PHIL Edmondson’s XB Falcon coupe, FAT383, is a genuine nine-second street car that does it all, from drag-strip storming to cruising and the occasional Summernats burnout. It’s powered by a 383-cube small-block Ford donk with a big 88mm BorgWarner turbo strapped on, and makes around 790rwhp at 14psi on E85.

We caught up with Phil at the Ford Forum Nationals at Heathcote Park a few weekends ago, where he was experiencing some electrical gremlins. At full-throttle the car was misfiring, which meant it was only managing 10-second times despite making a heap more power than when it last raced with Phil’s old low-comp, high-boost set-up which went high nines.

On the Sunday after the Ford Forum Nats, the XB came good and stomped out a new PB of [email protected]. Some investigating back at the workshop in Adelaide revealed a torched valve, so Phil might have set a PB on seven cylinders – imagine what the car could do with eight!

As off-street drag racing in Adelaide is on somewhat of a hiatus at the moment, this event was Phil’s only chance to race the car before taking on Street Machine Drag Challenge in October.

“I wanted to do some fine-tuning of the suspension and get the boost map right this weekend, as the engine is coming out for a freshen-up for Drag Challenge pretty soon,” Phil said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to do some testing before the event, but it might take another trip to Victoria – Heathcote is just about the closest street-meet track for me now!”