Brenspeed loves drag racing but the mainstay of its business are really fast street cars prompting their next move to be a wise one for business as well as racing. After the celebration was over the Brenspeed staff went back to work in the shop and began ordering more parts for the Gotta Have It Green business card. First on the list was a ROUSHcharger supercharger system using a TVS 2300 rotor system. More suspension upgrades, torque converter swap, and a full Roush Stage 3 (RS3) conversion package were also procured for the car. We don’t have any power results yet on the ROUSHcharger combination as the team is still working on the RS3 conversion but as soon as we get word we will update this post. Brenspeed’s Brent White told us that the goal is to have the low 10-second ride make a public debut at the Roush Collection Open House on June 14^th, right before the NMRA event at Milan Dragway (June 15-16).

For the first half-century or so of this sport, trucks were more often than not one-off exceptions. They were unique to see, because not a lot of load-haulers were converted into ass-haulers. The first inklings of a mainstream performance truck popped up in the 1970s, and then in the early-1990s performance trucks were rolling off the production line, forever ingraining them into the street and strip performance scene. In 1999, Ford released the new supercharged SVT lightning that absolutely changed the definition of a factory hot-rod truck. Designed to get up and move, Ford dropped a supercharged 5.4L Modular motor between the frame rails. As you can well imagine, getting 380 ponies from the factory to hook in a vehicle without a lot of weight over the rear tires took some ingenuity from the factory. However, how many enthusiasts do you know that leave the power-making aspect of a performance vehicle unmolested? So that leaves the average second-generation lighting owner with a challenge – if you make more power– which is pretty easy with a factory-supercharged 5.4-liter SOHC engine – how do you get it to the ground in a repeatable, reliable way? Enter Stifflers Performance.

Between the two mounting brackets there are six possible bar configurations to best tune your truck to the track conditions. The adjustability offered by the long bar kit is a huge advantage.

Stifflers, an Innovative Performance Technologies brand, is staffed with performance enthusiasts who have a passion for innovation. Their team decided to come up with a solution to make a stock Lightning chassis into a consistent and competitive platform. Sure there are a number of killer drag trucks out and about, but those have usually spent some time in a chassis shop, and have met with a welding torch or two. For the average enthusiast, not only is that an expensive and time-consuming proposition, but that can also limit the truck’s streetability. To that end, Stifflers designed a line of products which would increase the the rigidity of the stock Lightning frame as well as greatly improve traction off the line. And the best part about the parts, is that you can install everything yourself with a basic set of hand tools, in the driveway, in a half-a-day. Enter the Stifflers’ Long Bar Traction System and Lightning Chassis Stiffening System.

The Long Bar kit attaches to the rearend vial two “U” clamps. While you can weld the kit to the rearend, it isn’t the recommended way to perform the install. Again, underscoring that you can complete the installation with just handtools.

2011 Detroit Locker Truck and Lightning class-champion Steve Martin relied on a Stifflers Lighting Chassis Stiffening System to make his launches nice and consistent. Look at all that tire wrinkle—Martin’s Lightning leaves HARD.

It has long been known in the Mustang world that one of the most important things you can do is tie together the subframe assemblies to eliminate chassis flex and put the power to the ground more efficiently. While the Lightning doesn’t really have subframes to connect, eliminating chassis flex is still an important first step in putting the power to the ground. For this, Stifflers developed their Lightning Chassis Stiffening System. The system acts as a support structure for the chassis via triangulation of braces. The brace installs in a mere 90 minutes with hand tools, and bolts into OEM mounting points—the only excep- tion would be if you have an aftermarket exhaust, in which case you’ll have to drill a single hole. Once installed, the brace will add stiffness and be a stout platform on which to mount the Long Arm Traction Kit.

The entire Long Bar installation utilizes factory- existing mounting holes. Save for one hole, being scribed here. That makes the kit about as bolt-on as it gets, and as long as you can drill a single hole, you are capa- ble of performing the install.

Stifflers also has a chassis stiffening brace kit. Functioning like subframe connectors on a Mustang, the brace kit utilizes triangulated rods to provide much greater resistance to chassis flex on launch, greatly improving the Lightning platform’s traction off the line.

