We all malign how bloody expensive cars are, and how much that problem amplifies when we start pushing them to go faster.

However, Dwayne Heagney and Ryan Rixon from the Lobuc Racing YouTube channel recently showed at Drag Challenge 2024, you needn’t re-mortgage your house to take on the event. If you’ve wanted to do it but the money side has scared you off, we highly suggest reading on.

Using a 350,000 kilometre LS1 WK Statesman he got for $3000, he threw in a basic cam kit, some nitrous, radials, a diff, Sherrin footys in the rear suspension (yep!) and got the thing to run 11s, complete the week and all for just over $9200! 

“We used a lot of second hand parts, the nitrous kit was $400 off marketplace,” says Dwayne. “I wanted to show you can have fun and do this without spending a fortune, which is why we started the channel.”

That budget spirit was best encapsulated by the budget but effective rear suspension hack. “We stuck some small Sherrins in the rear springs, which helped with rebound and squatting,” says Dwayne. “They’re inside standard height heavy duty springs, the goal being to stiffen up the rear and improve the 60 foot times.”

Running in Hare & Forbes DYO, Dwayne successfully completed the week, running a PB of 11.70@119mph at Dragway at The Bend.

“It would have gone faster, but it smacked the limiter on the 1-2 shift and then ran out of revs at 1000ft,” says Dwayne. “I think 11.50s is where it should be. It’s also full street trim including a stereo system, the car with me in it is 1968kg.”

“We’re aiming to run a 10.99 on the LS1 and standard 4L60E, then we’ll dump in an iron block 6.0 and make it a mid 10 second machine,” he says.

You can watch the full build series from start to finish here Lobuc racing – YouTube , including their coverage of all five days of Drag Challenge 2024.