JBA's Bruce Tucker is the go-to guy for EFI tuning in San Diego

Competition on price from the big mail order houses has eliminated a lot of traditional speed shops, but if you haven’t been to visit your local car guys lately, maybe you should. Every time we drop in at JBA Performance in San Diego, California, there’s something interesting up on a lift or spinning the rollers. Our latest visit coincided with tuning guru and shop manager Bruce Tucker putting tweaks on the EFI system installed on this blown Willys street rod.

The car utilizes the “Megasquirt” engine control unit, a true DIY EFI system designed to be inexpensive and open-source. Tucker was sorting out the initial tune and working on ignition issues that afternoon, and we got a chance to talk to Jim Hassad, the custom fabricator who took over the project two years ago and was babysitting the Willys while JBA did their magic.

Hassad says he has about 2500 hours in the car so far, and he inherited the project as a partial roller. “Feature creep” has stretched out the timeline – his customer keeps finding new things to do on the car, and it’s kept Hassad’s CNC mill and welding torch busy.

There's lots of custom billet work and fabrication on the blown Hemi

An adjustable air suspension with automatic ride height adjustment will keep parts from scraping (unless that's the desired effect, of course!) High-voltage transformers for the HID headlights are mounted ahead and above the A-arm.

Electric exhaust cutouts let you dial in exactly how much you hate your neighbors.

Inside it's still pretty rough, but when complete it will feature air conditioning, power everything, and keyless ignition. There are more relays on the firewall than at the summer Olympics.

Here's a perfect example of Hassad's custom work - His customer didn't want an external linkage for the throttle butterflies, so he fabricated this internal bellcrank setup to keep it all concealed inside the injector hat.