ROD JONES

1933 FORD TUDOR Class: Pacemaker Radial Aspirated

AFTER following Street Machine Drag Challenge twice as a spectator, Rod Jones vowed to get his Dart 427ci small-block Chev finished and into his ’33 Ford tudor for DC 2018. He met the deadline with a week to spare. “But I knew my 8¾-inch Mustang diff with 4.11s would be the weak link; I expected to break an axle,” he said. Sure enough, the diff let go on Day Two at Swan Hill, though a broken carrier was the issue. A mate’s mate soon located another centre in Mildura, and six hours later, Rod was back at Swan Hill to fit the $250 single-spinner 2.78:1 innards. Then he was again Mildura-bound, via the designated DC route.

Rod set his Drag Challenge PB on Day One with an 11.94-second pass, backing off at the 1000ft so as not to go too quick. Then on Friday, with one timeslip under his belt, he hit full throttle, albeit with salt-lake gearing. “It still ran 11.50 seconds, so I’m sure that it’s a 10-second car,” he said. “It has 580hp at the flywheel, so now I’ll swap my T700 for a 4L80E and put a nine-inch with low gears in the rear.

“Going into Drag Challenge, I just wanted that survivor sticker. Now for 2019 I want to run 10s and be in the Radial Aspirated Top 10.”