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Steve Kurimchak to Return to NMRA G-Force Coyote Stock with Gen 3 Engine

Posted By: Steve Baur
After sitting out the 2020 season due to the pandemic and the birth of his second child, Steve Kurimchak was missing racing and feeling down, so he bought himself a little pick-me-up in the form of a sealed Gen 3 Coyote crate engine. A Maryland resident who works at Johns Hopkins University managing its heavy equipment fleet operations, Kurimchak hadn't raced in NMRA G-Force Transmissions Coyote Stock since the end of 2019. Back then, his 2001 Ford Mustang Bullitt was powered by a Gen 2 Coyote with a 2018 intake. While it did run a 10.05-second pass in the quarter-mile in class-legal trim towards the end of 2020, and 9.98 with a new 9-inch rearend in an unsealed configuration in the Spring of 2021, Kurimchak didn't feel that it had enough oomph to keep up with the newer Gen 3 Coyote engines. So, against my better judgement and my wife's I bought a Gen 3 from Mike Long at G-Force Transmissions at the end of June [2021], laughed the racer, who is sponsored by his wife, Melanie, and two kids Everett and Piper, and who sold his old engine to a fellow member of the NMRA family. The market right now was just too hot for me not to sell the Gen 2 and do this instead. It was a good engine that made good power, and I got my license with it and ran 9s with it, but it was time to move forward. There's still a bit of work to do to get the Bullitt ready to return to competition, but Kurimchak's forward progress has been halted by supply chain issues, as he is currently waiting on a control pack from Ford Performance to complete the swap. In the interim, he's staying busy going over the car to make sure all of its components, including a JLT intake, are race-ready. Over the winter, Kurimchak added a new Strange Engineering rearend housing, axles, center section, and more. He runs UPR Products front and rear suspension components, along with shocks from AFCO Racing in the rear and Santhuff in the front, and a dependable G-Force G101A manual gearbox with a Spec clutch. Kurimchak will continue to run with the Booze Brothers Racing camp for the foreseeable future and is looking forward to making his first few test runs with his modern combination. Charlie Booze and Dan Ryntz have their setups dialed in, and our cars are similar, so it's just a matter of making a few tweaks and running a halfway decent number, he said excitedly. Waiting on his care package from Ford has the racer antsy and eager to get back to the track, so he assembled a plan he can put into action as soon as he's ready to fire up his new Gen 3 engine. I'd love to make Jacob Lamb's race and then the NMRA race in Kentucky, shared Kurimchak of the Factory Hot Rods event to be held in August at Kentucky Dragway and the NMRA All-Ford World Finals in early October at Beech Bend Raceway Park. Then, it'll likely be three or four races with Coyote Stock in 2022.

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