Engine has moved into its new home... Update 31/7-2010 Page 4...

[Mefirst]

Well my Charger, turned into a race car, project is moving along nicely again

Dropped the engine in about two weeks ago, sadly it did not go with out a fight Problem was that the external oil pump/lines hit the K-frame engine mount on the driver side. Had to lift the engine out two times cause modifications had to be made to the K-frame.. I also had to route one of the oil lines differently to get the room needed.. Well project continues.. Bolting the engine and trans together is always a bitch, nothing new there, but after some cursing, kicking and some screaming the engine and trans did co-operate...

Continuing on today...

..Bolted the starter to the engine, another SOB project because how ever you do it, the headers will always interfere and you'll end up with scraped fingers and bloody knuckles.. OK, starter is in place, now the real fun begins.. Attaching the positive feed wire from the battery and the little start safety switch wire And again the header interference makes your life miserable... and cause some serious use of bad language... The fun continues when you bolt on the headers, some bolts are easy to get going into the threads, others, well not so easy, not to forget you also need to stuff the header gasket between the header flange and cylinder heads...

But after everything is done, you feel and a beer has not tasted this good in a long time, so

Here are some pictures for you who are interested..

You may note that bolting the passanger side valve cover will cause a headache...



Driver side looks allot better (Then again NOT when your bolting on headers, everything will interfere..)



Here is a front/side view of the engine bay (Sorry its looks so filthy, haven't had time to clean...)





The Dominator carb is also being modified into a E85 carb. I will NOT go into detail about that.. Reason is I'm not doing the modification myself, my buddy who is doing the work, wants to keep some of the "Voodoo" that goes into the modification secret, cause he has spent a great deal of time and effort looking into what modifications need to be done, also its way to early to say if the carb modifications will work or not... I may return to this E85 modification topic at a later time...


..Well thats it for now, and I thank you Las Vegas, you are a wonderful audience

/Tom

[Ghoste]

It looks mighty nice sitting in there Tom.  As for the top secret E85 mods, well fair enough and thanks for being the pioneer.  Somebody has to be first so good luck with it.

[tan top]

nice work  ..motor look awesome  sitting in there ... can't wait to see what it runs down the 1/4

[Mefirst]

...As for the top secret E85 mods, well fair enough and thanks for being the pioneer. Somebody has to be first so good luck with it.

Its not really top secret stuff, problem is more that there is not that much knowledge to dig into about the E85 conversion. So its going to be more "trial and error" with the conversion. I know people are doing this and you can buy ready "converted" carburetors, but its still in my opinion kinda uncharted, like one "home" conversion seems work, but try to copy it, and it may not for you..

My Dominator carb conversion is more or less to use Alcohol carburetor parts, but not have the carburetor flow as much... I have a "gray" understanding about what my buddy is doing, but not that I would feel confident enough to try and explane it.. So until my buddys conversion theory is proven, I don't want to get into it.. or to make it more clear, I simply don't have enough knowledge to explane the carb conversion until he explanes it in detail to me, and of course I understand what he is talking about... and most important, the carb really works as intended...

/Tom

[Mefirst]

nice work ..motor look awesome sitting in there ... can't wait to see what it runs down the 1/4

-Thanks

Well I'm also looking forward to drive my ride, hopefully it will happen soon.. I do have to be truthful and say that I'm feeling kinda nervous about it. The Hemi will put out allot more power than my old, now RIP, 440. Also about the 440, it was dynoed at 542HP, but sadly when I finaly got to race it, it did not give out that power, cause it was so messed up after the dyno pulls and most of al cause of the stupid way it was put together. It was an expensive lesson to learn, so If you buy a ready made engine, take it appart and check everything yourself, so you don't get sad suprises later...

/Tom

PS. In theory my ride should be able to pull mid 10sec times with the HP the Hemi may be good for, but that remains to be proven... The estimated HP rating is only tried out with a Dyno program, and I am some what skeptic about those numbers, atleast until the time slip proves the Dyno program right...

[Ghoste]

Sounds like the biggest problem is going to be putting it to the pavement!

[Mefirst]

Sounds like the biggest problem is going to be putting it to the pavement!

