“My kids both run junior dragsters; NHRA doesn’t run juniors and Super Stock together at any events in Division 3, and with IHRA’s class racing program going away a few years ago we decided we needed to build a bracket car so we could all race at the same events. My kids are old enough now to do their own between-round maintenance, so that helps make it all work. We wanted to build a lightweight, low-maintenance bracket car, and since I’ve always run unique combinations, a dragster wasn’t something I wanted to build. The engineer in me likes to be different, so going with an altered made perfect sense,” Kish explains.
When it comes to brand allegiance, Kish is a Mopar man, and he actually looked at putting a late model HEMI engine in his Altered, but the LS engine was a more affordable path to take. A co-worker made Kish a screaming deal on a 403 cubic-inch engine that was built by Lingenfelter Performance Engineering, and since the engine already had a boost-friendly 9.33:1 compression ratio, it was perfect for his goals.