Project Kingfish Part 2

Hey, welcome to Horsepower TV, where it's time to reel in our project. Kingfish again.

It's a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda that Chuck and I picked up recently. And if you recall, this thing was seriously modified for drag racing,

our game plan is to turn it into a pavement pounding street machine. And here's what we've done so far. We started our, a body project with a magnum 360 short block from Jegs.

Then added a roller valve train from comp cams

Brock performer heads

and air gap intake along with a 750 demon car.

We buttoned up the bottom in with a moroso oil pan.

But before we could drop in the new motor, we had to get rid of the one that was in the car. A 440 RB motor that was ok for drag racing. But again, our goal was to have a more balanced drivable street machine that'll go through the curves as well as it does the straight away.

So at Steven's performance in Rogersville, Alabama,

we found a used correct K member and bolted it up to the

Kiss Frank.

Then back at the shop we dropped in our magnum 360

along with some new headers and exhaust from two technologies.

We installed a TCI Street fighter 727 torque flight trans

and finished up the day with a power master mini starter,

a mallory high fire ignition

and a B cool radiator with twin electric fans.

And

that was a lot of work and we've still got a lot of work yet ahead of us today. First thing though is to get rid of this road runner rear end that's way too wide for our plans. And of course, that's gonna help us also get rid of these wide rims that are hanging out of the fenders. Then we're gonna add a new set of springs here that are gonna help get that back in, back down where it belongs.

Now, the first thing we wanna do though is get the thing safely supported on some jack stands

so we can start ripping that stuff out

after we get both back wheels off

the rear end of this thing ought to come out pretty easily.

First, we need to disconnect the brake lines,

the parking brake cable

and the drive shaft

then support the rear end with a floor jack while you remove the rear shocks,

followed by the rear shackles

and finally the front spring mounts

there. Now, we can remove the rear end and spring assembly's unit.

Now, any of you Mopar guys need a good eight and three quarter. Yeah, we're gonna replace that thing with this custom Dana 60 we got from DTs.

Oh, I know what you're thinking of. Dana is kind of overkill for that small block cua,

that's what I thought too until it crunched the numbers and discovered it's only a couple of 100 bucks more than a similarly built and three quarter. That's pretty cheap insurance. When you consider we might wanna spray that small block later on or even throw something stronger in the engine bay. Here's what we got

DTs starts with a new center section and adds these three inch diameter tubes with 250,000 wall thickness. They fill that center section with a new Dana track lock posse

and 354 gear.

Now, the Pinion Yoke is designed to accept a heavy duty 1350 series. You join,

they cover the center section with this thick aluminum girdle that uses these bolts

to support the carrier caps and keep them from pushing out.

Wow, that thing ought to be bulletproof. Now, for axles, we're using these 35 spine pieces from strange engineering.

The flan just drilled for a 4.5 inch bolt circle. And what that's gonna do is give us a lot more options when it comes time to choose our wheels. The axles also use this floating bearing assembly here and they're gonna keep the axles in the housing if we should ever break one. Now, let me show you our rear disc set up

there was one good thing about that rear end we removed, it had a set of 11 inch drum brakes on it, but we're gonna improve on that with a rear disc kit from stainless steel brakes. Now, they use a pair of 10 and a quarter inch rotors with these machine slots to help degas the pads. What that's gonna do is keep them in full contact with the

motors at all times. Now, the calipers are a single piston design and they come loaded from the factory with a set of carbon metallic pads.

The kit also includes all the hardware caler

brackets, dust shields, flexible and hard brake lines and check this out. It even comes with an adjustable proportioning valve.

The first thing we wanna do is position this flat spacer plate here on the end of the axle tube.

Then

we can go ahead and install the axle.

Next are the caler

mounting plates. Now, once you get these things bolted up, you want to make sure the top of the plates point towards the front of the car.

After installing 4716 bolt slide the spacer into place

and then the dust shield

from the backside.

We have the caliper straps

and the L bracket for the parking brake.

Finally to the bulls to 65 ft pounds.

These new rotors come with a protective coating. You need to remove with some brake cleaner before you install them.

Then use a couple of lugs to hold them in place while you bulked up the calipers,

the caliper is the final piece of this brake puzzle and I've already attached this flexible brake line with it oriented towards the center of the housing. You also wanna make sure that the parking brake mechanism is oriented towards the top

and we'll just slide it down over the rotor here and we'll attach it with one of these bolts that gets torqued to 100 ft pounds.

Well, now we have to do is plumb our metal brake lines. And while we do that, let's take a short break.

When we come back, we'll install our new springs and get this Dana under the

Ka

coming up, we'll give our ka

the shock treatment before we roll in that new Dana rear end.

Then we'll bolt on some boost for our new disc brake set up along with this adjustable proportioning valve. Stay tuned.