The main focus of this review is Stifflers Long Bar Traction System. Making it really simple, the Long Bar system essentially functions as half of a ladder bar setup. First and foremost, the Long bar system only requires one hole to be drilled and uses factory mounting points for the rest of the installation. While it can be permanently welded to the rearend housing via welding, it doesn’t need to be to function properly. The standard attachment method uses compression brackets to mount the rear bracket to the housing. The Long Bar system minimizes axle rotation, while maximizing front end lift, helping to plant the power to the pavement. The chromoly bars are adjustable via a six-position mounting bracket, so that you can dial your Lightning in to changing track conditions. The high-strength rod ends react instantly and will stand up to repeated abuse. While the kit will help you tremendously at the racetrack, it’s also a streetable suspension setup. While a bolt-on suspension setup that cures a Lightning’s woes may sound too good to be true, the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the 2011 Detroit Locker Truck and Lightning champion, Steve Martin, was running the Stifflers Lightning Chassis Stiffening System and was deadly-consistent all year long. Martin will be adding the Long Bar System over the winter—watch out for him in Bradenton!

Innovative Performance Technologies, LLC 317.837.2444 buystifflers.com

The newest heads-up class in drag racing is starting to pick up momentum with new racers and increased performances. It has spawned a new rivalry as well as Justin Burcham and HiPo Joe Charles have made that publicly known. There is also a new name in the game, Shane Stymiest, and he turned to one of the best in the heads-up racing realm—Charlie Booze Jr. of Booze Brothers Racing. The class went from two racers in Florida to four by Maryland and from what we are hearing a few more engines were just sold and there could be a field of 8 by Bowling Green.

Up until this point a Tremec TKO-600 backed the quickest and fastest car, belonging to HiPo Joe, but that is about to change thanks to the delivery of a new Performance Automatic C4 transmission and a few different torque converters. We certainly applaud HiPo Joe and MV Performance to test a different combination to remain in front of the competition despite being nearly 2-tenths ahead of the closest competitor. That is what happens when the engine under the hood is sealed and the tuning locked—you turn to the drivetrain to find an advantage.

Stymiest on the other hand stepped up his game after MIR simply because the car was literally finished the morning of qualifying. Once the event was over the car went back to Booze Brothers Racing where Charlie installed a new UPR rear suspension setup and consulted with Marty Chance at Neil Chance Torque Converters. A new converter was ordered and Booze reset the chassis. The quick results came a weekend after the MIR event had concluded during a test session at Mason-Dixon Dragway. Stymiest ran an impressive 10.94 at 120 mph on just the 7^th pass on the combination. It puts him first in the 10s with the automatic combo as the car features a Performance Automatic C4 transmission.

HiPo Joe Charles

Hines knocked off a new career best of 7.05 at Maryland International Raceway (MIR) over the June 1-3 weekend during the NMRA event there. He knows the key to a championship is to run through the John Urist freight train and to do so he needs more testing and tuning. The GT has the performance to overtake the champ but Hines needs to find the consistency. The crafty Ohio racer, just the other day, headed to Milan Dragway for its Saturday heads-up program. Making the near 5 hour trek served two purposes, first was more testing time and the second reason is the next NMRA event is at Milan Dragway. Hines entered the Outlaw Limited Street class where virtually anything goes on 10.5-inch slicks or 315 radials. Hines kept true to his SSO trim and actually qualified second in a field full of monster big blocks, bigger supercharged combinations, and even twin turbo engines. Hines’ experience on small-tires served him well despite being outgunned. He might not have won the race but Hines walked away with a super quick 4.66 at 163. To put that in perspective his incremental times on the 7.05 pass were 4.63 at 163 mph. Consistency is a valuable asset to winning and Hines is working hard to find it.

When it comes to aftermarket braking systems, there are generally two schools of thought for performance vehicles; Either bigger than stock for increased braking performance or lighter than stock with less braking performance. Either direction you go, the universally-accepted fact is that if you are upgrading the car, the OEM system needs to be address. However, with the advances in technology across the board there isn’t that definitive divide between types of braking systems any longer. Large, high-performance brakes aren’t necessarily the big, heavy pieces of equipment they once were and the increased braking power they offer can far out- weigh any “concessions” made to run them.

This is the complete SS4 rear kit, It contains the parking brake assemblies, 12-inch vented, drilled, and slotted rotors, a pair of billet aluminum 4-piston calipers, stainless steel braided brake hoses and all the miscellaneous hardware needed to install everything. The front T4 kit was similar, except that the rotors are an inch larger, as are the T4 calipers.

