PROJECT(S) DOUBLE A’S

PROJECT(s) PROJECT(s) D As D As

Two 3G Hemi A-body swaps for any taste and budget. An introduction to we dunno how many installments.

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Brian supervised the body drop of his ‘69 Dart onto the freshened ’73–’76 K-member which we dropped the boneyard 5.7L onto.

This is the Dart, as it came off the transporter from Oklahoma. A few rust perforation areas, but, overall, extremely solid. HEMIS. No question 3G they have been the mainstay of Chrysler’s performance cars since their first appearance (5.7L) in the 2003 Dodge pickups. Their predecessor, the 360 Magnum, was actually quite good, but was never installed in a passenger car. With a more HP-oriented intake manifold, it would have been one of the ’90s best engines, as we have proven in one project car (Savvy Savoy) and one project pickup (Scat Dak). But that was then, 25 years ago. Today, with roughly LA-engine overall cylinder block dimensions (including the bolt pattern on the back of the block), the 3G Hemi mill is an easy and popular swap into B, E, and even C-bodies. Yet A-bodies, the affordable, svelte, goodhandling 1967–’76 variety, have been a bit tougher. The exhaust (headers) is tight, the alternator hits the chassis rail, and air conditioning is even tougher.

Holley set out to correct this. As you may have noticed, Holley has been playing corporate Pac-Man on a grand scale, gobbling up speed equipment manufacturing companies like M & Ms. They also hired bright engineers away from Chrysler / SRT. This gave them the ability to engineer and manufacture virtually any and every part needed for 3G Hemi swaps.

So we’re going to do two Hemi A-body swaps and document every inch of them. Numero uno is a ‘69 Dodge Dart 2-door hardtop which was dragged out of a field in Oklahoma and shipped north to New York at the height of the pandemic. This vehicle’s actual owner will be Brian Dowell, our wonder from down under. Brian likes creature comforts so it will have air conditioning,

The Green Brick, our famous ’69 Valiant Corvette killer, looks pretty good after 15 or so years in Kevin’s garage, near Lansing, MI. Now the Brick is back in the MA project car garage, where it will receive a 6.4L Hemi crate engine. The Valliant’s engine compartment is also no thing of beauty Yes, that’s original Bell System (telco) Olive Drab paint, only 53 years old. Acrylic enamel might not be as glossy as the modern urethane 2-stage stuff, but it seems to be at least as durable.

a basic 727 with the shifter on the column, air conditioning, and power steering. Power will be supplied via a junkyard 2014 5.7L Hemi. Suspension and brakes will receive low-end upgrades.

The second 1969 A-body, our Green Brick Valiant 100 pillared sedan, will be getting a 6.4L crate engine backed by a 5-speed manual trans. And little else.

Both will use some of the Holley components: mounts, oil pan, and shorty headers. Only the Dart will use their unique timing cover, this is a clean-sheet design which moves all accessories closer to the crankshaft centerline making swaps a cinch. It isn’t cheap, but it makes the swap so much easier we deemed it a worthwhile expense. Plus, this car will be saving us over $5,000 by the use of the junkyard 5.7L. One of the ramifications of the Holley hardware is it moves the engine and transmission forward 1.75 inches. This makes the exhaust a whole lot easier but makes things kind of cozy up at the front of the engine, especially because their timing cover setup, despite being smaller in diametrical dimensions, is also considerably longer than stock.

One area where we will significantly deviate from the Holley recipe is the electronics and harness. Since we will be keeping both engines dead stock, we see no need for Holley’s programmable computer systems and complex wiring. Instead, we will go with the Squier family’s HotwireAuto (hotwireauto.com) systems. These use dead stock PCMs which are modified only in that they have been reflashed to ignore the fact that they are seeing no other microprocessors on the CAN bus. In other

This is the Junkyard 5.7L, circa 2014, that we’ll drop into the Dart, with A/C.

Dart’s pretty sad underhood.

words, they are now standalone engine control systems. Perfect!

The HotwireAuto brain trust also produces absolutely awesome wiring harness systems that even someone who can’t change a lightbulb could install. There is not one superfluous wire, and only a few wires need to be connected to the vehicle systems such as fuel pump, charging system, ignition-on, etc. No hacking required, and factory reliability.

For this, the first installment, we are going to primarily concentrate on the Dart, although we will be engineering various details and purchasing parts for the Valiant. The Dart showed up with the Slant-Six long gone, and the transmission held in by bailing wire. We quickly gutted everything else from the engine compartment, then cleaned and painted it. If you have done this type of pure-tedium work, you know that is very time consuming, but there’s not much we can teach you about this, so we’ll just say that the job is done. Yes, we painted it in nature’s spray booth—the great outdoors, using 2-stage urethane enamel (PPG) and a HVLP spray gun.

Two key components make said swap D-I-Y feasible. First is the HotwireAuto (hotwireauto.com) harness and reprogrammed ECU.

PROJECT-ING MOPARS: MA’S CONTINUING SAGA

FOR MUCH of our 35-plus year existence, we have had a current project car. The first was project Beeper, a 1972 Road Runner (above) which appeared in the mid-’90s, and still pops up here and there in some kind of component testing capacity.

