Ranger Mike said:
Damn straight!
Mine is a wee bit weird; it's literally the only one of it's kind ever built (as of when I bought it). It's a '72 GTX model. The original owner (I bought it in '75) worked at the Chrysler plant in Windsor. He followed the car down the line and put every nut and bolt in the thing himself. It came out of the factory with stuff that wasn't available on production models. For instance, Roadrunners came with bucket seats. He had a kid that he wanted to be able to sit up front with him and his wife, so he put in a split bench front seat that was made for a Polara station wagon. It also had Hurst air shocks, with the air tits screwed into the bottom of the rear bumper. (I replaced them with Striders set to 'extra firm'.) Normally, that model would have the regular rally wheels. Mine has them up front, with 8" Tiger Paws, but the rears are slotted chrome-reverse with 10" Goodyears. (Still have the original wheels on it, but I swapped the tires for equal size all-season radials.) He bent the interior sheet metal of the rear fender wells up for tire clearance. The badging is in the wrong places.
What struck me most was the power of the thing. According to the VIN, it has the high-perf 440 (mid-way between the regular and the 6-pack models) which was factory rated at 290 hp. This thing was putting out more like 400. The factory redline was 5,500 rpm; the valves floated at 6,500, so I shifted at 6,400. I'd go into 2nd gear at 65 mph, third at 85, and 4th at 115—and 4th is a .73:1 overdrive.
The weirdest thing showed up when we took it apart. As a fellow Mopar man, you probably know that 440's don't like to oil the #4 rod bearing very well. When I was on vacation in the Ottawa valley one year, that fact made itself known in a spectacular fashion. The bearing spun out, the piston collapsed, and it took the bore with it. My cousin, who I was staying with, had a friend who was an excellent mechanic, so I took the car to him. He talked me through what he planned to do, and I agreed with him. It started with a .030 overbore. We then inserted the 'race-only' 12:1 aluminum TRW pistons (they use a 1 16th inch ring rather than the standard 1 8th). The normal ring gap is .032; we set mine at .008, so it's almost a total seal. Moreover, we mounted the pistons backwards; ie: those meant for the left bank went on the right and vice versa. That reversed the wrist pin offset, and essentially eliminated friction on the stroke. It naturally induced significant piston slap at the top and bottom, so the thing sounds like a coffee can full of rocks, but it was good for about an extra 35 hp and boosted the compression to 12.5:1. The rings on those pistons are rated for about 10 passes on a 1/4 mile strip, but I put 35,000 miles on them with no problem. Now for the weird part: when we took it apart, we were startled to find that it had 6 10:1 pistons and 2 8:1's. It also had 6 4-barrel rods and 2 6-pack ones. The off-size pistons were not connected to the off-size rods. About 10 years ago, I figured that it was Bruno's way of balancing the motor. As I said, it ran like a turbine at 6,400 rpm.
I have since added a Moroso deep sump pan, an Edelbrock CH4B 'Performer' manifold with a 750 double-pumper, Blackjack headers, a home-made methanol injector, a Hayes disk and throwout bearing with an 1,100 lb McCloud pressure plate and, unfortunately, a totally inappropriate cam. Going to switch that up to either a Street Hemi grind or a Mini-Express.
I haven't driven the thing in over 25 years, but it was putting out about 650 hp then. Can't wait to see what it does with a new cam and maybe a nitrous kit.
As to the gearing, it is an A833 four gear with a 3:23 Dana 60.
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