The Dodge Challenger Message Board

Not really part of a planned route them stream crossings, although the last trip did have one about rim height.

When I was younger , there were several Arizona crossings one had to traverse to get to swimming holes in the back country. After a really wet year they were still releasing water from the reservoirs well into spring. The Challenger had turn downs which were blubbering like a motor boat and water was splashing up through the shifter boot. Kept the engine revving while working the clutch and we made is across both ways.

Did a 64 mile round trip to the border of Scotland and back on Saturday night. It was pitch black by the time I set out so no photos.

Car ran great. It is a narrow twisty road up through Northumberland towards Carter Bar. I kept up to 65mph on most of the road. Got up as far as 85mph on some bits. Took some very tight bends at 45mph.

Only a few minor problems;

It was a lot colder than I was expecting. It went down to below freezing before the return run. Not a lot of fun with no heater. My wife was in a skirt and no tights so her legs were just about blue by the time we got home.

The rear window misted up. But that was no big deal.
The windshield misted up on the OUTSIDE which was OK as the wipers dealt with that. Once I realised it was on the outside not the inside.

I hit a Badger that was already dead or dying in the road. I tried to miss it but my passenger side wheels went over its head and exploded it.

Fuel gauge has stopped working again. Crap (but not cheap) repoduction sending unit with half inch pipe. When it does work it does not read right.

omg dave no heater and a skirt in a drafty old chally humm,ok rofl wait till i tell lisa lol

maybe get one of those cheap heaters that plug in the (pop out) cig lighter,



yea those fuel sending units suck, mine is wrong and i ust dont want to deal with fuel (yuck) , i have seen long threads about those units, i am assuming it is that and not your gauge?

Gotta have a heater there Dave. Maybe a few extra pounds but no power loss that I can think of.

Glad you had a good drive and no major mishaps like hitting a deer which is always a concern out in the woods.

Northumberland is not heavily wooded. So the deer tend to be in isolated out of the way places.
It is mainly moorland and farms with a few hardy sheep and long haired cattle.
Road kill is limited to rabbits, foxes and obviously the occasional Badger...

My wife has hit two deer here. They're like free range cattle. Damn things walk down the main road in town, sometimes. After my wife totaled my car with one, I got a new paint job. I paid for the front clip out of a rear ended car. My body shop friend and insurance, took care of the rest.

Hunting season's pretty good though!

patrick wrote:My wife has hit two deer here. They're like free range cattle. Damn things walk down the main road in town, sometimes. After my wife totaled my car with one, I got a new paint job. I paid for the front clip out of a rear ended car. My body shop friend and insurance, took care of the rest.

Hunting season's pretty good though!

yea there is nuttin like road kill for breakfast

drewcrane wrote:

patrick wrote:My wife has hit two deer here. They're like free range cattle. Damn things walk down the main road in town, sometimes. After my wife totaled my car with one, I got a new paint job. I paid for the front clip out of a rear ended car. My body shop friend and insurance, took care of the rest.

Hunting season's pretty good though!

yea there is nuttin like road kill for breakfast

!!!

Coming at the end of May;

http://www.classic-american.com/next.html

ok now i can purchase a sup.

Just in case anyone ever reads this. I have not mentioned anywhere in this thread that a while ago I re-altered my distributor advance curve.

I now have 25 degree initial and 36 total. No vacuum advance used. It seems happier at this setting and the exhaust is so clean I no longer get any "haze" on the bumper after a long run. You can't smell the exhaust in the car like you used to and my clothes still smell fresh after miles of driving.

hey dave how do you get on with hot starts with 25deg initial ? i run 20 initial and seems ok at that but get a real hot day and will kick just a tad

When it's still hot it fires real easy on just a turn or two without touching the throttle and with no kickback.

But then again this is the North you know? We don't get 30+ degrees here mate.

dave-r wrote:When it's still hot it fires real easy on just a turn or two without touching the throttle and with no kickback.

But then again this is the North you know? We don't get 30+ degrees here mate.

yeh i forgot you get cooler weather up north, hence why northerners are always lilly white skinned your car sounds the same as mine for starting but thats only since i recently fitted a solid cam n lifter kit, better idle quality to, maybe we will have a run at the nats after all

yea them northerner milk skinnd peeps, and there cars run cooler too its just cooking here 35 plus every day for the last week

now i gotta check my initial timing because i get some kick back when starting

OK so the car ran 12.2 @ 110mph at Santa Pod Raceway.

