SRT8CUDA Build

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RealWing

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I've been working on a '69 Barracuda convertible for a few months and thought I should post some pics and restoration information.
I started with the car shown below. It was originally a Y3 "Yellow Gold" body color with D6P 'Pale Yellow" seats and originally came from near Richmond, VA. It is a 318, auto, console with factory AC.
It will have a 6.1 L stock hemi, FAST, with one of Jamie Passon's new 5 speed manual OD tranny's, RMS suspension and TTI exhaust. The AC system will be retained.

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I figured I'd better beef up the frame a bit to handle the Hemi torque, otherwise I might have a pretzelized Cuda!!! I added the stiffening kit from XV Motorsports. It consists of lazer cut frame connectors, shock tower to firewall bars and front frame connector. The lazer cut frame connectors are supposed to be profiled to fit the floor so that you weld it to the floor, but I found it took a fair bit of grinding and fitting. You have to provide a hole through the drivers side connector so that the emergency brake cable acn pass through. We welded a piece of tubing into the connector.
My son did all the welding and I cut out spotwelds on the body repairs and did all the grinding and prep work!!
The front rad support bar ties the frame rails together much better than the flimsy rad support sheet metal.

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Hmm good idea on the rad opening. I'll have to do that so I can do a 26" rad also. Have you sourced a rad yet for the hemi swap?

Riddler
 
Hmm good idea on the rad opening. I'll have to do that so I can do a 26" rad also. Have you sourced a rad yet for the hemi swap?

Riddler

I'm leaning towards a Wizard aluminum rad. Talked to them at Carlisle and was quite impressed with the quality and their knowledge. Because I'm running AC, they wanted to be sure I had enough surface area for adequate cooling and recommended a 26 rad. The AC condenser adds a lot of flow restriction. This is the basic rad design but would need the lower outlet moved to the other side. This rad basically drops in just like a Mopar rad.
The only think I need to do before ordering is to install the engine and see how much room I have to accomodate the electric fans. https://wizardcooling.com/
There are certainly other good companies for rads.
 

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nice work. I hope you have clearance for the front wheels after you welded those braces in...i had to custom make mine to clear my 17x8" wheels...
 
nice work. I hope you have clearance for the front wheels after you welded those braces in...i had to custom make mine to clear my 17x8" wheels...

I wondered about that. Do you have any photos of your custom braces after they were installed?
 
After the body shop had a good look at the car, they did not like the looks of the hood or trunk lid!! Seems like in a past repaint, someone had sandblasted them both and they were rippled. Off I went to find another hood and trunk lid. Found a good hood here in Ontario and a trunk lid in the US. Seems like this is how restorations go on these old cars - they look not too bad to start with -but then you keep replacing more and more panels!!! As I later found out - there is more bad news to come!!

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Are you using the RMS Lynx kit on the rear? What other mods are you thinking? I will be watching this one closely...

Subscribed.

:happy1:
 
Off to the blast shop. They use powdered glass at low pressure so they dont warp the panels. I had my Superbird blasted with plastic media which did a great job - but could not find anyone in Ontario who uses that any more.
This is where more bad news emerged. The LF fender was badly damaged (under the bondo) and could not be saved. Off to the US to get one of those (same time as I got the trunk lid)
I knew both rear quarters were in poor shape when I bought the car, so it was no surprise when I saw them after blasting. Yup - 2 new quarters on order!!
The good news was that both doors were good as well as the RF fender!!!

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Are you using the RMS Lynx kit on the rear? What other mods are you thinking? I will be watching this one closely...

Yes - RMS Street Lynx rear. Other mods are a Moser 8-3/4" rear axle. I looked at used Mopar 8-3/4" axles and by the time I fixed them up with new gears, bearings, sure grip and axles etc- I though it was far better to buy brand new parts.
Due to the use of rear disk brakes, you are usually limited to using the "Green" ball bearings in the axles to control end play. From an engineer's perspective, I don't like them at all because they have limited capability to take side thrust - unlike the original Mopar tapered roller bearings - that are virtually indestructable. Bill at RMS said he has used Ford (did I say Ford??!!) tapered roller bearings with the Moser axles and disk brakes - so I am going with those.

By the way - Bill is a great guy to deal with. A real treat. I drove down to his shop to pick up my suspension and Bill was very helpful. He spec'd and ordered all the Moser parts for me.

That is pretty well all the major mods I have in mind. I'm keeping the interior absolutely stock.
 
After looking at several different condensers from American Condenser, I settled on p/n 1033320 from a 75-76 Dart that fits the enlarged rad support opening and has both connections on the pass side. The AC compressor on my Hemi will be on the pass side.

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Isn't the stock AC location on the drivers side? Wouldn't it be easier to just run longer lines?

Great work so far!

Where in Ontario are you? I'm in Belle River, not far from Windsor.

Riddler
 
Isn't the stock AC location on the drivers side? Wouldn't it be easier to just run longer lines?

Great work so far!

Where in Ontario are you? I'm in Belle River, not far from Windsor.

Riddler

yes - the line from the compressor on a stock engine runs to the driver's side of the condenser and the liquid line from the condenser runs from the pass side. One of these days I'll post some photos of the Hemi that shows where the AC compressor is located. I didn't want lines running across the engine.
I'm north of you - near Owen Sound.
 
Show us that Hemi... I'd like to see how your moving that compressor around. Might be worth it for me.

Time to start writing a few things down, enlarged rad opening, condensor PN#. :)

Riddler
 
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