[TheMonkey]

best quote in article: ....."making it one of the fastest street-legal cars in the nation.".....

Those Muscle Cars
On the Drag Strip
Are Really Electric
Clunker Run on Batteries
Trounces Latest 'Gassers';
John Wayland's Close Call
By JOHN J. FIALKA
August 1, 2007; Page A1

PORTLAND, Ore. -- On a recent Friday night at the Portland International Raceway, John Wayland scanned the dragsters, looking for an opponent for his geeky looking 1972 Datsun sedan. Finally, he challenged the owner of a souped-up 2005 Corvette, the hottest-looking car at the track, to a quarter-mile race.
See how an electric car dubbed the Zombie is leaving conventional muscle cars in the dust.

When the starting light flashed, the Datsun, known as White Zombie, shot silently past the Corvette and kept widening the lead as the two cars faded into the distance. "Oh man, right off the [starting] line he had me," said the Corvette's owner, Robert Akers, shaking his head.

Electric cars are typically known for their fuel efficiency and environmental bona fides, not for their speed and muscle. But Mr. Wayland, 47 years old, is changing that, and has become something of a hero to a small group of hot rodders dedicated to humiliating gasoline-powered cars. The night White Zombie beat the Corvette, it also trounced two other "gassers," as Mr. Wayland calls them -- a blue BMW and a bright orange 1964 Pontiac Tempest.

The electric-car racers, who go by nicknames like "Father Time" and "Electric Louis," hope to jump-start public interest in electric vehicles. "Getting electric cars going in the U.S. has been like shoveling sand into a tsunami," says Roderick Wilde, who sometimes races here in his electric-powered Mazda.

White Zombie and the other electric cars compete in the most popular drag-racing category: the one for cars that can be driven on regular streets. Anybody with a hot car and a safety helmet can drive up and compete in this "street-legal" category. White Zombie can go from a standing start to 109 miles an hour in 11.9 seconds, making it one of the fastest street-legal cars in the nation.
[John Wayland]

Sometimes, given White Zombie's renown as a speed demon, other drivers avoid a face-off. The night he went to the raceway, Mr. Akers, the 35-year-old owner of the Corvette, had just gotten back from a two-year stint in Iraq working for a private security contractor. He says he knew that the Datsun had an electric motor but didn't realize what that meant. The boxy looking Datsun was driven by Tim Brehm, who is a mechanic for a local forklift distributor; Mr. Wayland, the car's owner, is a mechanic-instructor at the same company.

Mr. Wayland is a former bass player in a rock-and-roll band who says he barely made it through high school. He got interested in electric gear while running a business fixing broken amplifiers and television sets. In the 1980s, he drove gasoline-powered Datsuns in illegal drag races on the streets of Portland. "I had lots of speeding tickets," he says.

In 1985, he found the white Datsun sedan in a junkyard and bought it for $585. He intended to use it to drive to work. But in the early '90s, with General Motors Corp. beginning to tout the electric car, Mr. Wayland decided to convert the Datsun to electric power. Today, after several modifications, White Zombie has two powerful motors normally used to operate forklifts and 36 12-volt storage batteries crammed into the back seat and trunk. In daily use, most electric cars in the U.S. are little more than souped up golf carts with fewer batteries and much less power.

In electrifying the Datsun, Mr. Wayland had as his goal building a car that could beat most of the big gasoline-powered muscle cars around Portland. "Getting beat by a little Japanese car back then reflected on your manhood," he says.

Unlike gasoline engines, which take a few seconds to build up turning power, or torque, for the rear wheels, electric motors deliver it instantly. The sharp jolt of power was a problem for Mr. Wayland in his first few races. "I hit it and it was on full power," he says. "You just held on." He has since installed a controller, a kind of giant dimmer switch that phases in the battery power more gradually.

