As a racer, the last thing you want to do is bring a dull knife to a shootout. Jason and Brad Terrell’s 1979 Chevy Malibu, known as “Charlie Brown,” is far from a dull knife, but its nitrous engine just didn’t have enough firepower to match its competitors. So, Charlie Brown got a new supercharged powerplant that’s fed a lot of boost via a F-3 ProCharger.

With Jason behind the wheel and Brad handling the tuning duties, Charlie Brown was a formidable force with its nitrous combination. The brothers learned that you can only lean on a nitrous engine so hard when you’re trying to run at the front in the outlaw racing world.

“With the type of racing we do, there really aren’t many rules. Charlie Brown isn’t the best car for that since it still has the factory firewall, factory-style front suspension, and still has a mostly steel body. That puts us at a massive disadvantage racing what essentially is Pro 275 on slicks. When you combine that with the 744 cubic inch engine we were running, it just wasn’t ideal,” Jason explains.

Since Brad already the tongue out of the big-block’s mouth, there wasn’t much room left in the tuning window. That’s what led Jason, Brad, and Carlie Brown’s other owner, Heath Heisel to make the decision to move over to a boosted combination. The 565 cubic inch engine was acquired through some trading and stuffed into Charlie Brown.

The Malibu’s is already sorted out and full of great suspension parts from Tin Soldier Racecars, TRZ, and Menscer Motorsports. Behind the supercharged big block is beefy three speed transmission from Extreme Automatics and torque converter from Circle D. The car is controlled by a Haltech VCU system. When you combine all of this with the F-3-136 ProCharger and ProCharger crank drive system, you get a new version of Charlie Brown that’s got plenty of firepower for the horsepower wars it partakes in.

This engine change is playing another role; it’s helping Jason and Brad get the package lined out for the new car they’re building. The goal is to get everything sorted out, so when the new car is ready, they can drop everything into it and be competitive right away.

“We probably need to cut Charlie up more, but that’s my internal struggle, because where do you stop with this car? Charlie was built four years ago to run frontside no prep, and if you were running 4.90s, you were flying. Things have changed so much, now you need to be running 4.50s or quicker if you want to be competitive. That was just pushing our nitrous combo too hard in Charlie Brown, so a change was needed if we wanted to stay on top,” Jason explains.

So far, Jason and Brad are making strides with Charlie’s new setup. It won’t take them too long to get the car sorted out and start putting the old Malibu back in the winner’s circle.