Re: Contemplating My Build Part II - DYNO RESULTS!!!: 658hp / 667 fpt

[joflaig]

Ask three people the same question and you get three different answers -- plus you'll need whatever they happen to have on the parts shelf at the moment...  

I'm trying to decide what to do with my torque converter. After talking with multiple parties, one unexpectedly raised issues they saw with my tranny setup (more below). The consensus seems to be that the central conundrum with this build is the fact that there are 4.10 gears paired with a Gear Vendors overdrive, a lot of power, and that the car is meant for maybe 60-65% street, 35-40% strip. Trying to balance all this is not simple it seems. Perfomance with the new heads, intake and cam was expected to be about 625hp, 640 fpt. That's up from 543hp, 612 fpt.

Basically, when you call anyone who sells torque converters this is what they want to know:

Carb: ProForm 950
Intake: Indy Dual plane
Heads: Indy EZ Max Wedge size
Motor/cubes: 440 stroker (505cid)
Compression: 10.8:1
Cam & duration: Comp solid flat tappet, 256/262 duration on 112*lsa, .605/.624 lift
Header size: 2"
Gears: 4.10
Rear tire size: 275/60/15 drag radials

...and in this case, the Gear Vendors OD ratio: 4.10 X .78 = 3.20

The next thing they want to know is how you plan to use the car. Then they do a lot of calculations and make a suggestion.

Currently, I have a 10" Street "S-800" Series Turbo Action Torque Converter (Tight) Part #17805ST. The Advertised Flash Stall Rating is 3,800 rpm. So I called the tech line at Turbo Action. Very nice folks. A lot what they said went a bit over my head, especially when they started talking about various options and timing advance. But basically, in the end they thought I should stick with what I have, at least for now. Their advice: see what my RPM is at 65mph, compare my 60ft times and 1/4 ETs with I was doing before the upgrades and call them back with the results for their advice.

Next, I tried Dynamic Converters. They sell a 9.5" Race/ Street converter. They were very helpful and some phrases came out like 3% slipping, ultra-tight, flash 3300-3500 stall speed...and, yes, buy the 9.5" from us! Argh. If you call and ask about a specific part you think may meet your combo often they will tell you should buy it, but what is the truth?!  

Lastly, I tried a well known Mopar parts specialist in Oregon. They were extremly knowledgeable and very helpful on the phone. They race a '69 with a Gear Vendors. Actually, you could tell they do a lot of racing. So even explaining that this was a street/strip car, my impression was the bias in the advice tended more toward racing setups. Anyway, this call scared me. I have not thought at all about what increased engine performance will mean for the tranny. Let me mention, however, that the guys who re-built my 727 two years ago are local Mopar gurus. They used a Heavy duty B&M Flex Plate, A&A Ultimate Rear Sprag gear, A&A Rollerized Rear Governor Support w/ Bearings, and Red lined clutches. Talking about the converter, this shop in Oregon threw out things like PIA, dual pattern, and over heating the tranny. They wanted to know about the distributor (MSD pro billet) and timing. The bad part was they said with the torque I would be making that I absolutely must convert to a full manual valve body on the tranny (and they just happened to have an A&A right now I could have). They really thought the combo outlined above would cause the tranny to overheat (it has a huge external radiotor) and cause parts to break.

I just don't know what to think? I really don't want to switch to a full manual valve body because on the street it is not so convient (for me at least), though on the strip, granted, it would be perfect.

Is anybody here running this kind of power through a 727 without a manual valve body and using a GV OD, plus 4.10 gears? Is my stock valve body going to cause problems? What are some alternatives? By going to the Dana 60 the rear end is basically built proof now. I don't want to have to worry about the tranny! Maybe now I will call Gear Vendors and ask them what they think.

[firefighter3931]

Hi John,

As we discussed previously my first choice would be the 10in converter that you allready have. The advise from Turbo Action is sound and they make an excellent converter that is efficient and the stall speed is right where you want it to be for a dual purpose car ; enough stall to effectively launch the car and tight enough to cruise at highway speed with the overdrive. You can allways add a trans temp guage to monitor temps on the highway but with the B&M supercooler you won't have any problems, inmo.

As for the strength of a torqueflight ; it's plenty strong for what you're planning to do. Your's is rebuilt with good parts and the stock valvebody does have the low band apply feature which helps protect the rear sprag (which you've allready upgraded). The key is to do burnouts in second gear only to protect the sprag....as long as you do this the trans will be fine. A manual valvebody helps with shift overlap allowing the shifts to be smoother/quicker but the stock VB will work, just not as effectively. You can allways add a reprogramming kit later if you want quicker upshifts but i would still try it first and see what you think. 