I also got it accuratly weighed which was interesting.

Total weight of car with slicks and full tank of fuel was 3705lbs.

Total race weight with me in the car was 3890lbs.

Front - Rear weight is split 54.9% - 45.1% (pretty good for an iron head big block car I think).

Side to side weight distribution is 50.8% Left and 49.2% Right.

Using the race weight and timing slips to work out rear wheel HP indicates something like 420HP at the wheels on that day.

dave-r wrote:OK so the car ran 12.2 @ 110mph at Santa Pod Raceway.

Congrats!

I wish I had been there!
Not only did I get eliminated during the first round of my race this week-end, but I broke my distributor (totally integrated electronic distributor, a stray rotor screw got loose at 6K+ RPM and wrecked the whole thing, 400 miles from home).
Not the kind of part for which you usually carry a spare in the trunk.... And good luck trying to find a SB Mopar distributor in a drag race here!

A club member brought me an old one that worked like a charm (so I could at least lose on the track, not in the pits, and then drive home).

Side to side weight distribution is 50.8% Left and 49.2% Right.

I wonder what's so heavy on the driver side...

fbernard wrote:I wonder what's so heavy on the driver side...

Without me it is 49.5% on the left. Few pounds off my belly should make it perfect.

Photos by Dave McBride. Not for distribution.

Photos by Dave McBride. Not for distribution.

Photos by Dave McBride. Not for distribution.

2nd from last pic say,s it all after all them stressfull times and late nights its all worth it, credit to ya dave and credit to dave mcbride and his photography

awesome pics dave the car really looks great i love the 1 with the storm clouds
cheers ian

Just found out I have been running this engine for years with 60thou quench distance in the heads when it was supposed to be 40thou. 20 thou too much.

Basically quench is not effective at that distance and my compression ratio a lot less than it should be.

Plus since I fitted a thicker composite gasket I have been running 19 thou more than that! So my 12.25 runs at the Nats recently were done with 79 thou quench distance. 39 too much.

So I will be putting that right next week.

Can anyone tell me how much needs to come off the intake if you remove 39 thou from the heads?? I have forgotten how you work that out.

I rounded it off to .049 thou Dave. For every .010 you take off the heads, you need to take off .0123 off the intake side of the heads. Still, amazing what you can wring out of her, even with that much quench. A quick piston to valve check may or may not be necessary but fairly easy to do and would let you know exactly how safe you are,,but I bet you already thought of that! also taking it off the intake will match that intake to those heads, taking it off the heads and you can use any intake you want.

Thanks mate. I'll see about taking it off the intake side of the head.

Great pics Dave..........I saw the proud PAPA in the pic........

Starting to chicken out of running only 40thou quench.

MP say the piston will hit the head at 45thou. KB pistons say 40thou is fine for stock rods up to 6500rpm as long as the bearings are tight and cylinder walls not worn so the piston does not rock any.

I am thinking maybe I should aim for 50 thou quench to be safe.

That would mean a total of 29 thou off the head and 35 thou off the intake side.

Haven't updated this for a while.

I had a total of 29 thou cut from the head and I am using a 39 thou gasket instead of a 20 thou to leave me with a quench distance of 50 thou.

Not sure if the heads have had any previous cutting. Quite often when re-faced they get 10 thou removed so that may have been done before I bought them.

My combustion chamber volume measured to be 80cc.

Now according to the tech sheets for this KB piston, on a stock rod and stroke I should be 25 thou down the hole on the deck height.

But measuring it (if I am measuring the correct bit) I get 16 thou. I could be one thou out i guess so it looks like 10 thou might have been cut off the deck at some point.

So if I am measuring correctly (and doing my sums correctly) I now have a static compression ratio of 10.6:1.

I also had 35 thou cut from the intake face of the head and another 35 thou removed from the intake itself. This was because I have fixed gaskets to either side of the metal valley tray. This allows easy removal of the intake any time I like without the use of sealant and also removal of the valley pan with only a little sealant needed on each end of the pan.

I also fitted Promax metering plates to my two outer sixpack carbs. These allow the use of jets instead of having to drill the holes out.

I had drilled my original plates out to a size that equates to around a #85 jet.
Mopar usually say to jet the rear carb two sizes richer.
So after screwing these plates on I installed 2x#84 jets in the front and 2x#86 in the rear. See how that works out.

At the track I want to try going richer on the outer carbs to see if MPH picks up any.
Nice to have real screws in these plates too rather than those silly "clutch screws" Holley fits.