There’s an old saying when it comes to building a race car: cheap, fast, reliable…..pick two. To reach a build goal different racers will go with different combinations of this saying. If you are trying to build a race truck some might say the “fast” option might be the most difficult, that is unless you are the team from Oddball Turbo & Fabrication. This Texas shop is responsible for some pretty quick whips, including a V8 turbo Ranger we featured here on Dragzine recently. Their current creation is a nine-second Chevy step-side that is as beautiful as it is fast.

There are all kinds of different options you can get when purchasing a truck. Most trucks from before the 1950’s were offered as step-side trucks.  GM was the first manufacture to actually offer a non step-side truck.  The step-side lost its popularity because the smooth-sided beds actually offer more cargo space.

Oddball Turbo & Fabrication took a late model Chevy step-side pickup and turned it into a single digit beast. This truck sports the stock block and 418 cubic inches.  When you look under the hood a massive, large frame 98 mm turbo is present and forcing tons of air into the mil. The truck weights a rather portly 4,000 pounds and runs on C16 race gas, and on a fat tune-up, makes over 1,100 horsepower to the wheels. While the Oddball Turbo crew was working on the tune this truck ran a 9.70, leaving on 13 pounds of boost, and clicked off a 1.48 60 foot.

As you can see in the video from www.1320video.com this truck doen’t look like it’s leaving very hard at all. Don’t let that soft launch fool you, as this truck ended up running a new best of 9.52 at 139 with over 20 pounds of boost at the top end.