Took the Dart to the track for the first time in 9 years

Last night I took my 70 to the track for the first time since 2000.

Best et: 14.31 @ 94 mph with a 2.19 60ft
Best trap: 14.43 @ 97.74 with a 2.39 60ft

Car is totally out of balance and the tires must be made out of axle grease, first gear was completely useless, which is ironic considering I'm running 3.23 gears, 28" tall tires, with a 3K stall converter. Shift point was 5K, car would be completely out of breath at about 5200, I attribute this to the stock valve J heads and 625cfm carb.

Overall I was pretty pleased with it because I was expecting a mid 14 run at best, and I almost hit low 14's. Ironically I had a hard time launching the car and red lighted several times due to flashing the converter and rolling out of the lights prematurely. This makes me want to stick the 833 I have sitting in the corner in it even more now (I have a 5.0 with a T-5 that I can launch much better). The big deal was I drove 180+ miles round trip and the car didn't break. I got close though at one point when I got stuck in some stupid construction that caused traffic to come to an almost complete stand still for over 30 minutes. I almost got clear of it and my car hit about 230 degrees and vapor locked (I assume).

Only way I could get it running again, was to floor it and crank on it, then I had to keep it around 3K rpms to keep it alive. Almost didn't make it, but once I got back up to highway speeds it cooled back down to 180. This is due to my homemade shroud not being deep enough, so that got added to the to do list also. It had been fine before, but I never got stuck in traffic that bad before.

All in all not too bad for only having $1200 invested in the engine I'd say.
Author: admin