After years of racing and winning championships with his 1970 Duster in the West Texas True Ten Five class, Midland, Texas resident Marty Pearcy decided it was time to step up to something new. What that something new became was a rarity in the small tire drag racing: a a new-age Dodge Challenger packing Chrysler for power.
“When these cars first came out, we bought one for my wife, and I thought ‘What a great car to make into a race car’, so that’s what we did. I bought a Challenger R/T roller that had been stolen, stripped, and recovered, then shipped it off to Darren and Anne Breaud at B&B Race Cars in Tennessee. We used to run out here in Midland with my Duster, but I sold that car to buy and build the Challenger,” he explains. “I didn’t even see the car until last Thursday. It took 21 months to get it done from start to finish.”
“The best engine out there for a Mopar small block was a P-5 Pro Stock Truck Hemi head,” explains Pearcy. “It wasn’t hard to find the heads, but the R4 block is about impossible to find. When they canned Pro Stock Truck, Mopar stopped building the blocks, and all of the guys running Super Comp and those classes used them all up. I got a call from a fellow X275 racer that knew of someone that had a few aluminum R4 blocks that were built by Chrysler and were located in West Virginia, and we ended up getting the tall-deck block at the time; it’s one of two and I now own them both,” says Pearcy.
Hans Feustal Racing Engines in Fort Worth, Texas got the call to put together the 400-plus cube Aussie Pro Stock-headed bullet. A custom billet intake manifold sits on top of the P-5 cylinder heads, and the rest of the combination is undisclosed for competitive reasons.
Proformance Transmissions is involved with the project with their two-speed Turbo400 transmission, the torque converter comes from PTC, and there’s a full Drag Pak suspension and nodular 9-inch rearend underneath. Initially the plan was to use a ProCharger F-1X supercharger, but last season’s X275 rules change had him pulling the pistons and camshaft for a swap to turbocharged power.
Boost comes from the aforementioned large-frame Precision 88mm turbocharger. As is the case with many of today’s top heads-up racers, Part Time Performance‘s Patrick Barnhill is responsible for tuning the BigStuff3 fuel injection.
Just over a week ago at the X275 race in Denton, Texas, Pearcy became the world’s fastest Challenger (in the 1/8th mile) with a 4.78 at 151 MPH. A leaking intercooler (the only part re-used in the build from the Duster) ended up stopping his weekend short, but he’s already in the process of sourcing a new one for next season. “I think we had an easy low 4.60 car this weekend had the intercooler not been leaking – we’re going to get it out, and B&B is going to build a new one that’s smaller and lighter to get me back on track,” he explains.
“You just have to see this car. The job that B&B did is just so amazing, it’s nicer than any Pro Stock car that I’ve ever seen. I spent about two hours just walking around the car and staring – I was afraid to touch it at first,” he says.
It looks like he overcame his fears, as evidenced by the results from Denton.
If this car is like any of the others we’ve seen in the past from the B&B shop (like Don Baskin’s fleet of NMCA machines), it’s definitely a top-notch piece, and the performance level has already shown glimpses of excellence in the tough X275 category, which should make the Mopar fraternity a proud bunch.
We look forward to seeing the car out next season!