At first, skeptics abounded. One day, Mr. Wayland found policemen measuring a long skid mark the Zombie had made the previous evening. (Before a drag race starts, drivers often do a "burnout," spinning their tires furiously on the asphalt to make their treads sticky so they have a better grip on the road.) The policemen had heard rumors of a fast electric car but dismissed them. "There is no electric car that could lay down a strip like that," he heard one declare.
[Zombie]
John Wayland, standing next to his drag-racing, electric-powered Datsun.

The disbelief began to disappear in the mid- to late '90s, after Portland made drag-racing legal on a cordoned-off downtown street and later at the race track, and White Zombie prevailed over and over.

Around the country, other electric cars started beating gasoline-powered favorites, too. In 1996, a few tracks began to ban the electric cars, calling them unsafe because they went so fast and employed unfamiliar technology. In response, Mr. Wayland and others formed the National Electric Drag Racing Association, which now has about 50 members, and drew up safety rules for electric dragsters.

Those regulations satisfied the National Hot Rod Association, the world's largest promoter of drag races, which a few years later invited the electric drag racers to take part in its competitions. Now the electric cars routinely participate in drag races in California, Maryland and other states.

Still, even with tough safety rules, the cars can pose special hazards. When installing an array of batteries in a car, Mr. Wayland lays a rubber blanket on top of it, and connects one battery to the next, one at a time, to avoid short-circuits.

But in March 1998, feeling elated after installing 28 batteries in preparation for a race, he whipped off the blanket before he was finished. He leaned down to connect the last battery to the array and dropped the brass connecting rod, which bounced from battery to battery, creating a trail of sparks and flashes. A superheated cloud of gas, called a plasma, formed and flickered over the batteries as the heat generated by 336 volts melted the brass and fused the batteries together.

"I could feel the skin burning on my face," recalls Mr. Wayland, who wasn't seriously injured. A colleague threw a wet towel over the blaze. The towel was vaporized. Fire extinguishers had no effect. Finally, a fireman wearing a hazardous-materials suit disconnected the batteries, and the cloud disappeared. "The Zombie looked like a roasted marshmallow," Mr. Wayland says. The car was quickly repaired, and Mr. Wayland has since been known as "Plasma Boy."

The accident fueled Mr. Wayland's mystique, which has spread far beyond the drag-racing set. Last year, a Washington state police department -- the Clark County Sheriff's Office -- invited him to show off White Zombie in a fast-driving course for young officers. Mr. Wayland did a massive burnout, leaving a squad car, with lights blaring and siren screaming, far behind. "Somebody, please arrest me,' " Mr. Wayland recalls saying. "I'm having way too much fun."

Write to John J. Fialka at [email protected]1

[Half-Inch Stud]

www.teslamotors.com

[Tone]

That's pretty cool! Awesome gas mileage...kinda infinate actually....AND it can whip our gas powered cars at the track!

I want one.

[n2ogpsj462]

seems pretty cool but 11.90s being one of the fastest street-legal cars in nation? i would estimate there are probably hundreds ofthousands of cars going faster than that and are registered and inspected and street legal

[BVR421]

Originally Posted by n2ogpsj462

seems pretty cool but 11.90s being one of the fastest street-legal cars in nation? i would estimate there are probably hundreds ofthousands of cars going faster than that and are registered and inspected and street legal

I doubt there are more than a couple dozen street legal electrics running that quick
lots more track only cars and bikes that are quicker. There are 9 sec electric dragsters out there.

http://www.wurts.net/ElectrifiedMotorSports/ 8.91@145

I used to watch the electric bikes run at the Palmdale track nearly 20 years ago. 11sec silent motorcycles are awesome to watch run. Hard to get very many batteries installed on a bike or they would be much faster.

[n2ogpsj462]

"White Zombie can go from a standing start to 109 miles an hour in 11.9 seconds, making it one of the fastest street-legal cars in the nation."

doesnt say fastest street legal electric anything simply says what it says. its probably the fastest electrical carlet alone one of.

[TCSGTO]

Thats very cool & inventive but if comes down to either paying $3.00/gal and "ruining the environment" or running the risk of getting your face melted off in a hazardous battery fire I'll take pain at the pump anyday.