Hi and welcome back this week. We're giving project Kingfish here the royal treatment with a new rear end suspension and brake set up. Now, so far, we've added a set of strange axles to our DTs rear end, then bolted up a set of rear discs from stainless steel brakes. And finally,

I've finished plumbing the rear brake lines here, but you know, there's one more bit of business to take care of before we can bolt this rear end under the barracuda.

Remember how that fish is tail fin used to flap in the air. We're gonna fix that with a new set of springs from eating

and it's easy to get the right stuff from them because they've got blueprints and spring rate information on just about anything you can come up with. Now, we had to build ours with the right height. That's an inch lower than stock. Yet it boats up in the stock location with original hardware.

Hey, I'm way ahead of your partner. Now, we're gonna use the original front mount spring pads and even the rear shackle mounts. And while I was ordering those springs, I also popped for Eaton's installation kit, which includes new shackles U bolts and even the front spring eye bolts.

Before we're using the original parts, we be blasted them

and treated him to a fresh coat of paint.

Now, we can bolt the springs to the rear end

using the spring pads and new U bolts,

the front mounts attached to the front spring eye with the new hardware.

And finally, the rear shackles attached to the rear of the spring and the shackle mounts.

Well, we're almost ready to put that rear end under our ka.

But first check out this junk, we pulled out old Kingfish.

These coil overs were bolted to the shocks to support the rear end,

keep the fenders off those fat wide tires.

We're gonna replace them with these,

bro ias shocks. There'll be a vast improvement over the ones we pulled off.

We're ready to slide the Dana under the car now and check this out. We're using dollies under each side to make it easier to slide it up into place. Now, Joe,

how are we looking under there, buddy? It

looks good.

Yeah.

Ok. Got the brake line, reconnected, shocks are bolted up.

Now, the old Kingfish has got a bulletproof rear end,

you know, disc brakes require a lot more fluid to move the pistons and the calipers. And our kit from stainless includes this new master cylinder

that has the capacity that we need.

Now, it just bolts right up here to the stock location on the firewall. And I'll tell you what it even connects up to the original brake lines.

That proportioning valve that we showed you earlier needs to be installed in line to the rear brakes. So let me show you where we put it.

We installed it right here under the driver's floor pan. That way the front cross member will protect it from a flying debris while still allowing us access to that adjusting knob.

That was a good idea. And I'm sure glad I thought of it. Well, next time you get another bright idea, you get to do the work too. Sometimes. I'm just the idea, man, but I got a great idea. Now, let's take a short break and we come back, we'll show you how to measure for the right drive shaft and wheels stick around

next up measuring for a new drive shaft and we'll use a cool measuring tool to find the right offset for our new wheels. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the shop and our rear end upgrade on Project Kingfish here. Now, in case you missed it, we've been putting the finishing touches on the installation of AD TS Dana 60 on our 67 Barracuda.

We also installed a rear disc brake set up from stainless

and added new axles from strange engineering.

We bolted up some lower leaf springs from Eaton

and a pair of Edelbrock shocks.

Well, now we got the rear end positioned and bolted up. We can address our drive shaft needs here, man. I trade you this

as we showed you earlier that Dana uses a heavy duty 1350 series yoke. So the stock drive shaft no longer fits. Plus we need one. Now, with the correct new link, gotta tell you that drive shaft shops around the country use different methods to determine the proper length. Make sure you confirm the one your shop uses before you crawl under the car

in any event. Make sure you properly position the rear end. So you get the correct ride height.

The shop we use prefers to measure from the center of the pin yoke

to the end of the transmission tail shaft housing

47 and three corner.

All right.

Now, the shop will take this dimension factor in the length of the yoke and the amount of slip the yoke has on the transmission's output shaft and well, then they can build us a custom drive shaft. Tell you what I'm gonna call this in now. So we have it in time for the Kingfisher return visit. Good idea. And if it doesn't fit,

I guess you can blame me. Of course. Now, let me show you how we're gonna make our wheels fit.

We know we wanna use 17 inch rubber and after measuring the wheel wells, I figure we got room for 250 fives all the way around. Now, the trick though

is to get the right wheel offset to keep everything tucked up under the body to help us do that. We're gonna use this mount mate from wheel works.

Now, this thing will work on rim

from 14 to 28 inches in diameter and from width 7 to 15 inches.

Of course, just like with the drive shaft, you have to have your car at normal ride height to get accurate measurements start by setting the bead clamp to the proper rim with. Now we're gonna be using eight inch rims all the way around

and just fasten the bead clamp to the tire bead.

Then with the second bead clamp in place,

you can attach the face plate,

then bolt the whole assembly to the wheel hub.

Now you can move your tire in and out

to center in the wheel. Well,

then you just read the scale right here to get the back space that looks like ours is 5.5 inches.

You wanna make sure that the tires don't rub on your springs, exhaust or the shocks and when you measure the front ones, turn your wheels lock to lock, make sure you don't have any interference there.

