12:05 Garage- ’70 Duster build

-
Moparty 2022, day 3, Speed stop.

Speed stop is an acceleration and braking event. It's a standing start with a U-turn, then stop in a box of cones without hitting 1. The cone box is about 20x40, so imagine pulling into your garage at 50-60mph and stopping before crashing out the back of it. This is a fast paced event. My runs were in the 12 second range and after you do the left turn side, you immediately go to the right turn side. I made 10 runs and decided that was enough. I'm sure I could have made some time improvements, but I wanted to get the car loaded and start my 9 hour drive home. Here's some pictures from Sunday. Yes, that 4 door Acclaim (or whatever it is) is in front of me. I'm sure he can floor that thing in wet grass and it won't spin the tire. I was having to slip the clutch to prevent ridiculous tire spin.



pic 7.jpg
pic 8.jpg
pic 9.jpg
 
racerjoe said:
Moparty 2022, day 3, Speed stop.

Speed stop is an acceleration and braking event. It's a standing start with a U-turn, then stop in a box of cones without hitting 1. The cone box is about 20x40, so imagine pulling into your garage at 50-60mph and stopping before crashing out the back of it. This is a fast paced event. My runs were in the 12 second range and after you do the left turn side, you immediately go to the right turn side. I made 10 runs and decided that was enough. I'm sure I could have made some time improvements, but I wanted to get the car loaded and start my 9 hour drive home. Here's some pictures from Sunday. Yes, that 4 door Acclaim (or whatever it is) is in front of me. I'm sure he can floor that thing in wet grass and it won't spin the tire. I was having to slip the clutch to prevent ridiculous tire spin.



View attachment 1715988354 View attachment 1715988355 View attachment 1715988356
Click to expand...

Nice!!!

Question, how do the cars with carburetors fare in this event? Do they all have modified vent tubes? Just curious, I know that with my unmodified double pumper I would have issues with it wanting to stall with the fuel slop-over trying to stop that fast...
 
72bluNblu said:
Nice!!!

Question, how do the cars with carburetors fare in this event? Do they all have modified vent tubes? Just curious, I know that with my unmodified double pumper I would have issues with it wanting to stall with the fuel slop-over trying to stop that fast...
Click to expand...


This is a good question and I was actually wondering that myself when I thought I heard a car, that I believe had a carb, backfire. I'd think at the very least you would need to have slosh tubes on the jets, and connect the vents together with a hose and put a small hole at the top of the hose.
The oil in the rear end was coming out the vent the first time I auto crossed. I would have never guessed all the oil in the diff would fill the tube to force it out the vent. I just have about 2' of hose coiled up now coming off the vent. That seems to have stopped it from leaking.
 
racerjoe said:
This is a good question and I was actually wondering that myself when I thought I heard a car, that I believe had a carb, backfire. I'd think at the very least you would need to have slosh tubes on the jets, and connect the vents together with a hose and put a small hole at the top of the hose.
The oil in the rear end was coming out the vent the first time I auto crossed. I would have never guessed all the oil in the diff would fill the tube to force it out the vent. I just have about 2' of hose coiled up now coming off the vent. That seems to have stopped it from leaking.
Click to expand...

There's stuff out there to mitigate the fuel slosh thing, I was just curious. I've definitely had to stop short a few times, and had to pedal the throttle to keep it running when I did. I would imagine if I really wanted to be competitive in an event like that I'd need to modify the vents.

I run "seals it" seals in the axle housings I've redone, it depends on where your vent is located but if it's in the tube then the seals keep oil from getting that far out. They make generic versions too that are a bit less expensive
sit-as9218_it_xl.jpg

Seals it AS9218 Seals-it High Performance Axle Seals | Summit Racing
 
I ran at an Optima event in my charger a few years back and had issues with the car stalling out on the speed stop. Ran it about 20 times and it died on about 60% of the runs. I could sometimes feather it to keep it running but it with the big brakes it was tough. It was just an edelbrock carb with a mechanical pump so it wasn't built for it but that was one of the reasons I swapped to EFI on it. There were other cars with carbs running fine but I'm sure they had the proper setups with electric pumps.

