JBA supports local drag racing by sponsoring Barona Drag Strip and RaceLegal. Last night, July 24, 2010, Barona hosted its Funny Car Summer 2010 show. It was a fun time and the crowd seemed to enjoy it, even if one of the funny cars did try to eat a crew member!  I’ll apologize in advance for the lame night-time photography….let’s just call it “special effects” and let it go at that. The pictures don’t tell the definitive story, just random shots. Chris Boyer was on the microphone, the ice cream truck was armed and dangerous and the weather was perfect. One stop at Sonic on the way home and we called it a night. See the pictures for more details. -bt

Crower invited JBA to exhibit at their 2nd Annual Open House Saturday July 10, 2010. What a great collection of cars and gearheads! The event featured serious machinery, including top fuel nostalgia dragsters, vintage slingshots, offroad vehicles, pro mods, street rods, late models and muscle cars. Something for everyone! Hosted by Bruce and Dave Crower, Kerry Novak, Roger Levine and the rest of the Crower crew, a good time was had by all. If you played your cards right, you also got a tour of the 100,000 sq. ft. Crower facility. A number of the hard core vehicles took turns cackling for the crowd. Music and a snack bar topped it all off. See the pictures for more of the story. -bt

On Wednesday afternoon June 23rd JBA co-sponsored Dragster Nite at the Steakhouse Stake Out at Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse on Mission Gorge Road. Somehow we found a way to get out of moving our shop for a few hours to hang out with a bunch of drag racers. We brought down Fenn’s Vega drag car and Tucker’s old split window. The special guest was Don Prudhomme and he was as friendly as can be. He made a point of walking around the whole show and talking with folks, posing for pictures and signing autographs. Even though he’s earned superstar status in drag racing, at this show he was just another gearhead checking out the cars. One of the funny things he said about his driving career was “I’ve been on fire from here to New York .” See the attached pictures for more of the story. -bt

JBA was invited to speak at the June meeting of the San Diego Region of the Shelby American Automobile Club on June 17, 2010 at Casa Machado next to Montgomery Airfield. After the club enjoyed a fine dinner that featured multiple margaritas and multiple fly-bys, club senior adviser Steve McKay conducted the official business. Then J. Bittle reviewed his early involvement in motorsports including his first race (lawn mowers!) which J won. He also described how he came to own his 1967 Shelby GT500. Next, J introduced Bruce Tucker for a presentation on custom tuning late-model fuel injected vehicles. After the tech talk, the meeting got really interesting as we headed out to the parking lot to see (and hear) Chuck’s brand new 2011 5.0L Mustang GT. It’s a stunner, and fast too. Check out the attached pictures. For more info on the Shelby club, go to www.socalsaac.org. -bt

Just a quick thank you to the members of the Bonneville 200 MPH Club that put together the Annual Summer Party held at the NHRA Motorsports Museum on June 5th, 2010. I cruised up to Pomona with my son for the drinks, food, music, bench racing, raffle and all around fun. BBQ by Dan catered the event and the food was killer…especially the pork ribs. Lot’s of land speed racing celebrities too. Got our picture taken with a cigar-chomping Ed Iskendarian who was nice as can be. The raffle had great prizes like a framed picture of Thrust SSC breaking the sound barrier at Black Rock signed by the pilot…I mean…the driver Andy Green. The only reason the raffle sucked was that we didn’t win anything! Couldn’t ask for a better location than the NHRA Motorsports Museum (unless they moved the museum to San Diego). If you’ve never been to the museum, make it a priority. For more info, go to www.museum.nhra.com. Thanks again to the “two club” volunteers and club sponsors for a great event. -bt

Steve Farkas has owned his Boss 302 for over 30 years and drives like it was meant too!
As an airline pilot Steve expects maximum power when he demands it and he turned to JBA for just that requirement.
Designing a 347 Boss 302 before it was popular Steve’s Boss in basically concourse appearance put out 467 flywheel horsepower with manifolds and stock ignition.

