Stouffer Racing – Team Bios

I went to my first drag race in July, 1982 with my friend whose dad was racing a red ’68 Cuda at the time. It was the July race at MoKan ’82 and I’ve been hooked ever since! I still remember those first few times I went.

I couldn’t wait till I could take my car and run it. The next summer we were there too. It was the July ’83 race and Big Daddy Don Garlits was going to be there to race the King of the Jets, Les Shockley.

That was really cool in that it was the first time I ever saw a Top Fuel car and a Jet Car. I’d followed Garlits previously, but never saw him in person. I was 14 at the time. I went over to his car to talk to him while he was working on it. It was like being in the presence of a King, since Garlits was literally larger than life! He was changing spark plugs in his Hemi, throwing the old ones in a pile on the ground. I remember asking him what he was doing with the old ones, and he looked up at me and just handed me one he just took out and said “Here, you want one?” I still have it! I thought that was just so cool! I also have the t shirt from that race on my wall.

Our cars

  • 2-’70 Pro Mod Hemi Cuda Race Cars
  • 526 BAE Hemi PSI-C rotor screwcharger w/carbon fiber injector
  • Lencodrive 2 speed 4,000HP alcohol Hemi
  • Best e.t. to date, 3.77 @ 201.84 at Ennis, TX in October of 2011

By the ’85 season I was 16 and driving my own car to the track to watch. My dad still wouldn’t let me run my car yet though. Finally, after begging him to let me for a long time he finally did. I believe it was the Labor Day race at MoKan ’85. John Neil was with me that day and boy did we have a blast! Everything seemed like such a big deal at the time! I jacked my ’67 Mustang up in the pits and unbolted the exhaust and tied up the pipes. We thought we had it made, running open headers! It was so loud we couldn’t believe it! Nothing compared to the Pro Mod cars we run today, but a big deal at the time.

The following season I had my first actual race car. It was a ’66 Mustang with a 302. It was caged and was much more of a race car than my ’67 which was just my everyday driver. I worked on that ’66 day and night and bought all the coolest stuff at the time I could afford. I bought a new tunnel ram and a pair of double pumpers with a street scoop. (the one that looked like an Enderle hat) I thought that was the ticket! It sure looked cool, but I realized later you don’t need 1500cfm feeding a stock pair of small block Ford heads! You couldn’t even buy aftermarket heads for a 302 back then. They didnt make them yet. I did a lot of work to those heads with the shop equipment we had while I was in vo-tech. They were probably the best flowing set of small block Ford heads around here at the time. We managed to get that ’66 to run a 13.06 that next season. We kept trying to get a 12 sec. pass, but never got there. 13.06 was very tough back then, especially on the street! I did a lot of street racing on the weekend back then. We all had a lot of fun.

I had a ’70 Boss 302 I bought in ’86 that became my primary driver car. I took it to the track several times too, and it saw severe street duty every weekend. It was the fastest car on the street around here. I outran the two fastest cars in Neosho that year at the old track we used to run on out at Crowder. I felt like I’d just won a top fuel championship! My name was even painted on the starting line. Felt pretty cool at the time.

By the ’91 season I started wanting to really go fast so I bought a cool ol ’74 Vega race car from Buddy Farmer who was running it at the time. He was running a carb on a 468. I drove it at MoKan one day when he was running.

He said, “If you drive er you’ll wanna own er!”

And he was right. I laid me down a 10.11et that day and wrote him a check! I later put an Enderle hat on the 468 and got the Vega down to a best 9.18 @ 149 during the ’94 season. It would leave and pull a giant wheel stand every time and carry the front end most times past the 60ft timers! It was a blast to drive! And superfast at the time!

By 1995 I decided I wanted to finally go Hemi and Mopar. That is when I bought my old yellow hemi Cuda. It was a bone stock street car with an old ’68 hemi in it. I had a lot of trouble with the hemi that was in the car and later bought a new Ray Barton hemi and put in it. Come to find out, the crank was bent in the old motor, but that Ray Barton hemi was one of the best purchases I ever made! The first new motor I ever had too! And it was dynoed! 776hp on race gas with a Dominator and alum heads.

That woke that ol car up! Almost too much HP for the stock bodied ‘cuda. I beefed up the 8 3/4 rearend to handle the HP and put sub frame connectors on it. I was always afraid the back glass was going to pop out on the starting line, the ol car left so hard!

The 2001 season finally brought us around to running Pro Mod. Buddy had an old Camaro he turned into a pro mod, which was pretty state of the art at the time, and we ran that car the next two seasons after running the Top Dragster series the year before. He built it with a blown big block first, but later switched to a blown hemi. I had so much fun helping him with that car that I decided to turn my ‘cuda into a pro mod. Late in the ’02 season it was torn completely apart and put together as a brand new double frame rail pro mod with a blown TFX hemi and BAE3 heads. I had quite a time making the transition to the blown alcohol deal. It was alot of fun, but I had to totally buy all new parts and all since everything I’d run before wouldnt work now. It was quite a learning curve there for a while! Seems simple at first. Blown Brad Hemi, but then you find out nothing works with anything! Literally nothing will interchange, so you spend two years running around and learning how to make this thing work. By the ’04 season though we had her lined out and took it to Tulsa for the first shake down passes. I’d never driven a pro mod yet, or a car with a Lenco, so this was a huge adjustment for me as a driver! I had the 4spd Lenco with the levers in the car originally. I’d planned on making three shake down passes to like 300ft that day just to see what would happen and get used to driving the car. I made one or two short passes and all seemed ok, so the third pass I blasted her through the 1/4 and laid down a jaw dropping 7.97et! I freaked everybody out! It was so cool!

I ran that car in that form, with various different combinations of blown hemi’s on into the 2011 season when I took delivery of my first brand new race car. A Jeffers built ’70 cuda Pro Mod with a carbon fiber body! It was the first time I’d had a car built just the way I wanted it and it was all new! It was going to be a huge change again this season getting used to a new car. Also, one much lighter and faster than the old car. It took me a few passes to get used to the feel of the new car, as it felt totally different than the old car. Better, just different. We took it to Tulsa to shake her down. We had a little trouble early on with some rod breakage and just getting a handle of the setup and all of the new car, but we soon got it lined out and I laid down a 3.88@192 at the Throwdown race in Tulsa!

We were all ecstatic at what the car had just run! We knew then that we had us a race car! All we had to do now was make laps and work on the tune up! We kept advancing all year throughout the ADRL event at Topeka where we ran a 3.92@195 and then on to Ennis, TX to the ADRL world finals where I got my first 200mph pass and first 3.70 et. We really stepped it up at that race, although we still had a lot of room to go on the tune up. We wanted to make laps and keep going faster, which we did. We ended the season with a career best e.t and mph of 3.77 @ 201.84

We all are looking forward to the 2015 season and into the future as well. We want to keep stepping up with this car and be competitive at ADRL events as well as local events throughout the Midwest. I’d like to see us run in the 3.60’s at 210mph next year and hopefully get our first event win. We have a great new race car and a great crew, all of which are dedicated to winning and running a successful program!

Jon Stouffer

Owner/Driver
Jon Stouffer, age 46 from Neosho, MO

Events ran
ADRL ’11,’12; XDRL ’13; PDRA ’14,’15; M/T Series 2013 Pro Mod Champion

Best e.t. to date: 3.69 @ 204.50 at Tulsa, OK -May 14-16

Track Record Holder at the Kansas International Dragway

First car in the 3’s!
3.94@192 mph at the Summer Nationals