But that day I learned a lot about how any fluid will find its way out on hard runs. So since then I've added fuel & diff vent setups, locking dipstick tubes, baffled oil pan, and oil breather setups. Just too bad they don't have the event here in northern CA anymore.

optima_thunderhill_charger.jpg
 
I believe somewhere earlier in this thread I may have discussed a gen 3 hemi swap. There were a few things that turned me away from the swap when using the stock K member or stock style K member. A big one was the need to use a remote mount oil filter and the other big one was the low mount AC required either a custom mount for a smaller Sanden, and probably some K member hacking. When Holley announced their A-body conversion products, I really had my hopes high on a good solution. Unfortunately, I'm not super impressed with their mount solution. I do think they killed it with the oil pan though. So, why am I bringing this up? After much research and surfing, I've come up with a plan to finally move forward with the G3 Hemi. I came across 'Cuda_ragtop 's thread showing how he moved the right side motor mount on the QA1 K-member to allow the oil filter to mount in to the engine block. My biggest hurdle seemed to be solved with this approach! This is a brilliant idea and I have to give him a big thank you for sharing with us. I'm sure I could have figured something out, but I wasn't about to spend a bunch of money on the QA1 K just to see if I could modify it. I think I'll still have some challenges on the low mount AC, but it seems like there will be much more room than a factory K-member. I'm confident I can come up with something.
So after much research, here's my plan for the swap:
QA1 stock replacement K-member, modified right side mount, and I'll also make sway bar mounts for it so I can continue to run my Hotchkis front bar.
Reuse my existing bellhousing, clutch, trans, etc. I will have to get a flywheel. I'm unsure if I'll be able to continue to use mechanical clutch linkage. I'm hoping I can, but thinking it will require some fab work.
New TTi Headers
Holley oil pan
I may need a radiator- still need to decide on that. Maybe I can just modify the one I have.
Reuse existing Megasquirt. I'll make a custom harness for the engine and make it so I can just plug it into my existing firewall bulkhead connector. I will have to add some coil ignitors since the hemi coils aren't "smart".
I have a 06 5.7 Hemi on hand already with relatively low miles. The plan is to use this engine as a placeholder until I want to build a bigger displacement G3. Once the engine is in and running, swapping in a 6.4 would be a simple swap from a fitment standpoint.
Here's the plan for the engine:
Disassemble, clean, and inspect everything. Reuse just about everything except the cam. (I have the heads off already and the cylinders still have hatch marks)
Open up ring gap, I'll likely replace the rings
Hand port heads
install Comp "Stage 3 HRT cam" (I hate "stages" of cams- sounds like video game terminology to me...) Comp claims this cam makes +86HP over stock. It's their largest cam for stock pistons. I'll call them to discuss before I purchase.
Lastly, I'd like to use the Torqstorm supercharger. From a price standpoint, it makes sense. A procharger or whipple is north of $7K. Maybe if I was planning on making 1000-1200HP I would go that route, but I'm not. With that cam, headers, a little port work, and the supercharger, I see no reason why it won't make 600HP. That should make the car scoot pretty good.

I started cleaning up the ports on the heads already. I know these aren't the best factory heads and I did contemplate switching to eagle heads. I didn't think the increased compression and supercharger on pump gas would be a good idea. So here I am putting lipstick on a pig.
I'm sure a trained monkey could clean up the ports enough for an improvement. The biggest airway interruption is a pushrod bulge in the intake runner. The pockets also leave lots of room for improvement. I'm not a head porter by any means. I'm simply cleaning them up to what feels like the smoothest path. The exhaust pocket and port is terrible. This coupled with the very conservative stock exhaust cam profile, I don't know how these things made any power.

