Month: April 2013

When it comes to late-model Mopars and drag racing, we know what you’re thinking: These cars are too expensive to make into dedicated drag racing vehicles. And while purchasing a new Challenger off the dealership lot, or acquiring one of the limited edition Dodge Drag Pak vehicles may not be in your budget, there is another way to build a late-model race car. Just like muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s, many new Dodge Challenger and Charger R/T and SRT models are being sold to anyone who can get financing or write a check, and not necessarily strictly to drivers that can handle the cars. As a result, we’re seeing these cars show up at auctions and scrap yards after being wrecked, and many of these vehicles can be had for pennies on the dollar, depending on the extent of damage they’ve incurred.

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.

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.

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.

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.