My first dirt late model i built back in '86 was a low buck attempt to exploit the rules to BB mopar advantage. Class champ used state of the art Bullit Chassis and bought his aluminum block sbc's in from Draime in OH. Rules said 2600lbs, 10.5" max engine setback from the upper ball joint centerline to the #1 spark plug, and had a RR tire rule to "equalize" the class. Everyone was running Chevys at the time, almost all sbc with one bbc exception.
I was a 30 years old street racer Millright with more energy/time than money. Found an older chassis with a 5th design Howe clip for $500, pulled the engine out of my '70 Challenger RT 440 4spd hot rod. The 10.5" engine setback rule seemed to be a huge dis-advantage for my cast iron block/heads 440 mopar, I was looking for ways to put the waterpump on the back of the engine when an idea hit me- why don't I just put the entire engine in backwards? The rear spark plug was a lot closer to the rear of the engine than the #1 spark plug was to the front of the engine, the net effect of installing the engine backwards was it moved the center of the engine's weight about 5" farther back. To exploit that even further, i made an 18" long input shaft, put a drive hub in the middle of the balancer, and remote mounted the transmission in the middle of the car. Now the water pump was on the back of the engine, so was the power steering pump and balancer. Backwards engine also moved the 440's oil pump from the least desirable position, left front, to the most desirable right rear. Of course putting the engine in backwards meant that the engine was now spinning the drivetrain in the opposite direction. Didn't have a proper quick change rear for a reverse rotation drivetrain just yet, so I pulled the 8-3/4" from the Challenger, welded the spiders in an open diff case, and installed that 8-3/4 in my dirt chassis UPSIDE DOWN!
The hillbilly reverse rotation mopar dirt latemodel was not competitive it's first year out. First night out it broke the welds on the spiders and that put me hard right into the wall. Took me an extra week to fix that damage. Next time out it ripped the center out of a double thick wheel center on the right rear, barrel rolled about 6 times between turns 1 and 2. When the car came to a stop, it was sitting on it's roof with only one front corner of the suspension still left on the car. They ended up dragging the car off the track on it's roof, had a hell of a time loading it up on the trailer. Took two trucks to haul all the parts back home. That crash pretty much ended my first season on dirt. Latemodel class had went years without throwing a red flag, I caused two reds in my first two times out.
Over that winter I bought an old Frankland quickchange and modified it for reverse rotation. This made the car actually competitive and with proper gearing. Now being competitive, some started to complain that my #1 spark plug with the backwards engine was a lot farther behind the ball joint centerline than the rules dictated 10.5". I knew this was probably going to be an issue at some point, but the backwards 440 mopar had an ace up it's sleeve. I had a stock 440 intake manifold that we took with us to the track, it had the cylinder numbers cast into the top of the intake runners. Big block Mopars have no water or distributor running thru the intake manifold, which means it can be easily installed on the engine "backwards". All I had to do was put that stock intake on with the #1 port forward, clearly showing the #1 cylinder was in the front of the engine, not in the back! Went on to win the 4th of july mid-season championship race that 2nd season, biggest 1st place payout of the year. Also the first non-chevy feature winner since the mid 70's.
After a few seasons with the backwards 440, i built an all round tube chassis around my homemade Mazda 4 rotor rotary engine, which I made by short coupling two 13B 2 rotor engines. Here's a link to a webpage featuring my 4 rotor rotary powered Outlaw Dirt Latemodel, but at the bottom of that page is also a picture of the last version of the backwards 440 car without the sheetmetal. The pic was taken after it's last race, against the garage door you can see my first attempt at a main hoop for the rotary powered car that replaced it...
http://grannys.tripod.com/4rotor.html
Found the bellhousing and drive hub that i made to mount that homemade transmission to the front of the 440, gonna blast/paint it in the next couple of days before i take some pics.
Grant
