…and the guy next to me puts it up HARD on the bumper. Fortunately, he was far enough out ahead of me that even if he’d crossed the center line when he came back down, I would have had plenty of time to react and stay out of his way. It was odd watching him alongside me and in front of me, and even weirder getting passed by the Safety Safari and ambulance going the other direction back up the track. The good news is that he walked away unhurt.

Since my car still has the stock 7.5-inch rearend and open diff it came with, the mount also came in handy documenting the heartbreak of the peg-leg burnout:

Why do I feel like this one cuts off just before the good part?

Another close call…

Straps not working? Just throw a fatter guy in the trunk!

Better yet, no straps at all!

Can’t let the import guys have ALL the fun!

Yah dude, just push it back on the rollers…

Crunch…

A shout-out to the late, great Shaun Carlson:

And we’ll wrap up with a classic video that is a stern warning about situational awareness…

The original Avanti, built for just two model years by Studebaker, was available with powerplants ranging from 240 horsepower for the “base” engine all the way up to the Paxton-supercharged R-2 that was rated at 289, all based on the same 232 cubic inch V-8. The customer car in Randy’s shop still has the factory 232, but with a somewhat stouter Novi head unit pushing boost.

Though the air-to-water intercooler is also distinctly non-original, the Avanti still utilizes blow-through carbureted induction, and Randy’s upgraded the fuel system with modern components to keep up with the greater demands placed by the Novi.

Inside, a ratchet-shifted automatic replaces the original 4-speed manual transmission, abandoned after a clutch explosion nearly made the car a writeoff (and made Randy and the car’s owner firm believers in ballistic SFI transmission blankets). As a happy coincidence, the car got a tenth quicker in the eighth with the slushbox added. A custom 6-point rollbar makes the car track-legal, but the rest of the interior is largely as-delivered in ‘63.

The trunk houses the relocated battery, intercooler tank, and high-volume circulating pump. The original fuel tank still serves - since the blown Avanti came with a return-style regulator from the factory, all it took was a plumbing upgrade.

Underneath, there’s been a lot of work done as well. Fabricated box sections up front carry the door bars in to the frame members, and the downtubes plug directly into the rear leaf spring perches. After tearing out a rearend at the track, no effort was spared to reinforce the chassis to endure stresses never envisioned by Studebaker’s engineers. The same clutch explosion that tried to tear the car in half also took out Randy’s hand-fabricated mandrel bent custom exhaust, which was replaced as well.

The end result of hundreds of hours of work and a wheelbarrow full of money is one of the rarest drag cars you’ll ever see, running 7.50’s in the 1/8th mile. I may have the owner convinced to give PSCA Open Comp a shot, and running the numbers indicates the car should be good for bottom 11’s in the quarter. Should be fun to watch…

Chris is better known nowadays for his crazy time attack car sporting a giant front-mounted wing, that rewrote all the records for FWD Unlimted than he is for his drag car, but back in the day it was equally groundbreaking. With a Ford 9-inch straight axle up front and a v-drive bolted to the back of the transmission to make it all work, it was arguably the high-water mark of FWD drag racing innovation.

With NHRA Sport Compact and NDRA long dead and buried, the opportunities to see a seven-second, 200mph front drive car run are few and far between, so it’s good to see that the PSCA has made room in Accufab Outlaw 10.5 for them. In Fontana, Rado qualified seventh in an eight car field, only able to muster an 8.646 at 108, and hurt the motor in the process, torching the cylinder head and starting a brief oil fire.

The team swapped in a spare head overnight and got back into the game, and Rado surprised everyone by toppling
number two qualifier Greg Seth-Hunter on the strength of a huge .084-to-.420 holeshot, running a slower 7.448 @ 197.83 to Seth-Hunter’s 7.225 @ 208.33

In the semis, Rado fell to Rich Zehring, despite another .107/.211 holeshot - 7.467 @ 198.12 wouldn’t do it against Zehring’s 7.153 @ 204.48. Still, it was a good first showing for the World Racing team, and I’m told that they’ll be back again for more PSCA events in the future. With the all-time FWD record in the seven-tens, they’ve got a way to go to be truly competitive in this 6.9X class, but it’s good to see at least one of these insane engineering exercises still running in competition.