[Z Code 400]

I gotta ask the real question here....sure, it runs in the 11.00's in the quarter, but can it do a 1st, 2nd & 3rd burnout???....:-)

I just had too...Robert

[BruceWilkie]

Electrics can be fast but I'll stick with conventional thank you. Battery accidents are down right scary. Will never forget the time I dropped a ratchet extension and it rolled across and shorted the top posts. Less than thirty seconds I had it off but 1/2" extension was yellow red battery was extremely hot and could have exploded. I was lucky. The thought of battery acid and shrapnel from the battery scares the hell out of me. If tools needed in battery area after that incident the battery gets removed not just disconnected.
Electric cars start getting popular highway accidents should be real spectacular! Anyone ever see a power pole transformer explode when a car hits the pole. WOW!

Had a 180 volt 1/2hp dc motor explode on a machine once where the mocon box failed and motor went to rpm 's unknown. Machine threw chains sheared gearshaft pins and screamed, big bang, then silence, then smoke, less than 20 seconds probably. NO thanks no electric cars for me.

[BruceWilkie]

Zcode e motors are all about torque!(instant) I once hooked a 90volt 1/4 hp motor to a 8 amp battery charger. Even at 6 volts couldnt stall the motor with a leather glove on, holding a 3 in pulley. Even though you could almost count the rpm. No doubt he can get rubber in any gear if he is even using a transmission. The damage a belt driven 1/4hp e motor can do has to be seen to be believed. (easily break a 1/2" chain)

[Dick Boneske]

In the above responses and in several articles I've read recently about electric cars, the claim is made about economical operation. The cost to charge the batteries in an electric car far exceeds the cost of the same amount of energy provided by gasoline or diesel fuel. Even though internal combustion engines are only about 15% efficient vs. electric motors at 90%+ efficiency, electricity costs approximately 4X more per unit of energy than gasoline. The efficiency of charging and discharging a battery is not anywhere near 90%. The environmentalists would have a cow if they knew the ramifications of everyone driving electric cars. The number of generating plants would skyrocket, along with very localized pollution from these plants.

It's amusing, however, to read comments on safety of electric motors/batteries vs. gasoline powered cars. The amount of energy to create an explosion--and the likelihood of an explosion is much, much greater with gasoline than with a bunch of batteries. Yes, you have to be careful with electricity, but the fuel in any petroleum powered vehicle is equivalent to a fairly large bomb. I am amazed at the small number of accidents that happen when refueling petroleum-powered vechicles.

[BruceWilkie]

And you think the Hydrogen in a battery isnt as explosive as gasoline?

[Half-Inch Stud]

Geeez, picky AND short-sighted comments...here's what the "Race Section" be:

You install the 3KW audio with Subs and PLAY/activate the sound of a nitro-alky for a pedal gone WOT.

"you can doo it ....it's electric...the elecrtric slide."

[JoeF]

Actually, it says it goes from 0-109 in 11.9. Not the quarter in 11.9. Not sure if that'ss fast or not, since I've never raced anyone to 109.

"Hey Buddy, you wanna run that thing? Last one to 94 mph buys dinner."

"Make it 109 and you're on..."

[TheMonkey]

the original article had a video. his best quarter mile time is 11.9 seconds. the article said that makes it one of the fastest street legal cars in the nation. 11.9 second street legal cars are being built on a regular basis aren't they?

[67cruiser]

pASS THAT SMOKE AROND PLEASE, 98,000$ are you kidding me?? Ill pass, ok ritch people jump on board and have a ball!

[n2ogpsj462]

only reason i opened this thread was because i thought i was opening a thread about a hybrid maybe toyota or something along those lines going 11.90 which would have been extremely impressive.

[lugnutt]

So, my LS1 in a 68 Firebird thread got moved from here. However, we can have a thread about nothing to do with pontiac racing what so ever in here???? Politics!