John Andrade and his ’82 Hurst/Olds-themed Cutlass have been glaringly absent from the hit reality show Street Outlaws and it’s vaunted Top 10 list for quite some time. During last season, we saw Andrade take an off-road excursion during filming that did some fairly heavy damage to the car’s front suspension. While it was down for repairs, the Cutty crew decided to swap the nitrous-fed small block for a boosted LS-style powerplant, hoping to make a run higher up the list. None of this is news for our regular readers, but some of you may be wondering how things are going for the Oklahoma City-based hotrodder.

Well wonder no more! We spoke with Andrade earlier today to follow up with him, and he had plenty of intel for Dragzine fans. After the crew at American Street Rods finished installing the turbo powerplant, Andrade has taken the Cutty to numerous appearances while slowly and methodically bringing up the power levels to learn what the engine, and car itself, like in order to perform their best. While ET’s are protected like Fort Knox, we did manage to pry some dyno numbers out of him, and not the laughable numbers – fifty to seventy-five horsepower – he gave us previously. “She made 1400 on the dyno to the tires, with 1190 lb/ft of torque.” revealed Andrade, showing the output potential for a relatively mild LS powerplant.

“We have about 10 solid passes on it where it’s doing good,” added John, “and slowly starting to add power to it and bring that ET down where it needs to be.”

While it’s a slippery slope, with the list constantly shuffling and new, faster cars taking shots all the time, I still took the opportunity to ask John where he thinks the Cutty will land on the list when he makes his attempt to rejoin the Fastest Street Raced Cars in the Nation, to which he replied, “The car works [on the street] better than ever. It should be right around the middle of the pack on the list when/if I make it back on it. That list is FULL of heavy hitters!”

Something tells me he will have no problem getting on the list. Just how high he goes… We’ll just have to wait and see. Until then, be sure to tune in Monday nights at 9pm on Discovery Channel!