Seven-Second Friend-Found Fox is Faster Than Ever
Could the demons at last be behind Duane Ruhl?
Sick Summer Presented By TBM Brakes earlier this year certainly represented a turn in fortunes for the Illinois racer, who would finish third in Modified with a new personal best of 7.623 seconds.
“2022 was a learning year and it had its ‘shit show’ moments for sure,” Duane said. “We had spun bearings, a failed drag-and-drive attempt from a throttle cable bracket, and a torque convertor as wrong as snow in July. We had one decent outing in October but otherwise the car got put away with a huge sigh.”
The ’92 Mustang Duane drives is a replacement for a previous ’93 model that went for a ride over the concrete walls at Cordova Dragway in 2017. After the crash, Duane’s friends immediately went to Maryland to buy this car as a roller and gifted it to him. Those are some true friends!
Mike Chenoweth put a 25.2 cage inside the cabin, while Duane shifted his allegiances to a big block Chevy. The current combination weighs in at 555ci and wears Brodix BB2 cylinder heads. A Molnar crank, Olive rods and off-the-shelf JE Power Adder pistons make up the bits that go up-and-down and round-and-round, while a Forced Induction billet 80/96 turbo forces induction (get it?).
Being a Modified class car, Duane relies on a pretty sweet suspension setup. There’s still a triangulated four-link Mustang suspension in the back, with TRZ radial-prepped Afco shocks. The front has factory frame rails to the strut towers with Viking Crusader no-prep struts. Bill McFeeters built the experimental anti-roll bar.
“Before Sick Summer, the car hadn’t been on a track at all in 2023,” Duane explained. “We tried on one random Friday night but a trailer issue sent us home without even unpacking. So all the winter modifications we had made were untested.
“The whole week was a blast. We finished, got into the top three of an unbelievably tight class, and met a ton of new friends. An MSD cam sync failure made us late for day four, so we went slower than I think we could have if we were there on time. But the success we had during this event was earned.”
