TJ Pruitt
By Ainsley Jacobs
The word’s first seven-second independent rear suspension (IRS) 5th gen Camaro has arrived, and NMCA racer George Farkouh of Farks Supercars drove it. Based out of Brooklyn, NY, Farkouh was actually piloting the cherry 2010 Camaro owned by American Racing Headers/Farks Supercars when he made the record-setting 7.998 at 173.29 MPH pass.
Farks Supercars, owned by George’s father Farid, did all of the chassis work on the SFI 25.3-spec car and put his 30+ years of knowledge to work building the big red beast. Boosted by a ProCharger F-1C supercharger with a Chassisworks Component Drive System, the 429 CI RHS LSX block is mated to Mast Motorsports’ Black Label cylinder heads. Late Model Engines built the motor and the team runs a FAST XFI system for engine management, and was tuned by Tune Time Performance. Internals include a complete Jesel valvetrain and Diamond pistons. Farkouh also credits the work they’ve done with Cam Motion to find the right cam for their application as being a big part of the car’s success. “We were pretty down on power compared to the nitrous cars at the beginning of the season, but Cam Motion has made us very competitive,” he says.
Farks/ARH’s late-model Camaro sports a host of suspension goodies from the top names in the industry, all of which played a significant role in the IRS Camaro’s blistering run. In the rear, the car uses BMR’s control arms and trailing arms with Santhuff coil-overs and shocks. Pedders coil-overs, originally designed for road race cars, can be found up front. Louie Filippides at American Racing Headers explains “no one had anything for the front for drag racing with a 5th Gen when we started building the car. Pedders’ stuff worked great, so we stuck with it.” With the exception of the no-hop solid bushings from Farks, the subframe itself is all stock.
Other components on the car include a TH400 from RPM Transmission, ProTorque converter, a Hendrix Engineering Ford 9-inch rear-end with 3.70 gears, and axles and a carbon fiber driveshaft from the Driveshaft Shop. Additionally, the team at JTM Motorsports has stepped up with lots of help throughout the build process.
The unprecedented run happened during the 5th Annual Holley LS Fest during LSX Real Street eliminations on September 7, 2014 at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Farkouh’s feat of becoming the first to run a seven-second ET with an IRS 5th Gen Camaro wasn’t an easy accomplishment. Before the race, the guys had made some changes to the gear ratio and transmission. “We didn’t have a chance to go testing, so we just kind of hoped for the best at Kentucky. We were pretty discouraged with the car’s performance initially, and weren’t sure if we had made the right changes,” says Farkouh. Filippides agrees that they were really struggling to get the car down the track during qualifying. Eventually, the car went 8.11 during the third round of qualifying and they knew they were on the right track.