The MSD distributor is fine, no need to recurve it. The black bushing will give you 18* of mechanical advance so all you need to do is set the base timing at 17* and the total will come in at 35* which will idle well and make great top end power. The cam Dwayne picked isn't overly large and it will be easy to tune and have nice street manners. 


To summarize :

-keep the TA converter
-add a trans temp guage to alleviate your overheating fears
-burnouts in 2nd gear only
-use the black bushing in your distributor if it isn't allready in there and set timing to 17* at idle

* most importantly : enjoy your car ! 




Ron

[Hemidog]

So the new radiator support actually goes UNDER the old one? Or is it the way you did it? I thought the new one replace the old one. 

[joflaig]

So the new radiator support actually goes UNDER the old one? Or is it the way you did it? I thought the new one replace the old one. 

The new one completely replaced the old one. It can be done either way, actually, but typically the old piece is cut out and the new welded into it's place.

[joflaig]

Hi John,

As we discussed previously my first choice would be the 10in converter that you allready have. The advise from Turbo Action is sound and they make an excellent converter that is efficient and the stall speed is right where you want it to be for a dual purpose car ; enough stall to effectively launch the car and tight enough to cruise at highway speed with the overdrive. You can allways add a trans temp guage to monitor temps on the highway but with the B&M supercooler you won't have any problems, inmo.

As for the strength of a torqueflight ; it's plenty strong for what you're planning to do. Your's is rebuilt with good parts and the stock valvebody does have the low band apply feature which helps protect the rear sprag (which you've allready upgraded). The key is to do burnouts in second gear only to protect the sprag....as long as you do this the trans will be fine. A manual valvebody helps with shift overlap allowing the shifts to be smoother/quicker but the stock VB will work, just not as effectively. You can allways add a reprogramming kit later if you want quicker upshifts but i would still try it first and see what you think. 

The MSD distributor is fine, no need to recurve it. The black bushing will give you 18* of mechanical advance so all you need to do is set the base timing at 17* and the total will come in at 35* which will idle well and make great top end power. The cam Dwayne picked isn't overly large and it will be easy to tune and have nice street manners. 


To summarize :

-keep the TA converter
-add a trans temp guage to alleviate your overheating fears
-burnouts in 2nd gear only
-use the black bushing in your distributor if it isn't allready in there and set timing to 17* at idle

* most importantly : enjoy your car ! 

Ron

Thanks Ron for being a great sounding board. What you're saying pretty much confirms my gut reaction to the different things I was hearing.

The tranny temp gauge is a good idea. At what actual temps do you want to be concerned?

[firefighter3931]

Thanks Ron for being a great sounding board. What you're saying pretty much confirms my gut reaction to the different things I was hearing.

The tranny temp gauge is a good idea. At what actual temps do you want to be concerned?

You're welcome John.  

Usually trans temps in the 220* range is cause for some concern. Out on the hwy with lots of air slamming against the B&M supercooler you won't see anything like that. In town stop & go traffic will probably put more heat into the trans. Those Supercoolers are fantastic and i don't anticipate any problems with your combo.



Ron

[joflaig]

Dyno numbers are in, 2nd pull was 658hp at 5600rpm, and peak torque was 667 at 4400rpm! This exceeded my expectations. I'm very pleased. I was worried that having the heads and cam spec'ed out and worked on by one place and then having the assembly and break-in done at a second shop would be a headache, but everything went very smooth.

Just to recap, this was the original build and all the specs (mid-way through the page):

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,36197.180.html

The goal with the "re-build" (and all of the additional work to the car previously outlined in this thread) was to take the idea of street/strip performance to pretty much a rational-minded limit (at least to my mind).

Excluding the girdle, only three things were changed on the motor: the cam, intake manifold, and the heads. So let's do a straight comparison:

OLD Cam:
Engle Hydraulic Cam (k62 intake lobe/ k64 exhaust)
-244/250 duration @ .050
-.540/.557 valve lift
-110* lsa

NEW Cam:
COMP solid flat tappet, custom grind - Part# 23-000-5
-256/262 duration @ .050
-.567/.585 valve lift
-112* lsa
-nitrided

OLD Intake:
stock Holley Street Dominator (low rise single plane) - Part# HLY-300-14

