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"There isn't a lot of stuff that we can do to these engines," said Owens, a service manager for two Dodge dealerships. "This is Stock Eliminator, so every little thing you know about what your engine is going to want - or not want - gives you the potential to go faster." To that point, Cape Girardeau, Missouri-based Owens has a log book that is bursting with information to draw from, and in the past three years, he has recorded everything that has been changed or tweaked on the car. He isn't alone in the quest for digging up as much horsepower as possible for his sleek '66 Chevelle; he wisely enlisted the help of engine guru Tony Bischoff of BES Racing Engines when he returned to racing after taking several years off to focus on his family.
"He said that he had never done an engine like that before but that he'd be glad to try, so we took my old engine up and dyno'd it, and he built a brand new engine that was right at 30-horsepower more. He's a very, very smart fella. I give him a lot of credit." Owens is another one of those racers who really didn't have a chance at not being involved in the sport somehow and at some point. He started going to weekly races at an abandoned airbase in Malden, Mo., with his dad, Terry Owens, and his Uncle, Lex Horner, when he was just a toddler.
"We didn't even know at the time that this was a rare car," said Owens. "It's an original Hemi car. Well, Sikeston Drag Strip was getting ready to open back up, and my dad said, why don't we race this car and find you something else to drive? I wasn't 16 yet, so I was good with it, and I was thinking I would race it, too." They dropped a 440 in it and the elder Owens raced it to his heart's contentment, and his son ended up with his first '66 Chevelle - a convertible. The car served him well, and he drove it back and forth to high school and even drove it when he dated the gal he would later marry, Joyce. Owens still owns the convertible and plans to restore it one day, but his race cars varied through the years until he landed on the gorgeous '66 Chevelle he drives today.
"I went to the Fall Classic, and that's all it took," recalled Owens. "I knew I was ready to get back into it. I originally thought I'd race the Road Runner, but when I started pricing things and trying to figure out how much it would take to run it, I realized it would probably be less expensive to do a Chevelle. I liked the '66 and still had plenty of parts from when I built the convertible, so that's what we did. We bought another '66 and started on it in January of 2007. That October, we ran it at Kansas City." The 10 month build was basically a ground up project. The Chevelle had been raced on the oval dirt track, so Owens and his son Alex, along with friend and paint magician Danny Eaker, took everything apart, down to the bare frame that they cleaned up and painted with a layer of clear coat, and then began assembly. The entire build was done in their garage at home, and Eaker managed the incredibly clean body work and paint that Owens describes as "flawless" in his own shop nearby. Steve Decker tuned their suspension parts and got things going.
So far, with the help of Bischoff, horsepower has been pleasingly evident. Last season, Owens was No. 1 qualifier five times, including at the Cajun SPORTSnationals in Belle Rose and the points meet at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis. In 2009, Owens shared a proud moment with his family when he won the national open at Gateway Int'l Raceway in St. Louis after he was runner-up at the divisional event in Memphis the weekend prior. Having his family, including granddaughter Myra with whom he shares a birthday, there to celebrate in St. Louis was something very special for Owens. Their support has been a big part of his racing, and he thanked wife Joyce, son Alex, dad Terry, and friends Danny Byrd and Dean Oliver.
The performance aspect of drag racing is where it's at for Owens. He is proud to state that last season on Nitro Joe's Drag Racing Stats his was listed as the fastest car in three different classes: K/SA, L/SA and M/SA. The quickest the car has gone is 11.46 in K/SA. Winning the national open gave him a taste of what it might be like to celebrate in the winner's circle on a grander scale, and sure, that would be nice, but Owens is willing to hand over the driving to Alex (the guy generally behind the camera at the races), who recently turned 16, when the time is right, and he claims he will be completely content to allow that to happen and happily settle into a role of Papa Tuner, still aiming to find little bits of horsepower here and there while staying within the strict boundaries of the Stock Eliminator category.
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