Mopar Mania Pt. 1

Hey, thanks for joining us here in the shop today.

You know, we get a lot of feedback from you

Mopar enthusiasts who like our engine projects and our build ups here. But what you really wanna see is an affordable street

Mopar

engine that uses off the shelf parts plus one that's simple to assemble, even for a Chevy guy like me. But before we get going,

here's a look at why it's easy for any gear head to appreciate that legendary pest star performance.

Ne ne

we put a dodge in our garage, honey.

No matter what your muscle car calling may be, you've got to love those monumental mo

cars from the sixties and early seventies

while they were born to run

the run they did when driven by people like racing legend Ronnie Socks in his 68 Ka.

And if you need proof that Mopar

mania still alive would just go to one of the many events for enthusiasts like this one all around the country.

We've always been a little tick left of center and uh we're very loyal,

whether they show their loyalty in the seat of a superb bird that dominated circle tracks in the seventies or behind the wheel of this supercharged 1969 roadrunner,

anybody can restore one takes a real man to cut one up.

It

is getting harder to find an ideal Mopar

street strip project car. But a bodies like the Dodge Dart and Plymouth duster make good candidates

a few seasons ago, we built up a 500 cubic inch race motor that started with a Mopar

performance block

that made 672 horsepower on the engine dyno.

And then we dropped it into Brian Sat's

71 duster and Bryan soon had himself a tire twist and consistent bracket racer knocking down quarter mile runs in the tens while knocking down the blue oval and bow tie competition.

Well, the old duster is still tearing up the tracks running deep into the tens and believe it or not, Brian's still tuning on it too. Now, he tells us there's still a lot more left in it.

Yeah. Well, here's another, a body that's dust in the competition on the show circuit

now belongs to Romeo Furio who calls this custom color match manic mango.

Now, the mostly stock body rolls on a set of bud at 17 and 18 inch Gasser rims

and the suspension has been upgraded with tubular control arms and those bear racing brakes.

The engine is a 372 Stroker small block. In fact, it uses a 340 block married up to a 360 crank

fuel deliveries handled by a fast electronic fuel injection set up. That helps it get 22 miles a gallon on the highway.

Spitfire headers feed into a pair of flow masters. All that power feeds into a trimming Tko five speed and eight and three quarter rear end,

man.

You gotta love all those a bodies even if they're not

Chevelles. After all, they're lightweight, good looking. And since Chrysler built so many of them, well, you can still pick one up pretty cheap. Yeah, that's what we plan to do after we get started with the heart of our A body project. The engines.

Now, unless you live close to a high quality machine shop, the question is who's gonna do the prep work on your block? Well, if you start with a crate motor, you found the answer after all. Why not keep it simple, affordable and easy?

Yeah. If you live in possum squat Kentucky, chances are you're gonna have to go the mail order route for most of your parts.

Now, horsepower isn't exactly reality TV. But we learned a long time ago that if you wanna be a survivor. Well, you gotta play the game by your rules.

So we made our first move by sticking our nose in the Jegs catalog where we came up with this magnum 360 short block.

They start with a season block, then do all the machining operations, like grinding the crank, boring the cylinders and resizing the rods, then they drop in a new set of aluminum pistons, a hydraulic roller cam shaft and a new timing set.

Now that roller cam that they install in the short blocks kind of mild. And we want a more aggressive piece to go with the animal brock heads that we'll vote on later.

So we got on the phone called the Comp Camps Tech line gave them such vital information as well. Compression ratio, the kind of cardboard used displacement and here's the grind. They came up with

it. Specs out at 2 32 36 degrees duration at 50 thousands with a gross lift of 5 53 5 65.

Now, the intake center lines at 110 degrees and tell you what this cam ought to make great power up to about 6000 RPM. It really ought to make my magnum P I.

Now, before we can install the new cam, we first need to get rid of the old one by removing the timing cover. Then we'll swap over the timing gear and stab the new one in place.

Well, I'll tell you what, while Chuck finishes breaking her down, we're gonna take a short break for these messages. We'll be back with more of our magnum 360 build up right after this.

Aren't you done yet?

Coming up? The Mopar

magnum gets a set of high performance heads along with an equally stout air gap intake and a 750 CFM carb to feed it

later in the show. Take a few simple tools and you can make a cool headliner that's uh kind above your neighbors.

Welcome back to the shop where today we're making some more

power power with our magnum 360 build up.

Now, I just finished installing our camshaft straight up. Then I reinstalled the timing set and the timing covered. Well, now, I guess Joe is gonna cover our butts by checking out that bottom man

before we button it up. I don't know that's a lot to cover. But since crate motors are mass produced, it's always a good idea to check your ride and main clearances. And well, if you got a set of mics in your shop, go ahead and use them. However, a piece of inexpensive plastic gauge from the parts shop will do just fine. Thanks.

After removing the cap, clean the journal

and bearing surface,

lay a piece of plastic age on the journal,

reinstall the cap and torque it to the recommended specs,

then remove the calf and using the included gauge measure the width of the plastic gauge,

what you get there. Uh Right about two thousands. That's right on the money. Well, just follow the same procedure for the rest of the rides and mains and that's it

if they are out of spec. Well, that means a trip to the machine shop.