Here's some before and after photos of where I am now. I'll come back and polish them up some. This is just straight off the sanding wheel- no polishing. I'm open to criticism, advice, or even name calling if it will get me better flow results...
intake pocket before.jpg


intake pocket.jpg


intake port before.jpg


intake port.jpg
 
QA1 K-member showed up. I'll admit its nicer and more rigid than I expected. It's a shame I'm going to grind, cut, and weld on the pretty finish. Why can't I just use stuff without modifying it.....SMH

K.jpg
 
racerjoe said:
I believe somewhere earlier in this thread I may have discussed a gen 3 hemi swap. There were a few things that turned me away from the swap when using the stock K member or stock style K member. A big one was the need to use a remote mount oil filter and the other big one was the low mount AC required either a custom mount for a smaller Sanden, and probably some K member hacking. When Holley announced their A-body conversion products, I really had my hopes high on a good solution. Unfortunately, I'm not super impressed with their mount solution. I do think they killed it with the oil pan though. So, why am I bringing this up? After much research and surfing, I've come up with a plan to finally move forward with the G3 Hemi. I came across 'Cuda_ragtop 's thread showing how he moved the right side motor mount on the QA1 K-member to allow the oil filter to mount in to the engine block. My biggest hurdle seemed to be solved with this approach! This is a brilliant idea and I have to give him a big thank you for sharing with us. I'm sure I could have figured something out, but I wasn't about to spend a bunch of money on the QA1 K just to see if I could modify it. I think I'll still have some challenges on the low mount AC, but it seems like there will be much more room than a factory K-member. I'm confident I can come up with something.
So after much research, here's my plan for the swap:
QA1 stock replacement K-member, modified right side mount, and I'll also make sway bar mounts for it so I can continue to run my Hotchkis front bar.
Reuse my existing bellhousing, clutch, trans, etc. I will have to get a flywheel. I'm unsure if I'll be able to continue to use mechanical clutch linkage. I'm hoping I can, but thinking it will require some fab work.
New TTi Headers
Holley oil pan
I may need a radiator- still need to decide on that. Maybe I can just modify the one I have.
Reuse existing Megasquirt. I'll make a custom harness for the engine and make it so I can just plug it into my existing firewall bulkhead connector. I will have to add some coil ignitors since the hemi coils aren't "smart".
I have a 06 5.7 Hemi on hand already with relatively low miles. The plan is to use this engine as a placeholder until I want to build a bigger displacement G3. Once the engine is in and running, swapping in a 6.4 would be a simple swap from a fitment standpoint.
Here's the plan for the engine:
Disassemble, clean, and inspect everything. Reuse just about everything except the cam. (I have the heads off already and the cylinders still have hatch marks)
Open up ring gap, I'll likely replace the rings
Hand port heads
install Comp "Stage 3 HRT cam" (I hate "stages" of cams- sounds like video game terminology to me...) Comp claims this cam makes +86HP over stock. It's their largest cam for stock pistons. I'll call them to discuss before I purchase.
Lastly, I'd like to use the Torqstorm supercharger. From a price standpoint, it makes sense. A procharger or whipple is north of $7K. Maybe if I was planning on making 1000-1200HP I would go that route, but I'm not. With that cam, headers, a little port work, and the supercharger, I see no reason why it won't make 600HP. That should make the car scoot pretty good.

I started cleaning up the ports on the heads already. I know these aren't the best factory heads and I did contemplate switching to eagle heads. I didn't think the increased compression and supercharger on pump gas would be a good idea. So here I am putting lipstick on a pig.
I'm sure a trained monkey could clean up the ports enough for an improvement. The biggest airway interruption is a pushrod bulge in the intake runner. The pockets also leave lots of room for improvement. I'm not a head porter by any means. I'm simply cleaning them up to what feels like the smoothest path. The exhaust pocket and port is terrible. This coupled with the very conservative stock exhaust cam profile, I don't know how these things made any power.

