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One of the
last competitive, self-sponsored racers in Top Fuel
drag racing is Carson City, Nevada's Bill Miller. Image: BME
Ltd. |
"Persistence" is moving ahead resolutely, despite interference,
opposition, importunity or warning.
Persistence,
above all, keeps Bill Miller and his Bill Miller
Engineering/Okuma/Red Line Oil Top Fuel Dragster Team competing
in the National Hot Rod Association's Powerade Drag Racing
Series.
Calvin
Coolidge, 30th U.S. President, was famous for his views on the
subject: "Nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent
will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with
talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination, alone, are omnipotent. The slogan
'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the
human race."
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Prominent in the
Bill Miller Engineering race trailer is a plaque bearing Coolidge's
words. Every member of the BME Race Team takes them to heart.
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A rarity
in a motorsport where teams with two or three racecars, a
dozen spare engines, three tractor trailers, scores of
full-time crew members and millions of dollars in
sponsorship are the norm, Bill Miller is the last true
independent in Top Fuel drag racing. He races 12-15 Powerade
events each year, mostly out of his pocket with the rest
made-up by machine tool manufacturer, Okuma America; premium
lubricant maker, Red Line Oil; Autolite Spark Plugs, Sandvik
Coromont and Infinity Rebuild. Miller's Top Fuel operation
is a single car, a highly-motivated crew of four full-time
and seven part-time members and a budget dwarfed by those of
the National Hot Rod Association's nitro class stars. |
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The BME/Okuma America Top Fuel Dragster blasts down Pomona
Raceway on a qualifying pass at the 2004 NHRA Winternationals |
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Asked how he manages to run a Top Fueler with a small crew and
limited financing, Bill Miller will quickly answer,
"Persistence. It's not talent, not genius, not education..
it's persistence." |
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Why does
Bill Miller race a Top Fuel Dragster? He and his Team are
consumed by the engineering challenges of racing
supercharged, nitromethane-burning dragsters. Each crew
member craves the competition and excitement of NHRA's top
class. Miller, also, views racing as a team-building
experience for his employees, several of whom are on the BME
crew. Last, but certainly not least, Bill Miller Engineering
uses its dragster to develop, test and promote its products:
BME Forged Aluminum Racing Pistons, BME Wrist Pins, BME
Forged Aluminum Connecting Rods and the Gibson/Miller Mark
II Supercharger.
"Just
recently,"
Bill Miller said in a late-2007 interview, "we went in
production with the Mark II version of the blower. The
changes we made to it were directly a result of what we've
learned racing the car in the last few years. Then, we used
the car, mostly last season, to validate the new design.
"A
couple of years ago, we changed the connecting rod and that,
too, was a direct result of racing the car. The durability
of our rods is about three times more than the previous
design. That makes a big difference to racers who use the
BME Rod.
"We
continually upgrade the pistons and the pins, too. And, it's
not only just racing the car. Because we're at the track and
talk with guys who run my parts, we get continuous feedback
about things to improve |
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We are,"
Miller
states, "the only manufacturer of pistons, pins,
connecting rods and superchargers which runs its own race
car in an effort to develop and test products and to stay
current."
Bill
Miller has been a regular competitor in drag racing's
ultimate class for a quarter century and he was persistent
from the start. For 17 years and in two different cars he
ran the only blown, Fontana/Chevy on nitromethane at
National Events, but at the end of '98, economics finally
trumped persistence. With the cost of staying competitive
with the Chevrolet out of control; he put a Keith Black Hemi
in his eight year-old chassis. Eventually the KB-powered
version of the "old" BME car went its quickest, 4.59-sec.,
with Tim Gibson driving, at the '01 U.S. Nationals. At its
final event, the '03 World Finals, it ran its fastest, 323
mph, with David Grubnic at the wheel. |
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This is most of the BME/Okuma Top Fuel Team.
It's a small, closely-knit and experienced group of people who
work together and communicate very well. They are preparing the
BME/Okuma/Red Line Dragster for its third qualifying run at the
'08 Winternationals. Image: BME Ltd. |
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Another of the reasons Bill Miller races a Fueler is it's a
rolling test and validation tool for his line of aluminum
connecting rods, racing pistons and wrist pins. Here Miller,
himself, examines a set of BME Rods which came out of the engine
in the BME Top Fuel car. |
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Bill Miller makes all the tuning decisions on
his Top Fueler. Like all professional drag race teams, the
BME/Okuma/Red Line Oil Dragster has an on-board, multi-track
data recording system. The data it stores on each run is the
lynch pin of the tuning process. One of a blown-fuel tuners many
tasks is making sense out of the myriad of data each drag strip
pass provides. Here, Bill Miller, reviews a pass from the '08
Winternationals in the BME race team trailer's lounge. Image:
BME Ltd. |
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In 2004,
Miller debuted a new car. The chassis is Don Long's latest, 300"
design and the engine is a Brad Anderson Hemi. The new car
played a key part in the Team's best ever performance in 2006.