Well, since we get to stay in our shop, we can go ahead and install our moroso eight quart oil pan. Now, what I like about this is all this internal baffling here really helps keep the oil down in the sump where it belongs plus the extra depth, keeps it away from the crank. Now, this pan will also fit just about any Mopar chassis combination and

it'll also work with just about any flywheel starter setup.

Of course, you're gonna have to use one of their extended pickups in your pump as well. But before you screw it in place, go ahead and give it a dab of thread sealant

right here. That looks pretty good

clearance on these small block mow pars is pretty tight between the oil pump and the oil pan, especially if you're using a high volume pump. So make sure you test fit everything before you cinch it down. Now, the real problem is these two bolts right here on the pump.

If they have interference, you can just go ahead and dimple the oil pan right here with a ball pin

hammer.

Well, Chuck finishes at the bottom end. Let's jump ahead. Literally,

as we mentioned earlier. Our goal is a stout but stable engine. So our combination includes a set of these Edelbrock performer heads.

The intake ports are 171 CCS for good off idle response and torque and

notice how they've been port matched and smooth to improve the flow.

Now, the 63 CC combustion chambers are filled with 2021 60 valves for about a 10 and a quarter compression ratio.

With those flattop pistons, we'll be able to run our magnum on premium pump gas since the cylinder heads are aluminum and we're using a cam that'll bleed off some of that low end cylinder pressure.

Well, I don't suppose you're ready for these things. Are you? Hey, I'm way ahead of you there, pal, I've already dropped in our comp roller lifters and a couple of these Mr gasket pieces here on the block. So now all we gotta do is hit the dial pin.

We do that

good deal.

We're using a RP bolts to hold everything together here. And well, you wanna make sure that you follow Edelbrock three step torque sequence and

end up at 95 ft pounds.

The Edelbrock RPM air gap intake is a perfect match for our head and cam combination. Just check it out. It's a dual plane design that makes great power from 1500 to 6500 RPM.

And this air gap down here is gonna help keep that incoming air and fuel charge cool to help us make more power. Right? You are. Well, we're gonna complete our intake combination with a 750 CFM Mighty Demon car. Now, it's a double pump design

with no choke horn and

features radius venturia to improve air flow and adjustable air blades to help you dial it. Now, that's especially important if you're running a lot of cam with a low vacuum signal. Well, we just got a signal. It's time for us to take a little bit of a break. So why don't you stay where you're at and help keep our sponsors happy.

Want some help with these studs.

Next, we'll show you the rest of our valve train for the magnum 360 including roller rockers. Then we'll vote on something to give our magnum a hot spark

and even a bullet water pump to keep our engine cool all coming up on horsepower TV.

Hey, welcome back to the shop as we finish off our magnum 360 which is starting to look like a real engine. Now,

let me get these push rides dropped in and I'll show you the rest of our valve train, Mopar small blocks, use shaft mounted rockers and comp cams says this set up featuring roller tip rockers to reduce friction. Now, these are investment casts crow

molly pieces for accurate rocker ratios

and they've been heat treated for stiffness and strength.

Each shaft comes with spacers to keep the rockers properly positioned

and they install using stock hardware.

Well, I've just about finished running the valves on this side. Now, this is a solid roller lifter motor. So we're gonna set the valve clearances at 16 thousands on both the intake and exhaust.

Like the rest of our engine combination. We want the ignition to be reliable and affordable too. So we're going with a mallory set up that includes their Unite distributor,

their high fire six multi strike box with a built in rev limiter

and one of their Promaster coils, we'll finish the job up with a set of their pro side, wider wires. Now, we like this box because it's upgradable just in case we want to add some spray or even a blower later on

before we can install that ignition. We need to bolt up our balancer first and that's gonna help us get our timing right

now. We're using TCI s rattler to help eliminate any torsional vibrations and crank shaft flex. It'll work with any standard pulley setup or crank trigger and well, it's also degrade as you can see to help you make any of those timing or valve lash adjustments

with number one cylinder at top dead center

mark the cap and distributor body for the number one plug location,

drop the distributor in. So the rotor points to the mark on the body

then install the plug wires to the cap in the proper firing order.

Keeping a hot engine like this one cool is critical to its performance. So we're gonna use C SI S NuWave billet electric water pump. Now, this thing uses a computer design impeller that'll pump 37 gallons per hour. Plus the pump motor has been tested for up to 5500 hours of continuous running.

Of course, it's

anodized inside and out. And besides looking cool that anodizing helps prevent corrosion.

It comes with a matching block off plate

and the hardware you need to mount the pump and make the electrical connections.

We want our magnum to look as good as it runs. So for a little dressing, we're adding a set of these

Edelbrock Elite valve covers

along with one of their matching air cleaner covers. Hey, that's nice. All we need now is a home for this thing. You bet. Now I've got my eye on a couple of possible players. Something that'll help us hook up

450 horses. We think this thing's gonna crank out. Oh, I smell another bet coming on. No way. You haven't paid on that last one yet. And that's why he hadn't got a haircut yet. Samson.

