB