Thanks kesteb. Good to see the old beast out on the road. I am glad someone is able to finish the project I started. Keep up the good work!

And yeah, definitely need some trans fluid in there.

When the car is truly street able, we will have to head down your way, so you and your brother can see the end results.

I spent some time installing the '68 Dart running lights on the Duster. I think i figured out why Chrysler went bankrupt in the late '70s. There is a total of 9 wires to get the running lights working in the rear tail light harness. 2 weld splices and cloth wiring tape that leaks electrons after 20 years. Simply amazing. Now to replace the bulbs, one that is rusted solid to the socket.

Ahhh, drum brake systems. I have repaired dozens of them over the past 50 years. I have even done some of the pre-bendix designs used on the late '40s and early '50s Dodge 1/2 tons. The Bendix system used on the A-Bodies are elegant and simple in design. A joy to repair. I can knock off a complete brake job in a few hours.

Fast forward to a 1998 Dodge Ram 1/2 ton 4x4. Who designed this monstrosity? The damn Germans who controlled the company at that time. Sheesh. It took my son and me, half a day to dissemble and reassembly one brake. And then I think we put one spring in backwards. What a royal pita. We'll try again, on that brake, next weekend.

grumble, grumble....

Is that on the rear axle?

Greg

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Yes, on the 9.25 axle.

I usually don't post personal stuff, but yesterday i turned 64. With good luck and health, I may live another 20 or so more years. That is a sobering thought. In light of that, the wife and I have made some descions. No, I am not getting out of the slant game. My kids can sell my junk at the estate sale.

We have sold our house in westeran washington and bought another one 200 miles east. We did this primarily due to the malise that is spreading out of Seattle. Maybe a mountain range and a large river will sloiw it down. Who knows the political class seems to have lost most of their collective sanity. An added bonus is that we are now 20 minutes from my youngest son and his family.

The new house is my wifes dream, she has always wanted one like this and I get a nice 2 car garage. Something I have lacked since I moved out of my parents. Hopefully I can retire in a year and we can live happily ever after.

Some interesting slant things that i rediscovered in the move.

I have 6 intake manifolds. 2 1v, 3 2v (1 aluminum), and a clifford 4v.
I have 3 working exhaust manifolds, 1 appears to be new.
I have 4 blocks. 2 forged, 2 cast.
I have one long block, cast, frozen, and the orignal engine in the dart. It was originally a SuperSix engine in my father-inlaw's' 78 Aspen.
I have enough cranks, rods, pistons, heads and cam shafts to build 3 complete long blocks.
I have a complete turbo setup from a '83 Buick Rivera.
I have an Eaton M90 that will make its way onto an engine someday.
I have 2 complete EDIS ignitions.
I have a 8.75 axle from a '72 D100, just in case.
I have a 8.25 axle, just because.

I think it is time to go racing again.

Congratulations on the move. I've been on the east side of the mountains twice on a motorcycle. Very beautiful country.

_________________
Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

I thought that I would miss the "green" that is on the west side, and I don't.

I bought a hydraulic press from NorthernTool. It has sat in Portland OR for 3 weeks before making it to East Wenatchee, WA, where it has sat for 3 days. East Wenatchee is 60 miles away. I wonder how long it will sit there.

I bought lifters and an Oregon Cams #1475 on a new blank for the Dart. It should be here next week, unless they use the same shipping company as above. Then maybe some time next year.

_________________
Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

A slow day at work, so i decided to play around with the Wallace Racing Calculators. Which can be an interesting pass time. So what will the new cam give me, and how best to use it. So, lets figure out the Dynamic Compression Ratio. This requires some figures that the Oregon Cams cam card on this site dosen't provide. Luckily they have a calculator for that. So what are the opening and closing events on grind #1475.

IVO 35* BTDC
IVC 67* ABDC
EVO 75* BBDC
EVC 27* ATDC
with a 65* of overlap

Or there abouts. Ken said he would grind the cam "for more vacuum" since I will be running EFI. So they are subject to change.

I also need the static compression ratio, and they have a calculator for that. The engine currently has 54cc for the chambers, the pistons are .137 in the hole, and I suspect that I will need a .040 overbore. Plug those numbers in and I am at 8.73:1 compression ratio. Mind you, to get these numbers i have already shaved the head .050 and decked the block .060. So the old adage of shaving the head .100 to get 9.0:1 compression is not necessarily true. This block and head are 1978 vintage.

