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After visiting the annual Woodley Mopar Car show in LA’s San Fernando Valley, Zak met one of the tech guys for Firm Feel, Inc., the 
Mopar performance chassis company. He then put in an order to buy a fast ratio 16:1 manual steering box with tight 3.5 turns from lock to lock, tubular A-arms, springs, a new Firm Feel sway bar and replacements for the tired stock torsion bars, springs and a full suspension kit. That new steering box will replace the heavy, enormous stock power steering unit and will give a bit more room inside the engine bay. The new spindles will be carrying a set of Wilwood disc brakes for extra stopping power on the street and road courses. We’ll be going through the suspension upgrade step-by-step over the next few months.
The engine in the Cuda was tired, smoking a bit at idle and had the leaky transmission, so to beef up the project it was decided that the time to pull it all out was at hand. Sprint car racing engine builder CARCO Engine and Machine in Anaheim, CA, was brought in since they had also recently freshened the bullet in Zak’s dirt sprint car ride. Don and Clint at CARCO listened to the idea of building a road-racing engine for the nearby courses at Buttonwillow and Willow Springs with the caveat that the 360 Mopar still remain streetable for the original purpose of being an occasional daily driver.
So, the 360 rebuild will become a 10.3:1 compression ratio, .040 over stroker engine. They purchased a matched rotating assembly from Eagle Specialty Products with a 4.000 stroke crankshaft and 6.123 stock length H-beam rods. CARCO also brought in Richard Iskenderian from Isky Racing Cams to build a .244 @ .050 hydraulic cam with 108 lobe centers, lifters, rockers, springs and retainers. They’ll also be utilizing a full set of studs for the mains, heads and rods from ARP Products in Ventura, CA.
CARCO also recommended that Zak look to Edelbrock for a cool set of their Performer RPM 340 Chrysler heads. Edelbrock performance specialist Todd Carroll, who is also a Saturday night dirt racer in a Ford Focus Midget, recommended that, based upon the direction this engine was headed, they buy a set of #60779 aluminum heads with a 63cc chamber size with 2.02” intake and 1.60” exhaust valves. When delivered, CARCO wants to give the valves the once-over with a 3-angle cut for maximum breathing. On the finished engine those heads will be topped off with a set of vintage Mickey Thompson finned aluminum valve covers found at the Long Beach Swap Meet.
When it comes to the induction system, Zak bought one of the Weiand hi-rise manifolds from Jeg’s, which arrived the next day, and before heading back down to CARCO he’ll get the whole thing polished to a deep shine. Atop the manifold will sit a Barry Grant Speed Demon 750 CFM carb. This engine build-up will be covered in MoparMax over the next couple of months.
Getting back to the suspension and getting the newly found power to the ground, Zak consulted with veteran rear-end master Ed Sutton at Sutton Engineering, whose dad built sprint cars way back in the 1940’s and ’50s. Sutton’s old school shop in LA’s City of Industry specializes in building plenty of stout Mopar rears, Ford nine-inchers, and more than his share of vintage Olds and Pontiac third members for period gassers. Zak had an 8 ¾ rear out of a late 1960’s Dodge wagon that had been sitting out in the elements for the last five years, but we’ll show you the junkyard transformation into a new-century ground grabber with 3:55 Richmond Gears, a Dana Trac-Lock with Moser Axles topped off with Wilwood discs.
As far as the paint, Zak is sold on a Valspar Hot Hues gold and black treatment similar to the color combination of the old exhibition wheelstander “Hemi Under Glass.”
There’s a lot of work to come as we dig deep into this ’65 Barracuda build and, as with most projects, we can’t assure you there won’t be any changes along the line. He’s now thinking of changing the automatic tranny to a Keisler Engineering manual five-speed to tame those fast road course corners.