The automotive YouTube world received a steroid shot in the arm back in 2012 thanks to Dave Freiburger and Mike Finnegan’s Roadkill YouTube show. The show was an instant favorite among pretty much every age bracket of automotive enthusiast, and proved that you didn’t have to have everything done just right in order to get out and have a good time in a car with your buddies.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, the show featured the two Hot Rod Magazine staffers doing, well, what they know how to do best: find a car wholly inadequate to make a cross country journey and do just that, on a shoestring budget to boot!
One of the shows long time favorite cars was Finnegan’s “Rotsun”. What originally started out life as a 1971 Datsun 240Z eventually turned into the vehicle that you see in this article. Over the decades it fell out of use and into utter detritus. Mother Nature put it on her standard weight loss regimen with the primary supplements of choice being rust and corrosion.
Thanks to Finnegan and Freiburger, somehow the Datsun found a new lease on life as the “Rotsun”. Since then, the tetanus hazard on wheels began to enjoy (a not so easy) life by receiving incremental improvements in the form of various engine swaps and go-fast parts. But, in order to receive better parts and upgrades, it seemingly had to fail in spectacular fashion each time.
A month or so back, Mike Finnegan reached out to the Ridetech team and shared some exciting news. The Rotsun was going to be participating in Sick Week, a popular drag- and drive event started by none other than six-time Hot Rod Drag Week winner Tom Bailey.
A couple of Mike’s friends offered to take the car and put some proper parts on the car and get it into shape for the week long event and they were in need of some proper rear suspension components. We like to see unassuming cars go fast, so we couldn’t help but oblige. Often times timing and logistics don’t quite work out as we’d like. While we would have preferred to equip the Rotsun with a set of three way adjustable TQ coil-overs, our HQ single adjustable coil-overs, a set of our patented R-joints, and some sway bar builder components shipped out of Ridetech HQ on their way to the boys at OK Race Fabrication in Scottsboro, Alabama.
Taylor Jones and Caden Stephens then proceeded to spend countless hours and many sleepless nights whipping the Rotsun into shape for the event, all of which led to the fastest E/T the Rotsun has ever bagged, an 11.46 @ 122 mph.
While we’d love to share the entire story with you in blog form, we’d prefer to let these talented fabricators and storytellers do it in their own native tongue.
Head on over to their YouTube channels (Filthy Built & Rowdy Street Cars) for the full story as they cover their progress and Sick Week experience in multiple episodes. If you’re a drag-and-drive junkie we’re sure you’ll enjoy.
