Made it to the 10's

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moparandy

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Well I finally made it into the 10's with an engine I bought from Bobby Josheph (BJR Racing) a couple of years ago. With my work I am not able to spend much time with the car but finally got it all together. Saturday night I took it to the track after installing the new 5200 PTC converter and the car ran a 10.756 at 124.83 mph with a 1.595 60', shifting at 6200 and crossing the traps at 7000 rpm in a 3000 lbs car with me in it. The car is spinning off the line but I did not notice it until looking at the videos. I will post them if I can ever figure out how to do it but not real professional as it is a new camera. I feel the engine is going to run some easy 10.50's with some tuning and solving the traction problem. The best time up to now had been a 11.05 at 120 mph with a 60' time of 1.59.

I bought the engine from Bobby because I wanted the W5 heads on it to put on a stroker engine I wanted to build. The engine is a balanced 360 .030 with a cast stock crank and stock rods with KB 107 pistons. He said the engine was running in the high 10's and offered to freshen it up for me for a small fee so I agreed and had him add a small roller cam to it. The W5's are 2.02 valves as one might expect seeing as BJR likes small valved heads. The cam is Comp cams, # 20-740-9 with a lift of 576/582 in/ex and duration @50 248/254. The carb is a 1050 dominator out of the box. I dont even know what jets are in it but after pulling the plugs I think I need to go up a few numbers because it appears it may be running a little lean.

Now by everything I have read on these sites, this near stock bottom end should be nearing its limitations. The 416 stroker short block is sitting on the engine stand but I dont think it will be seeing any action until I get all I can out of the 360. The 360 actually has about 30 passes on it now, as I was running it in some 1/8th mile 7.0 index racing. It was running a consistant 7.05 except for the last time out after sitting up for 4 months, it only ran a best of 7.15. After the converter swap it ran 6.861 at 101.76 mph in the 1/8th.

The 60' times must have to do with the spinning because when doing the 7.0 index racing I installed the Dominator and dropped the ET from 7.28 to 7.05 but 60' never changed. After installing the new converter the 1/4 mile time dropped from 11.12 to 10.75 but 60' time never changed.

I had a good night even though it was test and tune. I ran in the 10's and had two back to back reactions times of .508 on a 500 tree before the final red light of .493. Now I will hopefully get to do it again in a couple of months.

Thanks to Bobby for the engine and answering all my silly questions when I called him and to all others that offer excellent information on this site.
 
Congrats, Bobby really seems to know how to make these motors scream. Small valves and a pretty small cam too.
 
Way cool! Moparandy, what does the car weigh and how much compression do those pistons give you? My 360 is somewhat similer and I am going to take it to the track Friday if weather permits for my first runs ever with an untried combination.
 
If you ran a 10.75 with a 1.59 60 foot that car is capable of more. Need to get that thing to leave better. I am having the same problem, slow 60 foot time is leaving some ET on the table. My biggest problem is my weight balance, I need to shed weight of the front. You might look at that.
 
Adam I am convicned now that Bobby knows what he is doing although I never said anything on here until I made the car run in the 10's. I met him on one of the other sites a couple of years ago when he told me about the engine. I took a chance and bought the engine unseen. Drove out to Georgia from Texas and picked it up. Bobby showed me around his shop and I must say I was pretty impressed with a lot of what he had to say although some of it went way over my head. He told me several tricks to gain horsepower that I had never heard of. I do believe he knows his stuff when it comes to heads. He showed me many heads he had disected and some of what he does to increase flow but as mentioned before most of it went over my head. I consider my self a pretty good mechanic and have built many engines but have never built any racing engines. Me personally I would not have built an engine like this with stock bottom end but I will continue to run it until it comes apart.

66dartman, my car weighs about 3000 lbs with me in it and I weigh in at a whopping 240 lbs. The compression on this engine is suppose to be I think 14.3 to 1 but not exactly sure and dont have my paper work with me.

340mopar, I agree the 60' times are killing me. Bobby said they ran something like a 1.47 sixty foot with the engine in a 72 Demon so I am hoping to do the same or better one day. I originally put the engine in my 73 Dart Sport street car but decided I did not want to add a cage or cut the car up and the transmission failed anyway. I purchased another 73 Dart Sport that was set up for a big block. It has ladder bars and coil overs in it which I know nothing about. I noticed the car spinning when doing the 7.0 index racing but thought I had the problem worked out before running the quarter mile again. It looks like the car goes to lifting the front end and then you can see the rear tires look like they spin and the front end drops. It does not spin enough that I can feel it in the car though. Hopefully I will be able to work out the problem. I am open to any suggestions on how to make the car hook but will not be able to work on it again for several months now.

