After winning back-to-back ODSS Pro Street championships in his Cummins-powered first-gen Ford Lightning, Dustin Jackson turned the keys over to his wife, Mindy, the very next season. Her experience in drag racing up to that time? Zero. Nada. None. Turns out, she’s a natural. First, Mindy learned how to do a burnout, then how to properly stage the truck, and then everything else that comes along with piloting a 1,500hp vehicle. Within two weeks’ time—and thanks to some invaluable tutelage from Dustin and good friend, Daniel Pierce of Power Source Diesel—she was licensed and headed to her first race. That season, 2019, Mindy would drive the “Old Hustle, New Flow” Ford to three wins and earn the 5.90 Index class title.
While Mindy seemingly came out of nowhere to dominate the 5.90 field, her F-150 has been a proven performer for nearly a decade. Originally built by Zane Koch, the Lightning ran 10’s right out of the gate (and unbelievably under 7.3L power), then quickly went 9’s, followed by a common-rail Cummins-swap and 8’s in the quarter-mile. Once Dustin obtained the wheels-up Ford back in 2015 he took things to the next level, being one of the first to pioneer a TH400 transmission in the diesel drag racing game and regularly outrunning the truck’s chassis certification. By the time Dustin wrapped up the 2018 Pro Street title, the truck could turn out a 5.0-second eighth-mile on virtually every pass, 5.00 being the fastest a Pro Street vehicle was allowed to run at the time.
So what’s under the hood? It starts with a 6.4L Shredder series common-rail Cummins from Industrial Injection. Dynomite Diesel Products provides the fueling thanks to 12mm CP3’s and a proprietary set of injectors. Boost production is handled by us: a single, 5-Blade Mobster XL S476 bolted to our high-flow, Competition T-6 24-valve exhaust manifold. The latter combination got the job done in 5.90 Index without the need for any injectables. However, with a .52 jet thrown into the mix at the Texas Truck Jam back in August, the 5-blade Mobster supported a pass in the 5.70s—good enough to give Mindy the win in the Pro Limited class.
At the present time, one of our S485 Godfather’s sits in place of the S476 and Mindy is primarily racing in her native Texas. There, she’s beating up on the spark-ignition crowd on the local gas vs. diesel scene. In honing her skills against the gas guys, Mindy has had to drop her reaction times in order to be competitive. She’s even squeaked a 1.17-second 60-foot out of the 4,500-pound Ford, a stat Dustin will tell you he never achieved when he was behind the wheel… If her plans to rejoin the Outlaw Diesel Super Series circuit hold true in 2021, she’ll likely be even more deadly on the tree than she was in 2019, and we look forward to seeing that!
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