In the world of performance, we strive to do everything better than stock. Of course, if you make your car faster, you have to eventually come back to a stop. Sure, physics dictates that eventually it will happen, one way or another, but we’d like to be in control of the “when” part of the equation. To truly be in control of that variable, you need to upgrade your braking system to complement the increases in power—to balance the equation. Essentially braking system works by inducing controlled amounts of friction to the brake rotor, via the caliper and brake pads, which slows the vehicles momentum. The byproduct of friction, as we all learned in elementary school via “Indian Burns”, is heat. Dissipating that heat is a critical to the performance of a braking system. If the brake pad gets above its operating temperature range, the coefficient of friction—or how well it grabs the rotor—drops off drastically; an issue commonly known a brake fade. Since the rotor acts as a heat sink, drawing the heat away from the pads and caliper, its mass is critical. Again, going back to that physics class, we know that more mass has more heat capacity and less mass has less heat capacity. That is why you’ll notice that cars intend- ed for repetitive brake application over an extended period (like in a street car, or road race application) will have large, vented rotors—to be able to absorb more heat, and the vents to channel air through the inside of the rotors and help dissipate heat quickly. Drag racing-only brakes often have a thinner, lighter solid rotor, because they don’t have a need for as much thermal capacity, since the braking system has time to cool down after slowing from triple-digit speeds once every hour or so (even if you are hotlapping the car, you still have an extended cool-down period compared to driving on the street).

Since Project Nutjob is going to be a street/strip car—driving to the track under its own power, solid-rotor brakes weren’t ever a consideration. Instead, we went to the folks over at Baer who have been coming out with some seriously cool new things that have caught our attention—like dual-caliper drag-spec brakes, which still utilize a vented disc, and will fit with under a double-beadlocked wheel—and asked for their suggestions on our project.

This is the backside of the parking brake assembly. Notice the hole to the right of the main bore—that’s a provision to retain factory ABS with the 8.8-inch kit—a nice feature on a street/strip car.

Baer follows the Mustang market pretty closely, and really pays attention to the cars in the True Street class, which are the epitome of “Street/Strip” cars. Now, there is nothing that will inherently make a large brake setup not perform well on the dragstrip. However, one of the major turnoffs in the past to drag racers was the need to run a larger wheel to clear the larger brakes. There are three critical mitigating factors which have made that complaint almost obsolete. One is the avail- ability of quality drag-specific tires in larger sizes these days. A 17-inch drag radial or cheater slick is a readily-available part from a variety of tire manufacturers. Another consideration is that today’s wheel manufacturers are able to control spoke design, shape and wheel offset with far more precision than previously, enabling them to design a smaller-diameter wheel to clear a large-dimeter brake package. The final factor is the brake manufactures themselves. Baer has managed to design a braking system with a large 11-inch diameter, 1.1- inch thick rotor that will fit underneath not only a 15-inch wheel, but even some 14-inch wheels. It is no small feat of engineering, being able to shoehorn all that braking power into a compact package.

Baer offers rotors in plain, slotted, and slotted and drilled surfaces. We opted for the slotted and drilled option. Traditionally, the holes and slots were to evacu- ate the gasses created under braking from between the pad and rotor. With today’s advanced pad formulations, they are mainly for looks and minor weight savings.

After talking to Baer, we decided on the Track4 kit for the front of the car. The Track4 kit—colloquially referred to as the “T4” kit—starts out with a 13-inch—one inch larger in diameter than the OEM brake rotor—1.1-inch thick, one-piece direction- ally vented rotor which has been drilled and slotted, and then zinc plated. Then, Baer adds one of their T4 calipers. The T4 caliper is a two-piece billet aluminum four-piston design with six cross bolts. Internally, the caliper features stainless-steel pistons, abutments, and noise-suppression springs. The caliper is powder coated for both durability and good looks, and is available in three standard finishes—Red body with black accents, black with red accents, or silver with red accents. Custom colors are available, as well as a polished nickel-plated finish. Inside the caliper, Baer includes a high-performance ceram- ic brake pad. For convenience, The pad shape is an FMSI # D749, or in layman’s terms, the same as a 1998-2002 Camaro. The caliper mounts using Baer’s billet caliper bracket and the combination will fit within some 16-inch, and most 17-inch wheel packages. Also in the T4 front kit is a set of stainless- steel braided brake lines, and all the necessary stainless mounting hardware.