Well, while me and Delilah take a little bit of a break here, why don't you stay where you are? There's a whole lot more yet to come.

Look out now

ready for a hot headliner. We ain't talking about the Rolling Stones. It's a cool tip to help your ride right after the break.

Horsepower T V's Quick Tech is brought to you by

Wyotech.

No doubt about it. Gravity plays havoc on a headliner. And while yours may not be as bad as this, I want you to meet an expert who can take some of the mystery out of headliner rehab.

First, you got to get the headliner out which Dan's already done to save time. How'd you get the thing out there?

First, we remove all the trim around the windshield above the doors and the back glass

and then we remove uh the little hooks that we hold our clothes in there with

as well as the dome light, dome light comes out last because I hold the headliner in place while you're moving everything else. Let's talk tools.

Ok. Here we're gonna be using a glue pop gun for laying down our glue under a material. You don't necessarily have to have that and you can use a siphon feed gun that you can get at a local parts store.

We're also gonna be using a soft brush and a wire brush to remove the material from the headliner before we cover it.

And if we can't get it off of that, we'll use sandpaper as well.

First thing we'll do is remove the material slowly and carefully. So we don't damage the panel board

because we're gonna be reusing that and recovering it.

You may have some residue left over on the panel board. We'll remove that with a brush or sandpaper.

Now it'd be the time to take care of any cracks in the panel board like this

and to do that, we need to repair from the backside. So we'll flip it over

now to make sure everything's nice and flat. Dan's gonna go over those rough edges with some more of that 40 gras

you spray contact, submit over both a patch panel and the patch area

and let it tag for five minutes,

then press the panel in place

and it's fixed

nice work. You'll never know a crack was there.

Ok. At this point, we could go ahead and cover the headliner and be done with it. But, uh, being hot rodders, Dan and I wanna make a little statement.

So we drew some flames out on some quarter inch land off foam.

This is really gonna set the interior off and make it look really nice.

Let's cut out the flames using a straight edge razor blade cutting at a 45 degree angle away from our pattern,

spray glue on the back of the flames

and on the panel board and let them tack,

lay your flames on the panel board

and smooth them from the base

to the tips.

Be sure not to let your flame touch the board until you have it where you want it

last trim off the excess foam at the front of the headliner.

Ok. Now we're gonna spray

the contacts men again and make sure we get around

the flames real well and spray the whole thing down.

Now, at the moment of truth, Dan's ready to smooth down the finish headliner material,

fold the material over,

smooth it down around the flames starting from the lowest spot to the highest spot.

Well, there you have it, Joe,

I'm ready to put it back into the car. I tell you what dad,

you not only helped this headliner, you made it pretty hot. Speaking of that

horsepower TV S hot parts is brought to you by jags. One call. Gets it all. One click. Gets it quick.

I may not be able to carry a tune in a bucket, but I can sure tune a race header with Dino's

Quick tune collector muffler. Now they claim no horsepower losses. Thanks to the straight through core design and the silencer cones allow you to adjust the sound level to meet your own local tracks requirements.

Each muffler comes with an angled and a straight outlet plus a welded in bung that allows you to run a panty back system or even an +02 sensor for a fuel injected applications. Now, they make them for primary tubes from one in 7/8 to 2.5 inches and the price, well, it won't send you down the tubes either at about 300 bucks a piece.

Well, here's a look at a different set of tubes. These are designed to stiffen up your late model Mustang for improved performance on the track or on the street.

It's an underbody X brace from Evolution motor sport

that provides both longitudinal and lateral support and it features a safety loop for your drive shaft. Now, it's designed to

pro overall vehicle structure tying the front and back half together and eliminates body flex. Well, it's got a price that's not too stiff though about $315. Well, Hodgkiss has some handling hardware that'll improve the cornering capabilities and straight line stability of any 59 to 70 full size Chevy.

Now, this setup includes new upper and lower control arms and adjustable Panter rod and front and rear sway bars.

It also includes urethane bushings all around to minimize suspension deflection without hurting the ride quality.

The upper control arms are fully adjustable to get optimum pinion angle and the sway bars are hollow to reduce weight.

Now, to get one of these kits, you're gonna have to get a handle on your wallet with prices starting at about $1400 per kit.

Well, here's something you'll take a shine to and so will your car's tires

enduro

last is a coating that will keep your car's tires showroom shiny just like this half for up to six months. Now, it's made from an aerospace inspired chemical but also protects them from UV rays and prevents dry rotting.

The kit comes with cleaner, a brush on applicator and your choice of two coatings black. Of course, or for more radical statement on your rubber about prismatic.

Now, the kits start at about 20 bucks. Well, I ain't kidding around here. We're out of time for today, but you want to be sure and join us back here again next week and we'll see you then.

Hey, I like that prismatic stuff that looked good on your mustang. I don't think so.