History

As with all projects of this size it began with 'I want one of those', which as we all know is a lot easier said than done. You do ask yourself now and again, "If I knew what I know now, would I do it all again"? The answer, rightly so is "Yes, of course you would". The last few years have not always been easy and it has been a long road, but that said we have had a lot of laughs (as well as tears) along the way which is why I thought it would be great to try to share it with you, so here goes!

Roger Goring (owner and driver of Firestorm) has always had a passion for all kinds of racing but particularly drag racing and had been given the opportunity to drive a Jet Funny Car back in 1992 which was when he muttered those immortal words "I want one". He showed me (Helen - partner, editor and crew member) a copy of the Super Stock magazine with a picture of Al Hanna's Eastern Raider, that copy of Super Stock has long since disappeared but here is a photograph of the Eastern Raider Jet Funny Car,

when the Eastern Raider was built it was the most high tech car in the whole of Jet racing (and possibly still is). It is completely different to any of the other Jet Funny Cars as it is a Centre Drive where the driver sits in front of the Jet engine as opposed to the side of it. Roger contacted Bob Jinkens of New Jersey who built the Eastern Raider, after numerous long conversations with Roger (and a huge phone bill), Bob agreed to build Roger a car, which was to become the Northern Flame - this was in early 1996. We gained not only our Jet Car out of this partnership but also a friendship with Bob and his wife Sandy which has continued to this day. Roger visited the states many times over the next year or so and helped with the building/construction of the chassis and body, on some of these occasions he was also accompanied by good friend Colin Fallows who has given us a massive amount of help and support over the years. Colin is a veteran of the jet car world being the driver/owner of both the Vampire and Split Second Jet Dragsters and European Land Speed Record holder. Going to the States gave Roger the opportunity not only to work on the construction of his own car but also to work on many other projects which were in Bob's raceshop at the time, so all in all it was an invaluable opportunity for Roj. At the same time as building Northern Flame work was started on a second car as Roger eventually wanted to have a two car team, this was put on hold due to lack of funds at the time and work concentrated on Northern Flame.

The construction of the chassis was completed and now came the task of building a body for it. A regular funny car body based on the Pontiac Firebird was purchased, this was then modified for the air intakes and also to fit the chassis which is approximately 10 inches longer than a regular funny car chassis. Rather than go into all the details you can get a good idea of what happens next in these photographs (click on the image to see a larger picture)

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

Buy a brand new body.

Cut it in half and cut out the front. Put the rear deck back on plus another eight inches!

Rebuild the body with nice new air intakes (that you made earlier)!

The General Electric J85 engine was sourced in the US and fitted into the chassis before being shipped to England.

Finally, Northern Flame arrived in England on the 19th March 1997, there was still much work to be done, although the engine was in the chassis, it all had to piped in, this involved many metres of braided hose, numerous fittings and countless hours spent in the workshop. The skill involved in this is not only to get everything piped in but to make the whole system 'easy maintenance' ie you don't have to take the whole lot apart to get to any one bit of it.

Testing began in mid 1997 and took quite a bit longer than anticipated, the main problem being that we had very limited time for actual testing. Firing up an afterburning jet engine is not something you can do in the back yard! We are forever grateful to Steve Murty of York Dragway for his patience and for fending off the complaints about noise - where from I'm not too sure, for anyone who has been to York Dragway you'll know what I mean - it seems to be in the middle of nowhere! Every occasion we could be there, we were - come rain or shine (mainly rain, hail, sleet and snow)!

The first test runs were carried out later that year at York Dragway, we're not a 100% sure when this was or at what meetings, but after what had been a very promising start we had our first upset when we found some damage to the engines compressor. This cut short the 1997 season, and apart from the car appearing at the Essen Motor Show in November, we spent the rest of the winter stripping the jet engine and rebuilding it, not exactly what we wanted for our first season but hey these things happen and we did manage to start the 1998 season more or less on time but back at square one - testing!

