I’ll take a shot at this.
1. If the OP wants to run 12’s he can pick up an old DC/MP catalog and see how little it takes to go 12’s. It ain’t hard.
2. Everyone thinks 7500 rpm is screaming. It’s not. He really doesn’t need to shift any higher than 6500 to run far, far into the 12’s.
Now for Dan’s post.
1. Quench is far less important than you think it is. Especially with a small block Chrysler. It’s not a junk chevy. Why is that? Because there are things that are much more important than quench distance even though the long hair types think everything starts and ends with quench. I’m not saying to ignore it. I’m saying don’t get married to a design criteria to the detriment of something else. Plug location is NUMBER 1. The SBM has about as good of plug location you can get in an in-line wedge head. Rod ratio is number 2. A R/S ratio of say 1.7 to 1.85 will change the volume of the combustion chamber around TDC and that affects combustion etc. So reading **** on the 89% chevy centric internet doesn’t help increase your knowledge base. You actually have to build this junk, get it on a dyno to test and then get to a track and validate your testing.
2. When was the last time you drove a car with a “high stall” converter? Of course I have to ask how long is a rope. That’s the same as saying high stall. Some guys believe 3500 or 3000 is high stall. By todays standard that’s about as stock as you can get. I have several cars running around with 9.5 inch converters and one that’s running an 8 inch converter. The lowest stall is 3600. The highest stall is 5500. And they STREET drive these things all the time. Do they make more heat? Yes. Can you do something about it? Yes. Then it becomes of question of what to do to drive stuff like this on the street.
The number 1 thing about driving what most consider an unstreetable converter on the street is to learn to drive. The 9.5 inch converters require less attention to detail but you have to learn to DRIVE. If you think putting the shifter in D and rolling merrily along is the golden way then you need to build way less engine and use a stock converter.
If you want to control/reduce transmission temperature you have to learn that the way most dudes drive is WRONG for what we are discussing. Loping along in town at 35 mph in high gear will cause the temperature to climb rapidly. And this is exactly why God put a shift lever in these cars. Instead of running around in D, lugging the engine right into detonation and driving your transmission temperature through the roof you need to drop into the 2 hole. That will raise the rpm up and get the converter closer to locking up (as close as it will lock up) and keep the temperature under control.
It all starts with the driver. If the driver isn’t capable of understanding and driving the car appropriately then you need to do otherwise and give up on the dream of having a car that runs 9’s or 10’s or 12’s on the street and drives like a Prius. That’s just not reality.
The second thing is to get a correctly sized, QUALITY transmission cooler. It’s not hard to do but it has to be done. On top of that, no one should EVER run the cooler lines through the radiator. That is insane. If you run the transmission fluid through the radiator with 160 or 170 degree coolant in it (or even higher) and then trying to go through an external cooler to reduce the temperature you are fighting against your own cause. Keep your transmission fluid out of the radiator.
The last piece of the puzzle is buying a quality synthetic ATF. The chances of getting a quality oil from a box store is damn near zero. But it’s ok. With a little forethought and some planning you can have the brown truck drop the fluid right at your door.
Those three simple things (one of which costs exactly ZERO) is all you need to do to drive a good converter on the street. And yes, a good converter will be barely noticeable while driving around.
It’s not that RF is saying you’re wrong. He is trying to tell you that YOU dont have the experience to discuss what the OP is talking about. That isn’t offensive in any way. It’s a fact. I can say from reading your posts you have never driven an honest 12 second car on the street. I can say from reading your posts you’ve never built a 12 second engine either. It’s not something to be ashamed of, but it is important that anything you read on the Internet or see on TV be applied before handing out advice.
I’m all for reading anything you can get your eyes on. Same with watching **** on YT or TV or whatever. At some point you have to get out of the easy chair and start applying what you see and learn from those media and then testing it. I’ve said the biggest thing I learned from buying my own flow bench was that 95% of what you read on porting and flow testing is 100% bullshit. But I wouldn’t have known that had I not bought the bench and started testing.
Same with using a dyno. Engine or chassis. Like a flow bench they are tools and they have limitations and such and if you don’t recognize those limitations you will get bad data. It’s the same here.
No one is trying to offend you. They are telling you to go get some real experience before you get all dogmatic on your thinking.
