Indice dei contenuti per August 2021 in Mopar Action

UNLESS you’ve been living under the crust of the Earth or beneath an iceberg for the past few years, you’ve probably become aware of the sea change that’s impacting our beloved automobiles. Electrification. ’Course, electric vehicles (EVs) are nothing new. Back in 1828, Hungarian Ányos Jedlik invented a small-scale model car powered by an electric motor that he designed. Electrics peaked in popularity between 1899 and 1900, outselling all other types of cars. There was even a hybrid electric/internal combustion engine sold by the Woods Motor Co. of Chicago, which had a range of 18 miles, a top speed of 18 MPH, and a price tag of 2 grand. Electrics died out in the 1920s when better roads connected cities and called for longer range vehicles. The discovery of Texas…

A MATTER OF “A PINION” Hey Rick–Long time subscriber and love your tech. You have helped me in the past on my ’71 Road Runner. This time it’s about my truck, ’86 D100. I put bigger tires on it and need to swap the pinion gear in the tranny to get my speedometer right. Tag on the axle reads 2815. How do I get ratio out of those numbers? Dave Drews Princeton, MN Dave–You don’t. Briefly, three ways to handle this. 1. You can jack it up, count the revs of the propshaft for exactly one rear tire rotation. (This gets muddled if the truck does not have LSD, so only use this procedure if it does). Then look up the revs per mile spec of your tires and do…

ANYBODY WHO LIVES in the Northeast or upper Midwest will tell you that their state is “the worst” for vehicle rust, caused by road salt on highways. Now comes an exposé and lawsuit forcing state—New York, land of taxes—to own up to some of the damage. Surprisingly, the lawsuit doesn’t relate to vehicle damage, but pollution to water wells and death of farm animals from salt pollution. The incredible fact: NYS’s Department of Transportation—NYSDOT—spread just under 28 tons of rock salt (NaCl) per lane-mile (the stats are for 2018-19, not a particularly bad winter). And, no, that’s not a typo. They even spread liquid brine, guaranteed to reach every nook and cranny. Look under any car just a few years old in NYSrusty suspension components, tie rods, exhaust, brake lines,…

2019 DODGE CHALLENGER SCAT PACK WIDEBODY Paint code: PDR Graphite Metallic ENGINE • ProCharger P1X stage2, race intercooler, race BOV• MMX Modern Muscle Xxtreme 2618 drop-in forged pistons/rods upgraded rod bearings• MMX Max Effort blower cam• Cometic MLS head gaskets• Holley Sniper race intake manifold, Sniper valve covers• BBK 90mm throttle body• Stainless Works 1 7/8" long tube headerss, catless• AWE track edition catback• Fore Innovations dual 525s fuel pump/system• ATI 18% overdrive damper• ZPE 3.10 pulley/hub• Vibrant vacuum block• AEM water/meth for the street, boost/wideband gauges• Nitrous Outlet 90mm plate system• Gloshift NOS gauge• NOS Mini2 nitrous controller• ID1050 injectors• Unlocked PCM, Diablosport Trinity• Diablosport suspension controller• Hurst Shifter• Custom Dyno tuning by Brent @ DTP racing CHASSIS • Elbach pro springs• HHP drag springs, sway bar end links•…

LIKE WATCHING GUNSLINGERS , we’re standing on the starting line at Rockingham Dragway for last season’s Mopars@the Rock event. Dan VanHorn, the high sheriff who runs the Modern Street Hemi Shootout series that was being held the same weekend, has been telling us who to pay attention to, and notes, “The guy in the 300C is really good. You should watch his runs.” That guy is Guy, Guy Dalton, a 68-year-old truck fleet safety manager out of Painesville, Ohio. The car, a somewhat non-descript 2006 luxury model in classic silver with four doors (of course), rolls into the water, smokes ’em and stages. Pow! When the indexed 11.50 scoreboard shows the results, the W flashes up in his lane. Again. Though 2020 may have been a bumpy ride for some,…

HERE IN PART Two of “Stop The Steel” (see June for Part 1), we’re going to show you how easy it is to massively upgrade the brakes on your base LX vehicles. That means if you have a first-generation late-model Challenger R/T, Charger R/T, or 300C, or even one of V6-powered Rallye, SXT and Touring models, you can roll and stop like the big dogs. If you recall in Part One, we got with Wesley Motorsports (517-258-2757/wesleymotorsports.com) and focused on Challenger and Charger SRT vehicles, showing how you can adopt the unique and improved front Viper ACR brake caliper to these cars. The Viper ACR brake caliper offers many advantages if you’re into turning left and right, but in for those with the bread and butter R/T and 300C models,…

THE THREAT OF RAIN kept the wusses home cowering underneath their bed covers, but stalwart Mo’fans were undeterred in their determination to attend the 2020 Mopars at the Valley at Lebanon Valley Dragway in West Lebanon, NY. When all was said and done (to coin a phrase), more than 150 Mopes had paid their admission or snuck underneath the fence to display their wheels (and the rest of the car) on the showfield. While we didn’t catch the number of racecars that showed up, we observed that the staging lanes were not wanting. Mopes at the Valley is a popular event, especially since other tracks in the northeast, notably Englishtown, have been closed and sold out to real estate developers to be converted to condos, strip malls and massage parlors.…

