By Mary Lendzion
Photos by NMCA and courtesy of Justin May
It takes consistency and durability to be competitive in the ever-exciting NMCA TorqStorm Superchargers True Street category, and among the racers with plenty of both is Justin May.
He has been racing in the category since 2010, and has stepped up every year, with a 7.80 and 180 mph being the quickest and fastest times he has trapped in his 1991 Firebird with a Performance Technology-built 427 cubic-inch LS engine and a Precision 94mm turbo.
But determined to top that and earn even more wins than he already has, he's building a different engine for the 2020 season.
That engine had been in my car since 2012, and it was a good piece, but we're going to something that's a little higher-revving and more progressive, said May, who owns Indiana Musclecar in Leesburg, Indiana.
The new engine, being built by Andrew Kittrell of Performance Technology, will be a 400 cubic-inch Dart block-based LSX. It will feature a Callies 8 counterweight crankshaft, custom JE pistons, Callies Ultra Enforcer rods and a solid roller cam by Cam Motion. It will be topped with Frankenstein LS7 heads and Crower 1.8 rockers, and fronted by the same Precision turbo May has been using. He's hoping the new engine will crank out 1,900 horsepower, which would be 300 more horsepower than his previous engine.
"We went down in displacement to utilize the same turbo and allow the engine to rev higher without overloading the turbine," said May. "The heads are much larger than the heads we had last year, which will require us to change some of the turbo piping due to the height of the heads, valve covers and the position of the exhaust ports. We're still debating the intake design, but it will be a custom sheet metal and billet intake.
May will switch from VP Racing Fuel MS109 to VP Racing Fuel Q16, and will continue to rely on his RPM Transmissions-built Turbo 400 and PTC converter in his car, which has an Advanced Chassis-built 25.3 and stock-style suspension by Madman and Company, and wears Mickey Thompson drag radials.
The switch to Q16, which has more octane, will give us a larger tuning window, said May, who uses Holley EFI to tune his combination.
While May will miss the first few events on this year's NMCA tour, he plans to be powering up for the NMCA Power Festival, May 28-31 at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois.
Everything we're building is capable of running low 7s at 195 mph, but I have to pull it all together, said May.
"We went down in displacement to utilize the same turbo and allow the engine to rev higher without overloading the turbine," said May. "The heads are much larger than the heads we had last year, which will require us to change some of the turbo piping due to the height of the heads, valve covers and the position of the exhaust ports. We're still debating the intake design, but it will be a custom sheet metal and billet intake.
May will switch from VP Racing Fuel MS109 to VP Racing Fuel Q16, and will continue to rely on his RPM Transmissions-built Turbo 400 and PTC converter in his car, which has an Advanced Chassis-built 25.3 and stock-style suspension by Madman and Company, and wears Mickey Thompson drag radials.
The switch to Q16, which has more octane, will give us a larger tuning window, said May, who uses Holley EFI to tune his combination.
While May will miss the first few events on this year's NMCA tour, he plans to be powering up for the NMCA Power Festival, May 28-31 at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois.
Everything we're building is capable of running low 7s at 195 mph, but I have to pull it all together, said May.