Despite having to start over with the testing we had a great start to 1998 and attended some track days at York Dragway where Roger took the 1/8 mile track record at 176 mph in 4.55 seconds. We continued with the development over the early part of 1998 and even managed to save up enough money to put the name on the car! In May 1998 we were invited to Santa Pod Raceway for the Press Day for the Main Event. This went well with Roger's third run of the day at 236 mph in 6.7 seconds, it was a fantastic run for Northern Flame's first ever 1/4 mile passes with all the relevant parts working well together. (Photographed by Tog). Following this we were invited to attend the Main Event where the first run with the Northern Flame unfortunately ended in disaster after it got out of shape at the top end, hit the Armco barrier, went over the barrier and came to rest at the bottom of the banking after numerous somersaults and pirouettes! The build quality of the car ensured that Roger walked away with just a broken finger - the damage to the car was another matter altogether. We obviously had to sit back and take stock, there was very little salvageable from Northern Flame and the decision was eventually made to carry on with the second car rather than begin to repair Northern Flame.

This decision took Roger back to the USA in November 1998 where he stayed with Bob and Sandy Jinkens and worked in Bob's raceshop earning his keep and building the new car in his spare time. This was not done single handed by Roger, we are forever in the debt of Bob Jinkens and Steve Borkowski and countless others who gave up their precious spare time to help Roger with the project.

Everything went really well and Firestorm arrived on these shores in April of 1999! There was still much work to be done to get Firestorm ready for the track and unfortunately yet again we had simply run out of money so Firestorm remained in the workshop whilst we carried on working to put some money back into the bank to enable us to complete the project.

After a very late start to the 2000 season due to work commitments and the normal financial restraints we started to do the initial engine tests with the car chained down. The motor needed a little fine tuning on the fuel system but other than that it all worked very well. The afterburner was set to a very mild state of tune, this makes it easier to learn the launch sequence of the car and is very gentle on the motor.

We did a couple of run what ya brung meetings to get the first slow runs under our belt and taking time to test the many safety systems incorporated in the car. The car is fitted with an all new revolutionary parachute mount system, we took quite a lot of time testing this but are pleased to report it works superbly.

Once the first testing and slow passes were complete we were able to get down to the serious business of running the car a little faster, the thing here is not to get carried away! Firestorm drives very well and it is easy to go too fast too soon. Getting a little overzealous brought us an 1/8th mile record at York Raceway whilst setting up the afterburner, even with a very early shut off 188mph in the 1/8 mile is not hanging about, need I say more!

The highlight of our short 2000 season came at Shakespeare County Raceway when after building up the speed and dropping the ET's over a number of runs we finished the season with a 250 mph, 6.4 second pass (our only full 1/4 mile passes of the year).

As we moved along into the 2001 season we had a plan for the continued development of Firestorm but it didn't go quite to plan. It was a very mixed season for us, Firestorm made many appearances throughout the year at York Dragway, Elvington, Shakespeare County Raceway, Sheffield Arena, Santa Pod and Crail in Scotland. It was a busy year for us and Firestorm continued to delight race fans with the fireshow which we were developing but it was not all plain sailing. Firestorm had developed an intermittent running problem, we spent quite a lot of time chasing the problem but as it wasn't a consistent problem it was not easy. This culminated in damage to the engine in July which we managed to fix, only to further damage the engine again in August. The second time meant an early finish to the season as we simply did not have the funds required to fix it.

We went into the 2002 season with a fully reconditioned engine and many crossed fingers that we had finally got rid of the goblins and gremlins which had dogged us last year. Alas, that was not to be and I think the less said about 2002 the better. It started with Roger having two operations on his hand in the early part of the year both times he was in plaster for 6 weeks and not a happy boy. This meant we had a very late start to the season and once we got into the season we found we were still having problems with the set up on Firestorm which meant we had to tread very carefully as we could not afford to damage the motor for a third time. However, late on in the season we finally managed to find the cause of our problems and with the car now reliable and running perfectly we enjoyed the remainder of the season and looked forward to a fast and safe 2003.

I am sure that regular Firestormer's will know the outcome of the 2003 season, we had a FANTASTIC year, but if you would like to continue with the Firestorm history you can visit our 2003 News Page and keep up to date on 2004 News Page which will be updated regularly as the season progresses.