The PDM28 Across Two Generations of Drag-and-Drive Racing

Devin Vanderhoof owns HCR Innovations, a wiring and tuning shop built around Holley EFI systems and serving the drag-and-drive racing community. What started as a side hobby wiring cars for friends grew into a full-time business. Devin and HCR Innovations have rewired dozens of race cars from scratch and become a trusted name in drag-and-drive wiring and tuning.

Devin is also a competitive drag-and-drive racer, with multiple event wins in series such as Sick Week and Hot Rod Drag Week. His own cars double as a proving ground for the parts and techniques HCR Innovations brings to its customers, a track record that now spans two build generations.

Drag-and-drive

Drag-and-drive cars live a double life. They run deep into the single-digit seconds at the strip, then drive hundreds of miles on public roads between events. That puts unusual demands on the electrical system. It has to control a high-horsepower, turbocharged powertrain reliably at the track, and also run the fans, pumps, lighting and driver controls needed for road use, without excess weight or a maze of point-to-point wiring.

The original

Devin’s original drag-and-drive car, a twin-turbocharged 1993 Ford Mustang convertible known as Big Ern, set the standard. It ran deep into the six-second zone at over 230 mph and racked up multiple event wins. Its successor, an S550 Mustang known as Reddi Whip, was purpose-built to go further. Its chassis and roll cage are SFI-certified for the five-second range, with a lighter build, carbon fibre body panels and a twin-turbo big-block powertrain aimed at getting it there. In both cars, Devin wanted power distribution in the same digital environment as the Holley EFI managing the engine and the CAN keypads used for driver control, rather than as a separate hard-wired system.

Devin built both cars around a Hardwire Electronics PDM28, using it to control and power each car’s electrical systems from a single solid-state unit instead of a conventional fuse and relay panel. In Reddi Whip the PDM28 is mounted on the passenger side, within easy reach for diagnostics and reconfiguration.

In each build, the PDM28 sits on the car’s CAN bus and talks directly to the Holley Dominator ECU and the CAN keypads. Instead of switches and relays triggering circuits directly, keypad inputs and ECU data are shared over the same network, and the PDM28 turns the right outputs on and off in response, powering everything from fuel pumps and fans to lighting and driver-facing switch functions.

Key aspects of the implementation

• A single PDM28 powering and controlling each car’s full electrical system, replacing a traditional relay and fuse panel with a compact, central solid-state unit, carried over from the original Mustang to Reddi Whip
• Two-way CAN bus communication with the Holley Dominator ECU, so the PDM28 and engine management share data and coordinate control instead of running as separate systems
• Direct integration with each car’s CAN keypads, so driver inputs are read straight off the CAN bus to trigger PDM outputs, with no dedicated wiring run for each switch

Becoming a dealer

Having put the PDM28 through its paces in his own cars and in customer builds, Devin saw the value it brought to drag-and-drive and race car wiring more broadly. HCR Innovations became an official Hardwire Electronics dealer, adding the full PDM range alongside the Holley, MSD, Racepak and Davis Technologies products the shop already carried.

HCR Innovations went a step further and developed its own unterminated, flying-lead wiring harnesses for the PDM28. They give customers a ready-made starting point for their installs, cut the time it takes to wire a PDM28 into a car, and draw on HCR’s hands-on experience running the module in demanding race applications.

The results

• Simpler, lighter wiring. Consolidating relay and fuse functions into one CAN-integrated module suits drag-and-drive builds, where every pound and every failure point matters.
• Coordinated control. CAN communication between the PDM28, the Holley Dominator ECU and the cockpit keypads lets the electrical system and engine management work together.
• A proven setup carried into a new build. The same PDM28 architecture from Devin’s original Mustang went straight into Reddi Whip, showing how repeatable and dependable it is.
• A new product line for HCR Innovations. Becoming a dealer and building flying-lead harnesses for the PDM28 gave HCR’s customers an easier path to the same setup Devin runs in his own cars.

Looking ahead

With the PDM28 proven across two generations of Devin’s own cars, and now available through HCR Innovations with a purpose-built harness, more drag-and-drive and race car customers have a straightforward path to the same CAN-integrated power distribution, backed by a dealer who races and wires with the product every day.