A Bare-Bones Beginning
A while back, we introduced our Project Goodmark/Big Challenge, and asked you to help us devise a plan of what we should build. We got a lot of letters and e-mails; an overwhelming amount saying to make this a modern musclecar. You guys really are into updating your Mopars, and so it will be done.

Our giveaway project is back at the Mopar Muscle shop and being assembled. Don't forget to sign up for the drawing at TWSpeedshop.com, and maybe you'll be the new owner of the project Timber Wolf Super Bee!

In the publishing industry, we're accustomed to deadlines. Each month, we do our research, write and edit our articles, then turn them in by the deadline (well, at least close to the deadline) so our readers can get their magazine on time. When it comes to our automotive projects, however, we're used to deadlines that are a little more ambiguous. Sure, we'd like to get our projects done quickly, but we know that finding parts, scheduling outside labor, and, frankly, having a limited amount of spare time and money are all contingencies that can keep us from meeting our self-imposed deadlines. While this method isn't a big deal when we work on our personal cars, we must admit when we were given the opportunity to build a car with the Timber Wolf Speed Shop, we were concerned about our ability to meet the imposed deadline so this car could be given away.

If you've read the past couple issues of Mopar Muscle, we're sure you know about our latest project car. We're teaming up with the Timber Wolf Speed Shop to build a killer '69 Super Bee that will be given away when it's finished . . . that's right, given away. So if you haven't entered the contest yet, be sure you do. We'd love for one of our readers to end up with this Super Bee in his or her garage.

Project B3 has come a long way since we began our build several months ago. If you've been following our project, you'll remember our goal was to build a bracket race car that would run consistent 10-second elapsed times in the quarter on a budget of about $10,000. In previous issues, we've shown how to stiffen the car up with frame connectors and torque boxes, installed a legal rollcage, built the engine, and lightened the car by adding fiberglass body components and polycarbonate windows. We've also finished the front and rear suspension of the project, getting the car ready to hook hard and run consistently.

We've built a lot of project vehicles over the years at Mopar Muscle, but this one is going to be special. Sure, it will have stunning, super-straight paint, a fresh, high-performance 383 big-block, and tons of new aftermarket goodies, but that's not what makes this project so special. What differentiates this car from the project vehicles we've built in the past is that when we complete this car it will be given away, quite likely to someone reading this magazine.

Writing for a car magazine can be a very rewarding career. Though none of us will get rich from the pay, our jobs are very satisfying in other ways. Giving someone an award at a car show, or telling them their pride and joy will be featured in our magazine are just two examples of how we are able to bring pleasure to members of the automotive enthusiast community. And getting paid to wrench on some pretty cool cars is a side benefit as well. So when the folks at Timber Wolf Smokeless Tobacco approached us about building a car for them to give away, we jumped at the chance. What better way to give a little back to the Mopar community than to build a cool car and give it away . . . quite likely to someone reading this magazine.

Around here, we've been into cars longer than we sometimes like to remember. To put this in perspective, air shocks, glasspack mufflers, and Keystone Classic wheels were still in style when we had our first cars. In those days, musclecars could still be found in the back rows of local used-car lots and could be purchased for hundreds, not thousands, of dollars. Of course, in retrospect we should have bought every one of those cars and stored them for future sale, then someone would be writing for our magazine instead of vice-versa, but our foresight wasn't very clear in those youthful days. We'd simply purchase one car at a time, fix it up some, then sell or trade it, and move on to our next project. Since aftermarket components were few and far between in those days, one of the first things we'd do to our car was to have the local exhaust shop install dual exhaust and glasspack mufflers. Cherry Bombs were the mufflers of choice back then, and Cherry Bomb probably contributed to more "disturbing the peace" violations than any other exhaust manufacturer. so when we heard the company was still around and wanted to upgrade and customize a new Dodge Charger, we wanted to be involved.

