We’ve been keeping you up to date on the rebirth of Racin’ Jason Betwarda’s Mustang, which is being brought back to life by Joe Caldwell. The car was recently on the dyno at PSI Speed Solutions in Palmerton, PA with Frank Soldridge sorting out the combo. Soldridge, along with PSI’s machinist Gerry Cosimo have spent many a late night getting the car sorted out. “When you have multiple hands in a project, it usually comes down to one guy to go over everything to make sure it’s right. Well, I’m that guy,” Soldridge proudly says.

To refresh your memory, the car has its initial Duttweiler Performance-built 408-inch Windsor with a Dart aluminum block, Yates heads, a Wilson Performance intake, and twin 88mm turbochargers. The combination is being tuned by Soldridge via a BigStuff3 engine management system. “When the car came to me it needed some wiring, the right ProTorque converter, the driveshaft, and to double-check everything else that had been done to the car,” Soldridge says.

But he was glad to do it.

“It’s neat to get my hands into this car,” Soldridge says. Soldridge was a fan of these cars during their heyday, and even owned and raced a couple old school Pro 5.0 and Super Street Outlaw Mustangs before his current race car, so he knows and respect’s the history of these cars.

“The night we fired that car, it was an eery feeling. It was also an awesome feeling to bring the car back to life. It was really neat. We feel accomplished to be able to get the car running after 20 years. She gets a second chance at life,” he says, talking about the historic race car. “It was neat that Caldwell even wanted me to work on the car. It’s definitely a humbling experience.”

Speaking of the car running — the first couple dyno runs at PSI, Soldridge just established a baseline with the car to make sure everything was doing what it’s supposed to be. “We’re testing everything, making sure the engine and transmission and the converter are doing their part. We’re also making sure the BigStuff3 and AMS1000 boost controller are working properly. Once you have a good baseline you can start finding the sweet spot,” Soldridge adds.

Once the baseline was set, Soldridge made a couple full pulls and discovered a misfire at around 25 pounds of boost and 1,200 horsepower. The problem was traced to the car’s spark plug wires, which were the same ones that were on the engine from back in the day. Evidently, their time in the sun had come to an end. With new spark plug wires, and at 32 pounds of boost the combination made 1,600 horsepower.

Yes, that’s good power, but the biggest thing with Soldridge is that it lives at that power level. Is more power available? Sure, but Soldridge wants it to be reliable. On 20-22 pounds of boost, Frank believes the car should run 7.50s, so 32 pounds is way more than enough…for now.