RPM PROJECT CAR

PART 3: by

Toby Brooks

B It just needed something else. Like a blower. Or maybe two. And a stage of nitrous. Or maybe two.

82

Blowin’ up our plans

uilding a project car for a car guy or gal is like cooking a multiple course gourmet dinner for a well-respected chef. Namely, for the whole thing to end up as initially intended, it takes tons of planning, lots of work, and sometimes excruciating levels of patience. We here at RPM are known as the “Real Time Car Magazine” for a reason, and along with that comes a hearty dose of urgency (some would call it impatience, but we like to keep it positive around here). However, as we are learning from our experiences with Project aPocalypSe Horse, sometimes you just have to dial down the burner a bit and let the thing simmer in order for the whole package to end up tasty. Case in point, we had hoped to have a full story on the chassis fabrication progress this month. However, as things often do in a project of this caliber, there have been a few delays. In planning the build initially, our intention was to run a relatively mild naturally-aspirated 700-800 horsepower Kaase Boss Nine backed by a beefed but still budget-friendly two-speed Powerglide transmission. One call to our now-friend Terry

FEBRUARY 2014 | RPM Magazine

Woods, a veritable mad scientist constructing wicked induction systems in the Arizona desert out of his Supercharger Store shop and those plans might as well have been paper dinner napkins—in the trash. It all started as we were analyzing last month’s article that featured the rendering so expertly penned by renowned automotive artist Steve Stanford. No doubt, the car Steve drew based upon our input was cool, but it just seemed to lack that wild 1980’s Pro Street overthe-top “wow” factor. The big gun tubbed cars back in the day all seemed to have something that set them apart and broke new ground somewhere. While the car we told Steve we were going to build would have still been trick, it just needed something else. Like a blower. Or maybe two. And a stage of nitrous. Or maybe two. Now we were gettin’ somewhere! Twin superchargers are nothing new. Rick Dobbertin’s J-2000 had had two Magnachargers on an all-aluminum small block Chevy (along with two turbos) back in 1986. Matt & Debbie Hay’s pink Thunderbird had two B & M blowers mounted out front on a wild 351 Ford powerplant in 1989. Rocky Robertson’s Kaiser had two Paxtons blowing through a single carb in the mid 90’s. Lots of people have done it. The challenge in a build like ours is to pay respect to those pioneers but still not blatantly copy their efforts—and try and take it one step further (or at least in another direction). Enter ProCharger and the Supercharger Store.