Hello from Arizona!

moparhead

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Greetings! Looking forward to sharing stories, helping where I can, and learning a lot. I own a 78 Aspen RT SportPak and a T-top Aspen Super Coupe. I’m thinking of getting back into some racing and would love to do that in an F body so I’ll probably be looking for a heap that’s taking up space in someone’s yard to turn into a race car :)
 

moparhead

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Welcome, what type of racing are you into?
Thank you. I’ve got a buddy here (from Iowa) that is a drag racer. I want to go drag racing with him. But I want to set the car up so it’ll autocross too. I’ve done a little of both in the past. Not looking for crazy numbers, just want it to be reliable, consistent and fun.
 
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M_Body_Coupe

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Thank you. I’ve got a buddy here (from Iowa) that is a drag racer. I want to go drag racing with him. But I want to set the car up so it’ll autocross too. I’ve done a little of both in the past. Not looking for crazy numbers, just want it to be reliable, consistent and fun.
Good news there is that we do actually have some chassis products from aftermarket (FirmFeel), so with a little fabrication (installing the pre-made stuff) you can stiffen things up a bit, which will lend itself to a better behaved autocross ride!

Keep in mind though, drag racing vs autocross are pretty much counter to each other. Drag racing requires you to encourage the proper weight transfer in the vehicle to plant the rear tires against the pavement in order to avoid slip. The Autocross on the other hand is for the most part looking to avoid such significant weight shift as you attempt to finely control the chassis behaviour.

But hey...there is an in-between there that you can aim for, it just won't end up being best of either one!
 

moparhead

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Good news there is that we do actually have some chassis products from aftermarket (FirmFeel), so with a little fabrication (installing the pre-made stuff) you can stiffen things up a bit, which will lend itself to a better behaved autocross ride!

Keep in mind though, drag racing vs autocross are pretty much counter to each other. Drag racing requires you to encourage the proper weight transfer in the vehicle to plant the rear tires against the pavement in order to avoid slip. The Autocross on the other hand is for the most part looking to avoid such significant weight shift as you attempt to finely control the chassis behaviour.

But hey...there is an in-between there that you can aim for, it just won't end up being best of either one!
Cool, thanks! Yeah I want to keep it reliable (also relatively cheap lol) so no faster than high 10’s in the quarter. Definitely a trade off to do both types of racing with the same car but I’d like to participate in the Hotrod Power Tour soon and race at that event in both classes.
 

M_Body_Coupe

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...Yeah I want to keep it reliable (also relatively cheap lol) so no faster than high 10’s in the quarter...

Nice...I like the sound of that...but high-10's is no easy feat, so at the risk of sounding like 'Debbie Downer', going that fast will take a bit of a budget!

Regardless, there are some FAST cars on our forum here, so you've got some great peeps here to converse with and exchange ideas with.

All the best...and yeah: PICS man...give us pics!!!
 

moparhead

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Nice...I like the sound of that...but high-10's is no easy feat, so at the risk of sounding like 'Debbie Downer', going that fast will take a bit of a budget!

Regardless, there are some FAST cars on our forum here, so you've got some great peeps here to converse with and exchange ideas with.

All the best...and yeah: PICS man...give us pics!!!
Agreed! High 10s is just my high water mark for this project. My goal is to get into the high 11s using a <gasp> 318 and mostly factory parts. I’ll for sure need an aftermarket cam tho. Will definitely share progress, failures, and pics. Need to find the mule first
 

69-

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Thanks. How is the Mopar contingent in Germany?
Quite good, I'd say. Not even close to the same numbers as in the US, but we have some good and nice cars here. A-/B-/C-/E-Bodys, mainly. M-Bodies are rather rare. I know of only four LeBarons, there are some Cordobas & Aspens, Magnums are very rare (love that car!)... M's are not typically sought after. I think we just don't have the same close history to owing those cars.

So, it mainly concentrates on the "real muscles" - like promoted in movies (2nd gen Chargers always in demand, Challenger/Cudas, of course). Earlies have a strong fan base, but its a rather "closed group", as their design is prompting the question of "what did they take at that time??". :)

But, sad as it is, the market is currently rather down, fewer sales transactions. People holding onto their money - uncertain times all over. And as local (european) policy is more like "go by train, bicycle, foot" anti-car (somehow pro-electric... :( ), it doesn't help for the next gen of gearheads. I know a couple promising young people, but it's not the same than 20/30yrs ago.

Then comes infrastructure - after WW2 (in the 50s of last century) some cities promoted bigger streets which helped growth for over 60 years or so, but now some very loud and influential people want to protect the common field mice (common vole) and putting work places / growth on the line (even pushing them down the drain)... Building a new highway is usually a 30 year project.... Together with most cities with roots in the medieval age (e.g. very tight streets) - you get the idea.

