318 Street/Strip build?

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txstang84 said:
My question was more rhetorical than anything--I KNOW how to relocate them--I wanted to know why Wyrmrider thought it was worthy of a good luck statement.
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For this day n age and depending on what part of the country you may be from...it can be beyond many peoples ability.
 
Yes, that is one of Howard's 'optimized-for-.904-Mopar-lifter' mechanical flat tappet profiles, per their lobe lift; .200" duration at 157*. I've been looking at the smallest one in that series for an application.
 
nm9stheham said:
Yes, that is one of Howard's 'optimized-for-.904-Mopar-lifter' mechanical flat tappet profiles, per their lobe lift; .200" duration at 157*. I've been looking at the smallest one in that series for an application.
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If I were to go solid in my 318, it would be that one. I don’t have enough compression for it right now. Heads would probably need machined for that stick. (Spring seats and guides).
 
MOPAROFFICIAL said:
For this day n age and depending on what part of the country you may be from...it can be beyond many peoples ability.
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You’re absolutely correct-again I assumed a little much; good thing FABO has a shipload of experienced folks more than willing to walk one through the process in addition to the how to articles.
 
Good point Rob, even when the meat is there, the pistons to balance to a 318 steel crank will probably add to much expense to the build. There are a few postings on here of people lucking up on 318 wall thickness lately so I thought it was worth a shot to check, he’s got the right years. I grew up around crazy neighbors with crazy combinations on the street (4.88s, 6-71s, nitrous, tunnel rams) so I tend to go overkill when I think of what someone will be running against, I apologize! (My first thoughts are tunnel ram 4.56, straight axle solid roller, ladder bars, big life insurance policy). At any rate, it’s probably not going to take a whole lot of engine to make that lightweight react like a missile.
 
Also, I May Be Crazy But I try not to be stupid. Time For The Angry All Caps... FOR GOD’s SAKE MAN, IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE POWERSHIFTING THIS THING, BUY A BLOWPROOF BELLHOUSING AND PUT A DRIVRSHAFT RESTRAINT IN. A HELMET AND SOME FIRE PROTECTION IS MANDATORY!
 
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i know you said no roll cage, but since there is no back seat, I do encourage a four point roll bar and harnesses. It’s a lot easier to get hurt in something like this than even I like to admit. Think of it like this... where do you want to be the next morning or day? Being able to go to work or other normal life activity is better than being in an ICU.
 
Garrett Ellison said:
Also, I May Be Crazy But I try not to be stupid. Time For The Angry All Caps... FOR GOD’s SAKE MAN, IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE POWERSHIFTING THIS THING, BUY A BLOWPROOF BELLHOUSING AND PUT A DRIVRSHAFT RESTRAINT IN. A HELMET AND SOME FIRE PROTECTION IS MANDATORY!
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Dad told me a story of a mid sixties small block corvette just out the road when we first moved out here that our closest neighbor came up on going to town one afternoon. The young driver was shaken and miraculously unhurt. He did a full throttle sidestep of the clutch to see how his car launched, and the resulting clutch explosion exited the right side of the car and nearly cut the car in two. It didn’t mean much to me at that time being a youngin’, but once I got into cars, i realized just how lucky he actually was to still have his feet.
 
I have a nice clutch alignment tool from a clutch explosion in my 65 dodge, snapped the input shaft off clean at the bearing, completely shattered the stock bell housing.
 
Okay, now that I have a clean conscience about telling you to take minimum precautions, how fast do you need to go? Another advantage of even a four point roll bar is to help to tie the chassis and subframe connectors together. The stiffer you make the back of the car, the easier it is to make things like superstock springs or CalTracs work. On a very limited budget? 318WillRun has a good tutorial on cheap traction bars on a mopar. Do you plan on maximum weight reduction like heater and whatever else delete? Light makes Might, scraping undercoating and trimming fat wherever its safe to is better than X amount of $$$ anytime. Shim your hood up in the rear a 1/4 inch to a half inch above the cowl if possible, or even louver it, it lets some air out being shoved through the grille and will reduce drag.
 
If you can stand the climb over the door bars and you put some reinforcement in to tie the angled down legs to, I can see justifying it. You will stiffen the chassis a lot with that and be a lot safer at the same time. A six point is good with subframe connectors to tie the fore and aft together, but the eight point with some 14 gauge to 1/8 inch plate sandwiched top and bottom and tied to the center down legs adds a lot of torsional resistance.
 
Garrett Ellison said:
If you can stand the climb over the door bars and you put some reinforcement in to tie the angled down legs to, I can see justifying it. You will stiffen the chassis a lot with that and be a lot safer at the same time. A six point is good with subframe connectors to tie the fore and aft together, but the eight point with some 14 gauge to 1/8 inch plate sandwiched top and bottom and tied to the center down legs adds a lot of torsional resistance.
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whats your opinion on subframe connectors? Weld on or Bolt on?
 
