April 5-7, Bowling Green, KY
4th Annual Challengerfest at Beech Bend Raceway, (798 Beech Bend Road, Bowling Green, KY 42101) presented by ModernMoparForum.com.
Car Show & Drag Race - Modern Mopars welcome.
More info: www.speedysgarage.net

The all-new 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT, featuring Chrysler's impressive 6.4L Hemi V8 powerplant with 470 hp, is enough to get any Mopar enthusiast's heart pounding. The super SRT-ified Jeep has been completely overhauled for 2014, with updated sheetmetal, state-of-the-art safety technologies and other upgrades designed to set it apart from other performance-based SUVs.

We enjoy driving our 2009 Dodge Challenger, as it is arguably one of the most well-rounded vehicles ever produced by the Chrysler Corporation. With Hemi power, great braking, and independent rear suspension the new Challenger does everything well, but of course we wanted our R/T model to perform better than it does in stock form. To enhance our car's performance, we've already installed a ProCharger supercharger and aftermarket exhaust, as well as Wilwood disc brakes with six-piston front calipers, four-piston rear calipers, and large diameter rotors to get our Challenger stopping in shorter distances. To improve our car's handling, we installed Eibach front and rear sport suspension featuring larger diameter sway bars, re-valved shocks, and stiffer front and rear coil springs with a lowered ride height. We also installed a bumpsteer kit from Razor's Edge Motorsports. There's one area of the suspension found in late model Mopars, the factory rubber bushings, that limits how well these cars handle, so we decided to replace the stock suspension bushings in our Challenger for enhanced handling performance.

The Fast and Furious movie series phenomenon has been built around a heavily modified line-up of top notch vehicles. As is obvious, throughout the movies most of the cars are damaged or destroyed, so we were excited to learn that this awesome '70 Plymouth Barracuda that makes an appearance in the latest film was not one of the unlucky ones.

HEMI-powered A-bodies are known for delivering big performance and retaining a loyal following. Proud owners of these awesome Mopars can now look to the guys at TTI Exhaust for the ultimate in HEMI headers.

Here’s something cool for you scaled-down Mopar fans. Barry Kroh of Bismark, North Dakota, built most of this diorama when he was 15-years old, and finished it when he was 16. He says that is back when he had more time on his hands, and he was dreaming of owning a real Mopar. Anyway, most of the display itself was hand built, as well as all the models on display. It is highly detailed, including the wall outlets, all of the necessary shop equipment, and the thing even lights up at night. You got it; all of the shop lights actually light up. There is even a trouble light under the yellow Charger that works, and the Coke machine and Mopar clock in the office light up. Did you notice the Dodge sign? Yep, it lights up as well, and the Mopar service garage has blue flashing lights all around it, this thing looks cool at night!

Christian's Magnum was already a stout performer in SRT8 trim when he found it at a Tennessee dealer back in 2006. But, as soon as he got it home, he began upgrading it, inside and out.

Here at Mopar Muscle, we’ve always had the opinion that when it comes to performance, numbers don’t lie. And while we’ve all been to car shows, cruise nights, or even the racetrack and heard car owners making claims about how much power their Mopar makes or how quick it will go in the quarter-mile, the proof is only realized when that car is strapped to a dyno or makes a pass down the track. So when it was time to come up with a contest to replace the annual engine dyno challenge held at Comp Cams for the past seven years, we felt a chassis dyno competition would be a great way to let our readers not only experience the event, but participate as well. This year marked the First Annual AMSOIL/Mopar Muscle Numbers Don’t Lie Dyno Showdown, held at the largest Mopar-only event in the country, the Mopar Nationals, and the response has been better than we ever expected.

About four years ago, Jim Ford looked online and found a '72 Challenger for sale. "It was in Arkansas, and it was a rust bucket," recalls Jim. An original 318-powered car, it was somewhat complete, with four decades of rust to its quarters, floors, and trunk floor, subtracting from its original curb weight.

