Team Speedway's '86 Corvette

Editor's note: be sure to check out the latest on this crazy Corvette at the bottom of the article!

The “zero to hero” story of this ’86 Corvette started when Team Speedway’s head honcho Bill Schneider walked out into his field one day and began eying the decrepit maroon ‘Vette languishing in the weeds. He had acquired it years prior in one of those deals that was too good to pass up, without really knowing what he was going to do with it. (Haven’t we all been there?) There it sat, a stock L98 powered 80’s time capsule, complete with sun baked paint, a cracked glass top, and the infamous Doug Nash 4+3 transmission.

Bill opened the creaky door and sat down in the driver’s seat. He had seen Corvettes dominating the autocross competitions he had attended with the Team Speedway race cars, and he started to daydream about the potential of this one. After all, the C4 was a huge step in the Corvette’s evolution, and some well-chosen mods might make this one a contender. Just then, a mouse peeked out from under the dash, no doubt wondering who was intruding into his home. It was then that Bill decided to drag the Corvette into the shop and give it a new life. But first, to evict its current tenants.

The transformation into the beast you see here was more of an evolution. Aside from the Corvette’s aesthetic challenges, it was a fairly low-mileage, running car. Some fresh tires, oil, and plugs made it a driver again, and as Bill cruised it around town he noticed a couple things. First, even with the stone stock suspension, it was an amazingly well balanced, tight handling car. And second, the oxidized maroon paint made it look like it belonged on a used car lot on the wrong side of the tracks. A scuff and respray with some cheap flat-black enamel fixed that problem. After all, this was going to be a race car, not a showboat.

In this form, rolling on used sticky rubber leftover from the real race cars, the Corvette started its competition career. Still sporting the stock L98 TPI engine, Bill learned how to wring the most out of its 230 horsepower. In this form, your author was even able to run the car in the CAM class at the SCCA Solo Nationals. Other than the lingering smell of mouse nest in the interior, the stock ‘Vette performed admirably and was in fact capable of far more than I was able to deliver from behind the wheel. A turn in the passenger’s seat with an experienced driver proved that fact.

Bill then turned his attention to a couple of the open road races that are held on Nebraska’s wide open rural highways. The Corvette’s first high-speed event was the Big Blue Mile in 2017. In a standing start mile, the still-stock Vette managed 140 mph.

In the coming years, Bill continued to improve the car. The Doug Nash transmission wasn’t exactly conducive to racing, so Bill selected a Tremec TKO 5-speed from the Speedway Motors catalog. But there was a problem. C4 ‘Vettes have a torque arm that runs parallel to the driveshaft and bolts to the back of the stock transmission. With no place to mount it to the Tremec, Bill and the Speedway Motors R&D crew got busy drawing up a solution. The resulting bracket solved the mounting problem and has proven its ability to withstand some serious abuse in Bill’s car. As a bonus, these bracket kits will soon be available in the Speedway Motors catalog.

The Tremec made the car way more fun to drive, but only made it a few miles per hour faster in the standing mile. Time for nitrous. It was clear that the stock engine would have to go eventually, so why not retire it in spectacular fashion? Once Bill learned that a regular bottle would empty itself before a full mile was up, a big “mother bottle” was fitted and finally netted a 150 mph standing mile pass. Not bad for an internally stock TPI small block. Around this time, Bill also started running the car at the Sandhills Open Road Challenge with his daughter Paige as navigator.

In spite of his best efforts to kill it, the famously tough L98 kept on ticking. But Bill could no longer fight the temptation to go big, and a 454-inch small block from BluePrint Engines was rolled out of the corner of the race shop. The big inch small block more than doubled the stock 350’s power figures. It turned the docile stocker into a loping, barking monster almost overnight. It was paired with a DeWitt's radiator to keep the all those cubes cool.