Here's some before and after photos of where I am now. I'll come back and polish them up some. This is just straight off the sanding wheel- no polishing. I'm open to criticism, advice, or even name calling if it will get me better flow results...
View attachment 1716016672

View attachment 1716016673

View attachment 1716016674

View attachment 1716016675
Click to expand...

What's your timeline for the swap?
 
Racer joe hit the nail on the head. Run a piece of tube, arching from vent to vent, snip a v at the peak.

Old drag car approach to keep hard leaving/wheelie cars from getting excess fuel.

This one is a bit more fancy than hose.

View attachment 1716017614

One-Piece-Vent-Tube.jpg
 
DionR said:
What's your timeline for the swap?
Click to expand...
Good question. The sooner the better, but I think we all know the real world gets in the way of progress on hobbies. My ultimate goal would be for it to be done with all the bugs worked out by Moparty 2023. I think the longest wait time will be for the camshaft and lifters, everything else seems to be in stock or have a relatively short lead time. The plan would be to have the hemi on the K-member ready to go, drop out the 408, bolt trans to hemi and put it in the same day/weekend. I'll work on a new tune for the megasquirt offline so it basically becomes a plug and play conversion.
 
racerjoe said:
Good question. The sooner the better, but I think we all know the real world gets in the way of progress on hobbies. My ultimate goal would be for it to be done with all the bugs worked out by Moparty 2023. I think the longest wait time will be for the camshaft and lifters, everything else seems to be in stock or have a relatively short lead time. The plan would be to have the hemi on the K-member ready to go, drop out the 408, bolt trans to hemi and put it in the same day/weekend. I'll work on a new tune for the megasquirt offline so it basically becomes a plug and play conversion.
Click to expand...

My G3 swap timeline has always been winter of 2023/24. That was more because I have to do the T56/TR6060 swap at the same time and I didn't expect to buy the trans until next summer.

But all along the way I have been buying up the parts I needed just so I didn't get to the point of being ready and either they are unavailable or on back order. Took 3 months to get my headers, and if I hadn't been told there were pans on eBay I would still be waiting on that. I still need a car front cover and things like gaskets and such. Best I know, the only part I am nervous about is the lifters, but I have my 6.4 cam and upgraded valve springs already. And I even pulled the trigger on a "Black Friday" deal for a T56 and am just waiting on that to arrive.

In theory, I could actually start in January. But the reality is that there are probably things I am missing and a fair amount of money left to spend and if I did jump into it this winter it could end up keeping the car off the road this summer. And I want to avoid that at all cost. Never know, but I expect I will just keep buying parts, put my core 5.7 together and wait until the winter of 2023 to start the swap.
 
DionR said:
My G3 swap timeline has always been winter of 2023/24. That was more because I have to do the T56/TR6060 swap at the same time and I didn't expect to buy the trans until next summer.

But all along the way I have been buying up the parts I needed just so I didn't get to the point of being ready and either they are unavailable or on back order. Took 3 months to get my headers, and if I hadn't been told there were pans on eBay I would still be waiting on that. I still need a car front cover and things like gaskets and such. Best I know, the only part I am nervous about is the lifters, but I have my 6.4 cam and upgraded valve springs already. And I even pulled the trigger on a "Black Friday" deal for a T56 and am just waiting on that to arrive.

In theory, I could actually start in January. But the reality is that there are probably things I am missing and a fair amount of money left to spend and if I did jump into it this winter it could end up keeping the car off the road this summer. And I want to avoid that at all cost. Never know, but I expect I will just keep buying parts, put my core 5.7 together and wait until the winter of 2023 to start the swap.
Click to expand...
Are you using the Holley mounts and headers?
 
racerjoe said:
Did you get the cast aluminum pan or the fabricated “white box” pan?
Click to expand...

The cast aluminum one.

