68 Dart 440 Daily Driver Build Thoughts

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CraftyFast

CraftyFast

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Hey all. New member to the Mopar family and building my first car/engine. I have a 440 block that i have had decked, align honed, bored .06 with forged piston dished at 7cc, forged crank, all balanced. The cam i have is a .545 lift. Carb is a Quickfuel 780cfm and an Edelbrock Performer RPM dual plane. Its going to go into a 68 dart, the rear is a Dana 60, shortened with 4:10 gears and spool, that has to go, going to go with a sure-grip/ posi. fiberglass fenders hood and bumper, 10 point roll cage, tubbed, was a former pro street race car. I plan on using a stock 11.75" torque converter behind the 727 I got from a Winnabago, plan on getting a shift and rebuild kit for. Going to detune the chassis a bit to make it more of a pro turing car/daily driver with new wheels and tires. I plan on using Edelbrok RPM aluminum heads. Just wondering what peoples thoughts are on cam selection and all that for a daily driver (as much as possible) Thanks for your time guys.
 
Firstly, welcome to the board.

Daily driver ? My buddy had a 69 Charger r/t with a mildly worked over engine...even babying the car, he never got 10 mile to the gallon...much worse if he played with the loud pedal... I would hate feeding it at $1.44 a litre..

Grassy
 
Hey crafty- welcome from another Ontario guy. Sounds like you have a great plan but I hope you work a night shift. I'd hate to get caught in the usual TO traffic with that badboy.
 
Welcome aboard,
I would dial it back a little if you want to drive it every where. Lose some gear depending on your tire size and lose some cam but you may need more converter depending on the cam you decide to use.
But no matter what you decide have fun. Good Luck pictures help to
 
Welcome to FABO!

Am I the only one seeing some mismatched components, and a rather large gap of relevant info on the engine build?
 
Hey guys, pics of the build will come soon. i'm trying to document as much as possible. I have the block, 440, decked .006 down, .06 over, with forged crank, stock rods, balanced, forged pitons speed pro dished 7cc, all assembled so far. The cam I have is Comp cams energy .545 but i might change it out to maybe something a bit less depending. 1.5 rockers. I have a 727 with the 11.75" torque converter that i would like to use, not carved in stone. The heads i am looking at are the Edelbrock RPM 84cc to give me about 10:1-10.5:1 static compression. Schemacher Tri-Y headers are in the plan with 2.5" exhaust system exiting before the rear wheels. What my unknowns are: tire size. I need to put 15x12" rims back there to offset the cut rear end, steel cop car wheels and 15x8 up front, rear gears for sure depending on tire size, maybe different cam and torque converter. quad core rad with 2 electric fans. I think changing out the cam would be the easiest and least expensive thing to do if you guys think it might be too much for this type of application. Its not going to be a show car by any stretch of the imagination, just a fun thing to go here and there.
 
the rear brakes are stock Dana 60 drums. going to take them off, new shoes and lathe them the same, fronts are disks. i dont think stock they look pretty beefy. it had a 440 Wedge in it before so i am assuming the suspension is ok for a 440?
 
some pics of the engine so far
 

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ir3333 said:
i would give a lot of thought to your brakes and suspension.
Click to expand...

I'm inclined to agree with this statement, only thing I'll add is chassis stiffening otherwise it sounds like you have it pretty well covered, and any aluminum you put on that engine will be a nice weight savings.

...is your cam this one?

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-21-228-4/overview/make/dodge

That actually might be about right :) ought to be a thumpin 440 I would think...but your converter speed would need to go up...3k-ish? These are all JMO, though...there are much better big block builders on here...
 
txstang84 said:
I'm inclined to agree with this statement, only thing I'll add is chassis stiffening otherwise it sounds like you have it pretty well covered, and any aluminum you put on that engine will be a nice weight savings.

...is your cam this one?

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-21-228-4/overview/make/dodge

That actually might be about right :) ought to be a thumpin 440 I would think...but your converter speed would need to go up...3k-ish? These are all JMO, though...there are much better big block builders on here...
Click to expand...

