As the builds got underway, so too did the drama. Any racer worth their salt will try to bend the rules and search for grey areas to seek an advantage, and the teams have done precisely that, including the Boddie/Dow Brothers camp, who arrived with a set of cylinder heads that, well…didn’t quite match the description. Will they be allowed to keep them?
What ensued was an all-out assault on these four cars by their crews as they sawed and drilled their way down to largely the bare shells, leaving piles of steel and plastic strewn across their work areas and filling trash cans and dumpsters to the brim. Even with nine more days at their disposal, though, time was of the essence, and while members of the crews tore the cars down, others were devising their powertrain plans and scouring
Summit Racing Equipment’s website for parts.
The big challenge was budget. Each team was equipped with $3,000 cash and $7,000 in Summit Racing gift certificates to build their cars. This is a very tight budget given how fast the team’s were planning on making their cars — all were shooting for the 8-second zone. Summit was providing no-charge overnight shipping to the teams on all in-stock items from its massive in-stock inventory, which was a virtual requirement for building these cars in such a brutally tight timeline.
In the name of safety, each of the teams was provided with a pre-bent Rhodes Race Cars roll cage (left) and aftermarket Baer race brakes.
Each of the teams, in the name of safety, was provided with a pre-bent, 10-point mild steel roll cage from
Rhodes Race Cars specific to each chassis that they would use. Rhodes sent us two Mustang cages, a third-gen cage, Fox-body cage, a G-body cage, fourth-gen F-body, and then a generic kit for the Falcon.
Josh Rhodes from Rhodes Race Cars made sure that the cages were pre-fitted and precision-bent, and shipped to the build center in plenty of time for each team to begin fabrication. The cages were all 10-point that should certify to an 8.50 when included with the Rhodes driveshaft safety loops. Rhodes even threw in transmission cross-members and some extra one-inch and 1-5/8-inch chrome-moly tubing. Amazingly, each kit was installed within a day, so that tells you how well they fit!
We also required that each chassis would be NHRA certified, so the teams had to ensure that their roll cage and installation was completely NHRA-legal.