The ol' 440 with the gopher killer oil pan sits on the floor of my shop waiting for it's new owner to pick it up Saturday. My original PS legal 440 will be reunited with the 6 pack intake and spend another Summer sitting in the garage mounted to an engine stand. Next step is to yank out the donor K frame that has been in my car since I put it together and send my original K frame to the powder coater and start the rebuild. Man is it going to be nice to have a rebuilt front end. Those 30 somethin' year old parts were pretty scarry:eek2: Now if we can just get the mystery engine done and installed for May we'll be all set.:Brow:
Congats that will be the very first Mopar I have seen have the courage to finally go with a Buick 455. What kind of adapter plate did it take for the tranny?
Your doing the right thing I'm very proud of you Mike, but more importantly, PETA and the little critter's Thank You:3gears:
Haven't researched it but I was wondering why a 440+6 hasn't made it into the 11's in FAST. Is it not possible to make a 440+6 go that fast? I would think certainly with the FAST type mods that they could compete with a Hemi and 455. Just wondering. Dan
Dangerous to put one of those 455 Buick engines in a MOPAR unibody. The only time I remember it being done was back in the 70s. It kind of pretzeled the front end after a pass. They were never designed to handle that kind of torque without some special bracing.
There's no doubt that with a few more tries I coulda had mine into the 11's. With more money and effort it would have been pretty easy. Mine used old school TRW domed pistons(used pistons from a 1970's rebuild) which are heavy as bricks and not much good in the quench dept. It had heavy stock rods and home ported heads. My exhaust manifolds were untouched and after some talking with Greg Gessler he let me know that the cam we were running was not nearly what he would reccomend. Plus add to it that we were only running 446ci with 10.75 CR. If I were starting from scratch I would have taken a different route with the build-up. Not to say I am unhappy with the combo. We dropped 3/10's on the last time out with only changing the shift points:eek2: Also those times(12.14) were run with a stock mechanical fuel pump and off the shelf MP electronic dist and unmodified carbs with a scale crushing weight of 3900lbs:TU:
Wow!!...my apologies sir...you did pretty darn well considering. :TU: Shame you won't be staying with the 440 though. Hate for it to be a two engine show. Good luck to ya and I will be rootin' for a fellow Burnt Orange '70 RR. Dan
Mike My recollection from being around these cars in the late 60 s and early 70 s is that a 440 6 pack would take a 426 street hemi out of the box and on the street. That was the general feeling. A local here here until recently had both and verfied that was his experience. Now for competition racing on a 1/4 mile I am sure you guys know the best performer better than anyone. Says a lot though about the potency of a 440 6 pack out of the showroom.
