dwc43

We're just ramblin and waiting on an update ourselves. lol?

The most fun we ever had was at Hohenwald, Tn. We did a 200 lap Enduro race with a Super Street car. We prepped that car and brought enough parts that we could have built 3 more cars in the pits. lol We put tailpipes on the headers with a cross over pipe and ran them out the right side of the car trying to keep the noise down inside the car. Two cars crashed and ran over a bumper punched a hole in the cross over pipe and got a flat. Every time you backed off in the turn it would pop and flame out the pipes putting on a show. We also had a red flag at lap 100 on the front straight. You could refuel and give water or food to the driver, and you could look at the car, but not touch it. WE also had to provide a lap counter in the stands and their numbers had to match the number the track counter had in the booth. After it was over we were loading up and they started calling out the finishing positions from last to first over the PA. We thought we missed out names. We ended up finishing second behind David Earl Gentry. We proceeded to make a lot of noise and you would have thought we won the Daytona 500. lol Good times.

WOW, that's a lot of cars. I know at my home track and a few others if we got a lot of cars we split them up into two heats and then lined up a normal sized group for the main. WE did have a big dwarf car race one night though. For those that don't know, that's a 1/2 scale 20's and 30's cars running motorcycle engines and cut down Toyota rear axles. They had so many cars there, with the lead cars on the starting line the tail end was halfway down the back stretch. Needless to say, that did not work out to good. Big wreck on 1st lap going into turn one. A couple cars actually got out into the parking lot, well they were hung up in the fencing and I think they did damage a couple cars. And to make it worse, they had to call the FD and EMT's to extricate one of the drivers from his car. He was not hurt bad, just could not get out of the car.

Crash fest reminds me of the pony cars. Can't get through a race without 10 cautions or more. lol But, I guess you gotta start somewhere.

That's a fact. I got hit in the left front in the middle of 1 and 2 at Winchester speedway one night by a camaro. It dislodged the z bar mount that bolts to the bellhousing. Lucky, I did not lose the everything. It stayed on the car, but it had no clutch.

I'm in need of 2 Sun tachometer if anyone has one. Does not matter to me if it's plastic, resin or 3d printed. Thanks in advance.

3 inches under on Ebay.

Nice looking car. I always wanted to try racing one of these cars, but in my area, they restricted us to a narrow tire. Too much engine or a heavy right foot and you could easily burn the tires off the things. I had both issues. We always had too much engine (by the rules legal) and i had the heavy right foot too. lol

Welcome anytime. Chevy is the same too. The thing with Mopar is the big blocks are counterclockwise and the small block are clockwise. I forgot to mention that one. Nevertheless, it looks good.

Looks good. Firing order is 18436572 for Mopars.

Thanks for that idea. I don't think a pic will be needed unless you want to post it for others. I think I got the idea of what you did. I have some metallizer too. I need to check and see exactly what I have in those type paints. Thanks.

Thanks. That's not a bad idea at all. I did not think about using that. Glad I asked.

Most old 30's trucks had a rubber mat in the floor or nothing at all. The truck is black and I need to create the worn surface of the floor. So, the paint is rubbed off and it looks like a somewhat shiny or polished steel where constant wear from your feet has worn the paint off and polished it. I was thinking about spraying some Motolow Chrome paint on it and then hitting it with a dull coat of some kind to knock the chrome look off of it. Then paint the black around the area that still needs to be black. I can do some testing on it, but thought I'd ask and get suggestions.

Looks good so far. Since you mentioned the radio, I thought you might get a kick out of this. Back in the 70's David Pearson had a factory cigarette lighter mounted to the dash of this NASCAR Mercury Cyclone so he could smoke during a race.

