With the Big Red team working together, everyone understood Larry was in charge of the engines, period. Sure, some parts can be mentioned, but it’s Larry, with his years of experience, who made the decision about which parts were used on Big Red’s engines. An MSD Pro-Billet Distributor Chevy V8 was Larry’s choice on The Beast 555 engine for making the ignition perform to his liking. This distributor is designed primarily for race engines and is made with an oversized bronze gear.

The latest Dave Ward-winning idea was to use a different MSD distributor with vacuum advance for the Elephant 2, a 565 blown engine. Dave reengineered and fabricated parts to retard the timing via boost pressure. Another change for The Elephant 2 configuration was the use of an MSD-8 Plus timing box so the engine setup was allowed in its SCTA class.