JoJo (right) would like to...
JoJo (right) would like to thank his mom and dad for the car, his sisters Cassie and Casey, his nephew Cody Gullett, Ross Jackson, Brian Fitzgerald, Justin Laird, Shannon Smith, H.P. Performance, Mustang Motorsports, Unlimited Performance, No Limit Racing, Ronny Smrekar, and his auto shop teacher, Mr. Willingham, at Orange Park High School for teaching him all about cars.
Horse Sense: JoJo Gullett's plans for Renegade include using a 5.4 modular with Manley rods, JE pistons, ported and polished heads, and a Bullitt intake. Oh, yeah-it will also guzzle a ton of nitrous.
Drag racing is a family affair. Names such as Mark and Joe Mainiero, Gabe and Jarad Large, and Robin and James Lawrence are all ate up with racing. Back in the day, Mark Mainiero raced Pontiacs until the 5.0 Mustang came out, while son Joe seemingly exited the womb tearing up the streets. Gabe Large taught little brother Jarad everything he knows about drag racing. Jarad must've listened well. James Lawrence has his uncle Robin to thank for his drag racing prowess (or lack thereof). James must not have listened to Robin's sage advice.
As with Joe Mainiero and Jarad Large, Joseph (or JoJo, as he is more affectionately known) Gullett has followed in his elder brother John's footsteps behind the wheel of this '01 GT.
JoJo received his True Blue GT for Christmas in 2000. He was one of the first kids in his Orange Park, Florida, hometown to have one. "I couldn't wait for the first trip to Gainesville, so I had to run it at local eighth-mile Jax Raceway," JoJo says. He knew he had a fast car on his hands when he beat a '99 Cobra and ran a best of 8.69 at 82 mph. "I called my brother from the track asking him to tell me what that would equal in the quarter-mile," he says. "I had to know. He said not to get my hopes up-that it was probably a mid-14."
John's obviously had one too many 200-mph runs, because a couple weeks later at Gainesville, his younger brother's first pass equaled a 13.86 at 100 mph. JoJo was so excited, he went back to the pits and removed the passenger-side seat and air filter. Through much practice with his launch, he had the car running 13.50s that first night at Gainesville-with a fistfull of timeslips to prove it.
With the car's abnormal power, JoJo couldn't resist getting his street freak on. It's hard to believe, but he says no one around his hometown knew who he was when he first started out. "All they knew was that I was John Gullett's little brother," JoJo says. But the locals came to know him real fast because he was "beating all the cars around town," as he puts it.
With such a yearning for speed and the desire to remain undefeated, JoJo purchased a pair of street slicks to keep him ahead of the competition. Adding the slicks enabled him to get out of the hole quicker, but it also took out the stock clutch. So his friend Charles Gann replaced the clutch with a Cobra unit.
A blown front skinny is the reason for the front-end makeover. The shredded tire took out the bumper cover and some of the fender. With the insurance money in hand, JoJo called up his pals at Mustang Parts Specialties for a Cobra front bumper cover and a 3-inch cowl hood. For a while, he drove around with a red bumper and a white hood with a factory blue hoodscoop on it. Ronny Smrekar took JoJo's scheme design a little further and this is what he came up with. "When a friend and I picked it up, we about fell over," JoJo says.
Even though the car was running strong, JoJo still had unfinished business on the street. There were a few cars giving him trouble, so he looked to nitrous to settle the score. "Then I started hearing about how I couldn't do it with a returnless fuel system," JoJo says. He decided to try the nitrous anyway, but he didn't want anyone to be able to tell he was running the stuff. So he ran the nitrous line through the fenderwell and plumbed a dry-shot nozzle into the air intake where the filter is. He initially plumbed in a 75 shot using NOS solenoids. He was at the wheel with his friend Ross in the passenger seat the first time under nitrous. "I was hooked," JoJo says. "The way the extra horsepower came into play was sweet. We went through one bottle in less than 30 minutes." He had that bottle filled with nitrous, and then another. "The people who were giving me trouble had their doors blown off that night. We went through both bottles."
It was around this time the car developed a surge when under nitrous. After Joe Mainiero and Bart Tobener from UPR helped diagnose the problem, JoJo made the repairs and soon returned to the track. With the 75hp jets, he ran a best of 12.86 at 108 mph. However, he became greedy and threw in the 125hp jets. "The car came out of the hole real good," JoJo says, "so I grabbed the nitrous, and all I heard was grinding and rpm coming up real fast. That night, Ford Roadside Assistance was called to pick up the car and tow it to H.P. Performance, a local shop." Charles Gann replaced the rearend spider gears and H.P. Performance added 3.73s into the mix while the rear was apart.