FLUID FILM, or “hydrodynamic lubrication,” is the term given when a shaft rotating in a bearing is supported by a layer or wedge of oil so that the shaft is not in direct contact with the bearing material. The principle which allows large loads to be supported by this film of oil is similar to that which causes a car to aquaplane (a/k/a hydroplane) on a wet road surface. Aquaplaning occurs when water on the road accumulates in front of your vehicle’s tires faster than the weight of your vehicle and the pumping action of the tire tread can push it out of the way. The water pressure can cause your car to rise up and slide on top of a thin layer of water between your tires and the…

YELLOW . GREEN! GO! The immediate result was wheel hop, and I smacked my head as I looked down to the button layout on the dash was showing 2WD. My 2018 Dodge RAM 1500 Sport is not heavy in the backend, and the 1/4-mile surface at Bradenton’s DeSoto Memorial Speedway was fully-prepped for drag radials (I have the OEM Goodyear Wranglers on). Legging it through the top end, the results was a 15.266 at 93+ MPH. The 60-foot time of 2.6 told the story about where the ET had gone. My buddy David Hakim joked after I had made some 14.8 passes late last summer at Rockingham. “Stunkard, your truck is the fastest car you have ever owned!” It’s possible. My ’68 Charger never saw track time, but the 3.23…

WE KNEW WE HAD A PROBLEM when the letters and emails began pouring in. Typical was this one from Tony D. down in Murfreesboro, TN. “Hey, guys, me and my 4 buddies split a ticket on the Dream Giveaway Charger Hellcat that you featured in your February 2021 issue, and none of us won the car. What’s up with that?” ’Course, Tony had it wrong. It’s not the number of guys on one ticket that ups your odds to win, but the number of tickets you buy (duh!). Buy ’em all and you’ve got a better chance at winning. But at Mopar Action, the reader comes first. So we took all the letters and emails to the DG folks to see what they could do. And “do” they did—by coming…

1 975 WAS NOT EXACTLY a watershed year for performance Mopar fans. Hemis and 6-Packs were nowhere to be seen on the option list. Sporty E-bodies reached the end of the line in ’74. That left the A-bodies to soldier onward with the “sport” banner. Over at Plymouthville, the A-team consisted of Valiant and Duster. Bursting forth from Chrysler Corp.’s loins in 1970, the Duster (a restyling of the Valiant 2-dr. sedan) had a more laid-back windshield which eliminated the vent glass and helped aerodynamics. The Duster carried the same Valiant front end sheetmetal but flaunted its own styling from the cowl back. The body was of fuselage semi-fastback design and was the designated A-body to replace the Barracuda, which had graduated to the newly-created E-body segment. 1975 and ’76…

IT WAS 1970 , and Dodge had “Material” for every buyer if you liked it hot. The Charger R/T was for the money guys, the Super Bee / Coronet R/T design focused on the family man, new Challenger R/Ts arrived to meet the sporty crowd, and the 2-door Dart hardtop was there if you were on a budget. Dressing your redesigned Dart up for power that year meant buying the Swinger 340 package to get the underrated 275-HP engine. For owner Patrick Skiles, the car seen here has been executed to be a balance between stock and hot. “Originally, I was going to repaint it a high impact color, like Sub-Lime or Plum Crazy,” he tells us. “Well, after doing some digging, I found out that only 517 of the…

ONE OF ONE IN 2018 , Dodge only built 34 TorRed Challenger Hellcat Widebodies with the 6-speed manual transmission. Of the 34 built, only 5 had the Dual Stripe Carbon with 4 also having the Hellcat Logo Laguna leather seats. This is the only one with those options also having the black/Demonic Red interior package. Ocala, Florida citizens often see John Boman zipping around town in this striking Mope. John says he’s owned Mopar for the past 25 years, and when he first saw the Widebodies, he had to have one. Had to be a 6-speed. John always added his personal touches to his rides, but he promised himself that he wouldn’t go crazy on this one. The first thing he did was to have Hellcat side logos painted on…

WHILE WE EXPECT to have the full story on the Nats in the next issue, I gotta say that you meet the most interesting Mo’fans at that event. We found a couple of fairly interesting cars that we thought would make a couple of good fillers between our major stories, and we offered to have them featured. One guy agreed so long as he would be able to fact-check our story—something we always let a car owner do. But then this guy went further, demanding total control in approving not only the story on his car, but our story on the Nats (which isn’t even written yet) and approval of our editorial page. Gee, you gotta draw the line someplace. ’Course, it would make our job a lot easier if…

ART CLASS IS IN SESSION! Van Gogh, da Vinci, and Michelangelo are all famous artists, and I am about to add another to the list in the form of Jeff Frossard the “Poverty Cap Picasso.” Every great artist is known for something unique, whether it be the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, or, in Van Gogh’s case, of cutting off your ear and sending it as a gift…talk about cheap. Suddenly the monogrammed toilet plunger I got for Mrs. Crec looks like a Tiffany diamond. “Crec? What’s your point?” My point is, that if the Guggenheim doesn’t get your watercolors boiling, then the work of Jeff Frossard just may keep you painting in the lines of your color by numbers and quench your thirst for some wild “Mopart.” I am…