The Balanced and Blueprinted four bolt main Boss block has a steel crank and h-beam rods with and NOS balancer and flywheel.
Ported heads and a solid lifer camshaft allow the 7000+ RPM power band to tear up the competition. Steve’s attention to detail makes his Boss 302 a real show winner too! —

Well a few Sundays ago on the 25th, we had around 40 Mustangs/Fords who gathered at JBA around 5:30am prior to cruising up to the Fabulous Fords 25th car show at Knott’s Berry Farm. It was a long day of cruising the parking lot with around 2000 Ford’s, Lincolns, and Mercury’s! I took a few pictures of some cool cars so for more info on them just click the pictures below….Enjoy.

-Bruce Tucker

One of our favorite customers owns two, count ‘em, two Ford GT’s. Both black. He open tracks one of them on a regular basis at many different road race facilities around the country. It’s got a smaller pulley, Ford headers, straight pipes (no cats or muffler) and a JBA custom dyno tune. In this configuration, it made 661 rwhp at 6,317 rpm and 619 torque on our Dyno Dynamics dynomometer. The air/fuel was mid to low 11’s, downstream ACT peaks at 142-deg, and the peak boost was 15.6 psi. This is all fine and well except that the car was louder than a ‘System of a Down‘ concert! Over 120-decibels measured around 50-feet from our dyno. He was asked to quiet the car down by some of the facilities that he races at. By the way, have you heard the “politically correct” term for racetracks in California? Noise parks. Gimme a break….

As a compromise, we installed a set of SuperTrapp mufflers on the ends of the straight pipes with 12-plates in each muffler. We put the Ford GT back on the dyno. We did one pull…and then another pull…cause we couldn’t believe the results of the first pull. Here are the average numbers from the two pulls with the SuperTrapps installed: 475 rwhp at 5,330 rpm and 565 torque; the air/fuel went to low 10’s; the downstream ACT went up to 180-degrees and the boost went up to 19 psi. The only good news for Earth Day is that the db level went down to approx 105.

So, we lost 186 rwhp in one fell swoop and of course picked up a ton of heat. Call us naive but we might have guessed we’d lose 40 to 50 rwhp so we were astounded. We wanted to confirm that something else wasn’t amiss, so we tore the SuperTrapps off and did another pull: 678 rwhp at 6,317 and 635 torque; air/fuel back to mid-11’s; downstream ACT peak at 152-degrees and peak boost at 16 psi. The thing screamed like a banshee. So, the exhaust baffles stole 203 rwhp. That’s like removing the output of a stock 5.0L. The only thing around our shop louder than that Ford GT are the Harriers that fly in and out of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Back to the drawing board. So, next we installed only 8 of the 12 SuperTrapp plates on each side of the Ford GT exhaust and included a 1/16″ spacer between each plate. With this setup, the power level remained high (678 rwhp/643 torque), the boost was 16.2-psi, the ACT was 132-degrees, air/fuel hung in the mid-11’s and the sound level came in at 108db. Problem solved!
– Bruce Tucker

So I went cruisin all around the shop the other day and snapped some pictures I thought I’d share with y’all.  I found some customers being helped up front in the showroom…I also ran into John (our Master Engine Builder) and  Tim (Lead Tech) pulling a small block out of a customers Buick GS.  Looked like they were getting ready to hoist it onto an engine stand so John and Aaron can disassemble it and begin a rebuild.  I found a few other mechanics doing some general maintanence as well as finding a Sprint Car set up for the street!  I think the sprint car was getting some dyno tuning done. A few more long term porjects were around too like the ‘68 Stingray and ‘56 Thunderbird.  Anyways, I just thought I’d show y’all whats going on at JBA!

You’ve probably seen this very clean and low 1964 Ford Ranchero on display at the J Bittle American Performance Center. It’s now being featured in the January 2010 issue of Modified Mustangs & Fords Magazine. The Ranchero belongs to Sondra Gorman and was built by her late husband Rich. The Ranchero was finished at J Bittle American Performance Center in honor of Rich Gorman, who passed away before the vehicle was outfitted with a new intake manifold and a set of  Weber carburetors.

“Rich Gorman was a good friend, a Ford enthusiast, and a great law enforcement officer,” says J. Bittle. “We along with many of Rich’s friends pitched in to finish the vehicle for his wife Sondra who enjoys the vehicle as an honor to her husband. 

The January 2010 issue of Modified Mustangs & Fords will be available on newsstands around the first of December and has a small image of the Gorman Ranchero on the cover.

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