See the cars in the lead photos of this story? They both raced in the Super Street class at HOT ROD’s Fastest Street Car in America competition, which means the launches seen here were accomplished on mere 10.5-inch slicks. How do they get those relatively narrow back tires to yank the nose 2 feet in the air? You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find out that in most cases, a bunch of stock and off-the-shelf, bolt-on parts were used. We walked the pits at Memphis and lay under several of the harder-leaving Super Street cars to come up with some tricks to help you make your street car hook up.
The overwhelming notion that we took away from Memphis was that stock suspension parts work very well when combined with the right traction aids and tuning. The following tips will concentrate on how to get the most out of a stock-type suspension, instead of getting deep into the hard-core and expensive alternatives of aftermarket four-links and ladder bars. As you’ll see, most of these cars were running deep into the 9s (and even the 8s!) and turning amazing 60-foot times with nothing more than bolt-on parts. While most of the photos show cars with slicks, the information still applies when running sticky street tires. Just don’t expect them to hook quite as well as slicks.
