Shop Tour - Hardcore Drag Racing

     * Street Freaks   * What is a Street Freak?  It's a street driven Drag Strip dropout, de-tuned for Sorta-Legal   on-road Cruising. Take a fugitive funny car with a dynamite engine and jacked up suspension, add mufflers (rarely), lights and the biggest street tires (most only had slicks) and drive it on the street ! I grew up in North Jersey in the early 80's , reading every car magazine I could get my hands on . Yes, you could still hold something in your hands and read it !  I had a subscription to Hot Rod at 9 years old and renewed for at least 10 years , until it got over run with ads . I would also purchase  Car Craft , & now defunct Popular Hot Rodding & Cars Illustrated at the news stand / magazine store . This was my only education about Hot Rods or any cars for that matter, as I was the only one in my family who was interested in cars. And as luck would have it , my house was the only one on my street with out a driveway or garage . So convincing my fat

This 1940 Willys is street driven in Colorado & features a 528 CI Mopar Hemi . It has an iron block with 8.7:1 custom JE pistons and Indy ported race heads. ARP studs keep it glued together. The 4150 steel crank swings Eagle H-Beam connecting rods and an ATI balancer keeps the big Hemi from shaking to bits . It was Dyno'd at 1031 Horsepower & 900 lb/ft of Torque . A complete MSD ignition system keeps the sparks flying under the boost pressure supplied by the polished 14-71 Hi-Helix supercharger by the Blower Shop. It's running a drive ratio of 1:1 giving it 14 Psi through the traps. A pair of Holley 800 CFM Double Pumpers mix the fumes and this healthy Hemi is topped off a vintage BDS scoop . The exhaust system features 2 1/8 custom Zoomies with ceramic a coating so they will look good for years . There are two sets of inserts to drive on the street,but it's still loud ! The 727 Torqueflite is equipped with 300M input/output shafts, manual valve body and a trans br

   John Uzbasic was raised in Northern Wisconsin , then in 1979 he moved to Hawaii,  where he worked multiple jobs just to afford to live there. Even back in 1979 it was expensive.  So basically all he did was work with really no outside life.   John said that some years passed when he met two individuals that ended up to be good friends,  Roy and his wife Edie.  They were friends for some time and it was a surprise that after a number of months he shown John his race car.  At that time, he didn’t give it much thought because he wasn't really interested in racing at that time in his life.    Fast forward about 2-3 years,  Roy asked him a number of times to  check him out Drag Racing, John finally agreed to meet him at the track.  He said he got to the track early and jumped on the bleachers and waited for the event to start.                       He waited and waited as cars came in but no one going down the track.   His anticipation was starting to build and finally, it started .

  By Mike Salemme,   Enjoy the sights and sounds of Thunder Alley at The Dead Man's Curve Wild Weekend 2019 at Mahwah , NJ. There were many vintage Funny Cars , Dragsters & Gasser's on display  .  Special thanks go out to Big Al Liebmann & Rocky Pirrone  for getting all these bind blowing machines together  in one place .