In the process of building my streamliner one thing has constantly been on my mind, how do I "see" a fire that's behind me? I've heard of cameras (burnt up) or heat sensors (no sight) or even electric sensors (won't work in electrical fire) and decided I needed to take it to the next step. Now being I'm all about safety and it's MY butt on the line, I came up with an idea. I was hanging out at Victory Race Cars looking at some funny car tin work my friend Ron was doing and when I looked at the firewall, the light came on. Anyone who's been around drag racing for any period of time knows funny car fires (any car actually) are bad because it's hidden behind the firewall. Years ago the idea of putting little 2" lexan "windows" in the aluminum so you could actually "see" the fire, changed everything. If that idea is good enough for 7000+ HP, it's definitely good enough for me! So the plan is to have a window on each side of my head when I'm strapped into the car
Next I will build mounts that are attached to each side of the canopy, that will have small 1 1/2"-2" convex mirrors mounted on each side but in my line of vision
so as I'm looking forward, I can see behind me. If I see black in the mirrors I'm good but any flickering color and the bottles get hit. I told a fellow liner friend my idea yesterday because he is running this summer and being I don't want to see ANYONE get hurt if it can be prevented, I shared my idea. He really liked it so we'll see what happens...