Backyard Bullet: Think you have what it takes to do this?
This story starts in 1975 when a certifiable Mopar Man, Tom Roschen, purchased a nice little street car while he was stationed in the Army near Clarksville, TN. It was a 1975 Duster with a 360 small block and a Torqueflite. At the time he had no idea how long his
“affair” with this particular car would last. In 1976 he entered his first drag race event with the car and learned a little bit about a sport he would soon grow to love. His second week out he won his class and got runner-up in the Top Class runoff. The car was running 15.00 to 14.80 seconds in the quarter mile at this time.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 1977 he officially started to work on the car to see if he could make it faster. First it was headers and that got him to 14.60s. Then in 1978 he converted a 9” Ford rear end housing to fit his A-body leaf springs and put a 3.90 gear in it. Results were now 14.30s. A couple of years later he freshened the short block and installed 340 cylinder heads, a Direct Connection hydraulic cam, deep oil pan and a manual shift valve body. That got the car to run 13.0s consistently. The car was last street driven in 1981. He had put in a 6-point roll bar and tied the sub-frames as well as installed mini-tubs, a 4.56 gear and some used slicks. The results were impressive as it ran some high 12-second ET’s with the same 360 small block.
The year 1982 really changed the relationship between Tom and the black Duster. It was taken off the street and turned into a drag race-only machine. With the same 360 small block between the fenders, he added a fuel cell and electric pump. By the end of 1983 he had installed new 10x29 slicks, and started trying to get rid of excess weight on the car. The car remained about the same for the next three years and ran a best of 12.60 in the quarter.
 When I told you Tom and Vic are Mopar die-hards I wasn't kidding. I drove my Isuzu Trooper over to their shop and I got a little nervous. I was just glad he knows we race Mopar dragsters! |
SEARCHING FOR THE 10-SECOND RUN
Nineteen eighty-seven was the first year of the big-block 440 for the car. Hundreds of hours of work went on in the small garage as he added coil-overs, ladder-bar suspension and rear disc brakes, narrowed the 9” Ford housing, and put a new spool and axles in the rear-end. He got it out of the garage and it ran some 11.60s. That is one second quicker with a hydraulic-cam 440 on pump gas. Next goal was a 10-second time slip. Tom replaced the old converter with a Turbo-Action 3800 stall model and got into the 11.20s! Getting close to that 10 second ET slip now, he continued to lighten up the car as much as possible, and ran it that way for a couple seasons.
In September 1989, with the same engine he had run since 1987, he reached his goal of a 10-second run with a 10.994! You can imagine what his next goal was, right? How about a 9-second ET?