So all that doesn't help a lot. Sweden for example has a much stronger cultural approval of US cars (many many have been imported in the 50s to 70s) and much more young people have a family bond to the cars of their parents. Their meets (they have many in the summer) easily get more than 1.000 cars (mostly full sizes GM/Ford - but they have some specialty collectors with 6-figure Mopars). Big Power Meet in Västeras was one meet until 2016 (for 40 years at that time) with like 40.000 cars for the weekend.

Anyway. I won't complain too much, I like my cars, enjoy driving all of them, have a close community of like friends. Even doing trips to Sweden (one way 600 miles) or England (almost same; England though is a sadder story on US cars than Germany, money's real tight for most people there).

There's even a -very small- community of drag racing. But strips are extremely rare, only few events/test'n'tunes.

I was so amazed driving by Brendenton Motorpark near Tampa in the middle of the week in Jan this year, just to learn a couple professional teams had rented the strip for their test'n'tune. Cool.
Unthinkable here - also think people complaing "that's to loud, not climate friendly, blablabla" - local government/officialdom is quite fast closing such community efforts down and killing so much community efforts. Few teams, rather money burning, couple of private teams (with limited ressources, of course). "Free" is something completely different here than in the US.

Way too many lemmings running around here :(
 

Duke5A

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Agreed! High 10s is just my high water mark for this project. My goal is to get into the high 11s using a <gasp> 318 and mostly factory parts. I’ll for sure need an aftermarket cam tho. Will definitely share progress, failures, and pics. Need to find the mule first

You're going to end up having to strip the car, run it with an extremely low gear ratio, lots of cam, etc, etc. It will not be street friendly. Autocross is an entirely different can of worms from drag. You can build a dual purpose car for sure, but it's going to be a jack-of-all-trades car. We've got some REALLY serious drag racers here that can help you with the going fast in a straight line deal.
 

Oldiron440

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I would recommend having your vehicle weighed, I suspect a curb weight of around 3,700 pounds, and then you can go online and figure out how much horsepower is needed for your goals. The suspension needs for drag racing is completely opposite that of autocross.
My Volare has a curb weight of 3,200 pounds with its 440, 727 and 8 3/4” rear axle. And back when it was running mid 11s the 440 at the time was producing 550+ hp and going through 4.88 gears. The car has substantial weight savings and chassis stiffening done to the it including a full cage and modified suspension. The car was built as a full on drag car which did eventually run mid tens with a new motor. That new motor today would run 15 to $20,000, transmission/converter $6,500, axle assembly $5,000 and chassis preparation including parts 10 to $15,000.
Still want to go tens in your car?

A stock body Fbody with options and a stockish 318, = high 14s.

I don’t mean to try and be discouraging but building a race car is a money pit no matter how hard you try to make it not to make it one. If you’re detailed and can do your own work you could build your own engines, maybe you have access to a machine shop or can barter for services like transmission building or welding etc. I did all my own work with the exception of machine work and I paid for that. I buy my parts from a friend’s company who now owns the machine shop that does my work, he normally beats Summits prices on most parts. But it’s still crazy expensive. Back in the eighties I was running in the mid 11s for about five grand but I had a business that paid the bills. This is how many cars are funded still so go make yourself a million dollars and then go racing it’s the only way it makes sense to me.

A resource is out of print now but back in the eighties Mopar Performance/ Direct Connection had Engine performance and Chassis books that you can find online. Its a great resource and place to start.
 
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moparhead

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Quite good, I'd say. Not even close to the same numbers as in the US, but we have some good and nice cars here. A-/B-/C-/E-Bodys, mainly. M-Bodies are rather rare. I know of only four LeBarons, there are some Cordobas & Aspens, Magnums are very rare (love that car!)... M's are not typically sought after. I think we just don't have the same close history to owing those cars.

So, it mainly concentrates on the "real muscles" - like promoted in movies (2nd gen Chargers always in demand, Challenger/Cudas, of course). Earlies have a strong fan base, but its a rather "closed group", as their design is prompting the question of "what did they take at that time??". :)

But, sad as it is, the market is currently rather down, fewer sales transactions. People holding onto their money - uncertain times all over. And as local (european) policy is more like "go by train, bicycle, foot" anti-car (somehow pro-electric... :( ), it doesn't help for the next gen of gearheads. I know a couple promising young people, but it's not the same than 20/30yrs ago.

