When it was all together and the single four barrel alcohol King Demon was bolted on we took the engine to Stealy Performance Machine in East Moline, IL, for the “big test.” I’ll keep this short, but let me say that Jeff Stealy handles his customers as well as I have ever seen done. We were hooked up and ready for the first pull in about an hour. We made a couple partial pulls to get it warmed up and then we checked valve lash and everything checked out great. It was time to “let ‘er eat.” As the guy who paid the bills to put the engine together this is a nerve-racking time but for onlookers it is probably a lot of fun!
The best of three pulls on the alcohol carb combination was 835 hp with 754 ft. lbs. of torque at 5500 rpm. That is about 18 hp better than it was three years earlier with 540” and a gas carb. Now it was time for something a bit more serious, the tunnel ram. After about 30 minutes to make the switch we were rewarded with a first pull of 899 hp and 790 ft. lbs. of torque. WOW! We bumped the timing up from 28 degrees (where I run it on alcohol) to 35 degrees. The new 572 responded with a pull of 958 hp at 7200 rpm and 806 ft. lbs. torque at 5600 rpm.
All together we made about eight pulls. It was scary, exciting and exhilarating all mixed together. I was extremely satisfied with the dyno results and want to thank Jeff Stealy, Jay Roeder, Andy Nicholson, and all the marketing partners we had to get this much power from a big block Mopar that still only has the small heads (Indy 440-1) on it.
The results of the engine work revealed its real worth two weeks later at our first race. We did not have the correct converter amd the engine pretty much drove right through it and it never locked up. Our best ET on the 1/8th was 4.90 seconds. We found out a great converter for an 820 horsepower engine is NOT the converter for 950 hp. A quick call to TCI
and we had one of their 9.5” Extreme converters and the results were outstanding. Our first pass was 4.70 1/8th, 7.62 at 173 on the quarter mile. Smooth as silk and it performed that way for the entire race season.
If you are considering a big inch engine I have to recommend the Indy Cylinder Head series of engines. If you operate on a bit smaller budget I can sure relate to that and in upcoming months you will see the breakdown of our 500” low-deck engine we built for our other dragster, Back-2-Basics. It has run high-sevens but is a regular 8.0 performer and it cost us less than $6,000 to build it.
Thanks for reading this column and I assure you I will do my best to bring you REAL-WORLD Mopar tech features. The stuff I write about is the stuff we race with. No B.S. or “what-ifs” -- just the facts for Mopar racers.
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