Former Top Fuel Racer's 500MPH Viper Powered Monster: Doug Herbert's Purpose Driven Record Chase

so my dad was a sponsor on this car back in the ' 60s supercharged Viper engines with prochargers on and they'll be about 2500 horsepower per engine why do we do that I don't know you know I wish my younger son would have told his brother hey I don't like how you're driving let me out of the car would you know would have changed things we're here with former top fuel racer Doug Herbert his personal garage and he's got some pretty cool projects in there what do you got going on these days you know unfortunately not doing much Top Fuel racing these days so uh been working on a project to go to the Bonville Salt Flats and set the worldland feed records pretend we didn't just walk in here 30 seconds ago and then come back out here to record this intro Doug Herbert's dad Chad Herbert was actually kind of like one of the founding fathers of hot riding back in early days of Southern California he's credited with bringing the roller cam to the aftermarket industry the first car that legendary engine Boer Ed pink we did a video with him he talked about going to Bonville for the first time with a borrowed engine that engine was from Chad Herbert I had no idea until we had talked to Doug about this after the fact it's pretty cool very small world so you know everybody's got to have a Viper in the garage especially when they have a race car that has Viper engine in it yes we got the Viber we got an old Cadillac just cuz I I don't know I just thought it was fun they're cool yeah it's just neat it's fun that old Cadillac driving down the road or at a stop line it doesn't matter they're you know an old person a young person uh they're white or black or or Spanish or whatever everybody's like cool car you know it just kind of it just makes people smile I think old cars in general so yeah it's it's prettyy fun and we got an old Top Fuel car it's a 1964 uh Top Fuel dragster that was ran you know back back in the day the wind spoiler so it's kind of a neat old car uh but it starts up and cackles and makes you know makes flames and all that pretty cool and then we got our what we're calling the Beast here the the uh V car the pl on going setting the worldland speed record with this thing supercharged Viper engines with prochargers on and there'll be about 2500 car per engine so two dual engines 5,000 horsepower it's a four-wheel drive car it'll weigh probably around 7,000 lbs uh once it's completed really low coefficient of drag and uh you know should be engineering says we're going to go over 500 miles now so that's my story and I'm sticking to it started this project in 2008 my two boys got killed in a car crash and the previous summer the boys spent the summer with my dad he's lived out in California I grew up in California my dad lived in California so he's like send the boys out I want to I want to get to know him right because they live in North Carolina and I'm here so I sent out sent him out there and they spent a few weeks with my dad and D had a great time and uh when we lost the boys it really you know was was really tough on him tough on everybody but it was tough on my dad I called him and I said hey let's start a project together you know let's do something what do you thinking I said why don't you go come to the races with me and we'll run we'll run another car we'll run two Top Field cars you can go that like he says I have no interest in Top Field cars you said you guys are you know they're all the same nowadays like back when he raced them in the 50s and 60s everything was so different you know they were you could come back and have a two wheel drive car a four-wheel drive car two engines or whatever like it was all kind of crazy stuff and he goes nope they're all the same as a bunch of cookie cutters I don't care about that so I was kind of thinking about what to do and I watched this movie the world's fastest Indian with Anthony Hopkins I don't know if you ever seen the movie world's fastest Indian it's a pretty good movie actually you should watch it if you're you know you are car people right so the world's fastest Indian watched the movie and at the end of the movie I called my dad I go Dad I know we got to build a Bonville car we got to go to Bonville and uh my dad had had some pretty good success at Bonville over the years he goes well what kind what class are you thinking I said you know world's fastest car we're going to we're going to build a you know world's fastest car fastest Streamliner and he goes well now that'd be something I'd be interested in so we started working on the project and we were hitting it pretty hard um and right after I started on it uh Ray iram's a buddy of mine Ray came by the shop and he's like what are you what are you building here cuz I had the differentials and some of the part he goes that thing I can't I don't I've never seen anything like that I goes that's we're building a card go to Bonville set the worldland speed record and Ray goes well I'd be interested in helping on that and so then Ray got involved on the body design and doing a solid model works and and doing uh you know electric you know wind tunnel testing that kind of stuff and so raise Engineers helped with that is that when he still had the race team yep yeah 8 so we were hitting it really hard trying to uh trying to get the car done for 09 for Speed week in ' 09 and so it's coming together pretty quick and about that same time my dad got sick and ended up passing away and Ray's dad got sick and passed away so it was kind of like we were really pushing hard to get it done because we wanted to go do this with our dad's and you know life went on and we had other projects that we you know that we involved with and so it just kind of got put in the back burner year or two ago I decided you know what I got to get the car done is it was the car was actually sitting over in Mike Wallace's shop and uh he goes when are you going to get that thing done so Mike kind of jump started me to get the car done and then we built this garage so that I had a place to work on it what was the fastest you went a top fuel car uh just over 330 but you know it's a different right you go 0 to 330 in 4 seconds where this thing a run you know that 500 mph run will be about 100 seconds so it'll be like a a FM drag race basically is what we're going to do with this thing so pretty it going be pretty cool pretty exciting you know even going 330 M hour you don't have much time to look around and think man we're going fast so I'm hoping going 500 I'll have time to at least go this thing is ha ass you know