The humble old Corvette was becoming a pretty serious track car at this point, so master fabricators Dave Wallace and Matt Allen were called up from the Speedway Motors machine shop to build a roll bar. The stock buckets were ditched in favor of some aluminum Kirkey racing seats, and Simpson five-point harnesses were attached to the new roll bar. The carpet was tossed (likely to eradicate the mouse smell once and for all) and the stock dash remains. The Corvette’s digital instruments might look like a bad 1980’s video game, but they work just fine for Bill, thank you very much.

The suspension is amazingly stock. Bill pirated the higher-rated springs from an ’84 and bigger stabilizer bars from a Z51-package car, but otherwise it’s all 1980’s GM technology. Other than some mods to the stock spring mounts to lower the car, the only real magic in Bill’s combination is a set of custom, double adjustable QA1 shocks modified by the Speedway Motors Shock Department.

Big power demands big brakes. A C4 brake kit from Wilwood is paired to a trick Wilwood pedal assembly to haul the car down to civilized speeds after the run is over. To round out the rolling stock, a set of 18”x11” Rocket Attack wheels mount sticky 335 rear/315 front BFG rubber. The stock wheelwells aren’t quite able to fully enclose the giant tires, so Bill has plans to fit some Gran Sport style flares at some point in the future.

Bill’s Corvette has come a long way from its humble beginnings as little more than a mouse house. It’s now a serious track car with some podium finishes to its credit. When Bill is too busy running the show with the other Team Speedway cars, Brian Martin gets a turn as the Corvette’s pilot. With a win in the PRO class at the 2021 Goodguys Salt Lake Nationals and consistent finishes within a half second of first place, Brian has proven that he and the Corvette are serious competitors. But, if you think that Brian is some kind of ringer brought in to wheel the Corvette to victory, you’d be wrong. In fact, Brian was brought in to wheel something entirely different: the Team Speedway semi. Turns out, the truck driver also happens to be an outstanding race driver. Go figure.

As is so often the case, too much power just isn’t quite enough for Bill. What’s slated to come next for the Corvette is really going to up the ante. Over the past couple years, Bill has been working with the crew at Speedway Motors Racing Engines to put together a budget-friendly twin turbo 5.3 LS. It’s currently running on the run stand, and Bill has a date with the dyno scheduled in the coming weeks to really put the screws to it and see what kind of power it will make. The ‘Vette is a handful with its current small block. It’s going to be an absolute monster with the insane power from the turbo engine.

Stay tuned-there’s plenty more to come in the story of this little black Corvette, and things are just getting good!

To make it happen, the crew at Speedway Motors Racing Engines was tapped in to beef up the stock 5.3 bottom end with ARP fasteners throughout and piston rings with a bigger gap suitable for a power adder engine. The stock head bolts were replaced with ARP studs to help hold the boost. Then came the fun part. As it turns out, real estate is limited under a C4 hood when you add an LS engine, a pair of turbos, and a pair of intercoolers. The Team Speedway solution? Let it all hang out. The turbos are proudly positioned high and in front of the engine, poking through the hood along with the exhaust. While you might be expecting some round exhaust tubing, these guys instead chose to build some one-off exhaust "boxes" with the exhaust actually exiting through the Speedway Motors logo! Cool. To make it all fit, the Team Speedway crew ordered up a set of C4 Corvette LS motor mount adapters and backed it up with a Tremec TKX transmission. The fuel system was also upgraded with an Aeromotive pump adapted to the stock cartridge in the stock tank.

Of course, the obvious question here is "how much power." A sacrificial 5.3 with this setup made over 1,000 horsepower on the Speedway Motors Racing Engines dyno, but it proved to be too much for the main bearings. Another junkyard lump was located for the 'Vette and treated to a similar setup with the boost dialed down a few notches. It made 750 horsepower on the dyno and has proven reliable over a half season of autocross and open road racing. At the ECTA Horsepower Harvest, the old C4 that was once left for dead in the field went 178 mph. That's supercar speed from a junkyard 'Vette.