One of the great joys of fatherhood is sharing those special interests we might have with our children. A dad is almost expected to teach his son about cars—even muscle cars. But for many of us, introducing our daughters to this hobby is also an exceptional pleasure. That's exactly the case for Mopar enthusiast/collector Scott Harris and his youngest daughter, 16-year-old Savannah.

Cool Stuff

Like we said, unless you want to continuously see your buddies' taillights, you really need to check into getting some of these street performance parts that we have listed. We took a poll on our Facebook page, asking what people felt were the top street-oriented performance parts that every Mopar should have. If you didn’t notice the post, apparently your buddy did, because he knows.

It was 2005 when this Daytona finally saw the light of day after resting some 30 odd years in the back of a Quonset hut. It was covered with years of dust and bags of “stuff.” But how did it get there, and why did it finally come out?

There are many ways to find the car of your dreams, but sometimes finding the car is the easy part as many owners of classic Mopars just aren’t willing to let their cars go. Bob Schwartz of Albuquerque, New Mexico, found this ’69 Dodge Dart sitting in a driveway beside the owner’s house some 20 years ago, and watched as it sat inoperable for all of those years. During that time, Bob stopped by and asked about the car and was told by the owner Sue that once she was ready to sell, the car would be his. For years Bob would stop by the house to check on the 340 four-speed equipped Dart, finding it moved once in a while but never operable or roadworthy.

In the automotive world, a sleeper is a car that you really don't give a second look, until all you can see are the tail lights. But, if you're going to call a car a sleeper, it better look unassuming and run like a banshee. The Plymouth Duster might not be what some people call a sleeper; after all, back in the day, it was Plymouth's potent little compact. Now when you see one on the road, you either think A) a nice resto, or B) as is the case with Rick Trunkett's '72 version, you might think it a nice driver or street car—and you'd be correct. At first glance, you wouldn't expect it to have the capability to blow the doors off of a lot of racier looking cars, but it will.

Making a car run the best it can has different meanings for different people. Some feel that however a car runs just by assembling the parts is good enough. Then, there are the few that really make a science out of perfecting how a car runs. Not only is proper parts selection paramount, but every part is then scrutinized to make its small part of the complete package as best as it can be. Then, you have the guys that race their Mopars in the Pure Stock Drags.

Of all the big-blocks built by the Chrysler Corporation, the 383 is the most widely produced, and likely the most underrated of them all. As a big-block, the 383’s displacement isn’t nearly as small as the 350 or 361 cubic-inch B-series engines produced by Chrysler in the early days of the big-block, but it’s also not nearly as large as the popular 440 engine either. When the Chrysler Corporation decided to add the 906 cylinder heads and high-performance 440 camshaft to the 383 for the 1968 model year, the engine immediately became a hit among enthusiasts of the era. Installed in the Plymouth Road Runner and Dodge Superbee, this engine easily propelled these B-Bodies to low 14 second quarter-mile times at trap speeds of more than 100 mph. And with a little work, the 383 could go deep into the 13s and still be much more drivable than the optional Hemi.

If you're into Mopars, chances are you're into racing and the racing heritage that made Chrysler famous. From the dawn of motorsports, Chrysler embraced the racetrack, building cars and trucks to compete in nearly every competitive form of racing. Some argue that they did their job too well, as their purpose built race cars dominated many of the classes they were designed to run in. Some of these cars were handicapped by sanctioning bodies to the point of being non-competitive, while others like the Hemi powered '68 Darts and Barracudas were relegated to run in their own class since none of the competitive brands could keep up. Even today if you watch the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes of NHRA drag racing you'll notice that most, if not all, competitive cars still run a version of the famous 426 Hemi engine.

Last month we began building the late-model Hemi engine for our '10 Dodge Challenger drag car by bolting together a 426-inch bottom end using a factory 6.1 Hemi block. Our intentions with this late-model Hemi are to show Mopar Muscle readers how well the latest version of the Chrysler Hemi can run when built properly using a combination of factory and quality aftermarket components. We've challenged ourselves to make big power from this engine, and we decided to build the engine to run on pump gas to reduce the weekly costs of operating our bracket car during race season.