Here is a look at the SS4 four-piston billet aluminum caliper used in the rear. Its compact dimensions belie its big stopping power, and allow the SS4 package to fit underneath a double-beadlocked 15-inch wheel.

In the rear, The choice of kits was a “no-brainer” as the SS4 rear kit is specifically as a street/strip braking system. The kit con- sists of a set of 12-inch diameter, one-inch-thick vented rotors, which are drilled and slotted, and zinc-coated just as the front rotors are. The SS4 caliper is a compact two-piece bil- let aluminum four-piston calipers. On the standard 8.8-inch rearend applications, Baer uses a floating caliper design with their VeriSlide mounting technology. They also have a fixed- mount version for those with either 9-inch housing ends, or a full 9-inch rearends under their Mustangs. The rear calipers come standard with a clear anodized finish, but also offer the same black, silver, and red combinations as the fronts, as well as the same custom color and polished options.

Here is the massive Track4 front caliper. Even when coupled with the 13-inch front rotor, the kit will still clear a 16-inch wheel package. And the best part, not only are they much bigger than stock, the fronts also weighed in at one pound per side lighter than stock.

Here’s the stock rotor compared to the 13-inch Baer unit. Besides being markedly larger, the Baer rotor is also thicker than the OEM unit.

Inside the SS4 calipers reside the same ceramic pads, but this time in an FMSI DR1 size, which is unique to aftermarket calipers and not used in any OE applications. The backing/caliper mounting plates of the SS4 rear kit also have a built in drum-style parking brake, utilizing the inside of the rotor hat as the drum. Like the fronts, the SS4 rear kit includes a set of stainless steel braided lines and all the required mounting hardware. Designed to fit inside a 15-inch wheel while still providing a larg- er rotor and better caliper than stock, Baer engineered the SS4 so that upgraded rear brakes wouldn’t prevent you from being able to throw a set of 15-inch slick-wrapped wheels on the back for the dragstrip. Baer also has a dual-caliper SS4 setup for big-power street cars which utilizes an extra caliper and an 11-inch, and will all fit under a double-beadlocked 15-inch wheel. So if Project Nutjob ever gets to the point where it needs double-beadlocked wheels and is making four-digits-worth of horsepower, we know there is a kit available.

The front T4 calipers utilize the common FMSI # D749 (1998-2002 Camaro) size pad. The kit comes with a set of high-performance ceramic material pads.

Baer’s caliper mounting bracket for the T4 front kit is made of lightweight alu- minum and bolts-up directly to the stock spindle with no modifications to the spin- dle required. All you have to do is torque the mounting bolts to 85 ft.-lbs. and you’re good to go.

Since Nutjob is going to be a street/strip car, vent- ed rotors are one of our requirements. You can see Baer’s curved directional vane design that helps move air between the discs and keep them cool under hard braking.

The actual installation of the brakes is far from complicated. In fact, the only tools besides a standard socket set you’ll need is a torque wrench, a set of dial or digital calipers capable of measuring inside diameter, and a 10mm hex bit socket. Up front, the most difficult part of installation was the recommended removal of the factory dust shield, as for some reason, Ford decided to attach it with rivets instead of screws. While the angle grinder made rather short work of the rivet heads, and a punch knocked the rivet body out, it’s was an unexpected surprise thanks to Ford’s choice of fasteners. Also, some- thing else we ran into was that while the instructions called to snug two lugnuts onto the rotor to measure caliper spac- ing, using only two allowed the rotor to sit unevenly on the hub face, giving us a large amount of runout. Using all five lugnuts with washers cured the problem.

Once you bolt the calipers on (with no pads) you measure the clearance between the caliper and the rotor at four specific points.

Once you’ve gotten all your measurements, you’ll add up the two front numbers, and two rear numbers (sep- arately), devide the sum by two, and then subtract that quotient from the inside caliper-to-rotor measurement, and you have the amount you need to offset the caliper by using the provided shim pack.