The season-opening Winternationals marked the start of a
two-year run for '03 Top Alcohol Champion, Alan Bradshaw, as
BME's driver. To date, he's been the best to ever drive the BME
Okuma/Red Line Oil Dragster. In '06, they entered 13 events, set
best-ever marks for e.t., 4.545 sec., and speed, 326.32 mph, and
finished 15th in points. The pinnacle of performance came at
Chicago in June. Bradshaw qualified the BME car 16th. He beat
No. 1 qualifier and World Champion, Tony Shumacher, in the first
round and took out J.R. Todd in the second before losing to
Melanie Troxel in the semis. Of T/F teams running partial
schedules, Bill Miller Engineering finished best behind 14
full-time, touring pros. "2006 was a very good year,"
Owner/Crew Chief Miller told BME Blogger, Rick Voegelin.
"Finishing 15th in the Championship after competing in less than
60 percent of the races was quite an accomplishment. It's a
testament to what can be done by an enthusiastic and talented
team of volunteers who put their hearts and souls into Top Fuel
racing." For more on '06, see the BME Blog. |
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Once upon-a-time, Bill Miller raced a Chevrolet-powered Top Fuel
Dragster. For many years, it was the only blown Fontana/Chevy on
fuel at National Events. |
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If 06 was great,
07, well...it kinda sucked. Much of the season was spent on
development and testing of the Gibson/Miller Mark II Supercharger.
The new blower is a better performer than the original Gibson/Miller
which, in itself, was an improvement over other superchargers used
in blown-fuel drag racing when it was introduced a decade ago. You
can never have "too much power" in Top Fuel, however, if your engine
makes a lot of power but does so irregularly or unpredictably, it's
pretty tough for whom is tuning the motor to make the car run
consistently and, of coruse, consistency if the mother's milk of
drag racing. The newfound, but difficult to manage power from the
Gibson/Miller Mk II blower not only affected engine tuning but
aerodynamics as well. "The motor's making more power." Bill
Miller said. "Because the car accelerates so hard, it lifts the
front end off the ground in the early part of the run. It's tough to
steer with the front wheels in the air so the driver either keeps
his foot in it if the car goes straight or shuts off.
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Tim Gibson at the wheel of the old BME dragster at the
Winternationals in 2001.
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The
only thing that can keep the front wheels on the ground is
the aerodynamics of the front wing. Yeah, there's a drag
penalty later in the run, but that penalty won't offset the
gain early in the run. If you can't keep the front end on
the ground, you can't accelerate the car. The run is about
4.5 seconds in time. To half-track, is 3.1 of those seconds.
That's 70% of the e.t. spent in the first half of the race
track. Once you get past 150-175 miles an hour, you can't
react fast enough. That happens at about 250 feet, so the
car has to be going straight prior to that. During the
off-season, we changed the body work in the front so we can
use a full-width front wing rather than the two canards we
had before. That extra downforce will keep the front wheels
on the track." |
Not directly
affecting BME's performance, but certainly affecting that of other T/F
teams and possibly resulting in the crashes which killed Eric Medlin and
seriously injured John Force, was the type of metal tubing used in the
construction of chassis used in the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes. The
heat-treated vs. normalized (or "Condition N") tubing debate simmered
during the last half of '06 but broke wide-open in 2007. A hint of this
came in a magazine article about the BME Team in the January 2007 issue
of Drag Racer. Bill Miller's over thirty years of experience in
metallurgy had him a critic of the NHRA's "heat-treated tubing rule",
enacted after the failure of the U.S. Army Top Fueler's chassis at
Seattle in '05. Miller told Drag Racer correspondent, Hib
Halverson, in a mid-2006 interview, the change "...didn't make the
sport safer; it made it more dangerous. Heat-treating makes the chassis
brittle. Instead of having a ductile failure, where a tube bends; it
fractures. There's no warning you're approaching the limits of the part;
it just suddenly breaks. The Schumacher car at Seattle, last year, was a
ductile failure. The bottom rails broke because they were too small, but
the top rails bent, and, because they were not heat-treated, the chassis
stayed together. The failure McClenathan had this year ('06) at
Bristol in a heat-treated chassis, was a classic, brittle fracture.