Then comes infrastructure - after WW2 (in the 50s of last century) some cities promoted bigger streets which helped growth for over 60 years or so, but now some very loud and influential people want to protect the common field mice (common vole) and putting work places / growth on the line (even pushing them down the drain)... Building a new highway is usually a 30 year project.... Together with most cities with roots in the medieval age (e.g. very tight streets) - you get the idea.

So all that doesn't help a lot. Sweden for example has a much stronger cultural approval of US cars (many many have been imported in the 50s to 70s) and much more young people have a family bond to the cars of their parents. Their meets (they have many in the summer) easily get more than 1.000 cars (mostly full sizes GM/Ford - but they have some specialty collectors with 6-figure Mopars). Big Power Meet in Västeras was one meet until 2016 (for 40 years at that time) with like 40.000 cars for the weekend.

Anyway. I won't complain too much, I like my cars, enjoy driving all of them, have a close community of like friends. Even doing trips to Sweden (one way 600 miles) or England (almost same; England though is a sadder story on US cars than Germany, money's real tight for most people there).

There's even a -very small- community of drag racing. But strips are extremely rare, only few events/test'n'tunes.

I was so amazed driving by Brendenton Motorpark near Tampa in the middle of the week in Jan this year, just to learn a couple professional teams had rented the strip for their test'n'tune. Cool.
Unthinkable here - also think people complaing "that's to loud, not climate friendly, blablabla" - local government/officialdom is quite fast closing such community efforts down and killing so much community efforts. Few teams, rather money burning, couple of private teams (with limited ressources, of course). "Free" is something completely different here than in the US.

Way too many lemmings running around here :(
Wow that’s great that there’s so much interest in these old cars. I hear about some going overseas but didn’t know there were that many. I love keeping these cars going and hearing all the stories people have about them.
 

moparhead

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You're going to end up having to strip the car, run it with an extremely low gear ratio, lots of cam, etc, etc. It will not be street friendly. Autocross is an entirely different can of worms from drag. You can build a dual purpose car for sure, but it's going to be a jack-of-all-trades car. We've got some REALLY serious drag racers here that can help you with the going fast in a straight line deal.
Yep! That’s why I don’t want to take a car that someone could ‘easily’ restore and cruise. I’m definitely going to make it as light as possible but not take away from its looks (I think these are good looking cars). Definitely gonna run between 4.10-4.88 gear. Not trying to go max performance in either event, but I do want max fun. I think a car that can be fun in autocross could still run an 11 in the quarter. We shall see
 

moparhead

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I would recommend having your vehicle weighed, I suspect a curb weight of around 3,700 pounds, and then you can go online and figure out how much horsepower is needed for your goals. The suspension needs for drag racing is completely opposite that of autocross.
My Volare has a curb weight of 3,200 pounds with its 440, 727 and 8 3/4” rear axle. And back when it was running mid 11s the 440 at the time was producing 550+ hp and going through 4.88 gears. The car has substantial weight savings and chassis stiffening done to the it including a full cage and modified suspension. The car was built as a full on drag car which did eventually run mid tens with a new motor. That new motor today would run 15 to $20,000, transmission/converter $6,500, axle assembly $5,000 and chassis preparation including parts 10 to $15,000.
Still want to go tens in your car?

A stock body Fbody with options and a stockish 318, = high 14s.

I don’t mean to try and be discouraging but building a race car is a money pit no matter how hard you try to make it not to make it one. If you’re detailed and can do your own work you could build your own engines, maybe you have access to a machine shop or can barter for services like transmission building or welding etc. I did all my own work with the exception of machine work and I paid for that. I buy my parts from a friend’s company who now owns the machine shop that does my work, he normally beats Summits prices on most parts. But it’s still crazy expensive. Back in the eighties I was running in the mid 11s for about five grand but I had a business that paid the bills. This is how many cars are funded still so go make yourself a million dollars and then go racing it’s the only way it makes sense to me.

A resource is out of print now but back in the eighties Mopar Performance/ Direct Connection had Engine performance and Chassis books that you can find online. Its a great resource and place to start.
Absolutely an expensive hobby! Back in the day I surprised a few big block guys with my iron headed 340 ;) 318s aren’t 340s but I’m curious to see how well I can do. I’ve accumulated quite a few parts, motors, etc over the years so I’ll see what I can put together. Weight will definitely be a focus. I think I’ll need a gear between 4.10-4.88, but even that will depend on where I can get the rpms. The point of me doing this is to go racing with my buddy. I do have to pay attention to the budget so part of the fun will be blueprinting the motor to get every possible HP out of it. When I raced as a teen, my friends and I had no money so we made the best of what we had and did well and had a blast. It’s gonna be a fun ride :)
 
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