Take all of these numbers and plug them into the dynamic compression ratio calculator and I get a 7.09:1. Cool, I can run this engine on the street and use regular gas. It also means that I can up the compression ratio. What will it take to get to 10:1 compression ratio.

A deck height of .07 will get me to 9.83:1 compression ratio and will give me some breathing room at .060 over, which gives me a 9:92:1 compression ratio. Plug those numbers in and I am at 7:79:1 dynamic compression ratio. Still, a very streetable engine and I can even run it at sea level.

All I need to do to make this happen is grind another .060 off the block. At this point, I will have removed almost 1/4" of cast iron. Another interesting calculator, this engine should make 271 hp, just based on the bore and stroke. I wonder how they figure that one out...

Well the cam showed up, so did my press. The cam took a couple of days shipping, while the press took 26 days of shipping. It is nice to know that YRC Freight can ship 167lbs of steel from South Carolina to my door step in 26 days. Most of that time it sat in warehouses. And I had to call the local office to get the delivery process finished.

Well the cam card reads as follows:

IVO 12* BTDC
IVC 44* ABDC
EVO 52* BBDC
EVC 4* ATDC
with 16* of overlap @.05.

Which is considerably different then the calculated values above. So plugging those values into the dynamic compression ratio calculator gives a 8.25 value. So this changes the speculation a little bit. If I leave the compression ratio as it is now. This is a streetable engine, otherwise I start to play games with timing and octane ratings, or possibly installing a water injection system. If I was forcing air into the engine, this may be worth the trouble. But for NA, not so much and I save a couple of bucks at the machine shop.

Well typing the above in, the local "performance" machine shop called. They seemed excited to work on a /6, even more excited when I said I would assemble the engine and positively giddy that it was going into a '65 Dart. They mostly work with American iron, usually for hot rodders, circle track guys and boat racers. They even have a dyno, rated to 2000hp. Which lead to usual joke that I would not have to worry about breaking the dyno, hahaha...

You have to watch this when asking for a cam... cam grinders/installers can get "better
vacuum" in a few ways:

1) Widen the lobe separation angle- Generally this smooths out the idle somewhat..and in general
loses some low end torque...and if you have a high duration cam, it still won't fully cancel out the lope..
but the low overlap would help if using tuned/ram induction or a turbo... Ken set you at about 110 degrees LSA...
which will have a slight lump every so often.

2) Grind an advance into the cam, that gives a bump for low end torque and some increase in vacc...

3) Advance the cam during your degree process...if you optimize the centerline you'll get your max
vacc and best torque curve...this is why Lou tends to recommend a centerline in the 101-104 area,
any more and you lose the advantage.


Incidentally I had Ken grind 2 #549 cams for me to try when I went to Race Compression Ratios...
One was with a 111 LSA since i was running a fat pack, and the other with a 109 LSA to try and get
back some of the torque curve for the heavy car.... 111 LSA ran fine and had a lopey idle, but had
about 16" of vacc at idle when the Holley was dialed in and ran fine through the RPM band... the 109
was much more lopey tended to idle between 14-15" (needle bounced if idle was under 1000 rpm...would settle
into a firmer 15" at 1500)... 109 tended to dig harder when the RPM was in the 4000+ range (which
is also where the Fat Pak liked to play).

I would not worry about the DCR being slightly above 8 on an almost 10:1 SCR motor... when I ran my 10:1 build with
the Erson at 111 LSA and above an 8:1 DCR I found that I could build a distributor with an medium spring set... and if
setup correctly, I would dial the timing to be at 47-48 total w/vacc advance if running regular (87), or advance to 50-52
total w/vacc advance if running super or more than 1/4 tank of 108-110....ultimately both got the same mileage,
and took a quick moment with a dial back timing light to move the dizzy a couple degrees. For comparison, the 12:1
motor with the 248@ 050 duration 549 cam at 111 LSA and degreed at 102, was in the 9:1 DCR range.... would idle and run
fine on the street on 92 Super dizzy was same as the 10:1 engine with a 47 degree total...would run at the track fine w/o
vacc advance (30 total timing @3000), but performed slightly better if the tank got a few gallons of 110 leaded (at that
build level and large carburator mileage was on par with a stock 360....)


Good Luck on the build.

-D.Idiot