NEW Intake:
Indy 440-2D, opened to Max Wedge size, plenum divider reduced

OLD Heads:
stock Edelbrock Performer RPM Heads 84cc
-Comp Cams Pro Magnum Shaft Mount Roller Rocker Arms - Part# CCA-1321-16
-Comp Cams 3/8 .080 Wall Pushrod set
-Comp Cams "stock" springs
-Comp Cams Pro Magnum Hydraulic Lifters - Part# CCA-867-16

NEW Heads:
Indy EZ heads (opened to Max Wedge - EZ-1)
-Harland Sharp rocker kit, 1.6 ratio
-Smith Bros. Pushrod set
-Comp dual springs (pressure about 160 on the seat and 400 open)
-Comp steel retainers
-Comp 10deg locks
-Viton seals
-ARP head bolts

PERFOMANCE SUMMARY:

The old setup peaked out at 543hp at 5200rpm vs 658hp at 5600rpm with the new, and 612 fpt at 4200rpm vs 667 fpt at 4400rpm. So I gained 115hp and 55fpt.

OLD setup at 3500rpm: 385hp / 578fpt
NEW setup at 3500rpm: 425hp / 637fpt

OLD setup at 6000rpm: 512hp / 448fpt
NEW setup at 6000rpm: 644hp / 564fpt

The dyno testing for the new and old were both done on the same machine and with 110 octane race gas each time. Dwyane Porter mentioned that the higher octane gas (vs 93) would likely have had only a very marginal effect on the numbers.

Total timing on the ignition during dyno testing was 35 degrees. I'm going to switch the RPM limiter chip to 6800. I will take the car back to the speed shop when the engine is back in order to get the tuning tweaked (hopefully sometime in the next couple of weeks). They said to expect 500hp at the rear wheels.

Here's a link to a 2 min (15.5mb) video of some warm up and revving (turn the volume way up!):

http://johnflaig.com/jf/gl/dynotest.wmv

Below are scans of the Cam card, the flow chart for the heads, and 3 pages from the dyno testing.

I'm going to the resto shop tomorrow so I hope to have some new pics.

I am very curious to see how the new engine combo works with the over drive and 4.10 gears, and of course what it can do on the track! It's awesome to think that soon I'll get to drive around on the street in car with more engine than a ZR1 and even most exotics. 0-60 calcs put the figure at about 3.5 seconds, 1/4 mile ET calcs differ...one says 11.2, others 10.6. I guess we'll find out.

Ron, thanks again for your advice on all this!  

[joflaig]

last page

[elacruze]

Awesome!

For what it's worth, I helped race my neighbor's bracket car a couple years ago; 572" Indy wedge, 727 trans, 4.10 Dana 60. This was in an old Mancini ladder bar chassis with an Omni-Daytona body on it, weight was about 2200# if I remember correctly. This rig was running about 9 flat, dipping in the high 8's at the time. A three speed tranny was too harsh and we ended up with a powerglide. The car eventually ended up going as fast as 8.15.

Anyway, nothing broke for about 150 passes; eventually we learned the hard way (and they didn't listen when I told them something was going way wrong in the driveline) that a D60 in a fast car needs to have specialty strip gears. Street gears are too hard and the teeth eventually break off. So they did, and somewhere in the middle of the 60 foot, the pinion spun the teeth off and when it rehooked, the transmission split in half. Oops.
Bottom line is, for anything less than a full-on race car, that 727 will be just fine. Your D60 should be fine too, if you're not abusing it every weekend in a very fast car.

[tan top]

thats  a nice motor    good numbers

[firefighter3931]

Fantastic results John ! The bigger heads are really letting that stroker shine and holding the power up top !  There's virtually no drop-off in power between peak @ 5600 and the end of the dyno pull @ 6000 

The torque curve is nice and flat too....no real need for increased stall, inmo. Dwayne hit a home run with the cam/rocker arm/head/intake manifold combination. You will definately feel a huge difference and the car will ET/MPH much better at the track.

Congrats 



Ron

[oldschool]

awesome job! i just did my motor and only made 58 more horsepower and a little less torque. to do it i had to have my compression at 13.1,a solid roller cam,and sr heads. burning race gas is getting old,i think i like your combo better...congrats again on a nice motor.

i also think you will be 525-535 at the wheels,let us know.

[Challenger340]

Great Job ! You should be very Happy

Just Curious and I must have missed it somewhere, but what was the Final Compression Ratio as tested ?

[68chargerboy]

cant wait to see what ur car will run now! 

[joflaig]

Great Job ! You should be very Happy

Just Curious and I must have missed it somewhere, but what was the Final Compression Ratio as tested ?

According to Dwayne 10.8:1.

[joflaig]

Here's some shots of the newly installed and now painted AMD fenders. Great parts!