I've wanted to build a car with some heavy stock car themes to it for a long time. I raced short track cars(always Mopars)and more recently I've been doing SCCA Solo and Club Racing with a Neon Coupe. Well, earlier this year the Neon was sold to a Chrysler employee who's going to race it at Waterford Hills and I started on my quest to build my dream car.
The car: 1979 Dodge Aspen R/T. Originally a slant six car, right now it has a mildly built early 80's 318, a built 727, and a 8&3/4 with 4:10 gears. Found it on Craigslist in Nashville Tn. It has a fairly clean body, never been wrecked and only minor rust issues. The interior is typically cooked as wit many southern cars. That doesn't matter much as most of the interior will be removed and / or replaced. The PO mods were mostly done fairly well but there are some real goober mods also. The exhaust is especially bad yet funny at the same time. Again, doesn't matter because it's all going to be replaced. The wiring has all the typical hacks and crappy repairs of a home brewed backwoods hotrod. Again, all old going away and replaced with new.
The idea: I'm building this car so I can autocross it, do track days, drive it on the street, basicly build a Pro-Touring streetfighter. The car will have a lot of styling cues from short track stock cars. Here's some of the cars that are my inspiration:
Some details: The first thing to do is strip the car and get started on the fabricating. The major fabrication will be installing a rollcage and replacing the entire front stub with a Howe Racing Products fabricated road race front clip. This will allow me to go coil over, rack and pinion steering, and have endless adjustiblity for the fraction of the cost of what little else is available for an F-body. The rear suspension will be leaf spring for now but I'm considering truck arms. I'm going to work with the 318 for now as it's recently rebuilt and seems to run well. The big thing is to make it breath better and twist quicker. I'm also going retain the TF, I was impressed with how Mitch Lelito's Challenger drove with a TF on an autocross course. I will be looking to swap out the 4:10's though.
