Pete Johnson's Mustang: 236 MPH in the Standing Mile!

10/07/2016
10 min read

Pete Johnson's Mustang: 236 MPH in the Standing Mile!

10/07/2016
10 min read
Former NMRA drag racers Doug and Pete Johnson starred at the 2016 Hot Rod Magazine Top Speed Challenge, a standing-mile competition officiated by the East Coast Timing Association and contested at Wilmington Air Park in Wilmington, Ohio. They dominated the Super Street portion of the event, clocking the fastest official speed recorded by the East Coast Timing Association all year – 236.84 MPH! Their sleek, thinly disguised race car is powered by a turbocharged 351 Windsor punched out to 358 cubic inches. It's fed by a new Holley Dominator EFI system that they'd just installed and monitored by a Racepak UDX-SR Street Rod Dash. The hardest part of setting top speed for the year, as it turned out, wasn't finding more speed than everybody else – it was just getting to Wilmington in the first place. With time running out to make it to the event, the Johnson team found itself desperately in need of a bellhousing to fit their Powerglide transmission to the back of the Ford Small Block. That's when Quick Time stepped in. "They needed a bell a little deeper than what they had," said Ross McCombs, whose team at Quick Time Bellhousings made it happen literally overnight. "We cut the top off of it and put a new one on that was half an inch deeper and exactly what they needed for their setup. "We got it back from paint about 4:00 on a Friday afternoon and had to find the UPS guy on his cell phone," McCombs said. "We ran it out to him at the last minute Friday night – after last minute, actually – but we got it done and got it to them. They got it Saturday, put it in the car that day, and took it out there on Sunday and won."

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