John Franco’s day to enter the Outlaw 10.5 ranks is growing ever-closer. The gang at DMC Racing up in Halifax, Massachusetts have been putting many of their signature touches onto John’s ’68 Camaro to get it ready for action. The car was delivered as a shell with an engine between the framerails, and DMC’s own Dennis MacPherson and his hard-working crew have been hard at work on the project to bring it to this point.
As anyone who has ever seen a cutting-edge Outlaw 10.5 machine in person can attest, the amount of fabrication and development work is astounding, but the DMC Racing team took the project in stride. Custom-designed hot and cold sides including custom headers were built for the turbo system, placing both turbochargers within the confines of the engine compartment, and in a relatively unique location mounted midway-down at the firewall. The all-stainless headers were constructed using V-band flanges for at-track ease of maintenance, while the rest of the hot side needed to be fabricated around the existing framework. Both inlet tubes to the intercooler run behind the firewall in the passenger compartment, taking the extra heat out of the engine compartment and helping to keep things cool when the car has to be turned around quickly between rounds.
In addition, a custom intake manifold was also designed and built by the DMC team, which necessitated a custom throttle linkage to be built on the passenger-compartment side of the firewall, hiding the throttle body from view. The car was also wired using a Spaghetti Menders wiring system, designed to power a BigStuff3 engine management system and John’s MSD 7531 ignition flawlessly. All of the Racepak V300 sensors have also been installed, and the car will be delivered to Franco shortly. He will then finish up the remaining fabrication and installation work to get the car ready for Outlaw 10.5 action. Franco explained, “the quality of work these guys do is amazing, and I hope to be testing by the end of the season.” The car has been completely revamped since Franco first purchased it, right down to the absolutely-flawless paint scheme done by Tony Russo. Look for it soon coming to a track near you!