Nascar 340 Engines

-
DustyEd

DustyEd

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2019
Messages
301
Reaction score
155
Location
Far Out, USA
Does anybody know anything about Chrysler using some of the leftover 340 engines they built for Nascar being put into the 1970 Duster?
 
In 70 Duster sold by the dealers?......probably did not happen
 
besides nascar never used 340 cubic inch engines...they were 358 ....and they were sold in 71 dusters
 
Just talked to the original owner of our Duster and he was telling us about an article he read in a 1975 Motor Trend magazine about the Nascar engines.
 
never heard that,,i do know, that back in (73ish) my dad helped a bit with a few guys back when it was all volunteers,,,and harry hyde always asked my dad to keep an eye open looking for certain 340 engine blocks. i dont think it was so much dodge putting leftover nascar 340s in street cars, as much as it was nascar teams looking for certain 340 blocks. maybe aar blocks? i know he said they had "scouts" searching junkyards all over looking for these blocks.
 
70aarcuda said:
besides nascar never used 340 cubic inch engines...they were 358 ....and they were sold in 71 dusters
Click to expand...
The 355 engine was a bored and stroked production-340 6-barrel engine block (LA) that we modified for racing use. The modern 355 that we did in 2001 when we got back into NASCAR racing is a purpose-built race engine which has nothing in common with any of our old or new LA engines. [The 355 block was common to all racing applications before 2001.]

Back then, the engine block of choice was the 340 6-barrel block. However, by the late 1970s, 6-barrel blocks were hard to come by and we were scrounging the local junk yards. It was the same thing for the Pettys. We were using standard 340 blocks for dyno development and saving the six-barrel blocks for the race cars.

We wanted to use the 6-barrel block was because we had added material to the bulkheads for strength, so we could use 4 bolt main caps. Otherwise, the only difference between the engines was carburetion, camshaft, cylinder heads and headers. The NASCAR engine could only use a flat tappet cam (we used a mushroom tappet) and a single 4bbl carb.
 
So I have a question, as the NHRA drove racers from the Hemi's and they started building small blocks, what were they using? Like when Glidden won Pro Stock in 1979, what was Chrysler suppling to racers? Were the X Blocks out then?
 
Hyper_pak said:
So I have a question, as the NHRA drove racers from the Hemi's and they started building small blocks, what were they using? Like when Glidden won Pro Stock in 1979, what was Chrysler suppling to racers? Were the X Blocks out then?
Click to expand...
Yes, it was T/A blocks, then X blocks
 
That's a lot of TA blocks if the drag racers and a few Nascar racers were building motors.
 
Hyper_pak said:
So I have a question, as the NHRA drove racers from the Hemi's and they started building small blocks, what were they using? Like when Glidden won Pro Stock in 1979, what was Chrysler suppling to racers? Were the X Blocks out then?
Click to expand...
355 V8: the little-known Mopar LA racing engines this is pretty good synopsis of 340's used in both nascar and drag racing,,, drag engines even used chevy manifolds on 340 blocks! its an interesting lil read
 
DustyEd said:
So what would have been the engine code for the 358's?
Click to expand...

There was no engine code for the 358. The 358 was a NASCAR only build. It did not come from the factory.
 
70aarcuda said:
besides nascar never used 340 cubic inch engines...they were 358 ....and they were sold in 71 dusters
Click to expand...

So, Plymouth sold '71 Dusters with a 358 ci engine? Where did these engines come from? Nascar sold them to Plymouth and they in turn put them in the 71 Dusters?
 
Craftmans trucks were 358 small blocks using W8 cylinder heads....not sure on the blocks....probably R3 or R4 blocks or sometime along that line ....certainly not anything OEM
 
DustyEd said:
So, Plymouth sold '71 Dusters with a 358 ci engine? Where did these engines come from? Nascar sold them to Plymouth and they in turn put them in the 71 Dusters?
Click to expand...

NO. Once more. The 358 was not a factory Chrysler engine. It was a NASCAR only engine since 358 was the cubic inch displacement limit. Chrysler never offered a 358 in anything.
 
Actually.....now that I think about it...it was actually 1972.....but they were only available in Red Demons....
 
In the late '70s I meet a guy with a '68 Dart GT with a factory 340 6Pac. He said he bought it off the showroom floor that way.

I also knew a guy that had a '62 Corvette with a "283" that could blow the doors off just about anything. Fastest "283" that I ever saw.

Stories are told, sometimes they are true.
 
If it was leftover, in a '70, then it was leftover from '68 because '69 was when '70's were sold.

And I'm pretty sure NASCAR was using Hemi's in '68? But for a new model engine in the '68's, I doubt that cash-strapped Chrysler had many 340's in a pile with no home.

Edit: If I was selling a 318 '70 Duster with a four-barrel and headers, I'd tell a buyer it was a leftover NASCAR motor if they were dumb enough to fall for it.
 
kesteb said:
In the late '70s I meet a guy with a '68 Dart GT with a factory 340 6Pac. He said he bought it off the showroom floor that way.

He Lied.

I also knew a guy that had a '62 Corvette with a "283" that could blow the doors off just about anything. Fastest "283" that I ever saw.

Seen some fast 283s.

Stories are told, sometimes they are true.
Click to expand...
 
RustyRatRod said:
NO. Once more. The 358 was not a factory Chrysler engine. It was a NASCAR only engine since 358 was the cubic inch displacement limit. Chrysler never offered a 358 in anything.
Click to expand...
Okay, let's see if I've got it now: Nascar put their 358's in '71 Dusters that were used for racing? ~~~I should clarify that this is the Wife of DustyEd. I wouldn't want you guys thinking he was thick, like me :) ~~~
 
Back in Time said:
Before Mopar got completely out of NASCAR which engine were they using in the Dodge Trucks in the Truck Series
Click to expand...
We'll...they were basically small block Chevys. When Mopar made their return to Nascar and were so competitive from the start... it wasn't such an underdog story as people want to believe. Years before Ray Evernham started the cup team Mopar was pillaging other teams(mostly Hendrick).

The engines were 95% Chevy, 5% custom, and ZERO % Mopar. There's not one single piece that can be used on a production Mopar engine...Not One! The R,A,W,5,7,8,9 engines were GM engines developed by GM teams, and modified by former employees.

The entire rotating assembly is off the shelf GM. The vast majority of the valvetrain is from Jesel, and is Chevy part numbers with an asterisk or different number at the end. The blocks accepted GM accessories and were machined to accept a GM trans. Ect, ect, ect. The reason for all the wacky head changes was them changing from the copied SB2 platform and transitioning to the R07.

The Mopar teams went nuts trying to just get enough parts to build an engine. People may not realize that all W8, W7, ect are not the same. You need a perfect matching set. Things seemed to change daily back then.

Long story short...they ran slightly modified SBCs. Not a popular thing here...but true.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top