The producer Bill Ham and the engineer Terry Manning joined Gibbons in Memphis, Tennessee, to edit the songs, replacing much of the contributions of bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard.

Ham claimed the album was solely the work of ZZ Top, but in 1986 Hudson won a lawsuit establishing himself as composer of the song "Thug".

Music videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs" received regular rotation on MTV and helped ZZ Top gain popularity with a younger base.

Bandleader and guitarist Billy Gibbons traveled around Europe, and bassist Dusty Hill vacationed in Mexico; both grew their beards longer.

Drummer Frank Beard checked into Palmer Drug Abuse Program, a Houston detox community, for his addiction to hard narcotics.

To help finance Palmer, Beard organized a benefit concert and an album titled Freeway, working with engineers Steve Ames and Linden Hudson at Rampart Studios in Houston.

Hudson played on several demos, including a synth line on "Groovy Little Hippie Pad" which was mixed into the album by ZZ Top's engineer Terry Manning.

[10] They carried a small tape player to each concert, with a technician hitting the "play" button to give Beard a click track cue in his headphones.

[14][15] None of this was made public; Bill Ham, the band's manager, was closely controlling their image to create a "mystique" of self-sufficiency and authenticity.

A former radio DJ, Hudson presented Gibbons with personal research showing that many hit songs were clustered near a tempo of 124 beats per minute—faster than ZZ Top's normal practice.

For the majority of songs, Gibbons played Dean guitars with DiMarzio super distortion pickups, plugged into a Legend hybrid amplifier, and miked with an AKG 414B-ULS large-diaphragm condenser microphone.

ZZ Top's management company—Lone Wolf—denied that Hudson was significantly involved, and said that the album concept was solely the work of Gibbons and Ham.

"[11] The album was named for a drag racing term after Ham said the band should feature Gibbons's newly customized 1933 Ford coupe.

An early suggestion for the album title came from filmmaker Mike Griffin who proposed Top Fuel, but Ham shifted the idea to Eliminator—the term for any category of race cars competing against each other.

The car has become recognizable for its red finish and graphics, and is in several of the band's music videos, plus appearances in television, movies, auto shows, and charity events.

Eliminator was the first ZZ Top album to become a worldwide success, and made the band "bona fide pop stars", according to the Financial Times.

After he joined Warner Bros. Records in early 1983, he convinced them to pay for the first ZZ Top music video, for "Gimme All Your Lovin'".

[36] According to Texas Monthly, the album's synthesizer sound was "perfect" for the MTV audience, who had previously seen ZZ Top as an "old-fogey band".

[4] For "Legs", Newman negotiated a fixed payment every time Eliminator was certified for another 250,000 units sold in the US, earning him a substantial sum.

From May to October 1983 the band toured the US, interrupted in August by several days in Ireland and the British Isles, playing Dublin and then Castle Donington: the Monsters of Rock concert.

[38] The European leg of the tour in October–November 1983 brought the band to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium and back to the UK, including one added date at Wembley Arena to meet demand.

At each concert on the final song, a smoke bomb was triggered, then parts of the lighting structure along with a mannequin roadie crashed down from the overhead grid to simulate a rigging failure.

"[41] Writing for Record, Samuel Graham found it lacked variety compared to the band's previous albums, but praised "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Legs", "Thug", and "I Need You Tonight".

The prominent use of synthesizers and drum machines marked a significant change for ZZ Top, and drew speculation that Hill and Beard did not play on the album.

[46] Spin's Glen O'Brien wrote in 1986 that the "average ZZ Top fan" was no longer a long-time follower but a young person who had discovered them through music videos.

[23] Guitar World wrote in 2002 that ZZ Top had been expected to fail in the MTV era, but that they "surprised everyone with Eliminator, a brilliant merger of roadhouse blues and synthesizer swells and looped beats".

[48] The Houston Chronicle wrote in 2018 that it brought together Gibbons's classic rock foundation and interest in new-wave synthesizers, retaining "a sense of the Delta blues under all the technology".

[46] Critic Alan di Perna wrote in 2012 that "ZZ Top had found the potent combination that would bring them into the eighties and their era of greatest commercial triumph: raunchy guitar sounds coupled with the pounding drive and unrelenting sex machine rhythmic precision of electronic dance music and synth pop".