When Dale Pulde sold his racing operation some years back, he never officially retired from racing nitro. That’s because the seasoned world championship-winning drag racer with one of the more iconic names in the straight line wasn’t done. 

Pulde has confirmed he will return to drag race in 2023 as a driver on a two-car team fielded by Bucky Austin. When Austin first approached him, the multi-time IHRA Funny Car champion admitted he had to think about it.

“Bucky and I always got along,” Pulde said. “I always had a good relationship with Bucky. In the last few years, I would go to the races with him. One day, he asked, ‘Why don’t you do a second car with me?’ 

“I just kind of thought I got rid of all this stuff at one time. Val (Harrell) and I had talked about it. She said, ‘Bucky’s always awful nice and everything. Would you want to do a second car?’ 

“Man, I don’t know. I really don’t know. So, one day I told him, I said, ‘If you find something you want to do, I’ll do it. I’m willing to do it, but it’s your stuff. It belongs to you.’”
 

 

Pulde expected Austin’s plan to take some time, but it came together much quicker than anticipated. Austin had found a car in Michigan belonging to another racer with a commitment to detail that paralleled Pulde’s.

“Bucky says, ‘I found a car. I think it’s what we want. I think it’s something you’ll like,’” Pulde recalled of the conversation. 

Veteran chassis builder Murf McKinney built the car. A call to McKinney revealed the car’s original owner, Marc Bedrosian, was determined how he wanted the car built and would expect no less; indeed, a Pulde trait.

“He had every idea he had wanted to be put into this car, and he’d researched it heavily,” Pulde said of the McKinney conversation. “I understand that. Then he said, ‘You know what this guy used to do? He restored MiG fighter planes.’ 

“This thing, all the window screws were all lined up. All the bolts are all on the same angle. Everything was just a pretty nice little car and everything. It’s a McKinney car, and it’s pretty close to what Dan Horan’s car is, which runs awful well.”

A showpiece, indeed it was. But, a competitive Heritage Series car? It was going to take a bit more work. 

Pulde noticed a few things that needed to change, including the choice of the supercharger, fuel pump, and mag. 

“It wasn’t updated to run the pro stuff,” Pulde added. 

 

 

 

The other concern for Pulde wasn’t the immaculate paint scheme but the name on the side of the car. 

“In giant letters along the side of the car, it said, ‘Nitro Hero,’” Pulde described. “The car had a really nice paint job on it, nothing I really wanted, but I told [Bucky], ‘If I was your size or I was built like Matt Hagan, the  car really hauled ass, I could probably get by with Nitro Hero on the car.’”

Pulde told Austin, “‘I’m not a Nitro Hero.’”

Austin’s response was music to Pulde’s ears. 

“He said, ‘Let’s make it a War Eagle.’”

Pulde then reached out to veteran car painter John Pugh, who had painted some of his masterpiece racecars, and asked if he would like to paint the newest War Eagle. Pugh quickly accepted the offer and went to work. 

Pulde is very dedicated to the presentation of his cars, and even as recently as the previous War Eagle, he proved that he will go to extraordinary measures to maintain a high standard of design. 

“The hardest thing was buying the pearl to get the color we wanted,” Pulde explained. “That pearl hadn’t probably been made well over 20 or more years. In fact, the last car we had done, I had to get the pearl from [Bill] Carter to give it to the painter who painted it. So, I got the jar. I got the jar of pearl, and I took it to Squeege, and he painted the car. The car was beautiful. It was really nice. It did everything it was supposed to do.”
 

 

Pulde wanted a very similar paint job as the predecessor, but the problem quickly became the inability to get the same pearl he’d purchased from Carter, who passed in 2019. 

“John was able to get House of Kolor to step up and decide they wanted to come through with the paint and everything to paint the car. PPG, it was their paint that was on the last car, and it was all really good,” Pulde said. “So, between the House of Kolor stuff to make the colors that we wanted and everything, then trying to find the pearl, the pearl turned out to be a serious deal. Guys have the pearl. They don’t want to turn loose of it. One guy had a jar. He wanted $2,000 a jar for it.

“Then, another guy said, ‘Well, I’ve got the pearl, but I’d just rather have it.’ It turned out to be a real pain in the butt. But, John has done a really nice job on the paint job on it.”

The paint was one issue, but finding parts in today’s supply chain-ravaged world was another. 

“I’m having trouble finding parts like I want. The stuff that I thought would be really simple, things that I knew I had at one time,” Pulde said. 

One challenge that was previously not a challenge at all came from how he would shift the car. In today’s world of air shifting, Pulde remains a manual kind of racer. 

“I figured, okay, well, I don’t want an air shifter in the car,” Pulde confirmed. “I don’t want any of that air crap on the cars. Every car I worked on had all these air shifters, and everything on it always had problems. So, I said, ‘Okay, well, I’ll call Lenco, and I’ll get a shift tower for the manual shifter.’” 

Pulde found out that the expected arrival date could be at least six months. He continued to search, eventually finding what he needed from fellow nostalgia racer Jeff Gaynor, and Pulde received the part four days later. 

As Pulde works away on the project and despite the challenges, he's just happy to be back. 

Pulde plans to run select events on the NHRA’s Heritage Series and a few other Funny Car races.

“Any of Bucky’s races if he wants me to run. If he wants me to run a Heritage Race, I’ll run the Heritage Races,” Pulde explained. “If he wants me to do whatever, it’s his call; wherever he wants me to do it, go do it. To get some laps on the car or something, I might go run a (Funny Car) Chaos race now and then.“