Like we said, unless you want to continuously see your buddies’ taillights, you really need to check into getting some of these street performance parts that we have listed. We took a poll on our Facebook page, asking what people felt were the top street-oriented performance parts that every Mopar should have. If you didn’t notice the post, apparently your buddy did, because he knows.

Photo Gallery: Street Speed Parts Your Mopar’s Gotta Have – Mopar Muscle Magazine

Of all the big-blocks built by the Chrysler Corporation, the 383 is the most widely produced, and likely the most underrated of them all. As a big-block, the 383’s displacement isn’t nearly as small as the 350 or 361 cubic-inch B-series engines produced by Chrysler in the early days of the big-block, but it’s also not nearly as large as the popular 440 engine either. When the Chrysler Corporation decided to add the 906 cylinder heads and high-performance 440 camshaft to the 383 for the 1968 model year, the engine immediately became a hit among enthusiasts of the era. Installed in the Plymouth Road Runner and Dodge Superbee, this engine easily propelled these B-Bodies to low 14 second quarter-mile times at trap speeds of more than 100 mph. And with a little work, the 383 could go deep into the 13s and still be much more drivable than the optional Hemi.

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Photo Gallery: C-Body’s 383 – Bolt On and Go – Mopar Muscle Magazine

Photo Gallery: C-Body’s 383 – Bolt On and Go – Mopar Muscle Magazine

If you’re into Mopars, chances are you’re into racing and the racing heritage that made Chrysler famous. From the dawn of motorsports, Chrysler embraced the racetrack, building cars and trucks to compete in nearly every competitive form of racing. Some argue that they did their job too well, as their purpose built race cars dominated many of the classes they were designed to run in. Some of these cars were handicapped by sanctioning bodies to the point of being non-competitive, while others like the Hemi powered ’68 Darts and Barracudas were relegated to run in their own class since none of the competitive brands could keep up. Even today if you watch the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes of NHRA drag racing you’ll notice that most, if not all, competitive cars still run a version of the famous 426 Hemi engine.

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Photo Gallery: 1964 Dodge Polara – Recreating History – Mopar Muscle Magazine

Photo Gallery: 1964 Dodge Polara – Recreating History – Mopar Muscle Magazine

Last month we began building the late-model Hemi engine for our ’10 Dodge Challenger drag car by bolting together a 426-inch bottom end using a factory 6.1 Hemi block. Our intentions with this late-model Hemi are to show Mopar Muscle readers how well the latest version of the Chrysler Hemi can run when built properly using a combination of factory and quality aftermarket components. We’ve challenged ourselves to make big power from this engine, and we decided to build the engine to run on pump gas to reduce the weekly costs of operating our bracket car during race season.

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Photo Gallery: Can You Hemi Now? Part 2 – Mopar Muscle Magazine

Photo Gallery: Can You Hemi Now? Part 2 – Mopar Muscle Magazine

One of the most common questions we get regarding engine builds is, “How much compression can I run?” It seems like enthusiasts intuitively gravitate towards pushing the compression ratio up as high as practical, and for good reason. With increased compression comes increased efficiency, manifested by improved power and economy. Everyone knows the stock low-compression engines of the early emissions era were dogs by most measures, soft on power while guzzling fuel. Those late smog 318’s 360’s, 400’s, and 440’s often came through with actual measured compression ratios of less than 8.0:1, crippling power output as well as economy. When building a performance engine, optimizing the compression ratio is one of the biggest challenges in putting together a successful combination.

Photo Gallery: Pump-Gas Power – Mopar Muscle Magazine

Most Mopar enthusiasts are somewhat technically minded people, and understand the principles of the parts that make their car or truck perform like it should. There are some parts of Mopars, however, that most of us just don’t get the chance to understand fully and one of those parts is the torque converter of the automatic transmission. Last month we described the 904 transmission that we’ll be installing behind a late-model Hemi engine in our 2010 Dodge Challenger bracket car, and this month we’ll address design and operation of the stall converter that we’ll use to couple the engine to the transmission.

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Photo Gallery: The Mystery Of The Fluid Coupler – Mopar Muscle Magazine