Parts snapped and the car came apart."
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Nine
months later, failure of a heat-treated chassis possibly
killed Eric Medlin and, then, six months after that, another
failure may have almost killed John Force. Those tragic
events made the heat-treated vs Condition N tubing
controversy a high-profile issue throughout drag racing.
Bill Miller Engineering and the BME Top Fuel Team were
instrumental in scientific research done to prove the
detrimental effects of using heat-treated tubing in a race
car chassis. While the story in the January Drag Racer
was not an investigative piece, an article by drag racing
journalist, Jon Asher, posted in October of '07 on
Competitionplus.com and in January of '08 on this web
site, was investigative and is the truth about Top Fuel and
Funny Car Chassis Failures. Please click here to read this
BME Special Report.
During
'07, Gibson/Miller Supercharger development and the
distraction and tragedy brought-on by the heat-treated
chassis problem which plagued the whole sport of drag
racing, resulted in seven DNQs for the team, its worst
season in many years. The best of the worst came in June at
the Route 66 Nationals where Alan Bradshaw qualified the BME
Fueler 12th with a 4.550 but then lost in the first round to
Doug Herbert. At the World Finals the car went 324 mph.
Unfortunately, the Team was unable to run that quick and
fast on a regular basis. For more on BME's '07 season, see
the Blog. |
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The BME car uses an 8000-hp Brad Anderson
Hemi. Atop the BAE Hemi is the Gibson/Miller Mark II
Supercharger. Image: BME Ltd. |
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Now here's a picture right out of science
fiction movie. Because nitromethane exhaust is not so good to
breathe, when the team warms-up the motor in the pits, they all
don these gas masks. The guy just to the right of driver, Troy
Buff, is Car Owner. Bill Miller. Image: BME Ltd |
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The Bill
Miller Engineering Top Fuel team, anxious to put the trauma
of '07 behind, is looking forward to and working hard on
2008. When Alan Bradshaw moved to another team, Bill Miller,
true to his tradition of hiring successful blown alcohol
drivers, signed former TAD racer and second generation
dragster driver, Troy Buff, to drive the famed,
black-and-yellow, BME/Okuma/Red Line Oil Dragster. Buff,
who, in '06, put down the quickest and fastest T/F licensing
pass in NHRA history, then spent a year at the wheel of the
Coghlan Motorsports fueler, brings three things to BME.
First, he's lighter than Alan Bradshaw. The rule of thumb in
T/F is each 15 lbs out of the car is a hundredth off the e.t.
In a class were qualifying positions and round wins can
depend on a thousandth of a second, 20 pounds less in the
driver seat is huge. Second, Troy Buff already is Top Fuel
savvy, having driven for the Coghlans. Lastly, a dragster
gearhead since childhood, Buff is a perfect addition to a
team where everyone, even the driver, works on the car.
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EVERYONE on the
team works on the car between runs...even the driver. Troy Buff's
tasks are supercharger maintenance, care and mixing of the
90% nitromethane fuel and parachute packing. Here, he's
fitting the drive assembly to the BME Dragster's
Gibson/Miller Mark II Supercharger. Image: BME Ltd. |
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Perhaps the most
labor intensive part on a blown-fuel car is the clutch.
Any fuel team has a dedicated "clutch guy" and many teams
have more than one person working on clutches. On the
BME/Okuma Team, Ed Litke is the clutch expert. The Team has
half a dozen clutches and it's a full time job to "rebuild"
them after each run. Here Ed uses an air grinder and an
abrasive disc to refinish a clutch pressure plate |
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During the
off-season, the BME Dragster was "back-halfed" at Bill Miller
Engineering's facility in Carson City. The Team's chassis fabricator
returned the car to its pre-mid-'06 configuration, which used Condition
N or "normalized" rather than heat-treated, 4130 Chromoly tubing. New
front bodywork has, also, been designed and built which will provide
more front downforce. Of the Gibson/Miller Mk II, Bill Miller says, "The
new blower increases airflow into the engine. As a result, we had to
increase the fuel flow but, for the first six-or-seven races (in
'07) I was not prepared for the amount of fuel that it took to keep
the motor from backfiring. The Mark II is better than any blower I've
had on the dyno. They've all been less of a supercharger than what we've
been developing over the last 8-10 months. We're through 90% of the
development challenges. The fuel flow requirement for the engine with
the Mk II on it has gone up dramatically. In fact, to get more fuel into
the motor, Kent Enderle and I designed a new type of down nozzle. That's
another thing I've been testing and they work really well."
