PARTNER PROFILE

Rhodes is both a successful entrepreneur with his Rhodes Custom Auto business and he is an accomplished racer. His propensity for achieving maximum results has led to numerous X275 championships, most recently taking the class crown for the 2024 Radial Outlaws Racing Series championship.

How Ron Rhodes and Sonnax teamed up to keep the famed racer at the top of the X275 ranks

BY STEVE BAUR

Rhodes’ vivid red Chevy Camaro is widely recognized in drag racing as well as the X275 ranks, where he pilots his nitrous-oxide-injected, big-block-powered, and leaf-spring-suspended machine to top elapsed times and event wins. The Camaro has a long, storied history going back to its roots as a street car, and it has been Rhodes’ relentless pursuit of performance that has taken it to where it is today.

Looking back to 2022, Rhodes’ small-block combination lived on the edge of reliability and so did his RPM Transmissions-built Turbo 400. The Delaware-based racer squeezed every ounce of performance out of his drivetrain. With the transmission, eventually he began finding the limits of what the internal parts were capable of.

“ I had been running lightweight aftermarket parts,” Rhodes remarks of his previous transmission program. At a big event, it became evident that it just wasn’ t the right equipment for the task at hand and it cost him a record run as well as the race win.

Rhodes had RPM Transmissions set up his Turbo 400 with a traditional larger drum thinking that it wouldn’ t slow the car down too much. Reliability improved, but the larger and heavier components did not perform as well as the lightweight part previously used. The decrease in performance was notable and Rhodes couldn’ t recover the lost performance through other means.

“ Rodney [ Massengale ] mentioned the Sonnax drum to me,” Rhodes says of his introduction to the Sonnax Smart-Tech drum module.“ Anybody who knows about Sonnax knows they do their homework and their stuff is awesome. Rodney knows his stuff and I trust what he tells me so I said,‘ I’ m in.’ He put it in and it was hands down faster than the big drums. The car wanted to accelerate faster and earlier.”

According to Rhodes and Massengale, owner of RPM Transmissions, Rhodes was the first to use the Sonnax Smart-Tech drum module in X275 and the change resulted in improved performance numbers on track while providing the reliability he sought as well as the increased safety that the module is known for.

The Sonnax module replaces the traditional forward / direct drum design with a more efficient, single-drum system. With its combination of lighter components and redistributed mass, the module takes less energy to run and puts less strain on the transmission than typical aftermarket aluminum drums. An added benefit: the single-drum design eliminates the flaw in the two-drum setup that has occasionally been known to cause catastrophic transmission failure.

Rhodes paired the Sonnax module-equipped and RPM Transmissions-built Turbo 400 with lockup with a Neal Chance torque converter and ran that behind the small-block for a full year with no issues. His consistent drive towards improving his racing program had him look at his engine program next, now that the transmission program was fully capable of delivering the performance he required from it.

“ The class was progressing and the rules makers try to make the small-block Chevy competitive,” Rhodes says. The displacement limit at the time was 500, but then the rules were opened up for even bigger engines.“ It’ s been a challenge to get the Camaro to weight,” Rhodes notes of the small-block combination.“ Do we stick with the small-block Chevy and build another engine or go big-block and maybe get more longevity out of it?”

As it turned out, Rhodes was ready for another change and worked with Bischoff Engine Ser-

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TARA BOWKER

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