Around here, we've been into cars longer than we sometimes like to remember. To put this in perspective, air shocks, glasspack mufflers, and Keystone Classic wheels were still in style when we had our first cars. In those days, musclecars could still be found in the back rows of local used-car lots and could be purchased for hundreds, not thousands, of dollars. Of course, in retrospect we should have bought every one of those cars and stored them for future sale, then someone would be writing for our magazine instead of vice-versa, but our foresight wasn't very clear in those youthful days. We'd simply purchase one car at a time, fix it up some, then sell or trade it, and move on to our next project. Since aftermarket components were few and far between in those days, one of the first things we'd do to our car was to have the local exhaust shop install dual exhaust and glasspack mufflers. Cherry Bombs were the mufflers of choice back then, and Cherry Bomb probably contributed to more "disturbing the peace" violations than any other exhaust manufacturer. so when we heard the company was still around and wanted to upgrade and customize a new Dodge Charger, we wanted to be involved.

Whether your Mopar is a street car or a dedicated race car, chances are it's overpowered. Tire shredding, axle snapping, u-joint exploding torque is something even stock Mopar engines are known for. While too much power is not necessarily a bad problem to have, the driveline behind the engine must be built to withstand the power, or reliability will suffer. Since reliability is one of the keys to our bracket racer project, we had to decide what rearend would best suit our needs. While an 831/44 differential would probably suffice if built properly, it still wouldn't be as tough, or last as long as a 60-style rearend.

No Purchase Necessary to enter or win in the Timber Wolf ® Speed Shop Promotion. For Official Rules and how to obtain a free code, visit www.TWSPEEDSHOP.com. Starts 12:01 a.m. CT 5/15/07 ends 11:59 p.m. CT 11/1/07, or while supplies last. Open to legal residents of the contiguous 48 U.S. & D.C. (excluding VA & MA), 21 or older, tobacco users and who have a valid U.S. driver's license. Void in VA, MA & where prohibited. Sponsor: Pinkerton Tobacco Co. LP.

Racing your Mopar can be a challenging and exciting hobby as long as you take the proper safety precautions. We all like going fast in our cars, but an accident at the high speeds that most Mopars attain in the quarter-mile can be disastrous, so safety equipment must be added to a race car to minimize the risk of driver injury. Good seat belts, a helmet, and long pants are mandatory when racing even the mildest street car, but what if you want to go faster? Since the goal for our project Barracuda is some solid 10-second timeslips and speeds at around 130 mph in the quarter, we need to ensure the car is both safe to drive and able to pass NHRA technical inspection since we'll be racing at several sanctioned tracks. In this article, we'll show you the proper way to install a rollcage in any car, and we'll make project B-3 safer, stiffer, and more consistent in the process.

Project Name: Stealth Bomber
Car: 1989 Dodge Diplomat
Timeline: March 2004 - November 2004

In the build of Buzzing Half Dozen, we'll clear the smoke and relate the story of how these lightweight aluminum wonders came to be. Then we'll hammer one together that makes better than one horsepower per cubic inch on 91-octane pump gas. Finally we'll stick it in a 3,000-pound A-Body and show you how easy it is to run low fourteens at over 90 mph with any Slant Six, cast iron, or aluminum.

For a Mopar enthusiast, no other decade could equal the 1960s. Sure, the 1950s had a wide range of successes, but performance across the entire line had never been matched, and since, has never been equaled. For performance seekers, Holley has been synonymous with high performance.

When we started our D150, we had three goals: 1) Build a D150 Ram truck that embraced the earlier Ram truck styling. 2) Maintain the Slant Six reliability and efficiency. 3) It had to run like a V-8.

Project name: Valiant Efforrt
Car: 1967 Plymouth Valiant
Timeline: July 2002 - August 2005

Since we're building the engine for our bracket-racer project it must mean the car is ready to go, right? Well, not quite. While we have made some progress on our '67 Barracuda's floors, chassis, and suspension, we still have a long way to go before it's ready for the track. We still need to finish our rollcage, swap our windows for polycarbonate (Lexan) replacements, install a stout rearend, build a transmission, as well as plumb and wire the car.

