New Edge Mustang Drag Car

Constructed with an eye toward FFW Renegade and an occasional Outlaw 10.5W race, Dan has already delivered a 7.77-second e.t. at 185 mph (5.01-second e.t. best in eighth).

Horse Sense: The first great Pro 5.0 car was the '96 Cobra that Mark Wilkinson's Racecraft Inc. chassis shop built for custom firearm-maker Les Baer. Les has left the ravages of heads-up Mustang drag racing for the rewards of rare-musclecar collecting (Boss 429 Mustangs and '70 Hemi 'Cudas are his favorites right now). Mark has continued to deliver cutting-edge chassis and suspension parts to his many racing customers.

In the world of heads-up Ford drag racing in 2006, a racer has the opportunity to choose from several different classes. Which class to race comes down to interest, schedule, and budgetary constraints. Smart racers often pick classes they can afford to run in, are close to their homes, and have some national impact for their sponsors and their own egos. Balancing dreams of a national championship with the reality of paying for it often brings even the most talented car builder to a screeching halt. Problems still exist once you've made that fateful decision on which class to run because you never know when class rules will change. Imagine being six months into a project, only to find out that a major rules change by one of the sanctioning bodies makes your combination either obsolete or illegal.

At 3,020 pounds (with driver), this 360-inch small-block Mustang blasts through the quarter at more than 185 mph. The boost is provided via a ProCharger F-2 supercharger in the amount of 30 psi. Dan uses a ProCharger intercooler he describes as "the big one."

Luckily for Minnesota native, Dan Schoneck, his path to righteous speed led him toward the top of heads-up Mustang classes-a place where radical rule changes can certainly have an impact on the car, but don't usually turn it into junk overnight-well, so he thought. Dan initially took the car to Racecraft (a well-known leader in the world of Mustang race-car chassis smiths) with instructions to design a 25.5 SFI-certified chassis with a stock suspension in preparation to do battle in Fun Ford Weekend's Street Renegade class.

"After a couple of people asked for ladder bars in FFW, the rules were changed and so did my plans for the car," Dan told us. "The new plans called for one of the baddest 28x10-inch-tire, ladder-bar cars in the country-not to mention a 25.2 SFI chassis good to below 7.50-second e.t.'s."

While Mark and company were pounding away on the body-in-white, Dan got to work on a small-block Ford combination that Jim Summers, now of ProCharger, originally designed when he was at ASSC Racing in Chicago. Dan parted out his '84 GT350 race car, and the only transferable parts were the FAST fuel injection, Performance Automatic transmission, and the PST carbon-fiber driveshaft.

Perhaps it was the long weekends he spent at Racecraft working on the car or the smell of high-octane racing fuel, but Dan decided it would be a good idea to go into the composite-body-panel business, so he started Schoneck Composites. Actually, Mark had a lot to do with that, but Dan's initiative is unmistakable. With his brother and good friend, John King, Dan designed molds for the hood, wheel tubs, and cowl filler pieces you see on his own car. Dan's brother designed the trick carbon-fiber inlet from the bumper to the awaiting F-2 ProCharger.

Custom "double-throw-down" suspension and chassis pieces abound. Mark incorporated his new 2-inch drop spindles, multi-position ladder-bar brackets, and chrome-moly ladder bars. He used his "Pro 5.0-spec" chrome-moly rearend to solidify power transfer. Mark also went to the trouble to pre-fit the chassis for use with larger tires, should Dan so desire. This involved notching the rear end to adjust for the correct ride height and suspension travel.

"This car is special because we have our new ladder bars on it," Mark told us. "It's got the new Racecraft adjustable front brackets. Most of your typical ladder-bar setups have only three or four holes to position the bars-ours have a multitude of holes so you can move the brackets in quarter-inch increments. Sometimes you have cars that one hole is close, and the next isn't quite right either. Our bars allow you to put the bars right in the middle where it should be."