David Nickens wanted to see how well he could do. Sportsman drag racing Jeff icon Jeff Taylor was all too willing to give it a shot. They wanted to give a Factory Stock Showdown a shot.

Well, maybe not the class or the car. 

Starting next season, Competition Eliminator’s dynamic duo will get a chance to have their cake and eat it, too. Next year they will hit the track with a destroked, 360-inch. Magnuson supercharged LS platform engine in a Dodge Stratus. 

For the J&A Services-sponsored Nickens and Taylor, the move is well outside of their comfort zone. The duo built their name on the ability to make carbureted cars go fast and win. 

“I guess it’s the adventure of trying something new,” said Nickens, who plans to run the new car in BB/Altered. “I don’t know what inspired this direction. I’ve never worked on a supercharged car. Never raced one for sure. And it looks like it’ll be a lot of fun.”

Nickens and Taylor have tested the combination with reasonable results. Most recently, they brought out the BB/Altered car in testing at Tulsa Raceway Park ahead of the NHRA Division 4 event last month. 

“We think we know how to make power; we just got to figure out how to manage it,” Nickens admitted. “It’s a different combination. They basically run 14.71 blowers. And we’ve got a lot smaller supercharger on it. And I would say they probably have in the high twenties, low thirties, around a boost. And we’re probably going to try to manage this thing with less boost than that. Until we learn how to run it, for sure. So we’ve just got our feet wet, and we’re trying to inch into it. But it looks like it’s got a lot of potential.”

Nickens said the combination has yielded positive short times. But, he’s quick to point out that issues with the combination must be addressed before it replaces their B/Altered Planetary Cobalt. 

Taylor, who has easily tens of thousands of runs down the drag strip, said this ride is much different than the others that have carried him down the drag strip. 

“It’s cool. It’s loud. At least you can tell when it’s running,” Taylor said with a smile. “It doesn’t sound like much till you do a burnout, but when you step on the gas and, it pulls really good. It’ll be exciting to get it to run to the finish line.”

In the Competition Eliminator chess game of working the index, CC/Altered works well for them. 

“That index is so good, but that’s going to be real good when we get it sorted out,” Taylor said. “It’s going to be good, real good. It’s got an automatic in it now. That’s one thing that’s kind of hurting us a little bit right now, is there’s so much to do to it between rounds. It really needs a five-speed in it, and it’ll be real fast.”