By the way guys, Bobby does makes mistakes as the intake gasket leaked on cylinders 6 & 8 from under the intake causing the engine to idle rough and suck oil out of the intake causing it to smoke badly under heavy acceleration. This gave me the opportunity to look at the intake ports of the heads. There huge. I had to trim a lot off of the intake gaskets to make them fit properly when replacing them.
 
Congrads! Feels good huh!?!?!?

I met bobby here and then a face to face when I went on a trip to see a buddy of mine that lives close by. Gladly showing me around his shop, he has a nice stash, currently has a lot of parts (heads) for sale.
Great fella. On tech talk, not much went over my head, but boy he loves to talk about it. Alot of info was thrown my way and needed time to digest it all. By the time I had some diegested, we were 3 topics down the line. Sometimes on something new, or not exactly related.
(I like the flow bench. I want one.)
 
That's pretty good. As for the spinning there are several things to look at.

First what is the condition of your tires and what size are they? If they are more than a year old you probably need fresh ones and are they the biggest tire you can fit in there?

Second what does it have for shocks? Adjustable coil overs I hope? You can try loosening them up to let the suspension work a little more. There isn't much adjustment to the ladder bars themselves but it sounds like it's too stiff or too aggressive. Soften it up some to allow it's reaction to work longer.

Third have you experimented with tire pressure? My car works great at 11psi, at 10 it's very loose on the top end and at 12 it doesn't hook as well.
 
Rumblefish it did feel good but now I have to go faster. lol. My younger brother runs a 68 camaro and is running 9.14 at 144 mph with a 383 small block stroker with a 275 shot of nos. I smoked him pretty good when he ran on motor though.

Guitar Jones I think you will bust me on two accounts here. The tires are MT's 28" tall and 10 or 10 1/2" wide. They are over 3 years old but have been inside out of the weather with probably a total of 30 passes on them. They are still soft and not dried out looking but could be part of the problem. The tires that came on the car were 31" tall and 13 1/2" wide but I took them off because I was crossing the line at 5900- 6000 rpm. Even when changing these tires my 60' did not change. I was planning on buying some new 29" tires or something between the 28 and 31" because I am crossing the line at 7000 and the motor is starting to lay down. I also plan on buying a wider tire than the 10 1/2".

As for the coil overs they came on the car and are not adjustable. I read somewhere that you should have 60% extension and 40% compression with coil overs. I am about the reverse of that. There is only about 2 3/4" compression and 2 1/4" extension so I will also be looking at purchasing some new springs and shocks. I was told that I needed about 3" of travel on extension. Could you reccomend a good coil over setup? What should the pinion angle be with the ladder bars. I did not check this but it actually looks like it is level or possibly looking up.

For tire pessure I am running 11 lbs. I started with 13 and dropped to 11 and stopped.
 
The QA1's are pretty highly spoken of in either single or double adjustable. What you want to do is allow the shock to extend under launch. This will allow the suspension to work a little more rather than trying to jerk the car up. If you have front hole adjustments for the ladder bars (most have at least 3) start in the lowest hole (closest to the ground) and adjust from there.

Pinion angle will vary but probably no more than 2 degrees nose down but again unless you have adjuster links on the bars this is a nonadjustable setting.

I would definitely get new tires. The biggest I can fit in there. If necessary get a different rear gear because taller and wider in tires is better. Taller helps on launch because as the tire squishes it supplies more of a footprint. Wider helps down track when tire growth is high.
 
Getting pretty deep in here.14.3:1 with flat tops?Running lean with a 1050 dominator on a small block with a 5 something lift?Don't know the compression ratio?Give me a break.
 
The ladder bars are Alston with several points for adjustment and do have
the three front hole adjusters. They are currently set in the middle hole. I will move it to the bottom hole and try that. Will have to figure out how to check pinion angle first I guess.

I was just looking at the QA1 coilover kits but will have to figure out what length I need.

That is some good information on the tires that I did not know. Will definitely get some new ones taller and wider.

Thanks for all the info.
 