Chrysler's engineering department has always been known for designs that were well ahead of their time. Good examples of this are the Hemi engine, long ram induction, and also building cars using the "unitbody" method of construction. In fact, Chrysler was one of the first companies to build their cars utilizing this method, which uses the body, roof, and floors of the car, instead of a separate frame, to form the vehicle's structure. This method of building cars not only saves weight, but also saves time and material during the manufacturing process, thereby saving the company money. Attesting to Chrysler's foresight is the fact that nearly all modern cars, and some light trucks, are built utilizing the unitbody construction method. While this method of building cars makes good economic sense for a manufacturer, there are some drawbacks in the form of performance. Unitbody cars aren't as rigid as their framed counterparts, and the additional flex can create problems in handling, braking, and acceleration. Whether you're building a street car, or in our case a race car, there are many benefits to stiffening the car's suspension.

One of the nice things about the hobby we share is that there are many great ways to enjoy your classic Mopar. Spending the day at a car show can be a relaxing break from the routine of everyday work. Taking your car for a drive through the country is also a good reminder of why we love our cars so much. To this author, there is no more enjoyable way to have fun with a Mopar than spending a day, evening, or weekend racing at the dragstrip.

It's a common problem that many have already had to or will have to deal with-rust. Let's face it, short of finding a car stored in a climate-controlled garage, any Mopar project we try to undertake is going to have some rust somewhere. But it's usually just a simple matter of contacting the appropriate restoration supply house and getting the parts needed. What if the afflicted area doesn't have a replacement piece of metal available? Let's take, for instance, the driver-side inner front fender of our '70 Super Bee. The battery tray mounting area had a fairly large rusted area brought about by many years of battery acid slowly eating away at it, and no replacement is available. We can either weld a piece in where the rust is apparent, or find either a nice panel at a swap meet that has been removed from a donor car or hope to find a N.O.S. panel at the same swap meet.

As we admitted at the onset of this project, we had set some pretty ambitious goals for our Mild-Mannered Mauler; in fact, we were looking to cut new ground. To recap, the engine is a basic .030-inch over 440, a balanced assembly with a factory forged crank, and a set of short dome SpeedPro pistons, massaged for a final net dome volume of 11 cc. The engine combination's main goal was to produce power like a race piece, at the 600hp level, and yet deliver road manners, idle quality, and an rpm range typical of a mild street mill. To put numbers on it, we were after 600 hp, 600 lb-ft, and an rpm range making peak at or just above 6,000 rpm. The idea was minimal bark, but a bloody bite in a normally aspirated package. This engine will eventually wind its way into a street 'Cuda convertible project, where it will be expected to idle with 13.5-14 inches of vacuum, and cruise the open road cleanly at low-to-moderate rpm with a deep overdrive ratio manual trans. It will need to sit in traffic in the heat of summer with the A/C on. Good fuel economy, quiet operation, and low maintenance would be nice too.

Sometimes for one reason or another, projects can take a turn midstream, and in the case of our 446 build, timing and circumstance have led to just that. With our robust short-block built, fitting the top-end package marked the home stretch for our build-up. Our cylinder head criteria was to use aftermarket aluminum heads with relatively large Max Wedge ports, and we sought very high flow. We had planned on a set of extensively modified MP 383/440 replacement heads. in seeking to make these basic castings fit our requirements, the heads were radically ported, including filling in the pushrod pinch and cutting the as-cast intake ports to the maximum cross-sectional area. When we saw the new Indy 440-EZ heads at the recent trade shows, we began to rethink the practicality of our original approach.

Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time, or in the case of Dave Young, tech editor for Mopar Muscle, listening to the right radio station at the right time.

In our last installment, we took a $400 first-gen Neon, and bolted a new set of wheels and tires on it, and made a cool-looking ride. The wheels and tires were acquired from tirerack.com, and the total retail cost of the package was $1,036, which brings our Neon in at $1,436--not bad for a first car. But after it was driven awhile, the lack of available horsepower needed to be rectified.