First
of all I am related to "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, we
are cousins, however, he is not affiliated with these cars in
any way only by name, he has seen these cars and he offered his
approval and wishes me luck in the future.
Now
about the cars...
In
1993 I had an idea to build a 1/10 scale rocket powered car for
my son's entertainment and because we had grown tired of firing
off standard rockets and then searching for where it landed.
With rocket cars we have more of a controlled environment and
you know right where the car goes. So I started building cars
and looking for information regarding scale size rocket cars
on the Internet and there was nothing, there was a lot about
full size cars that run on the salt flats and jet powered dragsters
but nothing on smaller unmanned vehicles, so I was on my own.
I started out building as light as I could, it was impossible
at first to find suitable wheels so I would make my own out of
wood or aluminum.
As
friends of mine saw what I was doing they began building cars
and we would all compete on the weekends. We never did race with
a finish line, the winner was determined by whoever went the
farthest and when we started a car might only run one race and
disintegrate as it was hard in the beginning to make cars that
were light and strong as well as running straight and smooth.
Rocket engines can be brutal to cars that do not run straight
and smooth, we've had MANY spectacular crashes and when
that happens it is usually because of design flaws so if you
wiped your car out it was "back to the drawing board",
this prompted me to keep an extra car ready, just in case.
We
raced for years at this pace, weather permitting, slowly building
better cars as well as moving up to D-size rocket engines, now
what started out as fun became all out war on my part, I was
there to win!
I
was the one to beat every weekend from the beginning it seemed
like I was always one step ahead of the other guys and it was
at this point I began thinking of building cars that would look
and perform well enough to sell. The key to this would be in
the chassis design. I was winning consistantly but it was only
by a couple of feet and sometimes it was a matter of inches,
this was not good enough I wanted to win by a wider margin. So
I built a car which was not much more than a couple pieces of
aluminum with wheels on it, but it was built using a setup procedure
that I was testing, one that insures that the cars run straight
and smooth every time, unless of course it hits something. I
use this setup on every car I build even now.
So , on race day when we fired off matts car went about 60ft.
lost a wheel and crashed, my car was gone it just dissapeared,
I looked around for a second and then I saw it, still going,
straight out ahead of me leaving the parking lot down the side
road through the stop sign across the intersection and out of
sight. The radar gun was flashing 236mph and that is as high
as the radar unit goes. I wasn't concerned about the speed the
car went, I was more excited that the chassis settup had worked,
that car went straight as an arrow for over 1,000ft. I
looked around and everyone had stunned looks on thier faces,
not one of them has ever raced me again..........
I
was still at it though.
The rocket powered dragster is the culmination of all my efforts
after years of designing, testing and retesting, these cars have
surpassed even my expectations. They are everything I wanted,
smooth stable ride, amazing speed and endurance, they run straight
and true and they look awesome.
So, I began selling the rocket powered dragsters in the fall
of 2000 in hopes of indroducing the world to this new and growing
hobby by providing a collectors quality product that can stand
up to the challenge of high speed racing.
Garlits
Rocket Racing Designs is your only source
for the fastest, most stable, best looking high performance 1/10
scale rocket powered dragsters in the world.
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