BLOCK SWAP Hi Rick–I found the broadcast sheet for my ‘67 440 New Yorker—it has code 492, Maximum Cooling Package—what did this actually comprise? Also, came across this tag attached to the engine block. Does it mean the engine was replaced under warranty at some point, or was it installed that way during assembly—any ideas? Chris Sculthorp Asheville, NC Chris–Max. Cooling was generally the biggest radiator (3 rows), a shroud, and a 7-blade thermal drive fan. Yes, the block was replaced—and not at the ass’y plant. It could have been under warranty, or a “customer pays” deal post-warranty. The short engine was the block, crank, rods, pistons, bearings, rings. The heads, cam, and all external parts (if undamaged) were generally swapped over from the original engine. HURST NOT HEARSE Richard–I…

LET’S FACE IT , we are all in this together. This car thing, I mean. Now, jokes notwithstanding, the truth is, we usually get by with a little help from our friends. For Maryland’s Mike Marshall, his car hobby has been assisted by wife Daniela, son Mike Jr., daughter Carmen, brother-in-law Joe Mays, and a bunch of late-model suppliers who continue to make tons of cool stuff available so Mike and guys like him can always find a little more power, a little less E.T. Today, if we have the credit approval, we can go into the dealership and buy 700-plus ponies. For Mike, things got started more subtly, back in “the old days.” You know, 2008 (we are really aging ourselves here). On that fateful June day, Mike took…

IT’S AN ADDICTION , you know—collecting discarded and abandoned Mopars to save them from the crusher. Sorta like the old lady down the block who takes in stray cats and rescues others slated to be put down at the local shelter. Unlike with cats, you can’t have countless Mopes lounging all over your living room although you would save a ton on kitty litter. What to do? Up in Canada, body and paint man Mike McGee created his own solution. In his spare time, he developed a little gizmo called the ShrinkFlite. It generates proprietary energy waves that can proportionally shrink an entire car or anything up to the size of Texas to 1/25 its original size. It’s like magic! Why haven’t you heard about the ShrinkFlite before? See, McGee…

SWING OPEN THE DOORS to Jerry Macari’s 8,000 sq. ft. garage and you’ll be treated to a sight that would warm the cockles (whatever they are) of any Mo’fan’s heart. A virtual sea of vintage tin including some 15 Hemicars, Six-Packers, A990s and more—mostly all original. Yeah, there’s even some Brand X iron to warm the cockles of your Brand X-fan bud who tagged along for the ride. Jerry says he’s been collecting cars, mostly Mopes, since he was 16. By now, you’d think that with all those Mopes “in the bank,” any gear head would be satisfied and move on to something else, like maybe boats or skateboards, just for a change of pace. Most might, but not Jerry. “Just one more” seems to be his mantra. His latest…

IF YOU’RE UNDER THE AGE OF 40 , you probably were not there. Back in the ’ol days, as we call ’em, some family station wagons had rearmost seats that faced out the rear window. So as a little kid on a long trip, while you did a coloring book or had finished pulling your sister’s hair, you’d get some trucker in a big rig running up right behind you. You’d look up, make a fist in the air and pull it up and down, hoping the truck driver would blow that loud air horn. Great fun, except for the wagon’s driver, who needed to change underwear at the sudden blast for no reason. Sorry… This example of Plymouth’s ’64 9-passenger model is not for that. Actually, owner James Elsmore…

THERE ARE SIMILARITIES between starting a new engine and childbirth. Mistakes made during those first important minutes can have lifetime consequences, or even result in early death. Since, however, your engineering editor is pretty far removed from the study of obstetrics, and you are reading Mopar Action, not Birthing Action, we will, duh, concentrate on the right way to get your Mopar’s freshly rebuilt engine off to a healthy start. We wrote about this almost 10 years ago, but there were certain details, which seemed obvious to me to be at the time, that still bring up questions (of course, I also make the mistake of assuming that every reader has read every word I have ever written). Anyway, it is clearly time for an update—I still get far too…

STOPLEAK SEE COV. 2! ROCKAUTO.COM  MAIN SEALS KEEP THE OIL WHERE IT SHOULD BE. ARE YOU REPLACING A LEAKY OIL PAN GASKET? The two-piece crankshaft rear main seal may be leaking as well and swapping it out is easy while the oil pan is off with most old Mopars. Check out RockAuto.com’s selection of Crankshaft Seals, including modern rubber replacements for the old rope-type seals used through the ’60s. Find it quickly at www.RockAuto.com. GET HOOKED SEE PG. 29! YEARONE’S CHRYSLER DANA 60 TRAC PACK WITH 3.54, 3.73 AND 4.11 GEARS FOR 30-SPLINE REAR AXLE THESE YEARONE DIFFERENTIAL GEAR KIT PACKAGES feature a high-quality ring & pinion, Master Overhaul kit featuring Timken bearings, and a Spring & Clutch style Sure Grip unit. The Master Overhaul includes pinion &…