The 1500HP F-Bomb Camaro in Fast and The Furious 4

Anyone who subscribes to Hot Rod magazine will instantly recognize this 1973 Chevrolet Camaro as the “F-Bomb:” a 1,500-horsepower, twin-turbocharged fiend built by editor in chief David Freiburger as an experiment in how radically a car can be modified and still be used as a regular street-bound commuter. And, as the experiment turned out, it’s a lot easier to build something truly radical than it is to build something both truly radical and tame enough for daily duty.

Painted in flat olive drab, F-Bomb was one legendary street machine that picture car coordinator Dennis McCarthy was sure to put before the eyes of Fast & Furious director Justin Lin and the film’s producers. After all, it looked seriously evil, it was already famous in the hot-rodding world and it made sense for a particular role in the movie. And, no surprise, after its audition, Freiburger’s insane creation became a movie star.

For filming, the production didn’t need the ludicrous power of Freiburger’s original. So the six replicas of the car built by the picture car department were all powered by normally aspirated, 300-horsepower, ultra-reliable GM crate V8s backed up by three-speed automatic transmissions.

The original F-Bomb doesn’t appear in the film. However, that doesn’t mean the film didn’t want a car that looked like it had 1,500 hp under its hood.

For one of the film’s climactic scenes, the F-Bomb Camaro needed to perform a wheelstand — on dirt! So one car was built with the front end stripped of as much weight as possible and a rack hung off its tail that could hold up to 2,000 pounds of iron ingots. So counterbalanced, the wheelie-ready F-Bomb would lift its front wheels on any surface including ice and Crisco.

Amazingly, three of the F-Bomb replicas survived and are in storage. The other three are currently being recycled into Hyundais.

As Portrayed Specifications*

Engine
Type: 406-cubic-inch twin-turbocharged Chevrolet small-block V8
Engine builder: Nelson Racing Engines
Intake: Nelson Racing Engines
Injection: Electromotive electronic fuel injection
Air filter: K&N
Ignition: MSD
Fuel pump: Aeromotive
Fuel plumbing: Bent
Fuel: Sunoco Racing Fuel
Lubricant: Castrol
Headers: Brodix
Exhaust pipes: Morse
Mufflers: Flowmaster

Drivetrain
Transmission: Richmond five-speed
Bell housing: Lakewood
Clutch: McLeod
Shifter: Hurst V-Gate
Driveshaft: Wenco
Differential: Strange Engineering 9-inch with spool and 3.20:1 gears

Suspension
Front: DSE
Rear: DSE with Caltracs Bars

Braking
Front: Wilwood disc
Rear: Wilwood disc

Wheels
Type: Mickey Thompson

Tires
Type: Mickey Thompson

Interior
Seats: Kirkey
Cage: Red Line Race Fab
Door Panels: Red Line Race Fab
Wheel: LA Carrera Mark 8
Gauges: Autometer

Exterior
Body: Chevrolet original equipment plus Red Line Race Fab deck spoiler
Hood: Chevrolet original equipment

Paint/Graphics
Paint: Jack’s Anarchy Graphics

THE ORIGINAL F-BOMB Camaro

The Making from Bangshift.Com

This is the ’73 Camaro that would eventually become the F-Bomb. Freiburger bought it at a rainy Pomona Swap Meet in April 2003 for $800 plus a big-block intake manifold. The car was intended to become a land-speed racer.

The Camaro’s body was amazingly straight and rust-free, and it had come from Arizona. These days, second-gen Camaros like this sell for way more than $800.

The Bomb’s original engine was a used-up 350 backed by a TH350 trans. The drivetrain was given to Christian Hazel at JP Magazine and served duty in his Jeep-Kaiser M-715 for a while.

The interior of the Camaro was gross olive green with fake sheepskins. While it looks sort of presentable in the photo, the dash was really falling apart.

The ’73 was delivered to Nelson Supercars (www.nelsonracingengines.com), ostensibly for testing header fitment. Tom Nelson decided to strip the car to bare metal and build it up with the turbo crate engine project that he had been working on.

With all the paint gone it was revealed that the car had more whacks in it than we’d supposed, though it was still reasonably free of rust. It got a new passenger-side rocker panel and fender, but all the rest of the sheetmetal remained original, even the floors and trunk.