Clearly the most famous Mopar Action project was the reader-named Green Brick, a stripper 1969 Valiant 100 that went from being a Slant-Six telephone company foreman’s car into arguably the best-known A-body on the planet, primarily through our entries, with usually stunning results, in the One Lap of America. The car (and us) ran at least a dozen times, usually winning the vintage American class, and frequently finishing in the top 10 overall, one time as high as second, beating factory-entered Porsches, Benzes, ’Vettes, Lamborghinis, Vipers, you name it. There were two primary reasons for our success, and money was not one of them. First was my mission to build the car as light as possible. Second was the incredible driving skills of Kevin Wesley. Eventually we simply wore out the Bartonbuilt stroker 340, after something like 90,000 highway miles and over 150 racing events, including road courses, drag races, dirt and paved ovals, even road rallies. We were busy

with other projects, so the Brick simply sat at Kevin’s place in Michigan, where he had plucked out the smallblock for inspection. It is time for it to reappear, now with a 6.4L Hemi crate engine. It will be true to its bare bones origins, with manual steering, no air, etc. Since I am now well over half deaf, even the radio will be s**tcanned. While the reincarnated Brick will be a 100% street vehicle that will easily make the trip from coast to coast and back, as many times as the gold gas card will allow, we also know that not everybody wants such a bare-bones buildup, and we know Mopar Action’s first project car, circa 1994, was this tweaked, but that not everybody wants to shell out for a 100% stock appearing, 1972 Plymouth Road Runner. Today, it mainly seven-grand crate engine. Let your fingers sees local cruise duty, this photo was a local show in Kingston, NY. do the walking to the main text, and you’ll see that we’ve got everybody covered, with green A-body twins. –R.E. The Green Brick, a smallblock 1969 Valiant 100 2-door, was surely the most famous. Here, it is making a hot lap at a road course in Wisconsin, probably late 1990s, when it still had a 360 MP crate engine. Ironically, it will be reincarnated with a current MP 392 Hemi crate engine.

The PCM is plug ’n’ play, as is.... The engine came without a throttle body. We found a great deal on a new one at Rock Auto. Using electronic throttle control, with a mechanical kickdown A727, might be a bit tricky, but we have a potential solution up our sleeves. Stay tuned.

...virtually everything else. Wiring loom hassles? Banished to Shivvyland! Just connect to battery +12V, ignition-on (keyed) +12v, fuel pump, ground, and starter switch, and neutral safety switch if automatic. A cinch. A new tank, with submerged high-pressure pump, from Tanks, Inc., is part of the plan. We’ll cover all the details.

Could you chop up a stock harness and make it work? Eventually, with at least one bottle of Jack, but then the car would still not run with the stock PCM—no start if it doesn’t see the other computers. The Holley timing cover kit includes a plethora of parts, even an A/C compressor, alternator, PS pump, damper, water pump, and virtually everything else on the front of the engine. And it will clear everything, even on an A-Body.

The Holley / Hooker shorty headers definitely cost some power versus TTI longtubes but simplify installation. Your call. Outlet is 2.50˝ .

We’re hoping to use a stock 2014 Charger radiator (rockauto.com P/N 13512) and the matching dual fan (shown here, Rock’s P/N 76387). Light and efficient. At a glance, fitment looks good. We’ll keep you informed and see more next issue.

Next, we began the search for a suitable 5.7L engine. We found one, circa 2014, locally for $1,500, which is about the going price. It looked rather nasty externally, and we were chagrined to see that several components were missing, but the seller assured us that the engine was truly low mileage and had been sitting under his bench for 6 or 7 years. Apparently, the donor Chrysler 300 was rather toasty, but the engine itself, other than some soot and fire-retardant residue, looked OK, plus the valve covers were not melted (that would have been a deal breaker). A twist of the crankshaft reveled that it was not seized. We took a chance—hey, we know where the seller lives!

Lots of other details to deal with on the Dart: Oil pan and filter relocation, rear axle (the 7.25˝ would last maybe 2 launches, even with street tires), front suspension, ditching the 4˝ bolt circle 9˝ drum brakes (scary!), plumbing, etc. The Valiant had most of this stuff upgraded decades ago, so only quick freshening will be in order on that car.

Lots of food for thought—and installments. So, follow along as we get both of these projects under way.

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BUT WHICH 5.7L?

The first three years of 5.7L are easy to ID: They have ignition secondary (sparkplug) wires. Perfectly good engines, but much later is much better. 5.7L HEMIS have been around since 2003, so the junkyards are crawling with them. But there are differences: All had 16 sparkplugs (mostly for emissions), but the early (pre-2006) engines had a weird wasted-spark ignition system. While they were perfectly reliable, there’s really little sense in purchasing one of those, unless you live in Afghanistan and can find nothing else. In 2006, the modern ignition coil system was introduced, along with MDS (a cylinder deactivation system), which significantly improved fuel economy (auto. trans. only), but probably should be avoided in any swap application.

The big change was 2009, when the Eagle cylinder heads, and variable valve timing appeared. The heads greatly improved HP output, and the VVT cam phaser was amazing for both low-end torque and HP. So, 2009 should be considered a baseline minimum vintage for your swap.

Thru 2008, the crankshaft tone ring was 32 teeth, this changed to 58 teeth in 2009. The computer hardware and software were subject to a major revision in 2013. Therefore, for compatibility with current electronics, 2013-up is the way to fly. These engines, remember, are now 10 years old, and, since they were very reliable, junkyard prices are rock bottom. We scored a 2014, with low miles (actual unknown, but you can run the engine’s (or car’s) VIN on Carfax).

A 2009-up 5.7L, with headers and no cats, is an easy, cheap, 425 true net HP deal, with low end you have to drive to believe. Envision (and feel) a new Charger R/T that just shed 1,000 pounds!