AS AN entrant in last year’s VPW Drag Challenge, Luke Foley has a very good idea of what’s needed to make the trip; he took home both the Quickest Without Trailer and Spirit of Drag Challenge awards.

Despite getting almost no sleep during that inaugural event due to broken transmissions and faulty wiring looms, Luke is keen to do it all again, and he’s even built a new combo to shake things up. “Last year, we had a single 80mm BorgWarner turbo with an air-to-air intercooler. This time I’ve got twin 62mm Turbonetics turbos hidden under the guards with a pair of water-to-air intercoolers,” he says.

“We’ve also done a whole new engine. The cam is custom grind, but it’s more like a big naturally aspirated cam than a turbo cam, and we’re running more compression than we’d normally run as well. We’re just trying something different.

“For Drag Challenge I’ll probably be running two tunes; one for E85 at the track, and one for 98-octane on the road, but I’m still not going to be towing a trailer.”

With no water in the intercoolers the new combo is already showing some potential, making more power than the old set-up despite running two pounds less boost and the lack of intercooling seeing intake temps soar.

Luke plans to have the ’coolers all plumbed up for this weekend at Heathcote Raceway, where he plans to run the invite-only King Of The Street event. “The best we’ve gone is 8.73@162mph,” he says. “I’m hoping to beat that this weekend, but this thing comes on-boost so hard that traction might become an issue.”

We managed to grab some footage of the new combo on the dyno at MPW in Dandenong; check it out and stay tuned for more Drag Challenge updates.

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