How Big 3 Racing Used An Ididit Pro-Lite Column To Gain An Edge In Horsepower Wars

If you’re not familiar with Horsepower Wars, well, you should be … just because it’s awesome. But you’re also going to need to be brought up to speed on that epic shootout to truly appreciate the point of this creative install involving Ididit. Horsepower Wars pits rival builders, platforms, or ideas against each other in controlled competitions. Teams build engines or vehicles under a set of established rules, then compete on dynos, tracks and real-world drives to determine an overall winner. The theme is pretty cut-and-dried: Build it, test it, drive it, and prove why it’s better.

With all that in mind, building an engine or vehicle for the series requires every decision to serve a particular purpose. It is, after all, a competition. Power matters, reliability matters, and so does weight, especially when the rules limit where you’re allowed to remove it. Our latest Horsepower Wars series, C10 Shootout, pitted an LT team against a Coyote team. The teams had to build street-legal C10s that could reliably complete a 100-mile drive before hitting the drag strip.

Weight, Save It For The Strip

When it came to weight savings, the C10 Shootout rulebook was very clear: No major lightening of the trucks beyond suspension changes, installing a new steering column, and installing a plexi rear window, which, in reality, related more to accommodating cages than weight. That meant installing a modern steering column was a surefire way for the teams to potentially gain a slight advantage. That’s where the pros at Ididit come into the picture.

Our 1978 Square Body, or ”Big 10” as it is affectionately known, was assembled by Big 3 Racing of West Salem, Ohio. Big 3 is a big name in the drag and drive game, having competed at every major event in the country. Big 10, being the LT element of the competition, would be powered by a 1,400-horsepower Late Model Engines V8 that was built on a previous Horsepower Wars installment called LS vs. Coyote. Big 3 wanted Big 10 to be subtle, so in addition to using an OEM-style leaf spring suspension, it chose to make the truck appear as OEM as possible. Of course, under the facade of normalcy, the truck was optimized with a TCI front-clip, a braced Strange 9-inch axle, Afco shocks, CalTracs traction bars, and Strange disc brakes behind all four wheels.

Despite its theme, Big 3 knew a column swap would be a good idea. The truck entered its build still equipped with a factory tilt column. Was it functional? Sure. Was it heavy and hard to deal with? Absolutely. So they reached out to Ididit to discuss a potential replacement.

Ididit C10 Columns

Ididit offers many direct bolt-in options for a 1978 C10. Customers can purchase a tilt column, compatible with either a floor shifter or a column shifter, in finishes that include: chrome, paintable steel, and black powder coat. That solution would’ve worked beautifully and been the obvious choice if Big 10 was a restoration or purely street-focused build. Each of these columns is designed specifically for the truck, offering factory-style fitment, clean installs, and zero modifications to the vehicle. Buyers simply remove the factory piece, save their under-dash and floor mounts, and install the new column in place of the old column. Ididit even ensures that, if you want to add an aftermarket wheel, the gripping surface of that wheel will be in the same location as the factory original.

But here’s our problem: As simple and easy and great as Ididit’s drop-in column would’ve been, Big 10 wouldn’t benefit from much weight savings. Big 3 was betting on the rival team, Customs By Bigun, finding as much weight advantage within the allowed margins as possible. That means the team had to get creative.

Ididit To The Rescue!

Ideally, the team would’ve called up Ididit and ordered one of their awesome Pro-Lite columns. Weighing under six pounds, Pro-Lite columns are about half the weight of standard Ididit columns and, most likely, would even provide additional weight savings over Big 10’s factory setup. Installation would be easy, since the Pro-Lite uses OEM dash mounts and plug-in wiring connectors. A Pro-Lite column would also improve the truck’s safety, as it’s designed to crush up to five inches. Even better, in addition to being designed to work with most quick-release wheel hubs, the Pro-Lite features all the things the team would need to keep the truck street-legal, including horn wiring, self-canceling turn signals, and 4-way flashers.

There was only one problem: Ididit simply didn’t offer a Pro-Lite column for a 1978 Chevy truck. So, Big 3 got on the phone with the pros at Ididit to see if they could come up with a solution. Ididit offered their Pro-Lite column for the 1967-68 Camaro (P/N 1350680056). The Pro-Lite for the first-gen F-body is close enough, dimensionally, to Big 10’s factory column that, with the right planning, it could be successfully adapted for use. After some shipping info was exchanged, the component was packaged and on its way. As we all probably know, that level of support and turnaround is absolutely vital when the clock is ticking.

Innovating a Camaro Pro-Lite column into a C10 certainly allowed us to compare the two approaches. The bolt-in C10 column is heavier because it retains more OE-style structure and street features, with the major luxury being tilt steering. The Pro-Lite Camaro column strips things down. There is no excess bulk and no unnecessary mechanisms. It’s just a lightweight, straightforward floor-shift column that’s built with racing and safety in mind. For a drag-and-drive truck chasing ETs within a strict rules set, lighter always wins.

In the end, the Ididit Pro-Lite column proved to be exactly the kind of creative solution that Horsepower Wars demanded. The rules may limit where weight can be removed, but they don’t limit how smart a team can be about finding those opportunities. By adapting a first-gen Camaro Pro-Lite column to our Big 10 C10, Big 3 Racing managed to shave valuable weight from the truck while still keeping all the functionality required to stay street legal for the competition’s brutal 100-mile drive.

That’s really the spirit of Horsepower Wars in a nutshell. It’s not just about making horsepower, it’s about making the right decisions everywhere else, too. Sometimes the winning move isn’t a bigger camshaft or a more aggressive tune. Sometimes it’s something as simple as replacing a heavy factory component with a purpose-built racing piece that does the same job with half the mass. Big thanks to Ididit for their expertise and help on this build.