This, however, will be hard to beat:

Unlike a regular bungee jump, there’s really no limit to the g-force attainable by this lash-up. Want to rip your girlfriend/wife/sister into several chunks? Just hook the ripcord onto something a little heavier than a quad (like an F-150) and keep pulling until those wrist-thick bungee cords are banjo-string tight. Take it from someone with a lot of experience launching water balloons - once you pass the structural threshold of whatever you’re launching, instead of acceleration, you mostly get a fine mist…

That took the form of a Class I (wheelbarrows, Radio Flyer wagons, and kids on skateboards, age 10 and under) Hidden Hitch from etrailers.com, which goes under the part number 60887 for my particular Mustang. This same hitch is also sold as Reese part number 77029 and Draw-Tite part 24687, which says something about the stranglehold the international hitch cabal has on the market.

The hitch mount uses two existing bumper mount bolt holes, plus two new ones in the bumper core itself. To figure out where to drill, step one is to prop the hitch up in position to mark where the holes will go. Here, I am using the world’s oldest 15mm wrench to pull the factory bolts so that I can temporarily secure the hitch.

A step drill makes the job easier, but the bumper core is made of very hard sheet steel. ProTip: wear safety glasses, and sweep up all the little bits of steel before continuing or spend the next 24 hours picking them out of your scalp.

To actually secure the hitch to the bumper core, the kit uses two carriage bolts with rectangular backing plates dropped in from above. In order to actually do this, you have to enlarge a couple of the existing holes in the bumper, then fish the bolts and plates into position. Dad made quick work of the holes with the sabre saw, which turned out to be the easy part. We ended up using some mono-filament fishing line to pull the bolts over to the holes, then stood them up and dropped them through with the help of a powerful magnet.

To prevent the heartbreak of accidentally pushing the bolts back up into the bumper as we lifted the hitch into place, we threaded the nuts on as a preemptive strike.

Tada! The hitch is installed. We stuck the supplied spacers underneath the back two bolts to drop the receiver down at the rear to clear the bumper valance, and ended up with the drawbar exactly where we wanted it.

With the drawbar out and the receiver plug in place, it’s hard to even notice the hitch if you’re not looking for it. Very inconspicuous…

I have a feeling that the clock is ticking until I jam the trailer tongue against the bumper, but I’m going to be as careful as I can be.

The wiring kit I bought along with the hitch simply plugs into the taillight harnesses in the trunk, and rather than drill another hole, I just ran the plug out and gently closed the wire between the lid and the weatherstripping. Two hours of cursing and chasing circuits with a multimeter later, and the lights were working - to cut to the chase, I’ll just say, “always check your grounds first” and leave it at that.

With the War Wagon done, all that’s left is to get the tires balanced and take it out on a shakedown cruise to Fontana this coming weekend.

The last PSCA race in Vegas convinced me that I needed a better way to get my stuff to and from the track, and lock it up while I’m there. I can fit my jack, toolbox, drag radials, helmet, jacket, and spare nitrous bottle in the trunk and back seat, but there’s not much room left for anything else, and once I’m there, a long chain threaded through everything and wrapped around a light pole is the best I can do for security while I’m actually racing. When KJ brings his rig out to Fontana, I can throw my junk in his trailer, but I’d rather not have to mooch a chair and cooler space.

With a 20% off coupon in hand, I went down to my local Harbor Freight and bought one of their mini trailer kits. I stepped up to the 12-inch wheel version, not because I needed the extra weight capacity, but because it will pull better on the freeway than the one with the dinky 8-inch wheels.

$200 and a couple of hours of work putting it together later, and I was ready to build it out into something practical. My main goals were to have some locking storage for loose stuff like my jack and tools, and slots for my drag radials on the road, and my street tires in the pits. As a side note, it’s surprisingly hard to find big locking poly storage bins around here - I finally ended up with a 50-gallon Contico Pro Tuff bin from Lowe’s.

The bin is screwed down to the plywood deck, so it doesn’t need to be strapped, and it’s got a built in key lock, plus padlock hasps. Realistically, it’s not very secure - anybody with a hand saw, crowbar, or even a claw hammer would be able to get into it pretty quickly, but as my dad says, it will keep the honest people honest. About the worst-case scenario for it will be sitting empty in a motel parking lot overnight.

Up front, I left slots open in the deck for the tires to sit in, and there are plenty of eye bolts to use as tiedown points. I also have a cable lock going through holes in the trailer frame to keep my Mickeys from walking off. Now, all I need to do is find a cooler the right size to fit between the tires, and I’m off to the races…

Under the hood is a twin-Rotrex-supercharged 392ci small-block Ford, pushing 10psi.

The car has a crazy level of detail - it’s stretched 7 inches from the cowl forward, it’s got a full tube frame, and a complete underbody tray with every vent and scoop functional.