You know a lot of folks out here have very skilled professional tuners, some of the most
famous tuners in the world tune some of these cars I compete against and you're looking
at the guy who tunes this one with Holley EFI.
I get it on my laptop and what little brains I have and get that done.
Hey, it's Jeremy here from Holley Performance and we're here with Geoff Turk at the NMCA
Bluegrass Nationals here at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Geoff why don't you give me a rundown of this nice Challenger you brought out today to run.
Alright well, this is a 2015 Dodge Challenger Mopar drag pack, so this car was built in
2015 specifically for drag racing by our friends at Dodge and Mopar.
It's a cousin of the Hellcats and the Demons that you see out there making all the news
going so fast so it's the example of a purpose-built drag racing car by Dodge.
It's a big, heavy, original factory car, all steel, all the panels are there, two seats
in the front, so it runs in a class that's essentially stock.
It's powered by a supercharged 354 cubic inch Hemi, so it's the same basic Hemi that you
see in the Hellcats and the Demons but it's actually a specific one for drag racing.
Has a little different supercharger on it.
Supercharged 354 cubic inch engines, north of about 1250 horsepower, a bad actor.
Imean this thing has 9-inch tires and 36000 pounds, this is a handful of a car to get
down the track and you know a big part of that success is the control and capability
of that Holley EFI system, it's a huge part of it.
We are one of the first Dodge drag pack Challengers, Mopar drag pack Challengers with the supercharged
engine to try and come out and compete out here in the NMCA and what a great series it
has been for us.
Now you say compete, but aren't you at the top of the pile right now?
Well you know every once and a while we get into that and I've been lucky, I got runner
up in the first race and I won the second race, this is the third race in the series
so I'm hoping to hold onto that points lead today and this weekend and see if we can't
do well.
We're kind of a black sheep in a lot of ways, the Blackbird being the black sheep out here
trying to run with all these really fast COPOs and Cobra Jets.
It's a tough tough series against a bunch of capable, tough competitors, most of which
drive Camaros and Mustangs so that makes it all the more fun for us Mopar guys to be up
against that stuff so that's a good thing.
And you're also part of the seven-second club correct?
Well, I'm a part of it and I guess the only part of it right now, I'm going to hold onto
that, I am the club right now.
I guess I'm the one and only member but you know down there in Florida, which was the
first MNCA race, there was 30 of these cars down there trying to get into that seven-second
club and it was a drama filled weekend of trying to be the first guy out there to do
it and you know the Dodge came together for us and on our first pass we went 7.996.
Now we kind of rattled the competition the night before in time trials, we went 7.97
and kind of proved that we could get it done, nobody else had ever done that, and so they
kind of knew they had it coming for them but you know there was still a lot of hopeful
Fords and Chevys running ahead of me that thought they could get there first and we
ended up getting it first and so far we are the only ones who have gotten there.
And we did it there and just to put the period at the end of the sentence in Atlanta, we
ran the race in Atlanta in the final I went 7.994 so we did again in Atlanta.
Backed it up that's good.
So tell me a little bit about the EFI that you are running on this car.
Well, this is a Holley EFI system, it's a Dominator because I need some of those outputs
and all that capability.
Boost control?
Yeah, I mean the thing is so powerful and so capable it's just been phenomenal.
Got the Holley EFI on the car at the first race, second race last year in North Carolina,
in Charlotte North Carolina and it immediately showed the benefit because at the closed-loop
control, you know when it's trying to control and make sure the air will fill.
It's very self-learning and it's so quick.
I mean this is probably my 4th or 5th control system, not on this car, but between all the
race cars that I have had, and I can tell you that this is just been by far in every
way superior.
One of the major things is, when you run a drag car, it so rapidly changes, unlike NASCAR,
circle track racing, or even street driving, the changes are so rapid that there's very
few control systems that can really keep up with that rate of change.
Well, seven seconds is a pass so imagine how many things are going on in seven seconds.
And you are through three gears and the engine is up and down RPM and the boost is coming
up.
