1970 Dodge Challenger - Super Sleeper
There will always be those who ask if it's real. "Is that a real Plum Crazy Hemi car?" We ask, what is real? Does the Hemi under the hood make it real? Will a fist of 11-second timeslips convince you that this is real enough?
To his credit, owner/driver Dave Dudek of Shelby Township, Michigan, is happy to admit his purple pachyderm's humble origins: It was originally a 340/four-speed Plum Crazy car and had been converted to Hemi power back in 1976. Dave picked the Challenger up at the Mopar Nationals four years ago. In that time, however, it's made a radical transformation ... not that you'd know it by looking at it.
Such are the joys of the Factory Appearing Drags (or FADrags), where musclecars run 11s and 12s on bias-ply tires and through exhaust manifolds, looking as showroom stock as anything you'd find at a spit-and-polish concours musclecar show. Except in the FADrags, these guys make their steeds run the way we'd always believed (hoped?) they would have from the factory. This is one of the hottest racing sensations to sweep the country in the past couple of years ... and this is one of the top cars in the series. In the January issue story, "Mock Stocker Shocker," we'd announced Terry Pennington's '69 ZL1 Camaro as the quickest car of the series; meanwhile, the poiple Challenger has taken most of the trophies.
The list of accolades for Dudek's Challenger grows every time it turns a wheel. Dave won both the 2000 and 2001 Factory Stock Drags (and scored fastest e.t. of the day to boot), he was runner-up and got fastest e.t. at Year One's Factory Appearing Stock Tires (FAST) class in Bristol in 2001, and he came out on top in the first-annual Factory Appearing Drags event held at Norwalk, Ohio, last spring (October 2002). Dudek ran 11.60s (11.66 best) in thin mountain air at the Year One-sponsored FAST class at the Bristol Bash last October-fastest e.t. of the weekend; his best time clocked at an official event with the combination outlined here is 11.58 at 122.8 mph-the fastest e.t. posted by any Factory Appearing car at any event (Pennington's was a tenth quicker in unsanctioned testing). Remember, this is on ancient tire technology in a 3,900-pound stick car.
Lest anyone think that Dudek is some crusty old salt who's reliving his youth, think again: He is 32, which means his car is older than he is. As the guy who more or less willed the FADrags series into being (after running at Pure Stock Drag events and determining that the Buicks pulling the front wheels at the line were not, in fact, purely stock), and as the guy who is most consistently among the top runners, we figured there was no better person to fess up and spill secrets. (More than half of the 14 FADrags tips we presented in Oct. '02, were given freely by Dudek-no cajoling or arm-twisting involved.) Think he's not having fun? Take a good close look at the photo of his reproduction window sticker (page 46).
Here's what we know.
On top, there's a K&N element in the stock air cleaner, which sits atop a pair of date-coded 625ci Carter AFBs. Dudek says they're not messed with at all: "I've got 1,250 cfm up there; I don't need to get stupid. Besides, all of the Mopar Super Stock guys I've talked to say leave 'em alone-if you open 'em up, it messes with the metering." Choke horns remain because, as Dudek puts it, "those carbs are worth $2,500. I ain't milling nothing."
They sit atop a factory aluminum street Hemi intake that has been given "the Arlen Vanke modification," namely substantially trimming the center plenum to help kill torque lest the repro Polyglas rubber be liquefied at the Tree. At the same time, Jeff Kobylski at Modern Cylinder Head in Clinton Township, Michigan, has added a couple of fuel-distribution tabs to make sure the gas is dispersed evenly and no single cylinder runs lean. "It looks like a Popsicle stick with JB weld holding it in," as Dudek describes it, and is another age-old Mopar trick. One tab is located between cylinders 4 and 6 and a half-tab is located just off number 3. A Mallory 110-gph fuel pump is chassis-mounted above the rear axle and feeds the Hemi's unquenchable thirst; the stock mechanical pump at the front of the engine is gutted and hollow, for show only.
Kobylski also worked magic on the cast-iron '70-vintage head castings (just painting aluminum Mopar Performance castings is a no-no; FADrags tech guys are equipped with magnets to check). Bowls were blended and port-matched both on the intake and exhaust sides; stainless stock-sized (2.25/1.94) Ferrea valves are tickled by Mopar Performance/Dick Landy 1.57/1.52 (stock ratio) roller rockers; Comp Cams valvesprings offer 160 pounds of seat pressure at rest and 390 pounds with the valves open. "If I go with the spring the cam manufacturer recommends, it won't rev above 5,000 rpm," says Dudek. Comp Cams titanium retainers keep everything in check. Valve-job angles and low-lift flow numbers, says Dudek, are staying his little secret (though he admits the heads flow 375 intake/221 exhaust at 0.600 lift). Hey, he's spilling everything else-let him cling to something private.
The block itself is '68-vintage and now displaces 479 ci thanks to a Mopar Performance forged-steel 4.15-inch-stroke crank and a 0.040 overbore. Automotive Machine of Fraser, Michigan, blueprinted, balanced, align-honed, and clearanced the block for the stroker crank. The cam is a Crane hydraulic roller (0.542/0.535 lift and 226/240 degrees at 0.050; the lobe sep is 112 degrees since a smooth factory-esque idle is a requirement for the series). Though conventional wisdom in the FADrags says that the cam should be retarded, Dudek discovered during his season-ending teardown that his cam had been accidentally installed straight up (due to a miscommunication with the engine-builder). Stock-length Eagle rods hang to Wiseco pistons (770 grams each) for 10.75:1 compression, which Dudek says is perfectly street-driveable on pump gas. You'd never know just by listening to it that it was pumping out 466 rear-wheel horsepower (at 5,400 rpm) and 488 lb-ft of torque (at 4,400 rpm). "By the time I hit 6,000 rpm, I've lost about 50 hp," he laments. "I'm not sure if it's the cam or if a valve is floating."
Stock exhaust manifolds are the name of the game here; Extrude Honing them helped him pick up 12 hp and 9 lb-ft at peak. These flow into a mandrel-bent 211/42-inch Dr. Gas X-pipe exhaust installed by Doug's Mufflers of Mount Clemens, Michigan. This exhaust configuration remains the sole nod to modernization in the series. "The X-pipe was worth an average of 12.5 hp and 12.8 lb-ft between 3,000 and 6,000 rpm ... above that, a traditional H-pipe has been more effective-in my testing, anyway." Since Dudek runs out of juice at 5,400, however, it's a moot point. Dynomax UltraFlow mufflers and stock tailpipes help the Hemi sound surprisingly stock at idle.
Ignition is a Chrysler electronic system, sort of; the Mopar distributor delivers 36 degrees of timing advance at just 1,400 rpm, while an MSD 6AL box is hidden behind the dash; the coil is really an MSD Blaster 2 spray-bombed black. Jacobs 8mm wires and Champion N9YC plugs deliver and fire the spark.
Dudek handles shifting duties himself with an 18-spline Hemi four-speed 'box, a McLeod PN 260851 disc and 360153 pressure plate, plus a billet McLeod flywheel lightened to 22 pounds from the stock 28. "I tried an aluminum flywheel, but it slipped. No way was I going to chance a run on that." The Pistol Grip handle is stock, but the shifter itself is a piece from Harms Automotive. "I kept tearing the shifter off the side of the trans," says Dudek. "I'd break the mounting plate in two every time. So I contacted Harms, they said they'd make me an unbreakable one. I figured they'd just reinforce a stock one. They made a tool and die, and forged a new one for me! It must have cost $5 grand to develop that." Luckily, they can recoup their investment by selling copies at www.surprisegarage.com. Dave's buddy Tom George of Southfield, Michigan, built the rest of the trans so smooth that buzz in the pits is it's a slick-shifted trans (every other tooth removed from the synchros). "It's not," he says, by way of offering to give me the keys and take it for a spin.
"Anyone could go out and use this combination and get the same power numbers I have," says Dudek. "Small cam, big cubes ... you can get these dyno numbers. Getting down the track is another story, however." Matching his best-ever 11.48 in testing, however, may take some doing.
