Imagine trying to build the hot rod of your dreams, but living 400 miles away from the nearest chassis builder and thousands of miles away from most every part you’ll need to build it. Not an easy task, and definitely not something that most readers can even imagine, however, such were the challenges of South Lanarkshire, Scotland’s David Murdoch in building his street/ strip ’33 Willys.
“We had some long drives through the night for seat fittings and the collection of body parts and things at the chassis builder, Andy Robinson Race Cars,” explained Murdoch. “Plus, we first had the car built to 8.50 elapsed time specs because at the time the Street Eliminator cars in the United Kingdom weren’t anywhere near the times they are running now.”
The first iteration of the now heavily turbo’d 1933 Willys Coupe had an Oddy Roots-blown 502 motor that was good to get the car to 8.40 @ 165mph in the quarter-mile, but as David said, by the time he got the car got there, the SE field was dipping into the sevens.
“We now needed a 7.50 chassis tag,” he said. “We then saw the class continue to get even faster and we watched with interest the success of the guys with the twin turbo deals in the US and UK. So after three years and a fourth place finish best, we decided to build a new turbo motor.”
Murdoch was already using Clive Bond of Ultimate Race Cars to look after the supercharged mill and convinced him to do a turbo combination with them. “Clive has years of experience in Pro Mod and large nitrous motors but never a turbo motor, so we thought we’d give it a go,” Murdoch added.
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