Not everybody wants a door car or a dragster to wheel down the dragstrip; some racers are into truck even SUV’s to get their speed fix. One such racer is Greg “Z” Zoetmulder, who has taken things to a whole new level with his V8-swapped, street legal CJ7 race Jeep. This boosted ride is an absolute handful for Zoetmulder to drive and can rip off eight-second passes with ease.
The CJ7 only came with either a four- or six-cylinder engine under the hood from the factory (AMC, Isuzu, and Pontiac Iron Duke variants). A more powerful mill would need to be added to the mix to go eights, and Zoetmulder addressed that in a big way. Gone is the stock power and in it’s place is a nasty 408 cubic inch motor from AES that’s getting some serious boost from an F1 ProCharger. Taking in all that boosted air from the blower is a CSU billet carburetor that gets its fuel from massive MagnaFuel fuel pump. The Strange Engineering rear end helps transfer the power to a set of Mickey Thompson ET 28×12.5 sized rear tires.
As you can imagine, something with this short of wheelbase and a ton of power on tap is a handful to drive. In this footage from victoryredcolorado it becomes apparent really quick that those wheelie bars on the back of the Jeep are not there for show, as the CJ7 hangs the hoops as soon as Zoetmulder mashes the throttle. After a couple of aborted runs, the Jeep runs a healthy 8.64 at 153 mph, and seems to have a whole lot more on tap.