Kish was working on firming up the rest of his build when Magnuson Superchargers became the supercharger supplier for the COPO program, and this led to a unique opportunity. After speaking with the team at Magnuson, Kish’s engine was selected as a platform to show off the LS3 Hot Rod kit.

“To make the kit fit we are running intake port adapter plates with the plans to upgrade later to true LS3 heads and a bigger cam. The Magnuson LS3 Hot Rod kit uses the same Eaton R2650 TVS rotating assembly, blower housing, and 109mm throttle body as the COPO engine, while using an LS3 manifold rather than the LS7 of the COPO. To simplify the packaging and reduce the environmental variables for bracket racing, we opted to remove the massive intercooler core provided by Magnuson in favor of relying solely on the cooling properties of the methanol fuel we’re using,” Kish says.



Continuing with the theme of keeping things straightforward, Kish sourced a used ATI Powerglide transmission to go with the engine and had Coan Engineering build a converter to match the supercharged combination. For electronics, Kish used a Holley HP system rather than a Dominator, since he didn’t need all of the extra functions of the Dominator. Inside the cockpit, Kish uses a Holley 7-inch dash to monitor the car’s vitals, while a Dedenbear CC-3 Command Center acts as the delay box and shift controller.

Could Kish have built his altered to be much more powerful? Absolutely, but that wasn’t the plan. Instead, he wanted to create a car that would be competitive, yet easy to maintain so he could enjoy his time at the track with his kids.

“The move by most tracks to 1/8-mile for Top ET, in my opinion, helped level the field for door cars, altered, and roadsters against the dragsters, so this car fit together with what we wanted to do. We built the car to bracket race; it is set up to run Top ET. We’re not trying to be the fastest car on the property, but wanted to chase the car in the other lane more often than not and have fun racing. As we get comfortable with the setup and start to put more power to it we may try run some of the Jeg’s Super Quick series throughout NHRA Division 3; they run 1/8-mile qualified off a 4.50 index,” Kish says.