Re: new ride

[storm-king]

Dino, Thanks so much for posting those for me! I am a dunce when it comes to posting pictures for the most part.
So, top image was the car earlier this year. Originally bought this Dart as a slant six race car for my wife, and we got busy with other stuff. Later we really got interested in the nostalgia race programs, and I saw a good number of altered wheelbase ’65 factory clones/replicas, and a good number of early flip tops out there, and wanted something different. I loved that short period of time; as I’ve mentioned, with cars that had stretched noses but were still door slammers. So that’s where we are going. We chopped the factory rails off at the firewall, the frame rails are tied in front to rear and latitudinally; along with additional cross members. We pushed the motor back about six inches. It really doesn’t look like we stretched the frame as much as we did until you hang the factory fenders back on it.
Doug Dutra, aka “Dr. Dodge” lent me a pretty nice set of original ’66 Dart fenders. I like them much more than the earlier ones ( and besides, those are the ones on Landy’s and Charlie Allen’s cars!) and we’ve just got the first part of the tooling done to build these in stretched, altered, or stock whelbase configuration. We’ll be able to build these in fiberglass or carbon fiber.
We’ve got a 400 block mocked up in there but my intent is to use either a 426 max wedge or early hemi. Not a monster cube motor; I might add, but 426 CI. I may have to begin with Hilborns, but I’d like to run a 6:71 on it. I always liked the way those blown gas cars “lurch” coming up to the line, and of course if we get really nuts and pour the can to it, nothing smells a good as nitro!
We are going to use a pie crust profile slick, not sure who’s yet, but I’ll never put more than 12″ of rubber back there; I’m going to start with 10″. I hope to have it ready to roll out for the Chrysler Classic in Bowling Green in April, whether it’s running or not, I’d like to have everything else done.
If anyone has any other questions I’d be glad to answer them.

The roadster is a long way off. I’ve been having trouble locating the guy I want to do my chassis, and I want the Dart really rolling before I take a big bite on that next project. I have the body, a ’27 ford T, and we’re putting the motor in the passenger area and the driver in the cowl. This will be a car similar to the Speed Sport roadster. I don’t want to call it a clone, replica, or tribute because it will be my car that’s just built similarly. That’s another old drag car I’ve always loved, never seen anywhere but in Big Daddy’s museum, but just want it. George cerny also had a simialr car. The Speed Sport car is generally recognized as the first drag car to ever use fiberglass. We like that since that’s what we do for a living too. I will run either an early hemi like the original, or a blown small block in it. Probably be mid year next year before we really get going on the chassis.