Thursday, June 29, 2023

Still a couple weeks to go on the overhaul of my ol garage Dodge, and I'm thinking

before it gets the upgrade and emilination of iron heads and K frame:
Do a weight check, take it to a trucking scale nearby and see what it weighs
but first, fill the fuel tank so that it's easy to get an accurate before and after, as having "whatever" random amount of fuel when weighing it before, and whatever random amount in the tank after, would make the comparison off by as much as 120 pounds, and the actual weight difference, that I'm looking forward to losing off the front end, might only be a 120 pounds. 

So, I want to look forward to knowing how much weight it loses by upgrading to the QA1 front end, and aluminum heads. From the stock steel 14 and 15" Magnum 500 rims, to the aftermarket 18" rims and tires

Also, I'm going to do a sound level test... 
Before: rusted header, no header wrap, unknown iron heads
After: new headers, 1/2" bigger primaries, header wrap, new aftermarket heads that are port matched. 

Brake test
Before: stock heavy duty Mopar drums, I believe the measurements are 11 x 3.5 inch -all the way around
on BFG tires in back, and Goodyear tall and skinny tires in front to give that oil pan some clearance (the deep sump the car had when I got it was only 5" off the pavement at rest, and anyone that was reading along a decade ago (hello friendly old long term readers!) probably remembers me taking the deep sump pan off a couple times and JB welding the drain plug back on, yes, it was peeled off about 3 times. Yes, JB Weld is incredible, and perfect at patching oil pans))
After, 18" rims, U.S. Mags Rambler U121 from Summit, thanks to seeing what David Kruk's 70 Bee looked like, as my 69 R/T is a similar yellow car, and I bet it's the same size wheel wells, and he also went with the QA1 front end
plus Falken 615 tires... not 20 year old regular commuter tires, bigger contact patch and a bit stickier rubber compound

I had the car dyno'd years ago, and that was when I bought it, for a baseline for all future engine upgrades, so, I already have the "before" hp and torque  372 and 426 at the tires. 

Since then, it's had the ignition system upgrade from factory electronic, to MSD 6AL with 8.8mm wires, and now it's getting better heads, better headers. I expect it might be 60-110 hp gain from the 372hp of 2002 baseline dyno tune

I should compare the ride height / distance from flat ground to lowest part of front suspension, and flat ground to center of grill, or top of fender centered on the spindle too. Just to see how the new front end and different tire and rim combo affect the height of the front end, in combo with what I believe will be a loss of weight over the front suspension

No comments:

Post a Comment