The Nelson family out of Pennsylvania is awesome. Chances are, if you read BangShift you have seen or heard of their exploits on Drag Week, at the former Ohio Mile, the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge, and other awesome contests. The are pure hot rodders that do everything themselves and never follow the truly conventional path. That’s why we’re going to show you their latest creation. This is a Ford Fairmont that has been re-powered by a turbocharged version of the 4200 (4.2L) GM inline six engines that were in Trailblazers and other stuff. We have seen these engines used sparingly at places like Bonneville but they have never really taken off in mainstream hot rodding. Why? Well for starters they look and sound different and secondly they have stuff like variable valve timing that guys on the large do not want to mess with.
Thankfully the Nelsons aren’t those guys and fear nothing. Trust us, we have seen them in action! As we will see over a succession of dyno pulls and tuning moves, the car makes triple digit gains in horsepower, all through key-strokes. It is a process of understanding what the engine likes, what the turbocharger likes, and how to make it all work in unison. Lots of smarts being applied here!
Anyway, if you are into something different, this is about as great as it gets.