one thing I noticed in there is the seat how well first of all I have I don't know if you noticed I have my camera on extendo mode right now because normally when we talk to people I can hold the GoPro sort of at like a 90° arm level because everybody's shorter than me I'm your height yeah you're my height so I'm holding this thing up here and it's kind of like this is uncomfortable for my arm so I pulled up the little the little thing well the seat is definitely not made for Comfort uh the one you know the seat's not finished obviously where it'll be poured so it'll have a you know it'll have a poured seat in it that'll be fitted um you know for safety but uh you know it's really it's really laying down this obviously will be trimmed about the same height here um but it's you're basically laying down with your head tilted up a little bit cuz the whole car off the ground is only uh the top of the body is about 24 in the top of the canopy will be about a little over 30 in so uh the whole car is only 28 in wide uh so it's basically like a bullet right 5,000 horsepower to go 500 M hour what kind of gear ratio do you have to do that we've actually had special differentials made they're a 133 ring and pinion but they're uh quick chain style so we're we're going to we're planning on running about a 1:1 ratio um you know so it'll be it'll be uh we've got it figured that roughly little over 6,000 maybe 6,500 rpm should be 500 mph interesting so if you have one engine running each set of wheels y if one engine has a problem will there be like an electronic fail safe to cut the other one so you're not like uh you don't get out of whack no I mean it you know if something happens to one engine I'll probably just shut you know that's when we depend on the driver just make sure you just shut it off because you're not going to set any records on one engine yeah so yeah probably just shut it off at that point I would think and there's nothing to hit right that's the good thing about Bonville is you know I mean even drag racing NASCAR whatever right it's the speed is not what hurts you it's those sudden stops you know those sudden stops are what gets you well the thing about Bonville is there's nothing out there right it's a it's a national park it's a huge open space so you know the only thing really bad that could possibly happen is maybe doing a barrel roll in this thing but as far as but there's really not enough traction to kind of get it hooked up so you're you know you're more than likely you're just going to Skid around it's not going to you know cu the tires are pretty hard and uh not a lot of traction there and and so you know you're you're probably going to be skining around rather than hitting something if you get out of whack you throw the parachute and hopefully it's yeah right throw the parachute and pulls the car you know pulls the car straight really you know that's the idea so this car will have three parachutes on it uh the 500 mph shoot is only about a 6ft canopy and then 400 mph shoot's about uh a little bit bigger I think it's about a 8ft canopy and then the 300 shoot is like a regular Top Field dragster a parachute like you know pretty big you got to start small so it doesn't just get ripped off it doesn't rip the yeah it doesn't rip the shoot off exactly yeah doesn't rip the shoot off what are some of the construction details that you can um explain on this well one of the neat things and we found this out doing the doing the uh wind tunnel work originally we were going to run the exhaust out the side which obviously would be a lot easier the the drag at it was about 450 mph the drag from the exhaust coming out was actually slowing the car down because the exhaust is coming out slower than what the car is going so it's actually you're pushing that through the air so bringing the exhaust out the back of the car was a big deal it it was uh a huge benefit on on aod Dynamics bringing the F bringing that out the back so basically there'll be three parachutes mounted back here the exhaust is coming out the back uh vertical fin on the car we were pretty careful about doing the uh wheel well so these are they're like 8 in steel all around the tires because what we didn't want to happen is have tires start coming apart and then it you know disintegrates the car like a top fuel car you have a tire come off and takes your wing off you're going to crash so uh these E8 in steel wheel wells we hoping are going to contain anything if the tire starts to come apart um so that'll be a pretty good thing obviously you know fire systems for the engines fire system for the driver area and then we got you know a couple nitrous bottles in case we only go 499 mph we can push the button for a little bit more uh so that that should be pretty good cuz the exhaust coming out even though it's it's air know the way I've heard it explained is it almost acts like a solid object outside the car where like I don't know did you ever do this with your top fuel testing where where you would take like cones and the rough shape of what the exhaust would come out of out of the header and run at the wind tunnel like that yep well and it's hard because on the on the top field cars there's the amount of downforce you've got like 300 or 3,000 lbs of downforce coming out the exhaust on a top field car CU they're just they move such a huge amount of air so it's it's a big you know the header angles and all kinds of stuff on top field guards are critical will this be one pipe for each engine no one pipe for the left side one p for the right side we got them we kind of got them wide together uh these profab guys made the made the exhaust they're pretty neat uh pretty neat exhaust you know they're all you know merge collector like they're a pretty neat uh you know they're really neat design um but they're uh you know so basically it'll go from one engine will merge into the second engine so we'll have 10 cylinders going out each side going out through the back so you know 20 ERS total 10 cylinders coming out each side ProCharger has been pretty helpful on this project all along and so we've got these uh big superchargers on here they'll make you know we should be able to make that 2500 horsepower without a whole lot of trouble hopefully here in the next few weeks we're going to we're going to be doing some uh we've got one engine over ready to run on the diner now so these are just mockup stuff in here since you started this such a long time ago all like engine technology ProCharger technology fuel injection all that stuff has progressed so much since 2008 were there any components that you had that you were like