Originally a small block car with a warmed over 350, the engine was soon upgraded to a 406 with a good rotating assembly, Vortec heads and eventually a plate nitrous kit. That simple combo with some slapper bars netted several 9.90 time slips before being sold off to fund the purchase of dad’s 454 ci. BBC. That engine featured oval port heads ported by HPS Cylinder Heads, a small street roller cam with a Holley Dominator carb on top. This engine had been in his father’s car for several years and did time in Jon’s Nova for about a year and a half before he cut a deal for new paint and body work using the engine as barter. Best ET for it was a 10.11 @ 129 on a 175 shot on nitrous. Since we are freinds and have a healthy and friendly rivalry between all of us I have to mention that his 10.11 is just slightly slower than I had been at the time in my Chevelle with a similar engine, but that is going to change here very soon.

The current engine is this 555 cubic inch beast machined at Scotty's Racing Technology and assembled "in house" by Don and Jon Bitler in the garage. The Dart Big M block is filled with the best goodies and topped of with Edelbrock heads and intake. A Holley 1050 Dominator mixes the fuel and air.

The Bitlers do all of the fabrication and building of the car that they can with the exception of the engine machine work, transmission building and the roll cage, which was installed at NBS Race Cars in Pinellas Park, Florida.

After the trade off of the family 454 Jon set his sights on building a 598 cubic inch big block but that plan fell through and he settled on a 555 instead. Some swap meet gold in the form of a virgin set of Edelbrock 7760 heads and Super Victor intake helped save some serious dollars. A Dart Big M block was purchased and brought to Scotty’s Racing Technology in Spring Hill to get started on the project while the heads and intake were again given to HPS for massaging.

Inside the Dart block spins a Lunati crank with Oliver steel rods and Diamond pistons. Scotty Gaudagno spec’d out a custom roller cam of unspecified dimensions and sourced it from Cam Motion, as well as the lifters. Ferrea valves let the air in and exhaust gasses out through a set of Hooker headers and Flowmaster mufflers.

The interior has the obligitory race style bucket seats in front while NBS Race Cars was careful to allow the back seat to remain while building the cage. The car still has the stock dash with several gauges affixed to monitor vital functions. Ignition is a MSD 7500 series control box, which allows all sorts of timing control if you want it. Driving the powerplant is a Trans R Us TH 400 transmission and a Turbo Action Cheetah shifter mounted to the floor. A PTC Converter multiplies the torque and sends it back to a Ford 9 inch rear filled with a spool, 35 spline axles and 4.10 gears. After getting some shakedown runs in at Bradenton the car was running solidly in the 9’s on grunt and 6.20’s in the 1/8th mile but suffering traction issues. Jon decided to ditch the Goodyear 29×9 slicks in favor of some 295/65 Mickey Thompson Drag Radials and promptly dropped down to the six teens with a best of 6.10 @ 113 in the eighth.

The trunk is clean and all business with dual batteries, fuel pump, fuel cell and nitrous bottle tucked away inside.

Jon has just finished purchasing all the goodies from Wilson to finish up the nitrous as thats what this build is intended for, nitrous – and lots of it. Future plans call for a power glide trans from Dad’s car and getting the nitrous hooked up for more testing and some class racing locally in 5.50 and 6.0 index. They plan to race Jon’s car over the winter as the economy has them unable to afford feilding both car at this time. Once it’s dialed in Jon is looking to get into the eight second zone and beyond and taking a notch out of his fathers belt as Don is still just a tick faster in his lightweight 68.