Permanent Fill-Ins
We're talking about the bumper end fillers on your '71 or '72 Challenger. Four-decades-plus take their toll on them and leave them discolored and cracked, looking awful, at best. Solution: a set of repro bumper end fillers from Metro Moulded Parts. Made in the U.S.A with new-tech materials, they feature correct-as-original contours and shapes. Galvanized steel inserts are molded inside, exactly like the factory-original bumper end-fillers your Challenger was equipped with when new. (And just like the NOS/NORS ones you never seem to find at the swap meets.)

When considering engine performance, if anything has been a game changer, it is the advancement in cylinder heads. Back in the '60s and '70s, and even the '80s, the average street machine's engine typically wore the same iron heads the engine left the factory with. In those days, the typical hot-street cylinder heads might have received a three-angle valve job and a set of springs to match a hotter cam. Sure, there were some serious performance cylinder heads, like the famous iron W2 small-block units from Direct Connection, but the vast majority of street engines ran stock production heads. These days, aftermarket cylinder head choices are broader than ever, and given the potential performance gains versus the cost, they offer an excellent value compared to rebuilding old factory iron. Aftermarket cylinder heads are available in aluminum and iron construction. While there are iron heads that definitely offer a performance advantage over the factory units, we will save that discussion for another day. Our focus here is on the street/strip style aluminum aftermarket heads that will bolt onto a factory 59-degree engine block.

Trucks come in all styles, from sporty to pure utility, but few packages are as impressive off the showroom as the SRT10 Viper-powered models that were built between 2004 and 2006. These were based on the full-size Ram designs, using a 505-inch (8.3 liter) engine whose monster torque could propel the 5,100-pound standard cab model down into the 12-second zone in the standing quarter-mile. During the three years they were offered, less than 10,000 were created. As you might imagine, they are well-valued by their followers, but not all have ended up as cocooned collector's items.

For a solid 15-year run from 1971 until 1984, the Carter ThermoQuad (TQ) was ubiquitous on Mopar four-barrel V-8 engines. Really an evolution of the long line of Carter four-barrels, the TQ was a break in tradition, moving from the square-bore configuration of the earlier AFB and AVS carbs to a spread bore layout similar to the Rochester Quadrajet. The original OEM ThermoQuad, debuting on the 1971 340, was a unique unit with different castings, metering circuits, and tuning parts. These 1971 carbs are quite rare, and pretty much orphans today outside the world of authentic restorations. Subsequent carbs were produced in huge numbers, and saw only minor changes through rest of the production run. Though the TQ was an all-new carb, the distinguishing characteristics of earlier Carter four barrels were still there. This was an era where fuel efficiency and emissions were major considerations, and the highly-refined ThermoQuad carb, with its small primary barrels, dual booster venturi, and three-stage metering rods was perhaps the most advanced four-barrel carburetor on the market.

We all know the 440 big-block is the largest displacement V-8 engine built by Chrysler, and when it comes to a combination of torque, power, and drivability, the 440 ranks as one of the best engines ever built. Instead of utilizing a high compression ratio or aggressive cam grind for its muscle, the 440 relies on sheer size, making great power from an idle with enough torque to get even the heaviest Mopar C-Body moving quickly. And while the Mopar 440 does several things very well, we've always felt that with a few tweaks the engine was capable of well over the 375 horsepower rating it got from the factory.

If you haven't made plans to attend the All-Mopar Southern Nationals that are being held at the South Georgia Motorsports Park on Memorial Day weekend (May 24, 25, 26), you better hurry up. For those of you in the Southeast portion of the U.S. that haven't yet heard, Mopar Muscle has decided to become the title sponsor of the All-Mopar Southern Nationals and is the largest multiple-event venue in the Southeast for Mopar fans. There will be three days for racing, a two-day car show, and swap meet. You can also keep up to date by checking out our website (www.moparmuscle.com), our facebook page, or the South Georgia Motorsports Park website.