In the rear, we ran into problem after problem with getting the stock stuff off. We spent two days just getting the stock calipers and backing plates off the car, breaking a wrench, going through two cans of WD-40, a bottle of propane, and making our ears bleed with an impact gun in the process. Once all the stock stuff is off, you’ve got to pull the axles to mount the new parking brake and backing plate. From there, it’s as simple as bolting and torquing all the fasteners and tightening the new stainless braided brake lines. In the interest of full disclosure, during the course of the article, we found some issues with the stock 8.8-inch rearend, and are now in the midst of swapping that out for a 9-inch, so we haven’t had a chance to perform any road test- ing with the new brakes. Luckily, Baer has an the parts we needed, and all we had to do was exchange the parking brake assembly for one with the new housing bolt pattern on it, and new calipers, since a floating caliper design is used with the 8.8 (since it’s a C-Clip rearend), but a fixed caliper design is utilized with the 9-inch kit.

Here’s an important trick we learned. Even though the instructions only call for two lugnuts to hold the caliper on, we found that to give sloppy readings, and instead rigged up an assortment of washers and actu- ally torqued down all five lugnuts in sequence to get the most accurate rotor-to-caliper clearance measure- ments possible.

Here you can see the T4 kit filling up our 17x9-inch Weld RT-S quite nicely. We sent the template to Weld before ordering just the be 110-percent sure that everything would work together and it does, perfectly. Nowadays, they even make 17-inch skinnies, so if we ever wanted to, we could run a set of narrow wheels up front, and 15-inch diameter wheels wrapped in slicks out back.

Our brake upgrade will dramatically improve the car’s stop- ping power, while not preventing us from using a strip-only wheel and tire combination down the road. Plus, it really adds a killer look to the car. Also, we weighed one side of the Track4 kit and compared it to the weight of the stock pieces it replaced, and lo and behold, the Baer parts registered one pound less. So really, there are no downsides to the setup, with a ton of benefits. Compromise? I think not.

Baer Inc. 602-233-1411 baer.com

We knew it was coming—Andy Manson tried to remain quiet over the winter of his impending turbocharged conversion but word always seems to get out. Manson along with car builder and crew chief Chris Acors of Acors Performance rolled out their totally revamped 1996 Mustang Cobra this past weekend to rave reviews this past weekend at the NMRA-MIR stop on the Keystone Drag Racing tour. The SN95 race car is virtually all-new for 2012 with the aforementioned turbocharger (Precision 85mm large frame), new modular engine combination using a billet intake from Berry Motorsports, new paint job, and many new bars inside the cockpit of the mid-7 second ride. He qualified with a 7.59 at 182 mph but tragedy struck when some connecting rods decided to see daylight thus ending his weekend of fun. Manson has vowed to come back soon and judging on his initial success with the new combination, Jason Lee might have someone knocking on his backdoor.

The Ohio-native simply shocked and awed the competition and fans at the recently completed NMRA event at Maryland International Raceway (MIR). It is true that MIR is probably the best working drag strip in the country thanks to an enthusiastic track staff and hard-working owners. The traction at MIR was superb and Amrine along with crew chief Brandon Alsept put the ’98 Stang on kill. The flat black painted ride got the wheels up high and nearly dragged the bumper on every run. In fact, Race Pages staffer Greg Acosta even has photographic proof of the car dragging the factory sway bar on one run. The only information Alsept shared with us is that their tricks are in the ACT clutch setup and specially valved shocks and struts. Amrine would finish runner-up after going consistent 10.90s all weekend long. He might not have won the race but he certainly won the title of Wheelie King of Factory Stock.

Anyone who desires to make an official NMRA rule recommendation and/or request may only do so in WRITING. Telephone conversations with NMRA officials, staff members and/or contracted employees will NOT be considered in rules committee discussions. You must submit your 2012 mid-season rules requests for changes no later than May 15, 2012.

THESE REQUESTS MUST BE RECEIVED IN WRITING! (MESSAGE BOARD REQUESTS WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED!

You may e-mail your recommendations and/or requests to: NMRArules@promediapub.com  Fax to: NMRA RULES, C/O Event Division (714) 444-2509 or US Postal Service to ProMedia/NMRA, C/O Rules, Event Division, 3518 West Lake Center Drive, Suite “D”, Santa Ana, CA 92704.

To be considered, your written request must include the following: Full Name, Class, NMRA Competition Number and Membership expiration date. You may or may not receive a written response to your recommendation or request. You may contact the NMRA tech line (714) 460-3813 during the designated hours to insure the validity and confirmation of your rules submission.