8 CAR CRAFT AUGUST 2019
HORSEPOWER!
2,500HP, 450CI,
SINGLE-TURBO LS
Ryan Jones / Canoga Park, CA
If you’ve been following Outlaw
racing for a while, you may have
heard of Ryan “Toaster” Jones, the
West Coast hitter who has been
racing tire-limited classes for the last
five years. Back when everyone was
marveling at running low-5s on a
235-series drag radial, Toaster
clicked off an insane 4.65 at 161
mph, a record that stood for years.
“We were pushing everything as
hard as we could with a 94mm turbo
on gasoline,” Jones says. “I knew that
in order to stay competitive, we
needed to step things up.”
Stepping up in this case meant a
switch to methanol, new technol-
ogy, and a huge 106mm Precision
Pro Mod turbocharger. The car
made a lot more power, but there
was an issue. “We had to weigh
nearly 3,500 pounds when we ran
the 275 classes, which is just ridicu-
lous for a small-block,” Jones says.
With the popularity of no-prep and
grudge-style racing, the decision
was made to drop the class rac-
ing and focus on Outlaw activities.
Team Boddie’s Outlaw eighth-mile
race series was gaining ground, so
Jones made the decision to run his
Nova there, where he could drop to
3,000 pounds and face the blower
and nitrous cars head on.
With Championship wins in 2017
and 2018, you could say Toaster
has had quite a bit of success. At
more than 40 psi of boost, the
small-block LS is definitely churning
out some power, and with Jones’
consistent driving, the team had all
the ingredients for a championship.
Toaster said none of this would be
possible without his crew: Jaime
Vorhees, Pete Consolo, Art Williams,
and Brian Peterson. Jones also won
the first-ever NHRA small-tire race
in a four-wide battle in Las Vegas.
With some new and very tough
competition for 2019, Toaster indi-
cated that he’ll be “swinging for
the fences” this racing season, so
if you’re on the West Coast, come
check out the little Nova that could!By Jason Sands /
Photos: Jason SandsFUEL TECH TO THE RESCUE
We know Toaster had a good amount of success
with the BigStuff3 platform, so we asked him about
the switch to the FT600. “At one point, I had five
different computers and data-logging systems on
the car that I all had to jam through, download, and
review between rounds,” he says. “It wasn’t fun!”
Now the Fuel Tech does it all, including controlling
the mammoth Billet Atomizer 850 injectors and
Spark 8 coil-on-plug ignition. A huge 15-gpm
Waterman Racing fuel pump feeds -16 and -12 lines
to the fuel rails, and a 105mm Accufab throttle-
body gulps in air from a 106mm Precision Turbo Pro
Mod turbocharger, which is controlled with twin
46mm Precision Turbo wastegates and a Pro-
charger race blow-off valve. On VP Racing M1 fuel,
that’s good enough for around 2,500 hp at the fly-
wheel, or an insane 1,930 rwhp on a chassis dyno at
30 psi of boost (all the dyno would hold). Whew!NOT YOUR AVERAGE LS
You’ve probably heard of 5.3 and 6.0 LS engines,
but how about a 7.3L? Yep, that’s right. Toaster’s
engine is big, thanks to starting with a Dart LS-
Next block. The aftermarket block was filled
with a Winberg (the Top Fuel guys) billet crank,
GRP aluminum rods, and 11:1-compression Ross
Racing pistons and Total Seal rings. Oiling is
handled by a Daily Engineering dry-sump oiling
system and 9-quart reservoir. A custom 55mm
Comp Cams solid-roller camshaft bumps the
valvetrain with more than 0.800 inch of lift
and an undisclosed amount of duration. The
9,000-rpm short-block stays together due to
some careful machine work by Mike Consolo
at QMP Racing Engines.