Page 59 - NM Spring 2018

Ben Griffin: Tales from the Unblown Nitro Wars

By Connell R. Miller • Photos courtesy of Ben Griffin
With the media’s tagging them as dealership. Later, he became When I asked him about this he
“The Kings of the Sport,” AA/Fuel proficient with the nuances of smiled and said, “Yeah, I became
Dragsters and their plastic cousins, assembling race engines and built an injector expert, but was no Gene
AA/Funny Cars, garnered most of his own 392, 354 and 426 hemis Adams! Gene worked for Hilborn
the press and what little television (except for one that he obtained Fuel Injection and got to spend a lot
exposure our sport had back in the from Keith Black in 1972). Injected of time on the flow bench. I had to
day. There were always complaints, nitro engines can be finicky at find out the hard way, by trial and
however, that their unblown times and Griffin prides himself on error and making many mistakes
brothers in the A/FD and A/FC the inordinate amount of time he over time.”
classes were unfairly slighted, spent learning the intricacies of his
citing that many times they had fuel injection system to correctly People remember Ben’s beautiful
higher car counts and delivered adjust for the different conditions and well-prepared Woody Gilmore
just as much excitement and closer found at each track. and T-Bar’s Henry “Moose”
Schroeder-built dragsters and
racing – all to the delight of the
spectators in the stands.
Ben Griffin and the Yancey-Camp-
AEECO A/FD.
Ben Griffin was one of those
warriors that campaigned with nitro
but sans superchargers in both
classes for his entire racing career.
Raised in Highland Park, a small
suburb surrounded by the city of
Dallas, with a father owning a large
Ford dealership and monthly racing
at the nearby Caddo Mills drag strip
by high school classmates as well
as two families on his street a few
blocks away that were building and
racing cars, it was no wonder these
influences on Ben developed his
life-long passion for the sport.

He stuck with his family’s brand
for his first drag car, a 1957 Ford.
It wasn’t long, however, before he
jumped into his first fuel car, the C/
FD owned by Johnny Dodson. His
list of classes raced over the years
reads, S/S, C/FD, A/FD, A/FC and
AA/FD.

Ben first picked up his engine
building skills by working as
a mechanic at his dad’s Ford

Spring 2018 Nitro Madness Magazine 59