We still haven't decided what wheels to use on the Kingfish, but we have picked the rubber. It's a Firestone fire hawk SZ 50 EP

A

Z rated tire with a tread design that's based on their Indie Rain tire to prevent hydroplaning.

The traction blocks are designed to reduce road noise. But hey, check out this, this is something I really like this rubber ridge here will protect the wheels from curb damage. See, I told you we had a lot of work ahead of us today. Now, the next time we lure the old kingfish here into the shop, we're gonna tackle those front brakes, install our new drive shaft and even show you those new wheels that we chose. Yes. Speaking of wheels, we need some rollers to get the coa

in and out of our shop. And

these old ones I took off my 96 Mustang will do the trick. Same 4.5 inch bow pattern.

You know, I'm glad you didn't take these things to the swap meet.

That's about the best use of any ford parts I've seen around the shop here lately. Oh, you better watch your tongue there, bow tie bubba.

In fact, you ought to see the emails I've been getting from the blue oval boys about you.

In fact, if any of you, Ford guys got comments about my partner's conduct, you just send them to me.

Well, I'll tell you what. We're gonna send you to a short break for right now. But when we come back, we'll have a lot more horsepower TV, for you say where you are. I think those look great. You better watch your back. You got my back, don't you

just ahead some

dyno basics as we discover one way to use this high performance tool to make more power. Stay with us.

Horsepower TV. S Quick Tech is brought to you by

Wyotech

Chuck and I love to use our shop's chassis

dyno. Why? It's a handy, reliable tool when it comes to measuring a car's horsepower and torque output at the rear wheels.

But let's say you got a new engine and you need a lot more information about it. Whether it's for the street or the strip, an engine like this 502 that's bolted down and ready for a run here these days. An engine

dyno plays a more critical role than ever in determining your engine's overall performance. Well, come on, I want you to meet someone.

Hey, Gary. Hey, Joe, about ready for a pool on this thing. We're awfully close.

Hey, before you take us to the steps. Uh, tell me a little about this system you're using here. Well, the good thing about our

dyno is it's gonna tell us why we make horsepower and torque numbers if we're hurting the engine or not during the run. Now, this is ad ts what's the capacity of this thing he'll do about 1500 horsepower. Uh, that'll work. Well, I'll let you make a baseline. Ok. Sounds great.

It sounded pretty stout. Gary. What'd you get here? Well, we got 455 horsepower and 513 ft pounds of torque. And you got the graph here too. Let me see that. All right.

Now, horsepower torque we got. But what other things can your engine

dyno

measure that might be critical to know about this 502. Well, it's gonna tell us by each cylinder, the exhaust gas temperature.

Um, we also have air fuel mixture

and we also have oil temperature

among other things among other things. Now, the, uh, the temperature of the cylinders, why

would that be important?

You don't want to get them too hot, you melt the aluminum off the pistons. That's a bad day. All right. Do you think you get some more out of this thing? I think. So, I think, uh looking at these numbers, I think a lighter spring in the secondaries would help us. Come

on here. Let's do some magic.

Ok. We're gonna take off this vacuum secondary cover and replace the plain stiff spring with a white light spring. Can't wait to see the results. Meanwhile, I wanna show you something.

Here are the sensors that measure those individual cylinder temperatures we talked about

back here behind the header. This is a sensor for the air fuel mix. And of course, here's something else our dyno

doesn't have since it works on water to create a load, a power absorption unit.

Well, we got her up to 492 horsepower. So we gained 38 horsepower

and it also did 538 ft pounds. So we gained about 25 ft pounds of torque just by leaning it out a bit.

Yeah, just a little bit. It's nice to know the actual numbers instead of t them by the seat of the pants. Absolutely. Well, when it comes to measuring power, sometimes there's nothing like an engine

dyno

and when it comes to making it

nothing like hot parts

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Earlier today we showed you how to upgrade the brakes on a classic muscle car.

Well, now here's a better way to halt your Honda.

This high performance brake kit from AM

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It works with these 12 inch rotors and relocated calipers and of course, these brackets that come in the kit are what help you move those calipers out.

Now, the kit also includes all the hardware that you need to complete the conversion and you don't have to worry about converting your dollars to yen. About 400 bucks. I'll get you this set up

whether your street machines import or domestic. If it's 96 or newer, you can dyno

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you can measure horsepower, torque, fuel economy and drag strip performance.

You use this adapter to connect your personal organizer to the diagnostic port in your car's computer information appears right here on the led screen. Now, you won't have to pay for dyno time anymore. As long as you pay 350 for this little kit.

If your Ford power stroke, diesel is a bit of a dog. Well, here's something that'll wake that puppy up.

This power hound module from Bully Dog Technologies. Just plugs right in. You don't even have to touch your ECM.

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Of course, it's also gonna improve the performance of your wallet too. By lightning. It, by about 700 bucks. Hey, speaking of performance, just wait till you see what we got in store for our Supernova race car next week here on horsepower TV. Yeah, we'll see you then.