wow these are obsolete now and then replace them yep well prochargers came up with better impellers you know make more power and less heat um we were going to run 5-speed Transmissions now we've got these Liberty seven-speed Transmissions going in the car they're electronically shifted so that's pretty neat as far as the engine parts not a lot of different there uh this the ring technology has gotten a lot better in the last year so we've got different Rings um you know we work with total seal that for a long time on the Rings so we've got we got some better Rings there for the ceiling you know Billet crank shafts and corilla rods and you know coated pistons and um everything's still probably pretty close to to what it was even back then just the ring technology has definitely got better so we we got different Rings piston rings in it for now but other than that man everything's about pretty close the same and what fuel injection system are you going to run uh we got a motch stuff for it yeah so the motch is pretty neat because it'll be you know display for the driver also uh synchronizing the engines together doing traction control doing all the uh all the data collection ride heights and all that kind of stuff so it's a lot of there'll be a lot of data to analyze after I run you know on a top fuel car you've got 4 seconds of data analyze now we're going to have roughly 100 seconds of data to analyze on this thing so hopefully we'll be smart enough to analyze all that data and know what to do with it so is the entire body going to be carbon fiber or yeah okay that'll be cool you know like like a rough estimate of what the weight will be car should be ready to race about 7,000 lb so pretty heavy yeah pretty heavy we just get the uh the tank finished for the front I can't remember I think it's about a 80 gallon tank that'll be in the front for cooling uh obviously it'll just be recirculating at the end of The Run we can we're going to dump the water out uh spray it on the engines kind of cool them down so that we get back to the F we be P up help to work on um and then uh methanol the engines are going to run on methanol we chose methanol cuz they're kind of it'll it should keep things cooler it'll keep the air charge a little bit cooler going in cuz we just don't have enough room to put intercoolers on there so uh the engines won't be intercooled they'll just be supercharged with running of methanol r helped a lot on the suspension obviously he's a suspension you know Guru and so he's actually helped a lot on the suspension and watch links and all that kind of cool stuff but you know I'm an old drag race I didn't know about that so it was neat to have race help uh on that part for sure yeah so the air engines go in here and they kind of a structural part also and then they're going to go you know out of each of these pipes they'll be ducked it around to go into the superchargers thing built really really strong um but all the weight's down pretty low we wanted it you know we wanted all the weight to be really low on the car this this whole section here on bolts so that we can we can uh take this section of the of the frame off and be able to work on the engines you know just my previous experience working on Top Field cars we need to be able to work on the engines we don't want to go to Bonville and burn a piston or something oh yeah let's come back you know next year we want to be able to put a new piston in and go back out and run it run the engine again what kind of trailer do you put this in well if you're the kind of person who likes racing and cars and NASCAR I'm going to go out of limb and say when you pull up to your house you like seeing a nice Green Lawn and if you don't have a nice Green Lawn you probably want one well today's sponsor can help you get that figured out with the minimal amount of effort and research on your part which I know is important Sunday is a subscription service that combines unique data with Cutting Edge science to help you grow a better Greener lawn with mystery free ingredients like seaweed molasses and iron and uses soil climate and satellite data to model your lawn and build a custom plan just for your lawn they'll also analyze the results of your personal soil test to zero in on any deficiencies and update your plan from there because you got to have the right dirt to grow the right grass all you got to do is get sunday.com Stapleton you can find the link down there you type in your address to get your lawn analysis you get your customized lawn care plan in seconds everything gets sent right to your doorstep when you need it you receive customized shipments throughout the year to keep your lawn looking fresh here in North Carolina we have red clay it's very different from where I grew up in Pennsylvania and probably different from where you are and unless you're a farmer or something you probably don't know what the right balance of nutrients is in your dirt to grow the right kind of grass you might just be buying bags of stuff at the store that aren't actually going to help you and Sunday solves that problem go to gets sunday.com Stapleton and use promo code Stapleton 20 to get 20% off your Custom Lawn care plan yeah so there lies a stra uh when you guys were out at Poncho Weaver the today Poncho is building a trailer that'll have four swing arms on it so it'll be a a a a four-wheel trailer with swing arms on it so it'll have airbags drop down on the ground cuz the clearance the ground clearance is only an inch on this thing so it'll drop down on the ground we'll have an inch the car will roll on the trailer and then the airbags will lift it up and then off we go I guess got to be a long trailer it'll be a pretty long trailer yeah and then to go to Bonville we'll probably put that trailer on a semi- triler or something like that but that trailer we'll use it for uh Towing the car around in the pits and uh you know if we have to tow it around Charlotte area to go get some work done or whatever you know prob carbon shop to finish up the body or you know whatever we need to do there that makes sense who made the carbon on here um the the body workor that we've got so far uh uh Gunther Steiner actually did the body work on it did the kind of figured that he would be like the guru for that yeah Gunther did it and then you know G obviously I don't know what he's doing now but he's been pretty busy with the storm of the one stuff so um we're trying to figure out who's going to uh help us get the rest of the body finished so that that needs to start happening pretty quick we're going to run the car this year we got to get on that so that's…