Dennis Equitz to Dive Back Into Xtreme Street in Road Runner at NMCA Indy Event

There are many things that make NMCA Edelbrock Xtreme Street an electrifying category, and among them are the cars crushing it while cruising on small tires.

An example of that was Joel Greathouse gunning to a 4.68 in his Mustang to set the pace in qualifying at the 13th Annual Nitto Tire NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing in July at Route 66 Raceway in Illinois, but also commanding attention at the race was Dennis Equitz, who made his debut in the category from the driver’s seat of Bill Schneider’s 1968 Road Runner.

Equitz, who owns Blitzkrieg Motorsports in Wisconsin, transformed the former street car to a race car mere weeks before the race.

He started by replacing the car’s seats with a lightweight Kirkey seat, swapping its wheels with lightweight Weld wheels wrapped with Mickey Thompson drag radials and moving from a rear-mounted fifteen-gallon fuel cell to a front-mounted one-gallon fuel cell.

He also removed some steel that wasn’t serving a purpose under the fenders, and he shelved a bolt-on hood and went with a lift-off hood. In the process, he took the car from 3490 pounds to 3290 pounds.

Blitzkrieg Motorsports installed a 574 cubic-inch Mopar engine with a SpeedTech nitrous system for added adrenaline, and it was backed with a Proformance Racing Transmissions-built Turbo 400.

At the race in Illinois, Equitz, who had been wrapping up work on the car and wasn’t able to test beforehand, used the first round of qualifying to make an easy pass down the track to make sure everything was in working order. The nitrous wasn’t there in the second round of qualifying, and the tires spun at the hit in the third round of qualifying. Then, much to Equitz’s dismay, an oil line broke in the waterbox as he was preparing for the first round of eliminations, ending his weekend.

“We definitely had some new-car woes, but we’re going to keep trying,” said Equitz, who was quick to repair the oil line as well as replace an old nitrous controller with a new NLR Systems AMS-2000 nitrous controller upon returning home after the race.

Now, Equitz, whose sponsors include Still Motorsports, Fast Eddie’s Custom Cars, SpeedTech, Afco, NLR Systems, Proformance Racing Transmissions and Ricchio Automotive, is preparing to take part in the final race on this year’s NMCA tour, the NMCA World Street Finals presented by Chevrolet Performance, Sept. 20-23 at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indiana.

“A clean A-to-B pass and qualifying in the middle of the field would be very good right now,” said Equitz, who has his sights set on the pre-event test session at the track. “I think the car should run 4.80s fairly easily without hurting parts. We have the power to do that. We just need to dial it in.”

Catch Equitz at the race or via a live feed offered by presenting sponsor Edelbrock, along with ProCharger, Driven Racing Oil, RHS, E3 Spark Plugs, Moser Engineering, Flying A Motorsports, ATI Performance, Champion Cooling, Stage 8 and Aeromotive.

(Photos by Mary Lendzion)

About the author

Mary Lendzion

Formerly a writer at the Detroit Free Press, Mary Lendzion writes for Power Automedia, NMCA and NMRA, is the director of media and public relations for Summit Motorsports Park and is happiest in the driver’s seat of her Mustang.
Read My Articles

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