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I found the truck in the local green sheet back in '88 or '89. It had the normal rusted areas and dents aqnd dings. It had 86,000 miles on it and had a stuck engine. I bought it from the second owner who had bought it for his elderly mother to drive in the summer. The muffler went bad and he didn't replace it. It was parked in the wintertime and a mouse camped out in a cylinder that winter and stuck the motor. It sat a few years and the owner decide to part with it. I came along and gave him $350 for it.
I spent a couple years redoing the body, welded in new steel in the rust areas, stripped all the paint off and repainted it as it was when it was new, Dodge Truck Red and Sand Dune White.
I wanted an old Dodge truck to kick around in and decided to swap in a 440 and torqueflite. One thing led to another and it ended up with a 500hp 440 in it. It's best time at the drag strip with the 440 was a 12.19@107mph-1/4. It is still a street truck and is driven on the street 95% of time with a few trips to the dragstrip a year.
Being a speed freak I neede more power so I built a 528 Hemi for the truck. I soon found out the stock rear suspension was sadly lacking. The truck tryed to kill me a few times at the strip so I decide to upgrade the rear suspension and built a 4-link for it. I also was forced to install a rollbar as the truck was getting pretty fast.
Around this time I decided to sell my '68 Hemi GTX and buy an engine Dyno. I pulled the 528 to tune and upgrade it. (it was already at 680hp) After a set of aftermarket aluminum head and a solid roller cam it made about 755hp. I was still disatisfied so I ended up increasing the displacement to 605 ci and went with a custom solid roller cam. After 30 pulls on the Dyno it netted 852 hp and 818 ftlbs..
It's still 95% street driven, haven't got it to the strip YET, it will be before the end of the summer. I'm expecting high 9's to low 10's with it.
First track times netted a 6.53@103.21 in the 1/8. Track temps were to cold and the management only let us run through the 1/8. Truck was spinning off the line and slipping going down the track. 60ft times were 1.42 spinning. It also bent both lower 4-link bar mounts on the truck frame, will need to box and add an additional gusset on each side.
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