With their second of two 632 engine combinations they have put in the car, their best time of 4.82 was recorded at their local Eddyville Dragway, while spraying nitrous for 3 1/2 seconds. They use a Ron’s Terminator injection and an NX Stage-6 nitrous plate system enriched with alcohol.Rob had learned to bend rollcages when racing off-road. Since you need to rebuild them a lot in that sport, he purchased a bender and got pretty good at it. He decided the only way he could afford to build a good car, was to build it himself.“That’s how this ’81 Chevy Malibu came about,” Rob says. “We found a body style that was something no one else had and was cool. We started building the car in September of 2016. I initially told Devin, it would take about two years to complete the build. We worked in the garage a lot of nights until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. It went smoothly, and we finished early.”Rob had never built an entire car on his own. He had helped with pieces and parts on the family race cars, but constructing an entire car from scratch was a new experience. Rob did relay that having Devin working beside him was an added incentive.
The all-custom aluminum interior was also a McGee project. They added a fiberglass dash and
Racepak digital dash for gauges.
“Devin is outstanding,” Rob says. “We have always spent time together in the garage. He is computer smart, and figures out and bends pipe well. He has no interest in welding, so he will bend all the pipe, notch it, and help me fit it, but when it comes to welding, he’ll just walk away.”
Devin remained fully involved with working on the car and wanted the best of everything for the project. “His hands were on every inch of this car while we were building it, “Rob says. “I wanted to try to go cheap in a couple of places, but he told me we weren’t just building a race car, we’re building a show car. Everything I wanted to go cheap on, he was dead set against.”
- Rob and Devin spent every free day and night working on the car. it was a mere four months from start to finish. The car was tested in early 2017.The shell is ’81 Malibu and has all of the stock lights with LED bulbs and grill. The doors, front clip, and 5-inch cowl hood are all Glasstek fiberglass. The trunk lid is from Harwood Industries. All of the Lexan windows were cut and sized by Devin and Rob. They wanted to keep the body clean and stock-looking, so they laid on Dark Gray Metallic paint.Chassis construction includes 2×3 mild-steel frame rails, strut frontend. The four-link rear suspension was also home-built. There is a 9-inch rearend with 4.56 gears and Moser Engineering 35-spline axles. Weld Wheels’ Magnum 2.0 wheels are wrapped in Mickey Thompson Tire slicks and ET fronts.