I'm going from 10.3 to 11:1. It ran fine with the cheapest pump gas before at 36° total timing. I have stations that carry 91 octane fuel so that coupled with the fact I can pull timing with the turn of a dial, I'm sure it will be fine. The race gas will be in the nitrous stand alone cell (and maybe a little in the main tank) for those nights that I'm e.t. chasing at the track. Cometics are re-usable so if I don't like the higher compression, I'll just swap back to the .060 gaskets.

I pulled the engine out and started disassembly this past weekend. Nothing out of the ordinary and the bearings in the one main cap and rod cap I pulled looked really good. The main caps looked really good for what I put this thing though as I fully expected to see some transfer marks or "fretting" and it was very minimal.

Pulled it down the rest of the way yesterday and installed new rod bearings. Shortblock is assembled and ready to go.

Dumped the engine back into the car last night. Should be ready to rock this weekend!

Back running and sounding crisp!

After some self-induced issues with oil pressure and ending up with WAY too much, I went back to a stock spring in the oil pump. It comes close to sucking the pan dry with 7 quarts in the pan at the end of the 1/4 mile as it is with a stock spring. 75 psi cold idle and 45-ish warm idle now with .002 bearing clearance on the rods.

Shook it down by driving it around Sunday and drove it to work yesterday.

Just adding 7/10 of a point of compression made a difference. You can tell it's a little snappier and a little crisper. Hopefully the track #'s bear that out, but after getting used to the sound and feel of it over the last 6 years, it is definitely different.

We did a Wednesday night test and tune at the track to make sure all was good before the Midway Drags nostalgia event this weekend.
I had way too much timing pulled to be safe so the first couple of passes on nitrous were popping going down the track. By the time I got the timing corrected, the bottle was getting low (only brought one with me). With really sketchy prep, it still pulled off a 10.69 @ 131.7 mph popping and banging in the 60 ft. With me adding timing on the fly. LOL!
Mph was about the only way to tell what was going on with no traction, but it went with 1 mph of the 133 best it has done, so pretty happy.

The DA was 3200 when we got there so not great, either.

It was a great shakedown with no issues.

Awesome build ! Which Howard’s cam are you using ? Thanks

235/241 duration at .050, 545 lift hydraulic roller.

Not many pics (kind of ashamed to post what I do have) but we had issues a while back with the alternator going bad and back feeding through the engine harness. The engine harness was replaced with a reproduction but what I didn't realize at the time (because the car still worked fine) was the under dash harness got roasted pretty badly! It started having random issues lately with starting and lights flickering so I dug in and found bare power wires under the dash! I'm pretty fortunate that the car didn't burn to the ground!

Unfortunately, new dash harnesses aren't available for a '63 Dodge so I looked around to see if anyone had a used one. I found one but the guy wanted $400 for a used one! Kinda crazy for a small, 60 year-old wiring harness, but I guess people know an opportunity with they see one!

This prompted me to dig into mine and found it was mainly the two power wires that were fried. The rest of the harness was in surprisingly good shape! A good friend and neighbor helped me dissect and improve it. We spent about 3 hours on it last night and did wire replacement along with the ammeter delete. Gonna do the alternator wire directly to starter relay wire setup as well. I highly recommend this! I need to re-wrap the harness and put it back in the car and we should be good to go!

Again, pics will not tell the whole story. It's been a hot Summer and we missed The Rumble race due to rain and the car simply not being done. I re-wrapped the dash harness, bypassed the ammeter and put a waterproof fuse housing on the firewall next to the master cylinder to protect the interior wiring should a failure happen. Very happy with how everything works especially since the dash and harness was scattered all over the interior a few days ago. I should have done this mod a long time ago!

We are going to Mid America Dragway to race a nostalgia race tomorrow and looking forward to it!

Awesome day at Mid America Dragway as we took home the win for '64 and earlier street tire class! Hard to believe it had a gutted dash last Wednesday! Dialed 11.50's n/a and it was flawless off the trailer. Beautiful day with perfect temp to boot!

We went to Kansas International Friday night. The temperature started dropping rapidly by the time we got down the track at about 7 pm. 53° ambient and 63° track temp. I did a n/a hit and it was pretty slippery. I threw 50 lbs. of spare tire in the trunk and cracked open the bottle. I had a little too much timing pulled and it let me know by popping in the burnout box while purging through the motor. I added a couple of degrees before pulling into the beams. It hit pretty good and everything happened so fast that I forgot to shift (been a few months since I've ran the car on the hose. She hit the rev limiter, blew flames out the mufflers and I FINALLY shifted. Ran a 10.7 @ 129mph. Pretty good for the driver being a goof! Finally lined up with a 55 Chevy that had an LS with a turbo. It was lightly sprinkling as we pulled into the burnout box. Clean burnout with no pops purging. I got a decent light and tree'd the '55. I knew he was on my quarter panel as I couldn't see him in the rear view and he wasn't beside me. I slipped and slid to a 10.59 to his 10.85. The back half of the track was slippier than I ever experienced but managed to hang on!

Considering I put little to no effort to get the bottle to temp (was 72° when shot with temp gun, should be 91°) and had a lot of timing pulled (did a plug check later and timing mark was conservative) I'm really happy with how it was performing. 60 ft. was WAY off due to prep and cold temps. Considering the issues this year with the dash harness rebuild, I'm happy it is back doing what it should!

The biggest change I witnessed after the ammeter bypass and wiring the alternator to directly feed the battery is the lights don't dim at idle and the car idles much better with timing pulled! I'm happier with the functionality of the car than I have been in a while. It's starting to be a really refined piece that does everything well. Hopefully we get a couple more opportunites to run at the track and I'm definitely driving it to work tomorrow!

Here's a screenshot of video the neighbor took of the flames out the tailpipe! LOL!

That's movin...especially in damp condition!

That is such a great idea using the dewalt battery. Do you have a photo of the panel mounted in the trunk??

I do not, but I can get some tonight. The board is mounted right behind the bottle on some rubber MSD Box isolators.

Thanks man. I appreciate it! I just noticed this thread and really love this build.

Thanks!

I often wonder if I should keep posting here as it's not the typical Mopar "build" and is more about making performance upgrades, experimenting and chasing a number. As you can see, the cosmetics take a backseat!

I'm always surprised by the views this thread gets.

Okay, here are the pics of the board in the trunk. Don't look too closely as the trunk floor has lots of patina and is low on the priority list.