1980 thunderbird pro mod drag car mod#
1980 thunderbird pro mod drag car series#

1980 thunderbird pro mod drag car series#

Murray’s primary focus will be the Outlaw 10.5 points series at Cecil County, while he’ll also hit some of the 10.5 national series events and select drag radial races, as well. A FuelTech FT500 ECU will serve as the brains of the operation.

1980 thunderbird pro mod drag car mod#

Twin 94mm Precision Pro Mod billet turbos on alcohol provide the boost. The engine is a 521 cubic-inch, all-billet Brand Anderson Hemi with Brad8 cylinder heads. A fabricated full-floater rear end housing with Strange Engineering axles rides on Menscer shocks out back. Murray covered the car in PPG Pepper Grey metallic paint.

The wheelbase has been stretched 3-inches, but the front end remains factory in length (but is now a liftoff-style nose). My cars have always been different - I’ve never been one to follow and get a Mustang or a Corvette or a Camaro…it’s the older cars that I like.” There’s not many companies building ’57 Thunderbird parts there’s a fiberglass front end for a ’55 out there, so I’d have to modify the car, but I like the look of the ’57. The factory window trim is still in place, as is the factory glass port window. The car is, as purists of the Outlaw 10.5 category will appreciate, entirely steel, save for the bumpers, hood, dashboard, and the top (which was fiberglass from the factory). A Pro Modified-style car with a 25.5 chrome-moly chassis under it, it was an excellent starting point for his 10.5W and radial-tire initiative. While perusing classified ads, Don discovered a ’57 Thunderbird rolling chassis located on the West coast. He then began on a 1967 Mustang to replace the Fairlane, but when his father (and crew chief) passed away, he took a break to soul-search.īut his soul wasn’t the only thing he was looking for. He knew in order to do so he’d need to rebuild it a third time, and of the opinion that it was simply too nice to cut it up yet again, he instead opted to sell it. There, he raced a 1964 Ford Fairlane, but as the caliber of cars improved, his partially mild-steel machine couldn’t keep up. Murray grew up bracket racing and later went small-tire racing, which morphed into competing in Outlaw 10.5. And so in 2020, he will debut one of the coolest cars the Outlaw 10.5 category has ever seen: a real, steel 1957 T-Bird. Pennsylvania racer Don Murray is, out of sheer necessity, a do-it-yourself kind of racer he’s also not one to go with the grain. And so when a classic Ford Thunderbird, of all things, arrives on the scene, it’s worth making note.

Ford’s Mustang and Chevrolet’s Camaro and Corvette are the dominant makes and models in the arena, often comprising the entire field at radial-tire and 10.5-inch tire meets. As they say, variety is the spice of life, and small-tire drag racing…well, it’s not so spicy.