The weird thing was that the return ports in the front of the pan aren't drilled and tapped. I don't expect to use them so not a big deal, other than it makes me wonder if there is something hinky going on with the outfit I bought it from on eBay. I reached out to Holley about it and so far have heard crickets. Everything looks fine, I believe I got the correct parts, just wonder why it wasn't finished.
 
72bluNblu said:
Nice!!!

Question, how do the cars with carburetors fare in this event? Do they all have modified vent tubes? Just curious, I know that with my unmodified double pumper I would have issues with it wanting to stall with the fuel slop-over trying to stop that fast...
Click to expand...
I was probably the car that Joe was talking about backfiring. I was running a 1404 Edelbrock. Car ran alright Friday on the autox, ran worse on Saturday both on autox and the drag strip, sunday on the 3S it was running pretty bad. Idk if you saw the episode of VGG but what you couldn’t tell is it was bucking and sputtering bad on that run. That was one of my last runs. It was running rich and had a header leak so I think that was a big contributor to it backfiring. It did bog a fair amount on some of the hard braking and sharp turns though. Hoping to have the factory 5.9 mpfi installed before MoParty ‘23.

Btw Joe, I’m excited to follow along on the G3 swap. Having seen your car in person, I’m sure it’ll be nothing short of top notch!
 
Red Stripe said:
Nice! What's the power at with the current motor?
Click to expand...
I really don't know. 408ci 9.5:1, indybrock heads, .242@ .050" solid roller. It went 112MPH in the quarter granny shifting and it weighed 3535lbs right after the pass. It does have power robbing dynomax turbo mufflers on it. I feel like they are killing the car. I started it up with open headers not long ago and it wouldn't even idle it was so lean! Hooked exhaust back up and it was back to normal.
 
Here is what my completed intake port looks like. To get to this finish, I used a carbide bit to take out the big stuff and knock down the rough casting, followed up with an 80 grit cartridge roll, then 120 grit to get the carbide bit marks out. Finally, I found some scotchbrite type "balls" in 4 grits. I used all 4 in order to get the smooth finish. I'm happy with it. I have all the intake ports and pockets done on one head and the exhaust ports are hogged out, but not sanded yet. It really doesn't take long to get this done. Thankfully the head design leads itself to lots of room in the ports to work.

complete.jpg
 
Hey Joe, I fell down the rabbit hole of brake upgrades again and was reviewing your swap when it occurred to me that I never heard your final thoughts on you Viper caliper swap. Was it a major improvement over the brakes you had before? Happy with the swap?
 
DionR said:
Hey Joe, I fell down the rabbit hole of brake upgrades again and was reviewing your swap when it occurred to me that I never heard your final thoughts on you Viper caliper swap. Was it a major improvement over the brakes you had before? Happy with the swap?
Click to expand...
They are great! The peddle feels pretty much the same as the FMJ discs in terms of effort. I just have inexpensive parts store pads in them right now and I can lock the tires up once they are warmed up. I may buy some better pads once these wear out. The dust they make is ridiculous.
I put the adjustable proportioning valve on the rear brakes thinking I needed it. Turns out I have it wide open so there’s no need for a prop valve.
I also used the 2lb residual pressure check valves. I’d use those again. It does make the car slightly harder to push, but I don’t plan on pushing it very often!
Overall, I feel like the car is setup really well right now. I just need to get a wider tire on the front to help reduce some understeer so I can be more aggressive approaching turns on the autocross. For the street, it’s great and really enjoyable to drive.
 