All this stuff is happening and this control system keeps up with it all.
Then, in addition, the way the functionality gets presented to you as a user through the
interface, it makes it really easy to understand all the different levels of functionality
and you can get to easy stuff through the first couple of layers and if you want to
do some really really ingenious complicated stuff, which I'm not going to tell you all
the ingenious complicated stuff I get to do with it, but the ingenious complicated stuff
has made this car so much more reliable and so much easier to drive and it was obviously
a big part of getting it done in Florida when a lot of my competition spend years tuning
their cars way out ahead of me with cars that are arguably more competitive in many ways.
Imean these are big cars, they have to have a lot of power so that Holley EFI has been
a crucial part of making this whole thing work.
Lots of capability and to manage the timing at the hit, because we are not allowed to
manage boost, boost is controlled by essentially a pulley system to the supercharger in this
class and so the only way that you can manage the power is through cleverly managing other
aspects of the engine.
Fuel delivery, spark control, timing.
Yeah and to do all that dance and make the car run cleanly off the starting line and
not kick up and screw up the engine, it's a very tricky thing to do and you know a lot
of folks out here have very skilled professional tuners, some of the most famous tuners in
the world tune some of these cars that I compete against and you're looking at a guy who tunes
his with a Holley EFI.
So you get it done with your laptop then?
I get it done with my laptop and what little brains I have to get that done and it's capable
of not only doing the simple stuff that you can easily get to and it works so easy and
you have self-learning and the closed loop to make it easy, but you can do very advanced
stuff that I'll just hand out and say gets from A to B every time and makes it a manageable
car to drive.
I mean a simple thing because I think it is a safety thing is I've got a two-step on the
car that is activated on the foot pedal because you have to foot break in this class, there's
no trans brake, there are no electronic controls, you have to drive.
You've got to drive and you've got to shift.
But you do launch off of foot brake and the foot brake has a two-step that controls the
ignition, the Holley controls the ignition, does a nice smooth job holding the RPM right
where you want it but then you come off that and the RPM shoots up.
Well, you don't want that same two-step RPM control to come on down the track right?
Because it's a bad thing if you unintentionally touch the brake pedal, just barely tab it
because you are going sideways and then all of a sudden the two-step comes on and shuts
the ignition off and kills you.
Well, I was able to come up with some advanced tables and stuff and through the software
and a little bit of wiring change it only works in first gear now.
As soon as I leave the starting line make the shift to second, the two-step will not
come on.
It's initial and that's it.
And that was a change that took me, it's a little bit clever in how you have to do it
but it took me about half an hour to 45 minutes to figure out and now my teammate, we have
Kevin Helms who's her crew chief.
You know they desperately need that because they have that two-step come on down the track
because it's pretty easy to slide your foot over there on the brake pedal down there when
you are getting a little loose down there and want to be ready for brake.
If you just touch that brake the two-step comes on, well we can program it so that doesn't
work.
Did you take any of our EFI training classes?
I watched a lot of your videos, I haven't taken advantage of the full-blown training
although I've thought about it a couple of times so it's mostly self-learn and there
are lots of YouTube videos out there that you guys put out there, you guys put out a
lot of great videos.
It's a system that's gained such broad acclaim and acceptance that there are communities
of people that if like the two-step thing, how do I keep it out of two-step down the
track, I mean I was able to go on the web and find several ideas of how to do that.
I did a little different way but it got me thinking about other ideas.
Well, Geoff, I appreciate you coming out, taking time to go over the Holley EFI with
us today, I'd like to see this Challenger out here this weekend and I'd like to keep
you at the top.
I appreciate that and please take my thanks back to the team at Holley for making such
great products and for great support and on top of all that you gave me 10 thousand dollars
for doing something that you helped me do so thank you and thanks to the whole team.
I'm sure that's a drop in the bucket compared to what you spent.
Well, it's a nice drop.
We're happy to be a part of the team and good luck to you.
Alright, thank you, brother.