My best friend and race car partner is 75. I am 74. That's years old, not our I Q's. (our I Q;s are doubtlessly, lower than that....:( )
He has a super-nice '69 Dart GT with a 390hp 360 crate engine with all the bells ans whistles (TTI exhaust, 8.75" rear, MSD ignition, 3500rpm stall converter, built 904 and 3.55 sure-grip gearing.)
I have a '72 Valiant with a 1998 360 Magnum that is equipped with a Vortech V-1, S-Trim supercharger. 8.75" sure-grip equipped that is 4.10-geared. It is a solid, mid-11-second car.
We've had these toys for awhile,,,, but.... Four years ago, We were bored with them.
A lifetime of V8s for both of us had resulted in our trying everything under the sun to make these cars fun drives, and we hit a wall; there was seemingly nothing left to do... or so we thought.
Wrong, nitrous breath!!!:oops:
One day, with us both staring down the barrel our own mortality, we decided to build ONE MORE Mopar; something neither of us had ever had the slightest thing to do with... ever!
BOTH of us had always had V8s and the Vortech-inspired 360 Magnum in my '72 Valiant was the only forced induction car either of us had ever had anything to do with, so we mutually agreed that the thing for us to do was to build a turbocharged slant-six powered early A-Body.
So, we did.
We didn't think this up on our own. Fabo members Ryan Peterson and Tom Wolf had already been down this road, and both helped us out with the steep learning curve we encountered. Tom, in particular, educated us on a whole bevy of things, and saved us mega-bucks and lots of time.
Ryan's 2,800-pound '66 Valiant has run 10.74 @ 127mph, while Tom's later model and probably 500-pound heavier (1971?) Dart has gone virtually 11-flat at 120mph into a 15mph headwind. That takes about 500 flywheel horsepower... more than plenty for a couple of old codgers like us.
We have built a '64 Valiant ($700.00.... found waiting for us in an open field, where it had been for the last 15 years,) and have built a turbo'd 225 /6 that is a copycat motor that mirrrors Tom's and Ryan's mechanically-similar engines.
We'll never go as fast as they do, but we plan on horsepower in the 400 range, which in our 2700-pound bucket of bolts, should move out smartly, on the double. :blob:
We have been working on this thing for four long years, and it's finally almost ready to take to the strip.
We're old, slow, and stupid, but you know what? We haven't had TIME to be BORED!!!
Here are a couple of pics of the fruits of our labor... I'm the idiot in the white (doctor of motors) coat...
:wack: