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.

I've wanted to do a project like this myself. Just couldn't bring myself to cut up my current F-Body. I love the look and the idea.
Doug

Sweet ride and good luck!!!

Good Luck with it! I had a 77 RT In my younger days and loved it

Pretty cool project!!

Cool project! I look forward to following your progress.

Since buying the Aspen, I've not had a lot of time to pay attention to it. We bought a house and moved, remodeled the garage at the new house so I can comfortably work out of it, and a bunch of little things around the new house. In the meantime I did a few small things such as locating some needed Aspen specific parts like good taillights, some quarter window louvers, a grille, etc. Most of the time I spent on the car was investigating what to do about the car's front suspension. The factory transverse torsion bar front suspension isn't some of Chrysler's best engineering and is nothing but one compromise after another. I looked at a bunch of options and decided the best course of action was to cut the entire front off of the car and replace everything forward the firewall.

My intention was to use a road race front frame from Howe Racing Products that is used on the TA2 Trans Am series cars they offer. Friday I was pulling everything together to place the order to Howe for the front frame, control arms, spindles, and hubs but their website was having issues and I was having troubles pulling together the P/Ns and prices I needed. While i was waiting for a page to load, I popped open another tab and started cruising E-Bay's race cars for sale when I stumbled upon this:







What it is is a Laughlin short track chassis that was run as a NASCAR North Series car (NASCAR North is a ladder series that uses basicly the Nationwide Series Rules with less expensive bodies and more restrictive engine rules). It's a complete roller so it has suspension, brakes, rear end, and steering. The rear end is a quick change. The track width is just a half inch wider than the Aspen's stock track width and has a 105" wheelbase (The Aspen is 108"). All this for an opening bid just $200 more than I was getting ready to spend with Howe and it was a no reserve auction. So I bid and at 3pm today I won that auction so the Aspen will be getting a complete Laughlin chassis!

That is a pretty efficient way to get where you want to go. This is going to really be a cool project.

Sheldon

Went and got the chassis this weekend. 1400 miles and 120 gallons of fuel later it sits in the garage next to Aspen....

that will make for one cool car! hope it works out well!

NOW you're cooking!!!! Pic of one of my projects a few years ago..

2

A quick update:

I've been busy with SCCA stuff, was elected President of the Board of Directors of the Indianapolis Region SCCA so I've been getting up to speed with that position. I was able to get a little garage time so i got the trusty tape measure out and went to work. The chassis width is perfect! The chassis' width fits inside the rockers of the Aspen. Using the main hoop on the chassis and the b pillar on the body as a common reference point, I made all my length measurements. I was hoping to find that I would be able to fudge the wheel openings a little to make up for the difference in the wheelbase between the Aspen and the chassis (The Aspen is 108.7" and the chassis is 105"). Unfortunately that won't be the case. From the b pillar forward, everything works out perfectly, all the difference in length happens from the b pillar back. So what I'm going to have to do is lengthen the chassis behind the main hoop 3 3/4". That means moving the truck arm mount rearward as well as the entire rear clip. That will also mean that I will have re-do all the bars from the main hoop back. No biggie really. Now that the weather is getting better I'll be able to spend more time in the garage. The only stumbling block right now is I have to get our Mustang GT ready for the upcoming autocross season.

Finally got to get some garage time in this weekend. Rolled the chassis outside and started the process cutting away what isn't needed. I do have to lengthen the wheelbase and thankfully this chassis it will pretty easy. Have to cut loose the truck arm cross member and the rear clip mounts from the rocker rails as well as the rear rollcage bars from the main hoop and move the whole assembly back the appropriate amount and re-weld. The roll cage bars will have to be replaced with longer lengths of tubing but that's easy.