NHRA-Legal Cobra Jet Resets Standing-Mile Record At 208+ MPH
Regular readers will recall that this crew had the Cobra Jet out at the Space Shuttle’s landing strip to run a 196-MPH pass. However, they did so with a tired engine and little prep work, so a busted fuel pump really reduced the number of runs the team could make that day.
CONGRATS!
Great friend and Cobra Jet racer Rick Hernandez breaks into the 200mph standing mile club, doing it with his new generation 2008 Cobra Jet drag car. Truly a first of its kind seeing the a NHRA Super Stock quarter mile car used in a standing mile event. Congrats Rick and team, on the impressive 208mph speed and thanks for letting American Racing Headers handle your exhaust duties!
Chris Johnson, James Meagher, Rick Hernandez, Eric Raymer (from left to right) teamed up for another top-speed blast in an NHRA-legal 2008 Mustang Cobra Jet. (Photo Credit: JMS Chip & Performance)
NHRA-Legal Cobra Jet Resets Standing-Mile Record At 208+ MPH
Article By STEVE TURNER
The Space Shuttle might be retired, but every so often there are land-based rocket ships blasting down its expansive concrete landing strip. On such ride is a factory-prepped drag car that was tweaked for top-speed duty. This 2008 Cobra Jet recently returned to beat its own standing-mile record.
“We performed a standing one-mile top speed test with a real NHRA-legal 2008 Cobra Jet Mustang, VIN 005,” Chris Johnson, founder of JMS and SCT Performance, said. “We reset the record for the world’s fastest Cobra Jet Mustang in the standing mile at 208.806 MPH.”
The only mod that isn’t NHRA legal on this TVS-supercharged Cobra Jet 5.4-liter engine is the water-meth kit. This time out it benefitted from fresh piston rings installed by Chuck Trotter, The Engine Guy, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Freshened Engine and More Tuning
This time out they had the engine freshened, and Chris worked his magic on the chassis dyno using SCT Performance’s Advantage tuning software, Live Link datalogging software, and X4 handheld tuner. He refined the calibration and did more tweaking of the camshaft timing to squeeze more out of the combo, which is nearly legal to run at a national drag race.
“The water methanol from Snow is the only thing that is not NHRA legal,” Chris told us. “After the last mile run in 2016 the car was taken to several NHRA FSS events. The setup still retains the factory 2.3-liter TVS with stock pulley.”
This was undoubtedly an impressive run, but it merely served to tempt this team to run faster by swapping out the stock 2.3-liter supercharger in favor of Whipple’s 4.0-liter twin-screw blower to propel this S197 even faster.
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