The venerable Gen 3 Hemi engine platform, introduced nearly a quarter century ago, is arguably only now coming into its own as an enthusiast engine platform to rival and perhaps supersede its modern Detroit small-block counterparts in an availability, affordability, and vital aftermarket support. Blackbird Performance’s Geoff Turk has helped to pioneer that charge, bringing his wealth of experience developing the Gen 3 Hemi on and off the racetrack. Turk has combined that with a personal mission to grow the sport and provide opportunity to up and coming drivers with his line of race-ready engine packages and components to make racing dreams a reality.
Turk has had a front row seat to the ongoing evolution in the sport, as the prime car-buying demographic of young and middle-aged enthusiasts who gravitate to classic iron like their forefathers seek out modern engine packages to being the vehicles up to today’s performance standards using technology that would have seemed paranormal in the 1960s or 70s. One such racer is Washington native and second-generation drag racer Tanner Ellingsen, who has formed a unique partnership with Turk.
Ellingsen had a vision for his 1968 Dodge Dart from the start, but like a lot of racers, he spent some time getting comfortable with what he already had before deciding to tear into something bigger. The car had already become a proven piece in the high 7s, and after three years of racing it that way, there was no question it was a good combination. The question was how much farther he wanted to push it, and what it was going to take to get there.
“I had a dream when I first saw this car: a blown Gen 3 Hemi with a flat hood,” Ellingsen shares. “But like anything you get the car, get used to it, improve upon it and then comfort sets in, and it did. I was really enjoying racing this car over the last three years. The thought of going faster was always on my mind but there’s the how, when, why of it all.”
That changed last season when his father, Ron, brought a Hellcat-swapped Dart to the track and Tanner got a taste of a different kind of combination, one that was making power in a way that got his attention in a hurry.
“It wasn’t until my dad took his Dart to the track last year and I had an absolute blast trying my hand at power management and to see the results,” he says. “Every pass the car just kept picking up by leaps and bounds. At that moment I knew it was time for a change, I just couldn’t get anymore out of my combo unless I added a lot more maintenance and some bottles.”
That’s where Turk entered the picture. Ellingsen happened across a Blackbird Performance post on Facebook featuring his father’s old Pro Stock truck, and that was enough to get the wheels turning. He reached out asking for what he thought was probably a long shot.
“Later that week I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a post about the truck. We both immediately got excited, like ‘what are they doing to it? How fast will it be?’ And it hit me, we could do it too. I emailed Geoff asking for something I thought was crazy: a low maintenance, low 7-second motor, not expecting a reply honestly.”
Turk replied within hours. “He replied, ‘that is a crazy dream but we make those dreams come true every day,’” Ellingsen says of the response.
For Turk, the project made sense right away. He already knew the family’s Mopar background, and there was already a strange connection there with the old Dakota Pro Stock truck the Ellingsens used to campaign. More than that, he liked what he saw in Tanner’s Dart and understood exactly what he was trying to do with it.
“The Ellingsens have been Mopar guys for a long time. It’s a very serious, full-on race car, and you can tell it’s very well put together and very well thought out,” Turk says.
The original plan was a 1,300-horsepower engine package, which in itself was a serious step up from the big-block Mopar combination that was already in the car. But as the conversations kept going, the target moved. Ellingsen wanted reliability. He wanted enough power to put the car on a path into the sixes and step it up to the fast-bracket-racing Top Sportsman class. And Turk, seeing how serious he was, started leaning harder into the project himself.
“We kept it a hydraulic cam. I told Geoff I want to do no maintenance…I want to change the oil and put fuel in it. We don’t want to adjust valves between rounds, we just want to enjoy the race weekend with our family and focus on racing,” Ellingsen explains.
“We started out as a 1,300 horsepower deal,” Turk explains. “Then he wanted to twist the knob a little bit in a couple places. And then I threw in some twisting of the knob for free because I really wanted to help him.”
The combination grew from there into a 421-inch Gen 3 Hemi using upgraded internals, including a Callies crank and rods, and then went another step when Turk elected to step up the supercharger package, as well, to a 130 mm TB inlet Whipple Superchargers 3.0L Hellcat street supercharger. What Ellingsen ended up with is a customized Blackbird Race Spec 1300 package Turk has coined the “Tanner Special.” By the time Turk was done with it, the final result was on another level, as on the dyno the engine made 1,560 horsepower.
“We could tell his long-term objective was to make the car go sixes. so I said, ‘why don’t we put a better blower on it?’ I’ll donate that upgrade on the supercharger. It was fantastic. It made 1,560 horsepower and ran like it should,” Turk says.
Just as important as the peak number is the way it made that power. Turk said the engine is only making around 21 to 22 pounds of boost, with the blower operating in a ‘safe’ RPM range, which gets to the core of how he sells these engine packages in the first place. He isn’t interested in selling a big dyno number that comes with a short fuse.
“I only deal in performance that is reliable,” Turk says. “I never talk about performance levels that aren’t reliable because to me that doesn’t matter. Racers are people who want to go rounds. They want to compete. They want to run multiple races a year. They want to win championships. So there has to be reliability behind those performance numbers.”
That philosophy matched what Ellingsen was after from the beginning. He wasn’t looking for a hero pass or a combination that needed constant attention just to stay together, but a real race engine that could move the car ahead in a serious way without turning the whole deal into a maintenance nightmare.
“We first wanted a 1,200-plus horsepower motor,” Ellingsen says. “The more we talked, the lower that ‘low 7 second’ dream went. The goal became let’s campaign a 6-second, low maintenance Gen 3 hemi in NHRA Top Sportsman. This dream wouldn’t be possible if Blackbird Performance hadn’t come onboard to help us.”
Another key part of the project was making sure the engine was sorted with the electronics Ellingsen is actually going to race with. Since Ellingsen’s Dart is already built around a FuelTech ECU, Turk and his team ran the engine again on that platform, spending the extra time needed to make sure everything worked correctly with the stock crank and cam sensors.
“It’s always best to test with the control system that you’re going to race,” Turk says. “The real tune-up that matters is the one we came up with from the FuelTech.” That matters for a racer like Ellingsen, because Turk’s whole approach is centered on giving customers a combination that is fast, straightforward, and manageable. He’s not trying to make the owner dependent on a laptop tuner every time the car goes down the track. He wants them to have a package they understand and can race.
As the engine heads west, Ellingsen and his father still have plenty of work ahead of them with fabrication, plumbing, and wiring before the car is ready to run. Once it’s together, the short-term goal is to work into the mid- to low-7-second zone while Ellingsen gets seat time with the new combination. The bigger goal is no secret: “We want to show the world what a modern, low maintenance Gen 3 Hemi can do.”
“We will start chipping away at the mid to low 7 second passes as I get comfortable, with that goal of getting into the 4.30s to 4.40s in the eighth mile and 6.70s to 6.80s in the quarter. And thanks to everyone at Blackbird Performance we have plenty of horsepower to do it.”
For Blackbird Performance, that’s exactly the kind of build that helps explain where the Gen 3 Hemi market is headed. It’s about giving racers a modern Hemi package with real horsepower, real durability, and a price-to-performance value that Turk believes is tough to beat anywhere in the sport. In Ellingsen’s case, it also means a longtime Mopar racer gets to keep doing it his way, only now with a combination built to chase a much bigger number on the scoreboard.
