___ Mopar Max Magazine ___ Volume V, Issue 7 - July 2010

Match Racing with the
Canadians
Volume V, Issue 7 July 6, 2010
couple of months ago my friend Polara Pat, a founding member of the
Wagons of Steel North team, took my advice and read the outstanding
book "We Were the Ramchargers" by Dave Rockwell. Like anyone who
has ever brought a Mopar to the drag races, Pat found the book to be
inspirational. He decided to challenge us to a best of five match race at our local track. They would, of course,
make the monster tow from their home base in Nelson, British Columbia to meet us at Bremerton Raceway, ten
miles and a ferry ride from our shop. The catch for us was that our car, the Mighty Josephine II, was a shell sitting
in the corner and theirs was a scienced out mid eleven second race car. We had a month to get the big '70
Chrysler Town & Country ready for the track. The chassis work was basically done. We had installed sub frame
connectors and a complete roll cage. We had fabbed up a really cool fuel system. There was no engine or
transmission but we had put
together a custom Dana 60 with
4.56 gears and a spool. There
wasn't one inch of wiring in the
whole car. We decided to accept
their challenge.
I just had to laugh at myself as we
embarked on the project. The
thing that I hate about most of the
car building shows that I've seen
on TV is that under-the-gungotta-be-done-yesterday
thing. I
mean, isn't this supposed to be
fun? But here we were up against
the clock trying to do in weeks
what would normally take us months. We started by making a list. The thing that made this project economically
feasible was that we had many of the expensive components on hand, notably a motor, transmission, and
converter. The brakes that come stock on a '70 Chrysler are huge discs up front and drums out back for slowing
down a family of six towing a boat with a fifty five hundred pound wagon. That's plenty of stopping power for our
purposes. We adapted them and the steering to a manual configuration. We gutted as much weight out of it as
possible. We cut all the metal and
window mechanisms out of the
doors, replaced the glass with
Lexan, then reinstalled the
original door panels. The inner
fender wells are not structural in a
"C" body and can be unbolted
and discarded. Everything is gone
that doesn't make the car go with
the idea in mind that I want her to
look more or less original from the
outside.
The motor is a 480 cubic inch
stroker 440. It was originally built
for a guy who wanted to drive on
the street with something that
looked like an original Max
Wedge. He had Dvorak work over
a set of "516" heads to accept a
Max Wedge sized intake (no
small feat!) and fitted the short
block with custom soap dish pistons for pump gas friendliness.
Mopar to Ya - Match Racing with the Canadians - Page 1 of 3 - MoparMax.com