My ’65 Dodge Coronet has been in our family since I was 8 years old. We originally got it out of a marsh in Berlin, WI from a cousin. It was a total basket case; rotten floors, and rear quarter panels,it took us about 3 days to get it out of the ground and towed home. From that time my dad and I began the slow process of restoring it into a very simple Drag Car with Super Stock springs, and a very mild 440 with iron heads, and the car ran low 12s in the ¼ mile, and my dad and I ran it for a few years that way until I went into the Air Force.
Fast forward a few years and I’m settled into my Air Force career and now have a family and ready to return from overseas and start racing again. So we decide to update the car in many ways, first thing we do is cut out the entire roll cage and floors from the torsion bar cross member to the rear bumper. We then installed 2X3” frame rails along with a 4-link rear suspension with adjustable coil over shocks, along with a 12 point roll cage, and new aluminum interior all done by my father. The car now sports a narrowed 4.30 geared Dana 60 rear-end, with 14” wide by 32” tall rear slicks, and disk brakes. The front suspension is essentially stock with Slant Six torsion bars, Koni drag shocks, and disk brakes and 29” tall front tires. As for the engine I’m currently running a 500ci stroker using a 440 block, 15-1 compression ration with a .630 lift roller cam, with Indy aluminum heads and intake, and 2 1/8” Hooker Headers, the short block was built by Diamondback engines in Richmond, TX. As for the fuel system, I’m running a Flying Toilet, which is a mechanical fuel injection system that runs on Alcohol, and is very easy to set up and maintain. I’m running a 727 that I built myself, with a manual valve body, billet drum, and bolt in sprag, this was the first transmission I’ve ever built and seems to be working quite well, have over 70 wheels up runs on it with no problems. I put a lot of time and effort into this car and it seems rather overwhelming at times and I often wonder why I do it, but once I get the car fired up, get buckled in and helmet on, it makes it all worth while. This car has gone a quickest time of 9.61 at 136 MPH in the quarter mile with the last motor, I haven’t made any ¼ mile passes with the new motor and gears, but I know it will go a bit quicker now, has already gone 3 MPH quicker in the 1/8 mile. Have made a lot of changes over the winter in order to achieve greater consistency, we are also working on a new paint job for the car and hope to have it done by the time this is published.
I owe a lot to my wife Jamie for all she puts up with; she knows how much this means to me. I also owe a big thank you to my dad for building me a safe car. This car has been a part of our family for over 20 years now, and I hope that my two boys will be able to race it when they are older, drag racing is what our family does, and the time we spend together at the track means a lot to me. We plan to run this season mostly at San Antonio Raceway in the Footbrake class, and hope to do a bit of traveling to other tracks as well. See you at the races.