-True, not only that, my car does not have a rollbar in it yet So the plan for this summer is test and tune. Once I have the rollbar built, then Ill start to really hunt time slips... The car itself is built like a Stock class dragracing car and because the old 440 died to early, I never really got to test how the car itself works, so both engine and the car itself will most certainly need tuning... But my aim is to have the front wheels jump up one or two feet at launch (-Childish yes, but it looks cool )

/Tom

[firefighter3931]

Awesome Tom !  The project is really starting to take shape ! 


Ron

[Mefirst]

Little update....

In my first post I was worried about if the passanger side valve cover would hit the shockabsorber, no worries though... The valvecover will slide in place with out any worries. Getting a couple of the valvecover nuts on the threads is a completely different though...

I also have the mounts made for the engine "ears", only thing left is to weld them in place... Other than that its more about hoking up electrics, bolt on the waterpump, cooler, etc...

I cant even try to explane how good it feels to finally be at this stage in my project.. I started my project back in 2003 and it has been quite a trip, the feeling was still a couple of weeks ago like -Ill never get the car back on the street

Here are a couple of new pictures.. I just how the engine looks with the HOT Roded valve covers and the fresh paint on the rest of the engine (only down side is that now the rest of the car looks kinda crappy )





/TOM




PS: Here is my "Middle Finger Howdy" to al the Chevy/Ford guys out there

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Im diggin those covers!  Did you do the airbrushing?

[Mefirst]

Im diggin those covers! Did you do the airbrushing?

I wish I could say -Yes, I painted them, but -No, a guy my buddy knows did the airbrushing. I didint like them in chrome, looks to "bling" for my taste, so something had to be done....

/Tom

[Johnny SixPack]

That's a freakin' awesome sight, Tom!

Congrats on the hard work paying off. 

Now aren't you glad you didn't sell her? 

[Mefirst]

Now aren't you glad you didn't sell her? 

Johnny, good to see that your back... We have to talk over MSN soon to catch up

-Yeah, the 1971 Cuda would have been one sweet ride

Here are a couple of pics of the Cuda I was planing on buying. I did put my Charger out for sale. Got a couple of phonecalls from interested people, but none of the callers were serious, so I decided to continue on with my Charger.. I do wish I had the money to buy the Cuda and still keep the Charger, but sadly my wallet is not thick enough to have two cars, just having one car has over the years put a major dent in my economy...





This is what powered the Cuda, a Ray Barton fuel injected 572cid Hemi...





/Tom

[Mefirst]

UPDATE 11/6-2008

Well things have been kinda slow for a while, but made some progress again... This is what the enginebay looks like at the moment...









As you may notice, the hood clearance will be an issue ...

... -Yup a major issue








Still have some stuff to do before startup... But its getting close...

/Tom

[Runner]

wow, that looks killer. i have a solution for the hood problem,   how about you trade me a 383 and ill deal with the hod issue

[70sixpkrt]

That is looking sweet!!!! Nice job and the covers look good . If you don't use that hood, let me know.

[Mefirst]

UPDATE 17/6-2008

-Well things are not looking so good

Spent the whole weekend with the Charger. Saturday I tried to get the brakes to work, no go.. Need to rebuild the Master brakecylinder.. Well, this setback did not put my mood down that much.

On Sunday I made the Hemi ready for her first start up.. Things moved along nicely.. Time to turn the key... -Nothing The starter turns but I cant get the damn E85 to light up. Spark is good but it just wont fire up... Try different things, add timing, pull timing, check and recheck that the distributor is correct, also pull it a couple of times to check that the dist. drive is correct. (-NO, the dist. is NOT 180* wrong!!!) Check for spark and its good... By the way, damn this E85 "Jungle Juice" smells bad, like rotted vegetables Seems that the carb is a bit over jetted, it does flow like a SOB, so carefull with the throttle so I don't flood the cylinders.. Anyways, still I cant get the engine to start, it does promise a couple of times...

Fast forward a little and I'm now entering almost Compleat Disaster Level...