I like to measure and buy steel square tubing or channel, cut accordingly and weld in. I personally like “everything welded to everything else” construction where possible, the more you can tie in together, the stiffer it gets. It’s not nearly as critical in an a-body as in cars that weren’t designed for a V8 to start with, though, but being that your into it anyway... A flux core wire welder is a good investment, if you don't already have one. I have one of the $89 120 volt Chinacago Electric units from Harbor Freight and it works well enough but it is a little sloppy because the wire feeder is not robust enough to be smooth, the 230 volt unit may be better because it has gas feed. CO2 and Argon blend work well with flux-core wire when welding overhead.
 
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Garrett Ellison said:
I like to measure and buy steel square tubing or channel, cut accordingly and weld in. I personally like “everything welded to everything else” construction where possible, the more you can tie in together, the stiffer it gets. It’s not nearly as critical in an a-body as in cars that weren’t designed for a V8 to start with, though, but being that your into it anyway... A flux core wire welder is a good investment, I have one of the $89 Chinacago Electric units and it works well.
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Welding is no problem for me, I work at a welding shop so i can get tubing through them. Any Idea on tubing size? I have a Hobart 165 (110V) i purchased years ago. Only thing that works against me is no real Garage or Lift. Sometimes the boss will let me use the shop in the evenings but even at that i can only get the car as high as jack stands will allow
 
Use/Purchase 4 jack stand the same height. Keep the car as level as possible. Weld them in.

Same with the roll cage. More points (bars) the better. Use one step up in cage requirements than you currently need. A little overkill is a good thing.
 
That's great, your already ahead of the game, those Hobarts are about as good as it gets for this type of work. I'll research a little on site here, there are directions here for making them for a '67-76 A-Body, I am sure someone else has done an early A as well.
 
For a streeter with a manual trans;If you get to considering aluminum heads;
for a streeter to make the best use of them requires a pretty high Dcr, which means a tiny total chamber volume, which is something the 318 is not normally capable of with typical aluminum heads. So in compensation for the soft bottom end, an automatic-car would want an unusually hi stall TC for street, and unusually high for a streeter rear gears. But with a A230 3-speed,you don't get the TM from the TC at zero-mph,so you will need even more rear gear. And you will need a wide powerband,to cover the large 1-2 shift split, else the engine will fall off the cam; and that usually points to short-period wide LSA cam,which steals cylinder pressure, making this combo really tricky to pull off.
IMO, you will be waaaay ahead of the game with 3.09low Commando A833, no matter how much you have to pay for it, and small-chamber iron heads, and a very fast rate-of-lift cam.
Your saving grace in this situation is stuffing it into a Lightweight-A.
Yes you can use the aluminums with a low Dcr, but what's the point? Aluminum sucks heat out of the chambers big time, and at the same Dcr, your iron heads, all other things being equal, will likely make more power; and the iron heads will have a stronger bottom-end. The nice thing about aluminums is they suck so much heat out of the chambers, it will be difficult for your teener to get into detonation.If you still consider aluminum, look towards the low end of 50cc, cuz by the time you get it bolted on, and cammed up.............the pressure below 3000rpm, where a manual trans is married to most of the time, is slipping away.

But I really want to talk about gears
The A230 comes in 2 flavors;
the V8-A230 with ratios of 2.55-1.49-1.00, ............... .58-.67 splits
the /6- A230 with ratios of 3.08-1.83-1.00, .................59-.55 splits.
the A833 overdrive box...... 3.09-1.67-1.00-.73od ........54-.60-.xx. which can be had really cheap. as low as $50 at swapmeets
and A833 Commando........ 3.09-1.92-1.40-1.00 ....... .62-.73-.71 tight split box; which usually has to be converted to slip-yoke.
As you can see,
the V8 A230 has reasonable splits, but with the 2.55 low-gear,requires a lotta torque to get moving, or a lotta rear gear.
The od box has a terrible 1-2 split
The Commando splits are the best, and
The A230 slanty is a low-rpm gearset with a short 1-2, and a looooong 2-3. It would be fine on the street if geared to not get into third.
A good target for a street 318 is to hit ~52mph,revved out in second. With a 5200rpm power peak, this might be 5400 rpm. And so with 27" tires the math spits out an overall second gear ratio of ~8.36. This maths out to: 5.60s with the 1.49 ratio; 4.56s with the 1.83ratio; 5.00 with the 1.67 ratio; and 4.30s with the 1.92 ratio.
To stick with the A230(V8) and 1.49 second and 3.91s say, you will hit 75@5400, but just 3740 @52, 4315@60 ; not particularly quick no matter how you shake it. So there's no sense in a streeter having a fire-breathing cam with these gears.
To best use the slant A230 with the 1.83 second gear, you might consider a bit less cam and run 4.30s. The 4.30s will get you an overall 7.87 final drive and 52mph would get you 5100 rpm, and so a power peak of perhaps 4900, about 1.5 cam sizes smaller than for 5200. Probably just as quick to 52 but more torque below 3000.
If you're thinking to pull 60mph at the top of second, that's really a bit far out there for a street-318, but with 4.30s would be;
4780 with the 1.49; 5870 with 1.83; 5350 with 1.67; and 6150 with 1.92 ratio. As you can see, having the right gear at the right time, is all about picking the right box.
 
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