NMRA Pure Street Racer Jimmy Wilson Changes Things Up

At the Spring Break Shootout this past weekend we noticed a few racers had new combinations, paint schemes, wheels, and the like. Racers like to change things up for the new year, or change combinations to perhaps take advantage of a rules change, or simply to a new look.

One racer who changed many aspects of his car is Pure Street racer Jimmy Wilson. Right off the bat, we noticed the car featured new paint. For the new season, he wanted to change things up so he had the car painted. Wilson was going for a Deep Impact blue, but it came out a little more purple than originally planned. Still, the new paint was a hit at Bradenton, garnering many compliments during the weekend.

What wasn’t a hit with Wilson’s car was a high-rpm miss he worked to track down for most of the weekend. He tracked the miss down to a bad crank trigger sensor. The car didn’t seem to lack power at the starting line. If anything, the car had too much power out of the hole, which was something else he had to work on during the weekend. After working for so long to track down the miss, he had little time to work on getting traction.“I am already working on the traction issue,” Wilson says.

For power, Wilson changed things up a little for this year, as well. Wilson put together a 311-inch combination with Kris Starnes-ported Trick Flow heads, Edelbrock Victor Jr intake, and a Pro Systems carburetor. We know power is not the issue for Wilson. He ran 140 mph at Bradenton; harnessing that power off the line has been the challenge so far. Once Wilson gets that figured out, fellow Pure Street racer, and class defending champion Teddy Weaver is going to have his hands full.