-Hmm, decided to pour a little 98oct. fuel into the carb, may be that will do it Turn the key and then "BOOOOOOM" !!!!!!!!!!!! -WTF??? Ears are ringing and a Black cloud has emerged behind and over the car.. Sounded like a 81mm Mortar round had gone off in my garage -Damn, first thought was -I BLEW UP the engine... Well it was not that bad, other that I may have found a new way to clean the soot out from the exhaust. Had to "evacuate" the garage for a while to let the big black cloud of soot fall down to the earth.. Dynomax Turbo mufflers are by the way NOT that restrictive as I thought

-Well my mind is racing and my brain is hurting -Whats wrong Then it hits me, there doesn't seem to be that much compression for some reason. It may be that when the pushrods/rockers were dialled in, they might be a tad to tight, so when the engine is turning and there is oilpressure the lifters push the rods up a fraction with the result that the valves are slightly open = No compression

Need to do a comp. test and if that shows weird readings I have to open the valve covers and set the pushrods slightly looser against the rockers... and do the comp. test again... I hope this will be an "easy" fix so I can get my Charger out into the fresh air soon....


/Tom

[tommymac]

Just read last clip, so is it running yet on that E85 goop? what kept it from firing up?

[Mefirst]

Just read last clip, so is it running yet on that E85 goop? what kept it from firing up?

Tommy

-Well at the moment its cause I'm a lazy SOB... -Truth is that I need a "Time Out" from the whole Charger project.. Been working on the car through the winter and spring months, and lately I just havent had the energy to spend time in the garage, been working on the car for almost 5 years... It may sound weird, but truth is I have more or less lost interest and if the "heart and mind" is not 100% into something, then its better to leave it be for a while and do something else...

/Tom

[max]

Tom, is that engine a stock 4.25 bore?

the reason i ask is, did you check intake valve to cylinder block clearance. if you look at the intake valves on a Hemi head they extend out past the combustion chamber and if the heads have been milled it moves the valve even farther out into the combustion chamber.
if this isn't caught and there is contact then you could have either bent the intake push rods or even worse took out the intake valves.

[Mefirst]

Max

The engine is stock bore 4.256.. The engine is an old Pro Stock Hemi engine, a real Race Hemi from a Sox & Martin built Plymouth Duster that ran with the name "Brooklyn Heavy"..

The heads are the aluminium double sparkplug D4A. The engine had a comp of about 13.4:1 before I opened it up and did some changes to make it more street friendly. The head gasket was a steel shim .020, I changed those out for Cometic copper gaskets that are .040 thick = comp at about 12.4:1. I did al the prep work when the engine was assembled and everything was double, some things triple checked. The intake valves are a tad over the combustion chamber, but nothing radical that they would not move about freely, also the lift of the cam I'm using, is far less radical than the roller cam that has been in this engine, so the valve to cylinder block clearance is not an issue...



The problem with the "no" compression is that when the Valve Lash was set, it was set slightly to tight, so when there is oilpressure in the hyd. roller lifters, they push up the rods a fraction with the result that the valves are not fully closed. What I have to do to correct this, is to set the valve lash a little more "loose"..

/Tom

[max]

sorry, i just had to throw that in there.

i had that problem with my Hemi engine when i went togeather with it. i bought a new MP 4.19 block and when it was bored it was bored straight through with out any tapper at the top of the cylinders and when i bolted my new iron heads on and looked up through the bottom of the cylinders with the heads on, all the intake valves couldn't be seen so i had to notch the top of the cylinders to unshrould the intake valves.

i used the stock steel shim head gaskets and at the very top they have an eyebrow which is what i used as a guide to notch the cylinder bores.

atleast you know what your problem is and it wouldn't take long to adjust those valves.

[Mefirst]

UPDATE 24/7-2007

Well things are looking GREAT

-My ride has brakes now and -YES!!!! I got the engine running... Did a comp test and the numbers were OK... -Well this is weird, so whats the problem then
Checked the distributor again and played around with it... And more or less by misstake found the timing sweet spot and got it running


The Hemi still needs some tuning, sadly I couldnt do more cause I dont have a timing light ... So thats what I´ll go buy first thing in the morning...

Here is a BAD video clip. I was multitasking and shot the video with my phone camera...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7WybQqjv8A


/Tom

[tan top]

   awesome  stuff .... thanks for posting    ....need more video of it running now    ...........

[firefighter3931]

Excellent Tom ! Good to hear it's up and running. 



Ron