Light Box
I read in a previous issue about an aluminum housing for the A833 manual transmission, but cannot find it now. could you please let me know the name of the company that builds those housings?
Luis Vander-Linden
Via e-mail
You can find the housings and any other four-speed stuff you need by contacting Passon performance. Jamie has been working with Mopar transmissions for longer than I can remember. contact him at Passon Performance, 309 Turkey Path, Sugarloaf, PA 18249; 570/401-8949; fourspd@ptd.net. check out their web site, passonperformance.com.
Father-And-Son Project
My dad and I just bought a '67 Dodge Dart with a 383. We got tired of just watching cars at the dragstrip and wanted to race a car too! After we bought it, the guy told us it should be a 12-second car. We took it to the track as it was; on the first run the throttle cable broke, and after an hour to fix it, on the second run it ran a best of 14.30 at 93 mph, shifting at 6,200 rpm. It didn't break up or anything going through the rpm range even at 6,000 rpms. We were shocked it ran so slow. It didn't even break loose the little BFGoodrich street tires coming off the line. The 383 is bored 0.060-inch over, but it's supposed to have 11.5:1 forged pistons, with SpeedPro rings gapped to allow a 175hp shot of nitrous. It has a high-volume oil pump, bronze valveguides, and a hydraulic flat-tappet Crane cam with 324-degrees advertised duration and .552-inch lift, with 108 lobe separation, and a power range from 3,500-7,000. It has stock valvetrain. The heads are 906s, which have been ported and polished mildly. It has a 1050 Dominator sitting on top of a 2-inch spacer and a single-plane Team G intake. It has MSD 6AL ignition with a MSD Pro-Billet Distributor set to 28-degrees advance coming in at 2,000 rpm. The engine is coupled to a 727 reverse manual-shift transmission that has a stock 2,000 stall converter, which is rotating 4.30 gears with limited-slip. It has headers going to 3-inch exhausts with Pro-Flow mufflers. It's a dog on the street. We are getting tired of it being such a slow big-block Dart. So we thought downsizing carb and putting a dual-plane intake on it will give it back some torque and possibly drop our times a little bit. We bought an 850 Mighty Demon carb with annular boosters and an Edelbrock Performer RPM dual-plane intake. Before we could do anything, we noticed extra vibration in the car when it was idling, and after a water test on the headers, we noticed the number-six cylinder wasn't firing. We pulled the spark plug, and it was wet. We left it out to dry, and then we put it back in, fired it up, and it still had the vibration, so we shut it off quickly. We pulled the valve cover off and noticed the number-six cylinder exhaust side rocker wasn't moving at all. Someone suggested a collapsed lifter, so we took all the rockers off, then we used a magnet to pull the exhausts side lifter out; it wouldn't come all the way out of the lifter bore. It feels like there is a ring surrounding the bottom of the lifter. Do you think it's a cam lobe that has flattened, or is the lifter just mushroomed out? Should we rebuild it? We are going to do a cam swap, and we want a cam that has an excellent idle to it, but you can feel the rumble of the engine. This car is a street/strip car, but mostly strip with an occasional street drive. We want it to leave hard off the line and pull hard on the big end. We have two cams that we are trying to decide on. They are by Comp Cams and are hydraulic flat-tappet. The first one is Comp Cam's Exterme Energy XE284H, and the second one is Comp Cam's Magnum series cam, 292H. Which one should we go with, and why is there a big difference in power ranges?Willis via e-mail
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are going to be in for a full rebuild. The cam is wiped, along with the lifter. There is going to be metal debris through the whole engine, and it will all need to come apart and be cleaned spotless. You will probably need new bearings, since the metal would have chewed them up, and sometimes even the pistons can be ruined by imbedded metal debris. You have to check everything with a finetooth comb, and even take apart the oil pump, and clean out the housing and rotors. I cannot overemphasize the need to get everything cleaned, including all the oil galleries. I hate to think of the possibility, but the vibration say's there can be mechanical damage somewhere inside. Yup, time for a full rebuild.