Yeah same cam but with 3 bolts. I have looked around and found a guy on YouTube who actually spun his cam with the single bolt. The little dowel peg slipped or something and man it really f'd his engine. Whenever the valves kiss the pistons it's never a good thing. That was 1 thing I was adamant about. Yeah aluminum is going to be plentiful I hope. The heads, intake, carb, water pump, maybe valve covers if I can score some at a good price. The whole front end is fibreglass so that's a ton gone right there. American car tool I think has a complete package for chassis stiffening I might buy that. At least the rail connectors. Going to fab as much as I can on this. I have a converter that came with my tranny, I have no idea what the stall is but it is 11.75" across for the 727. Came out of a Winnebago. Learning as I go on this one
 
Yeah, I've heard a couple horror stories about that, but never witnessed it. There are a set of fabbed aluminum valve covers in the classifieds right now unless they're already sold.

If it came out of a Winnie, it probably has a short tailshaft housing...might need to swap that...
 
txstang84 said:
Yeah, I've heard a couple horror stories about that, but never witnessed it. There are a set of fabbed aluminum valve covers in the classifieds right now unless they're already sold.

If it came out of a Winnie, it probably has a short tailshaft housing...might need to swap that...
Click to expand...

Yeah you are right about the tail shaft. It is the short one. Have you heard of anyone trying to fabricate a bracket to fit the A body?
 
I can't recall seeing anyone on here doing it, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been done...best thing is to search through the threads...or just google it. Otherwise, it would probably be easier to locate and use a full length tailshaft.
 
That cam will not like that stock 11.75 converter. Will probably stall in the 1700 range. Think 3500ish, 9.5 or 10 inch.
 
So let me get this straight, the car has a cage but no sub-frame connectors?
 
inkjunkie said:
So let me get this straight, the car has a cage but no sub-frame connectors?
Click to expand...

to my knowledge, i bought the car on an impulse for a smoking deal, so i really havent gotten into the nuts and bolts of it yet. once it gets a bit milder here i'm going to take a comb to it and take more pics to show you guys.
 
In my opinion, that is WAY TOO MUCH cam and gear for a daily driver. Something with lift around .480 and [email protected] is about the most I would do for cam. I have daily driven a 440/4sp Dart with a basically stock 440 Magnum and 3.23 gears. It was great fun and mild enough to drive in traffic.
 
Jim Lusk said:
In my opinion, that is WAY TOO MUCH cam and gear for a daily driver. Something with lift around .480 and [email protected] is about the most I would do for cam. I have daily driven a 440/4sp Dart with a basically stock 440 Magnum and 3.23 gears. It was great fun and mild enough to drive in traffic.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input i'll have to do some digging on that. i am coming to realise i might have gotten a little carried away with the cam. thats an easy $150 fix now before i go much further on this build
 
Crafty- it's SOOOO easy to just shop for all the "cool" speed parts and get carried away beyond what's practical. I have built many, many 440's. Most of which are almost non-streetable. It's not any fun when you have to baby the car around because of the enormous power of the 440.
I would suggest like Jim said- somewhere around a 284/484 cam and a 10" Dynamic or Ultimate converter & some 3.55 gears on a 28" tire. That should be plenty for daily cruis'n!
 
hey guys. i think i am going to be going in a different direction with this build. i think i am going to be going with a slant 6 with a single possible twin turbo setup, 904 - 8.25/8.75. been looking around and the performance seems to be good, daily driver manors look good too. not to mention mileage. i'll have to post back
 
CraftyFast said:
hey guys. i think i am going to be going in a different direction with this build. i think i am going to be going with a slant 6 with a single possible twin turbo setup, 904 - 8.25/8.75. been looking around and the performance seems to be good, daily driver manors look good too. not to mention mileage. i'll have to post back
Click to expand...

Yea I'll say that is a 180 direction.
 
IDK what kind of budget you have but one big help for a car thats going to get driven alot is an overdrive trans. I put an A-518 behind my 440 and I like it alot. It has a .69 O/D ratio so you can run enough gear like 3.91s or so and still cruise on the highway. I did a photo gallery of the swap if you want to look at whats involved. The A-518 swap in pretty involved but it's a lot less expensive than what the aftermarket has to offer. The A-518 came in both lockup and non lockup.
 
Welcome! I wouldn't drive a 440 anything as my daily driver, not with gas around here flirting with $4 a gallon.
 
hey guys thanks for all the great advice. i think i am going to be going down this path:

318 block
10:1 +/- compression
aluminum heads
msd atomic efi
.488 thumper cam
headers etc...

the /6 sounds cool but looks like pain in the a$$. i want to spend more time driving then tweaking. cars going to be used for street and track days/autocross. going to post my 440 stuff and current drag stuff on car to fund this path. plus i have a 318 engine kicking around and a 904 that came with it
 
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