Pretty close to it. AS the pinion on the rear axle tries to rotate upward, it will pull the rear of the body downward. Bad thing is that unloads the weight off the rear tires. If you had scales under the car at launch you could easily see that. The main idea behind it was to prevent the front segment of the spring from turning into an s and snapping back and forth causing wheel hop. If you have ever noticed intermittent black marks instead of a solid black mark, well the first one is a wheel hop. The old slapper bars did the same thing. They Lakewood yellow or chrome traction bars. They mounted to the spring under the axle tube and had a single bar on each side with a rubber snubber on the front that hit the front spring eye mount. It would try to raise the body which as a good thing cause raising the rear ride height puts weight on the rear wheels. But its real job was to stop the front segment of the spring from turning into an S and wheel hopping. By the way, never put those Lakewood type traction bars on a Mopar. They won't work cause Mopar's use a short segment on the front of the spring and a long rear segment. So, when they launch the rear springs arch up. If both segments were the same length, then it would work like a Ford or Chevy spring. If you notice, Mopar's do what I call a leapfrog when they launch. Front up and back up at almost the same time.

Looking good. I noticed one thing, no one makes the new race harness belts. I guess we could make them ourselves if we wanted too though. Should not be that hard to do. The new belts have a latch link about in the middle of the writing on those belts. In the real world it keeps the shoulder belts from sliding out to the edges of the shoulder so that the impact does not break your sternum. I never broke my sternum in a crash before these were available, but I sure bruised it up one night in a crash. On all belts, the shoulder harness should be Y'ed in the back behind the seat. On this kind of belt, a lot of people miss it. Those to larger link pieces on the end of the shoulder belts should be on the lap belt. When you hit the release, that large belt release will fall and pull all the belts apart for a quick escape. They work the same way on the latch link belts too. Whoever designed it that way got it right.

It's not really a traction bar so to speak. As you launch a car the pinion climbs the ring gear, that's how you end up with a wheel stand on cars with too much rear traction, usually too much percentage weight to the rear. Anyways, when the axle rotates up the spring stops it at some point and if you could see it, the front segment of the spring looks like an S laid down on the side. All of a sudden that spring unwinds and jerks that axle back down. That's when it goes into wheel hop and the tires bounce up and down on the road and chirp and spin and lose traction. That bar is trying to prevent the axle wind up that turns into wheel hop. It's also going to try to pull the rear of the car down and that's not good cause you are actually unloading the rear tires by doing that. If you put 4 scales under a car and raise the rear end with, say leaf spring shackles, the scales will show more weight on the rear tires than the front. Opposite if you lower the rear. That's why they use forward facing ladder bars. They do two things at once. They try to raise the car up making weight shift to the rear at the same time using that leverage to push the tires into the track. Lower the front of the bar closer to the road for more traction and vice versa. 4 links work the same way, except you have two bars to adjust on each side. Lower bar is a big adjustment and the upper bar is a fine tuning adjustment. Upper bars have more mounting holes than the lower ones do too.

Ron Coon has just about everything you need to build it into a dirt track car. Even has the correct wheels and header pipes. Ron Coon Resins | Wheels & Tires - For Circle Track Builds

Actually, the reason for setting the engine back is to put more weight on the rear tires and to save that right front. Makes it handle better. All the classes I ran under had a rule that the number 1 spark plug had to be in line with the LF ball joint of the car. That's as far back as they would let us set the engine back. As for tires, Street stocks ran 255/60r15's Super Streets ran 275/60r15's and all the other cars except the ponies of course ran the dirt track tires, like Hoosier, American Racer, and such, usually no softer than a 55 I think it was on the RR if I recall correctly. Stocks and Streets ran a min. 4-inch ground clearance. This was through the late 70's, 80,s and 90,s here in Tn.

Looks good. And yes, those over sized tires are a joke. No one ever ran anything that looked like that.

Paint looks good. You need a MAD distributor with plug wires to set that little 4cyl off.

That should be a nice build. Can't wait to see it. Those little engines can make some big power. We used to run them back in the day in my brother's dirt track car. I modified the factory intake and fitted a 500 Holley 2bbl to it. I made custom headers for it. They made a timing chain kit so you could remove the balance shafts from the engine bock. Throw a cam in it and mill the head and you was good to go. We ran it in a Challenger with a 4spd behind it and 3.91 gears in the rear. Never took it out of second gear on a qtr. mile dirt track. Thing would turn 7500 to 8k easy.

Looks good so far. Love the red color. I agree, those wheels needed to go. Can't wait to see what it looks like in the end.

lol ...