Dodgeboy, like I said I am not a professional with race engines but that is what the paperwork said that I got with the engine. It is suppose to have KB-107's with 0 deck height with the W5 heads. I have the cam card so I know which cam is in the engine and when I pull the plugs at the end of a pass and they are almost white, I was told that it is running a little lean.
 
My engine worked out to 12.7 with flat top pistons .011 out of the hole, a .039 head gasket and 47cc chambers. That's with a 360 at .020 over. If you did a stroker you could get up there but I haven't done the math yet to see exactly where that would end up.
 
First I want to say that Just the feeling I got from talking to BJR was a really good impression. Any time a guy with his level of knowledge and back ground will just sit and chat to somebody he doesn't even know about how to get the most out of every day street car is truly humbling, during our 30 minute conversation he never once made me feel like I was asking a rookie question or that he didnt have the time to explain . Really a great person to talk to!!
I Just got off the phone with BJR asking about my stock j-heads and what I should have done to them. Once we got into the specifics of my set-up he gave me a bunch of reccomendations to help out my little 360 and that's before any head work......I am convinced also that BJR really knows his mopars. I plan on having some heads done up at the beginning of the year by BJR. Until then I will put to use the info he gave me. I got to thank MRMOPARTECH for directing me to BJR.
I would imagine that just doing the work that BJR talked about will help out a great deal.

Thanks Bobby!! for taking the time to talk to me and explain all the tech details that I seem to have just overlooked.
 
63dartman,
Thanks for kind words and anything that I can do to help you out I will, glad that you felt comfortable as I this is just they way that I am, also thanks to you Rumblefish and Mrmopartech.
Glad to see that you ran the 10's Andy, the way that the engine is setup it should be able to get you close to the 9's if not in the 9's with the right carb, make sure that your fuel system is up to par or this will cause the situation that your having. The car that we had the engine in ran 1.47 60' times with what my brother wanted on it for a carb and should have went upper 1.30's with what I wanted on it but at the time it was his so what am I supposed to do, but he was satisified and that was all that mattered anyway.
I'll get the parts out that I will need for the other car and get started on it so it will be ready when you get back.
 
One thing that BJR told me to do was swap out the 600 cfm for a 750 that I have as a spare. I had the 750 on when I fired the engine for the first time and it ran really rich(lot's a black smoke when I revved it) Well I took his advice and swapped out the carb and......Wow what a difference in manners. I don't know what changed but, I have no black smoke or indication that it's over carbed. I am going to check the plugs once I've ran it a bit. Just from the carb change it has gone from a mild mannered bottom end to a real nice growl. :) I can tell by the way it's pulling that there is a lot more room for improvement. That is were BJR comes in. Hopefully after the Holidays I am going to get some heads built by him. THEN.......I will take her to the track in the spring to see what happens.
It sure feels good to be getting somewhere. I would have never thought to put the 750 back on after the initial results. Also found out that my throttle cable had slipped a bit and was not full throttle with the pedal down. Details, details.......Thanks again BJR
 
Moparandy, did not mean to take anything away from your post....I just saw that you got your engine from BJR and thought this would be a good place to post. Sorry, sometimes I don't think ahead....
 
63dartman, no problem. Glad you got some good info from BJR. I am going to have him build me another 360 engine, hopefully to run some mid 11's on pump gas to put in a 71 dart swinger that I bought from 74360duster. This will be my wifes car as she has decided she wants to race some also. I think if you listen to BJR and several more of the guys on this site and build the right combinations you can go pretty fast cheap. I know all there comments and feed back have helped me. Thanks guys
 
Mike I have some videos but not with me. I am working in Qatar and will not be home for awhile. I will try to post a pic of the car at HMP when doing the 1/8th mile 7.0 index racing before changing out the converter. It still has some cosmetic work to be done both inside and out especially the hood scoop which has to go. I dont know how to make the pic smaller though.

andys race (Medium).jpg
 
The duster stripe on a Dart Sport is what you get when you get a chevy man to work on a dodge car. I can't beat him up to bad though as it was my brother. I was working in China and bought the car off of racingjunk and he went to get it for me. He then told me, you aren't going to like this. So I told him to take it and get it painted and put a demon stripe on it but this is what I got so it is ok. (it was blue and looked pretty bad) It was set up for a big block before.
 
Still, it's not bad looking and only the purists will gripe. Tell them to get their own car. :)

It looks good and runs good. If you like it that's all that is important.
 
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