Magazine project cars (at least mine) are notorious for being slow to develop, hard to finish, and quick to underperform. It's not that we editor types don't have our hearts in the right place, but rather that life and work often get in the way. I've often said I admire the maniacs who compete across and entire drag-racing season, and that's mainly because I don't have what it takes-drive, talent, and so on. It was bad enough that my little Real Street car took way too long to build, but by the time it was finished the rules and performance in the class had well exceeded my thoughts for a streetable car that could still run in the class.
Constructed back in 2001 (!),...
Constructed back in 2001 (!), our D.S.S. Super Pro Bullet short-block was built before multilayer-steel head gaskets were all the rage. So the stock block was O-ringed to help contain the head gaskets in the face of forced induction. As such, we need to go with a good traditional head gasket to work with the O-rings, and our pal Joe Charles at Parkway Ford set us up with a set of Ford Racing Performance Parts head gaskets, as well as the associated gaskets to put the engine back together. After tearing down the engine and cleaning the deck surface, Mark laid the new head gaskets over our ARP studs.
Even so, we dragged the car out to the NMRA World Finals in Bowling Green, Kentucky, back in 2004. We let Mark Anderson (son of Ron, nephew of Rick) race it there just to see what it could do. The Anderson crew basically chased the car's bugs all day, but it eventually ran a 10.70 at 129.92 with a broken antiroll bar and a head gasket that let go at the top of Third gear. In my eyes, that was a pretty decent performance for a car that still had air conditioning, power steering, and a full interior-not to mention the as-assembled valvesprings on the Trick Flow Twisted Wedge heads. It was fun to bench-race the idea that had things worked out, the car could have run a 10.40 or so, which would be pretty good for a street car.
Naturally we had to fix the head gasket, which shouldn't take more than a year. But throw in all the other upgrades I wanted to do "while we were at it," along with an office move, a longer commute, and my in-house tech editor Mark Houlahan moving to take over the helm at Mustang & Fords, and I had a recipe for slow motion. We started off, in print anyway, by upgrading the tranny back in the Dec. '05 issue ("Rock the Gearbox," p. 134) with Pro Motion's Street Pro Tremec TKO 600. Not only did the car have the aforementioned limitations, but it was also rolling with a borrowed tranny that had only the pro-shift treatment in Third gear. The Street Pro is a definite step in the right direction.
Of course, long before that the while-we're-at-it improvements had begun. Obviously, a new set of head gaskets was in order after No. 7 had a major blowout, but if a fuel shortage had caused the lean-out, bigger injectors were in order. Since the heads had to come off anyway, why not better valvesprings for more rpm? With more rpm, the stock block might be in danger, so could we bolster that? More boost would come with more rpm, so a bigger bypass wouldn't be a bad idea. Last but not least, a broken antiroll bar was likely a sign to perform a wholesale rear-suspension upgrade. Project cars are never done.
At the time we were collecting...
At the time we were collecting parts and slowly putting the car back together, Real Street rpm was reaching for the sky. I wanted to see how our stock block would hold up to that kind of rpm, so we opted to install Anderson Ford Motorsport's Hi-Rev valvesprings (AF-HR-15018), which use standard retainers but will let the stock cam rev freely, and rpm is the name of the game with supercharged cars in the limited Real Street class. These springs are legal under the new 160-pound limitation in the '06 rulebook.
So we finally put the car back together, but that was one time a little more procrastination might have paid off. By the time we were nearly reassembled, the NMRA Real Street rules had changed once again. The good news is, this car is nearly legal (only smaller headers, a larger blower pulley, and a six-rib belt stand in the way) and it should be as close to competitive as it's ever been. It might just be time to hand over the keys to someone with more talent and dedication so the car's potential might be realized. Until then, I'm planning to strap it to our new, in-house Mustang dyno to see if all those while-we're-at-its actually helped, but that's another story.
Horse Sense: For the past year, we've thought the NMRA should slow down the Real Street class to attract more racers. This season, they took that message to heart-the prior combinations were limited in a big way for '06. Among the changes were a mandate for six-rib supercharger belts (down from eight ribs), a maximum of 151/48-inch short-tube headers (down from 171/48), the elimination of the controversial and large Paxton Novi 2000 supercharger, a 160-pound limit on valvespring pressure (previously unlimited), and a limit of 3.73:1 rearend ratios for 5.0 engines (4.10 ratio or for 4.6 engines; previously unlimited). Will these changes slow down the class? Will there be more racers? By the time you read this, we should have an idea.
As slow as we are, at least we have a great facility in which to work on our in-house project cars. Since we moved to the big city, our shop went from grunge to glam. We have a Mustang chassis dyno, a two-post lift, a full appointment of tools from Powerbuilt, some pretty Hot Rod furniture, and even an epoxy-coated floor from UCoat It to protect it from the inevitable spills. We're not bragging-just taking care of the sponsors and letting you know we don't have many excuses for not getting our projects done anymore. We just have to work on getting out from behind the desk more often so we can take advantage of our in-house dream garage.