One feature of the F-Bomb that’s been discussed a lot is the fact that the entire body was powdercoated prior to paint and bodywork. After hand-stripping the exterior, Scott Carpenter at Nelson Supercars had the interior and underside sandblasted prior to coating.

After it was coated, the Bomb went to Nick Miserendino at Red Zone Race Fabrication (http://www.myspace.com/redzoneracefabrication) who handled all the rollcage work, subframe connectors, and minitubbing.

Our favorite style points on the F-Bomb are the punch-plates linking the cage to the A-pillars. A matching panel replaces the factory plastic under the dash.

This view is looking forward on the passenger side from under the dash. It always amazed us how well Nick bent this tube (with compound bends), fed it through a tight-fitting hole in the firewall, and got it to connect to the right place in the subframe up front.

The F-Bomb uses twin Kirkey-fabricated aluminum drag seats for road and drag use but will have a Kirkey full-containment driver seat when it gets around to some land-speed racing.

In the trunk, the downbars tie into the parachute yank bar that’s located right where the license plate attaches.

The rear framerails had to be notched extensively to clear the leaf springs after the leaves were moved inboard.

The rear minitub kit is one of the first ones offered by Detroit Speed & Engineering (www.detroitspeed.com).

The rear spoiler is wind-tunnel proven, as it’s the same shape used on our land-speed-race ’80 Camaro. Red Zone also fabbed the parachute mount for the Stroud Pro Stock chute and launcher.

After all the fabrication work was done, the Camaro went back to Nelson Supercars for finish bodywork.

We mixed up a lot of different colors of army green and flat clear to try and get the right hue. We’re not exactly positive of the final mix, so if we ever need to touch up the paint again we’re going to be in trouble.

Here’s the F-Bomb still wet in the booth after the basecoat was sprayed by Scott Carpenter.

Tom, Scott, and Larry from Nelson Supercars are checking out the fit of our super-trick, custom-made, dual-pass radiator from Ron Davis (http://www.rondavisradiators.com). This is one of the best features of the car, since it stays cool in virtually any kind of traffic and heat.

Ron Davis also made the twin air-to-air intercoolers that sit ahead of the radiator. Note that all the stock hood hardware is still in place.

We had the idea for the F-Bomb graphics based on old WWII airplane nose art, but Paul Adams at Anarchy Graphics made them happen. Here are his early sketches.

This is Anarchy Paul in action, making the F-Bomb come to life.

This shows the very first iteration of the air dam on the front of the Bomb. It looked pretty cool, but was way too low to actually drive the car. It later got sliced up to make one of several new dams that have been on the car.

The public debut of the F-Bomb was here at the 2006 SEMA show in Las Vegas. The Electromotive wiring was not complete at this point, so the twin-turbo 406 still did not run.

We really dig the interior, especially the way the fabricated panels replace all the plastic that used to be under the dash pad. The steering wheel is Lecarra, the gauges are Auto Meter, and the pistol-grip shifter is from TCI. The handle to the right of the shifter is for the parachute, and there is now a second handle that cuts off the main power to the car.

The front suspension uses Moroso coils, QA1 shocks, Global West arms, and 2-inch drop spindles. All four corners have Wilwood brakes with vented rotors.

This shows the Detroit Speed reservoir and plumbing for the complete hydroboost braking setup from Hydratech (http://www.hydratechbraking.com

Set into custom paneling in the engine compartment are Earl’s coolers for the engine and trans. Adding fans to the passenger-side trans cooler dropped the trans temps by 40 degrees.

Mark Bohlen at Bent (www.bentcustomandperformance.com) handled all the trick plumbing for this 1,550hp small-block.

We were lucky enough to have Dan Lemons from Lemons Headers (www.lemonsheaders.com) route the 3-inch exhaust for us using Flowmaster mufflers.

In the trunk are twin Odyssey PC1200 batteries and a Flaming River cutoff switch. The wiring is from Painless Performance. Those brackets are intended to hold the ZEX nitrous bottle, just in case we need some extra oomph.

There are twin Auto Meter fuel-pressure gauges because the F-Bomb runs two banks of injectors and two complete Aeromotive fuel systems.

The F-Bomb has had 1,000-plus street miles since it was built, but we’ve been short on time for drag days. On the first outing, it ran 10.02 on 91 octane at low boost, and we have video of that here on the site. You’ll know when we get it sorted out for higher power levels.