He must have been slamming on the brakes at the 1000 ft. mark to try and make it look at least reasonable.
I'm a die hard Mopar guy. I haven't had a Mopar 383, 400, or a 440 in my possession for over 30 years. They were great motors, but in my street brawling days, I could never get them to hook up on the street. I was probably getting a bit overboard with them back then, but if you can't get traction, all that power was pretty worthless. I didn't have much trouble getting the small block Mopars into the range of having traction issues and I well understood getting the Mopar bodies to hook up. Those big block Mopars would probably be a lot more fun on the street these days with the tires that are currently available, but they are a lot harder to find then they were back then. My bank account tells me its a good thing I'm past that point these days. Gene
I used to like big block Mopar stuff. My brother bought a brand new 440 68 GTX. I came home from Germany in 1973 and picked up my brand new 73 Charger 440 auto 3.55 posi and drove it from Michigan to Miami. Went to the track and it blistered off a 16 second 1/4 mile and so I knew it was going to take some money to get that turd to run. A set of 67 GTX heads. A purple cam and headers woke it right up, but the car was a lemon and I peddled it shortly there after. My next Mopar was a Charger 500 that I bought off a used car lot in Colorado Springs while stationed at Ft.Carson. It was the gas shortage and muscle cars were cheap .So a Hemi Charger became my daily driver. Except for the weekly tuneups to keep that Hemi running in tip top condition . It was a great car. My last big block Mopar was a RAM Charger 4x4 with a 440 that I had worked over to smoke all of the GM and Ford guys. I used to like to hook them bumper to bumper and have a pull off. Nobody could match the torque of that 440. Nobody had a 135 mph 4x4 either.
Look up "451 Manifesto" by Andy F. of AR Engineering. The 400 block is a good block, lots of material around the webbing. They used to be considered boat anchors and a lot were crushed in the "cash for clunkers" deal, too bad because they are becoming hard to get and desirable now. The Mopar builds have come a long way lately with the advent of readily available stroker kits the Trick Flow 240 and 270 heads along with others.
Chrysler Power Magazine did an article about putting a 440 crank in a 400 block some time in the 1990's. Darrel Buehl (Bishop & Buehl fame.) came out 444 cubic inches and made good power and tq.
The Jalopy Journal
