A few months ago we detailed a rear suspension upgrade here at Street Muscle. The article featured the installation of TRZ Motorsports A Body rear suspension kit and some track testing. Initial results were promising and the car was much more consistant. After getting the nitrous working up to par with help from Steve Johnson at Induction Solutions, some adjustments had to made to the rear housing to get it square in the car. A minor oversight on the initial installation that was barely noticeable before the nitrous upgrade to a -6 feed line.

Click here to check out the original article in case you missed it.

Once the line was replaced, the car started carrying the wheels past the tree and going radically to the left, finally setting the front down with the right front in the left side of the groove. I took some measurements and made an adjustment at the track to correct it which resulted in a new best of a 6.02 @ 112 MPH. After watching the video of these runs in slow motion, it was clear some more shock adjustments were needed to get it right. There was another issue I had to take care of first though, as running 6.0s is well below the ET requirement for a NHRA competition license and I did not have mine yet.

I took a trip to Bradenton during the Lucas Oil Series event to get the Chevelle’s chassis certified by NHRA tech man Jim Sherry and I am happy to report the car is now legal for 8.50’s. After that, a trip to Sunshine to begin the procedure for the licensing runs last Wednesday. NHRA requires you do a series of runs witnessed by other licensed drivers and a track official. The drivers must be of equal or greater spec than you are testing for. I completed four of the six required runs but could not get down the cold track on nitrous during the normal TNT session.

I took the car back on Friday for the pre race test session before Sunshine Dragstrip’s Heads Up Madness for another shot. The first pass was the same as the last, with it kicking the tires at the hit, even with smaller jets in the plate in an effort to tone down the launch with my old slicks. With advice from Matt LaRue, I used the old trick of not purging the nitrous to soften the hit further and that did the trick running a 6.09 @ 111. Then to back that up a 6.01 @ 111.

With the required license runs out of the way I reinstalled the 73 jets into the big shot plate to give a shot at a 5 second 1/8th mile pass. The added power taxed the slicks too much and the 60′ fell off resulting in a 6.07 @ 112.

This time I had come prepared and brought some new 295/65 MT Drag Radials with me and proceded to swap the tires out.  The radials did the trick on the next hit. The car launched hard and pulled the front high, I short shifted to second with the wheels still up hoping it would come down and it did, just setting down near the 60′ clock and pulling hard and straight all the way. It felt like the best pass yet and when I picked up the ticket it was confirmed with a 1.28 60′ and a 5.93 @ 113.09 MPH blast. On the next pass I tried a little more bottle pressure at 900 but that was too much and it’s kicked the tires a few feet out. I came back around and let everything cool down again. For the last pass the bottle pressure was about 850. It came up again and I shifted even earlier, which likely hurt the ET a bit but still a 5.97 @ 112.

Overall I am very pleased with the results of the session, especially on the Drag Radials. I should have all my credentials back in time for the NMRA races where if all goes as planned, I will be behind the wheel of last years Spring Break Shootout runner up car, Little Blue, as part of a two car effort by Rockstar Performance in True Street.