racerjoe said:
They are great! The peddle feels pretty much the same as the FMJ discs in terms of effort. I just have inexpensive parts store pads in them right now and I can lock the tires up once they are warmed up. I may buy some better pads once these wear out. The dust they make is ridiculous.
I put the adjustable proportioning valve on the rear brakes thinking I needed it. Turns out I have it wide open so there’s no need for a prop valve.
I also used the 2lb residual pressure check valves. I’d use those again. It does make the car slightly harder to push, but I don’t plan on pushing it very often!
Overall, I feel like the car is setup really well right now. I just need to get a wider tire on the front to help reduce some understeer so I can be more aggressive approaching turns on the autocross. For the street, it’s great and really enjoyable to drive.
Click to expand...
@DionR further to my comments about how well the car handles on the street, I went to local cruise night Saturday and had a friend ride with me. Now this guy has ridden with me many times and has even been a passenger on many autocross laps. The interstate exit near my house has three long sweeping curves then shortly after that a roundabout. There weren't any cars on the road so I took those turns much faster than the speed limit. After the round about, he says, "damn this thing just handles amazing". I sometimes forget how good it is. It just feels light and nimble. sometimes its hard to believe it is a 50 year old car.
 
racerjoe said:
@DionR further to my comments about how well the car handles on the street, I went to local cruise night Saturday and had a friend ride with me. Now this guy has ridden with me many times and has even been a passenger on many autocross laps. The interstate exit near my house has three long sweeping curves then shortly after that a roundabout. There weren't any cars on the road so I took those turns much faster than the speed limit. After the round about, he says, "damn this thing just handles amazing". I sometimes forget how good it is. It just feels light and nimble. sometimes its hard to believe it is a 50 year old car.
Click to expand...

Very nice! I like it.

Good to hear reports like that. Gives motivation.

My Duster seemed to handle at least as well as my Challenger R/T when I drove them back to back, minus the slow 24:1 manual steering. I've since upgraded to a Borgeson power box and can't seem to get rid of some twitchiness. I suspect the steering box mount is failing so it is getting a fully gusseted k-frame this winter. After that, I hope it feels pretty much like my Challenger did.

BTW, I am waiting with baited breath for the delivery of a Scat Pack Brembo brake caliper and some brake pads. I think with a 14.2" SRT rotor I can make it all fit with a simple plate and just had to buy some parts to get real measurements to see. Caliper was only $130 (which includes a $59 core charge) so I figure maybe $500 total in parts, minus hoses and whatever the adapter plates cost. And that includes $90 in shipping.

I will probably have to step up to 18" wheels though. I found people running 17x4 wheels on the front of Scat Packs with the 4 piston Brembos, but I am betting that is only because of the really narrow wheel. But I will cross that bridge later. Really don't have plans to change the brakes until after the G3/T56 swap is done, this is more just something to keep my mind busy while I do some other minor upgrades and fixes. If it works, I will probably make sure I have the calipers and rotors on the shelf for later though. Don't expect sourcing parts will get any easier, or cheaper, in a couple of years.
 
racerjoe said:
Here’s the drawing. Since I don’t know how precise the laser cutter will be, I had the holes cut smaller than needed so I can drill them to a true 1/2”. I ordered them this morning from sendcutsend.com. They were only $14/ea. And had free shipping. All the local shops had a minimum order so I was forced to use an online resource. Oshcut.com was considerably more expensive per part, setup fee, and charged for shipping.
I guess I need to order all the other parts to get this done. Turning out to be much easier than anticipated.


View attachment 1715688580
Click to expand...

What material did you get these cut from? SendCutSend doesn't seem to have a very broad range of materials.

I shot myself in the foot with my layouts. I had the hub face further away from the spindle than it was in reality. So my 1/2" or 3/8" adapter plate on the front of the spindle turned into less than a 1/4" plate once I cut down another rotor and put it on a spindle so I could get some actual measurements. So now the adapter has to go on the backside of the spindle and I need more than an 1" of spacers to get the caliper in the correct location.

The other option is a GT500 rotor with the SP caliper. That one would use better than an 11/16" plate thickness, but SendCutSend seems to top out at 1/2" for the milder stuff and only 1/4" for 4130. And the smaller GT500 rotor seems to make getting it to all fit a little tougher.

I guess if it was easy, everyone would do it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top