Doing mid-11s on Goodyear Polyglas G60-15s, 15x7 steelies, and piepans takes more than sheer mechanical might-it takes a spoonful of chassis engineering as well. The front suspension features six-cylinder torsion bars and Competition Engineering 90/10 shocks (painted black, of course), and the rear uses 50/50 Mopar Performance shocks, a pinion snubber, and stock Hemi leaf springs with twice the number of clamps ahead of the wheel; pinion angle is traditionally set at 2 degrees down; next year he's going to set it at 7 degrees. Beyond that, he admits that he's left the suspension "loose." The rearend is an 831/44, not a Dana as the factory would have wished, and the 3.73:1 is a bit softer than the 4.10s of a Super Track Pack car. Still, he has one of the doggiest 60-foots in the series among the frontrunners, with consistent 1.95-2.0s. His driving technique accounts for some of this: "I leave off idle. Once I'm staged, I lift off the clutch as slowly as I can, until the clutch disc just starts skimming the flywheel. I let it down slowly and go." He shifts at 6,000, despite the reported power drop above 5,400, and goes through the traps at 6,100 revs. Brakes are currently four-wheel-drum all around, though this is one of many things that are changing.
Dudek insists that tire prep has not been a factor in his race career thus far, and that his ballast experiments have been fruitless. "My race weight is 3,900 pounds. I've filled the spare with water, and had up to 200 pounds of ballast in the trunk, but for me, lower weight is more important than ballast. Now I race with no ballast and as little gas in the tank as I dare." The Dynabatt hidden inside a stock repro battery casing is his invention.
In truth, the specs listed above were correct when this car was photographed last June. When it next appears on May 21 at Martin, Michigan, dragway for the next FADrags event, recently renamed the Year-One FAST (Factory Appearing Stock Tire) Musclecar Shootout, Dudek will debut a new combo that includes a vigorous 130-pound diet. The metal hood has been replaced with a fiberglass Challenger T/A hood, saving 25 pounds off the front end. ("It was a $99 option only in Hemis; if you checked the Fresh Air engine option and the factory was out of shakers, this is what you got. Knocks a tenth off the e.t. consistently. I never believed it ... but I saw the paperwork.") Yanking the sound insulation from the interior was good for another 33 pounds; the console is now gone as well. (He wanted to install a radio-delete plate, but couldn't find one for less than $500.) Dudek's own personal weight savings amounts to 18 pounds. An aluminum Hemi trans case from a '68 Hemi Barracuda will save another dozen. A conversion to Wilwood HD 10.5-inch front disc brakes saved yet another 20-plus ("they're invisible with the steelies, but you can see 'em with Rallye wheels," says Dudek).
On top of the weight loss, there's more power. The Automotive Machine-built Hemi will displace 484 ci (0.060 over stock with the 4.15 crank, now knife-edged), feature Serdi-milled heads (the exhaust number will be raised above 250 cfm), and run a new Straightline Performance (Okemos, Michigan) cam with 0.593/0.575 lift and 232/246 degrees of duration at 0.050 lift. Lobe separation will remain an idle-friendly 112 degrees, and he'll start with the cam retarded 2 degrees and start tweaking from there. Compression will be 13.0:1 with a set of 720-gram Diamond pistons with smaller 0.990 big-block Chevy pins and 11/416-11/416-31/416 ring grooves plugged with Total Seal rings. Everything in the engine from the pistons to the combustion chambers to the oil pump gearing will get TechLine coatings (said to be worth upward of 70 hp in all), and Dudek is out for blood. Will all that be enough to keep him on top of the FADrags heap?
By the time you read this, the second annual FADrags event (this time held in Martin, Michigan) will be over and done with. For information check out www.geocities.com/fadrags.
So, is this Challenger real, you ask? Yeah. Real fast.

Photo Gallery: 1967 Dodge Challenger - Super Sleeper - Featured Vehicle - Hot Rod Magazine



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