Herbold Racing!

Now that I have the new bushings for the control arms, it’s time to tear it down and get the control arms out.  Just doing the lower control arm on the driver’s side took me all day.  What a learning experience.  I even managed to tear both my control arm ball joint boots on that side.  Something surprising – both torsion bars on the Dart are missing the lock clips that are supposed to hold them in place.  It’s a wonder they didn’t just rattle out when I was doing 70 on the freeway.  I managed to get the lower control arm off completely by the end of the day.  I think tomorrow morning I will try to tackle the upper control arm on the driver’s side.  Then it is wash, rinse, and repeat for the passenger side.  Andy suggested that I just take the control arms to a front end shop to do the actual bushing swap.  I think that’s probably an excellent idea!

I got a letter yesterday from the ADRA with a handwritten note on front saying that I finished in the top ten. Inside was an invite to the awards ceremony on December 13th. I am going, of course!

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Phoenix in the Fall. This is a car show that is presented by Mopars Unlimited of Arizona every year. There were about 90 pre-80’s Mopars at the show and I took pictures of them. Sorry for the crappy picture quality – the only camera I had on hand was the one built into my iPhone, and its pretty pathetic as far as camera phones go.  I also took pictures of some of the stuff they had available at the swap meet near the show.

A few cars parked outside the show:

Cars parked on the show floor competing:

Some more interesting pictures:

Pictures of the swap meet:

I took the ‘65 Dart in for an alignment to see if it would improve the steering.  That thing is a little bit hard to steer especially when making 90 degree right or left turns.  It is very easy to steer when driving backwards!  So I took it down to a nearby alignment shop.  They put it in the alignment bay and checked out the bushings and other parts.  They came back to me saying that before they can align it, the lower control arm bushings need to be replaced because they are completely worn out.  So now I am doing some research on getting polyurethane type bushings.

And check out this other car that I spotted near the alignment shop.  Who are you gonna call???!

The same guy (Pete) who sold me his R1A race block also had a really nice set of W5 heads and W7 intake.  Ryan Johnson at Shady Dell Speed Shop sold them to this guy.  I asked Ryan about these and this is what he had to say about them:

“Those W5’s he has are KILLER….I forgot he even had them…. those have been angle milled to 16 degree, & have some of nicest port work I’ve seen.  I did not port them, but I bought them from someone already done & sold them to Pete.  They were done by a Nascar shop for a circle track motor & never used. The intake has about 100 hours in port work in it.

I do not remember in what state I sold the heads to Pete (this was at least 3 years ago) I think they were bare but do not remember.  I believe all the machine work was done (valve job, drainbacks, surfacing etc) I may have set them up with valves & springs, but you’d have to ask him, as I don’t remember.

Those heads will support BIG power… I could make 720+ with them.”

Ryan has built dozens of W5 motors and if he is this enthusiastic about these heads then they must be really nice.  Pete said that Ryan flowed the heads and they came out 339 at 0.700″ lift.

Here are some pictures:

The Dart is pretty hard to steer going forward. A lot harder to steer than my Duster. Both are manual steer cars. So I’m trying to figure out why the Dart is so hard to steer. Driving in reverse, the Dart is very easy to steer. It is only going forwards that steering is tough, and especially when making 90 degree turns. So I made a video of all the steering components to see if my buddy Andy can spot anything out of place. He ended up suggesting that I take it to an alignment shop.

Enjoy the music!