2008 All-Chrysler Nationals Win This Engine - Building The Engine

The proprietary CNC porting includes the bowls, ports, and even the chambers making the heads much more efficient than out of the box 906s.

An Edelbrock Performer RPM aluminum intake manifold matched our camshaft nicely and should provide plenty of torque and top-end power.

Comp Cams provided the roller rocker arms and valvesprings to match their cam, and Milodon one-piece stainless steel valves were utilized in the heads.

With the engine bolted onto the Muscle Motors dyno...

...valve lash was set before bolting on the valve covers and firing the motor.

Before firing the engine for its initial dyno pulls, a drill is used to prime the oiling system. This fills the oil galleys and gets fresh oil to all the bearings and moving parts, ensuring no damage is done on initial startup.

With 31 degrees of timing and the carb jetted with 83 primary, and 84 secondary jets, two dyno pulls were made to establish a baseline. In this configuration, the engine made 517 hp at 5,000 rpm, and 612 lb/ft of torque at 3,900 rpm.

Ignition timing was set to 31 degrees total advance for the first several pulls. This is a safe setting that will ensure no detonation as the engine is run through its break-in cycle to seat the rings.

After the initial pulls, engine builder Mike Ware inspected the No. 3 spark plug which appeared to be slightly rich. Rather than changing jetting, Mike simply bumped the timing from 31 degrees to 33 degrees to help burn the additional fuel.

The engine responded to the additional ignition timing, making 526 hp, but the air/fuel ratio still showed it to be running rich. To correct this, Mike chose to reduce the jet sizes in both the primary and secondary sides of the carb, and reduced the high-speed air bleeds from 28s to 25s.

With the power tuning complete, the Muscle Motors crew again opened the carburetor up and changed jetting to 78s in the primaries and 86s in the secondaries. This tuning shouldn't hurt power and will make the engine burn less fuel when cruising at part throttle.

Power brakes won't be a problem as this engine makes more than 12 inches of vacuum when idling at 850 rpm.

The changes made a slight difference in power, but another inspection of the spark plugs indicated the engine was slightly lean, so jetting was increased to 81s in the front and 83s in the rear.

The first dyno pull in this configuration showed good power, but the air/fuel ratio was slightly lean. Increasing the jets to 80s in the front and 88s in the rear corrected this problem for dead-on air fuel ratios. Final power numbers were 537 hp at 5,300 rpm, and 628 lb/ft of torque at 3,900 rpm.

At more than 535 hp on pump gas, this stroked 383 will be a great street or bracket racing engine. The best feature of this engine, however, is that you could win it just by attending the All-Chrysler Nationals this year in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Be sure to check out video footage of this engine making its dyno pulls on moparmusclemagazine.com, and be sure to attend Carlisle this year for a chance to win this awesome big-block!