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The BME/Okuma/Red Line Oil Team just prior
their second qualifying run at the '08 Winternationals. They've
just started the engine and are making a few adjustments prior
to Troy Buff's rolling forward for a burnout. Image: BME Ltd. |
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And here's the burnout. After the
burnout, Troy Buff staged the BME car and made the qualifying
run which got him into the 16-car field. Image: Autoimagery.com |
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Bill
Miller owns the Team, leads it and works on the car, himself. The BME
Race Team aren't quitters nor do they look for the easy way to success.
Each crew member has a task crucial to the team's success. "When you
look at the mountain we have to climb," Bill says of the Team's
challenge, "which is to be competitive in Top Fuel; it's a tough
climb for a crew of four full-time guys and seven part-timers, competing
against crews of 10 to 12 working full-time. But, we have the right
parts. We've got virtually the same engine set-up as the full-time pros.
Our car is current as far as engine position, angle and flexibility.
There's a psychological effect, too. The entire team's attitude
bolstered by the state-of-the-art equipment we're runnin'
"I think, because
(for
2008) they've added 50 pounds to these cars," Miller continued, "they
now have to weigh 2300 lbs, we're on par with everybody else as far as
weight is concerned. The car can certainly make the power, so there's no
reason why it can't run the e.t. and speed that everybody else runs.
You'll probably see a difference in e.t. this year from last because the
cars have essentially the same powerplants but weigh 50 lbs more. If we
go back to our 15 pounds is a hundredth rule, that's two and a half
hundredths. So '50s (a 4.50 sec. run) will become '52s and '53s.
Now, they're also goin' to 90% (nitromethane, compared to the 85%
allowed previously) and we don't, yet, know how that will affect e.t.
Really, it doesn't matter what the e.t. is. We should be able to run in
the middle-to-high of the field, like from number 5 to number 10. If I
can do that consistently this year, I'll be happy."
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Troy Buff in the BME Dragster rockets off
the Pomona starting line on its third qualifying pass at the
'08 Winternationals. At left center, wearing his trademark,
yellow ball cap and holding his radio headset so it won't
get blown off, Bill Miller, intently watches. Image: BME
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What's Miller's
secret to being Top Fuel competitive on a budget that's about 15% of
what the touring nitro class pros spend? Bill told Drag Racer
magazine, "I work my ass off. Also, I'm careful with the money I
have. With some teams, a tremendous amount of money gets wasted. Also,
because I'm in the rod and piston business, I talk to my customers, many
of whom are nitro class racers, all the time. We talk about the car,
motors, clutches and everything about Top Fuel racing. I pick-up a
tremendous amount of valuable information that way.
"At this point, Bill
Miller Engineering and Okuma America put-up most of the money. We're,
also, pleased to have Goodyear, Autolite/Fram, ARP, XRP, Infinity
Rebuild, Sandvik Coromant and Red Line Synthetic Oil Corporation helping
us out. We're going to keep our schedule to about 15 or 16 races in
2008."
If you go to an NHRA
National Event and you want to meet some of the last independents in Top
Fuel stop by the BME/Okuma/Red Line Oil trailer.
During your visit,
you'll no doubt learn a little bit about persistence.
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The BME
Bulletin
Find out the latest news of the BME/Okuma
Top Fuel Team by reading our web log. Written by veteran drag
racing writer, Rick Vogelin, this blog will be updated
after each NHRA National Event which the BME/Okuma
dragster enters. The blog contains race results, comments by the
Team Owner, Bill Miller, BME driver, Troy Buff, along
with other topics of interest.
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The BME/Okuma/Red
Line Oil Top Fuel Team at Pomona in February of 2008.
Left to
right are: Mr. Bill, Ron Hixson, Troy Buff, Scott Bowen, Bill
Miller, Larry Wolyniec, Adam Schultz, Ryan Blaire, Robert
Howard, Ed Litke and Ed Litke Jr. These guys are the hardest working
crew in Top Fuel. Stop by the
BME trailer at a National Event and watch them prepare the BME/Okuma/Red
Line Oil Dragster |
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