Our '68 GTS Project

I thought you guys would appreciate some pictures of my '68 383 4-speed GTS that we occasionally take to no prep and other street type races. It has cutouts, nitrous and a 245-60-14 rear tire. So far I only have one outing with this combo after struggling with some clutch and fuel delivery issues. I'd like to wait until the season is over to talk ET/MPH as the engine is coming out for a cam upgrade and a few other things this winter. Now that my woes are over it's time to work on getting down the track better and there is a lot of improvement on the table.

Cab built the 451 and I changed the intake and oil pan to fit the car. It has an Accurate 2.25" exhaust and stock '68 BB a-body manifolds, valve covers and air cleaner. I drive it to the track, drop a few psi on the M&H's, open the cutouts, crack the bottle and let the good times roll.

A few more pics:

Interior shot

Maybe a mod can help me fix the upside pics?

rwhp through the muffs on a 125 shot, a bit better with the cutouts open.

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No cage?

Only thing missing is my little tool box and the cooler. You don't need a lawn chair at a drag strip!

It has an 8-track!


It's usually 1/8th mile stuff. It is on my list of things to maybe do. I have two other cars with 8.50 cages so this one is still on the fence. It just kind of snowballed.

Like that car. Want that car! Very cool.

Looks like a fun car.

So much fun

Very cool car!! reminds me of the one i had as a teenager, would love to find another one one day.....

Thanks for all of the positive comments. And yes it's a 17 year old's car at heart.

Cab built this engine and it has been trouble free, even with the extra abuse. Thank you Cab for always helping me out and providing awesome support.

Here is a pic for my man Weed Burner

We have been really happy with the Aeromotive 340lph Stealth Tank and the pass through regulator has been pretty good too.

I bought some 1/2" poly sheet from www.mcmaster.com to help isolate the fuel pump from the floor of the car.

Upon removal of the original fuel tank I realized that there is a slight step up in the trunk pan allowing room for the pump without contacting the body. I installed our ranch brewed isolator anyway and the fuel pump is hardly noticeable over the repro exhaust. This pic shows the fuel line and sender hook ups:

Love it! Is it original paint? How much of a challenge is it to get those tiny slicks to hook with a 4 speed??

Looks fun

The car is equal amounts of bondo, rust, spray paint, primer and original QQ1 "Bright Blue". Driver door still full of old beer cans from the 70's and lots of tape holding what is left of the seats together.

The tires are M&H DOT bias plys with tread. I'm afraid to put a "real" tire under it with the 8.75. I almost have enough parts to build a dana for it and when that happens I'll upgrade to a 15" wheel/tire combo and move the springs in 1/2" using offset hangers.

Does anybody know how big of a tire you can get away with on a '68 Dart with the offset hangers?

If it wasn't a street car I'd have to find some Supertricks for it too.

The main goal is just getting to the track and having fun. With my work schedule there isn't much time to prepare, load etc. and I rarely have an entire weekend to blow at the track.

So just getting some time pounding on my beater with my gearhead family has been great. Medford Dragstrip is a nice place, a lot of fun and only about a 45 minute drive through the countryside.

Comfortably.... a 255/60/15 drag radial. A 275 or 28/10.5 slick is pretty tight and requires perfect backspace and potentially wheel lip removal, unless you jack the rear up a bit. If you are going to build a rear end, buy the wheels/tires you want, set them under the car in the perfect spot, and take your overall measurement before cutting a housing or buying axles.

Car is super cool

What an AWESOME GTS !!!!! love it

Thank you for the info and compliment. I have a housing with the end chopped off so we can do a "perfect scenario" mockup. I don't want to trim the wheel lip although there isn't much of one. I wonder if I could fit an 8" slick on a 8" rim? Being a stick car I am pretty much in bias ply land for now. Having a taller tire would help things immenesly.

Thank you sir that it a highly paid compliment. I have always admired your car and racing efforts.

Thank you, I appreciate that a lot,, I had a 68 GTS 383 back in the early 80's I had to sell it in 1984 ish, I found it still in Texas a few years ago, it was white when I owned it, it is now Orange with a big Hemi in it

I have done 3 darts with this setup, and agree with topfueldart also, a 28x9 or a 275 radial. We buy the wheels and tires and make the rear fit perfectly for them. Pic is a 275 radial, 8in wheels on all I do.

I think I have a brand new set of 28x9 M/T's. Thank you for the confirmation!

I'll see what I have in the race shop at lunch time. How much do you have to trim the lip? My car has wheel lip trim which I imagine would have to be removed.

That car looks so mean. Can't wait to get all of the Darts at one track!

That's awesome. I dig those old pics! Cars like your GTS are what got me hooked on this stuff as a little kid.

Thanks, I agree on the dart gathering, so fun. 4spds for the win. About 3/16s off the lip. 2 cars I've done had trim also, no big deal. Easily still works. The rear will need moved back about 3/8s to 1/2in as to not disturb the front lip. It's all tight but will all fit without butchering no problem. I also turn a nut down in the lathe and tig it into the front bucket. Then you don't have to cut a hole or bash in the front frame for the front spring eye bolt to frame clearance issue you will have with the offset front bucket.

Excellent, I will start gathering some parts. Do you use a longer spring hanger or shim it between the front hanger and the frame? I use SS brackets and cut them down on a few B bodies to move the rear end back for clearance. Really appreciate the advise that will make it much easier instead of the entire process being "discovery".

Cool car/combo! What are the rules for this class you are racing? Who is all involved when you say "Our '68.." It would be nice if you could fit it for a 'small tire' (28x10.5) once you start fabbing things for the dana swap. As has been said moving the axle rearward and maybe pinching part of the framerail...shouldn't be too bad.

Just passing on stuff that I have learned or figured out. You can shim the hanger back but to go more than 3/8s, I usually just tig up the hole in the new perches you have to weld on anyhow and mill/drill the new hole just 3/8s forward so it moves the rear back slightly. Also I have recently found that the Calvert perches are head and shoulders above all the others. In thickness, quality and strength.

I will check them out. Sounds like I have a winter project in the works.

Care to elaborate on what you've got going on here?

Our meaning my family. This is our go and get ice cream car if you know what I mean. Nothing like your 4yo kid running out of the house chanting "burn out burn out.." lol! My wife is very, very supportive of my car hobby and even has four Mopars herself.

This frame pinching you speak of...is that a '68 SS Dart thing and can you point me to an example? I do not want to mini tub the car because it would IMO greatly diminish the value should I ever sell it. I could boogie pretty good on a L60 I'm sure of that. I always figured 275/60/15 would be maxing out the stock wheel well.

The class I run is "daily driver" - DOT tire, no roll bar, anything goes (within reason). I'd have to look and see if they limit tread width to 10.5 or not. It's all for fun as I'm more into cars and engineering than I am competitive. It's a great way to blow off some steam.

Thanks for the compliments and support!

I use that to slip the clutch. It's called a "clutch tamer" and I modified it to work in the GTS so with good results. It essentially allows me to temporarily adjust the clutch pedal so return at a slower, controlled rate to help keep the car in the powerband, now knock the tires off at the hit/shift. It works well, most of my traction problems will be worked out in the progressive controller. It can get a little wild when the nitrous activates but the car goes nice and straight even black tracking.

Very Cool Dart!!! A sleeper and a keeper

Love your Dart! I have it’s sibling. QQ1 383 4 speed GTS, although mine has gotten kind of away from original.

Awesome. Looks fun!

Thank you sir! This car was in Malin/Merrill area forever and then sat behind K&D autobody shop for about ten years. It's been a fun project.

Let's see it! I really like Bright Blue, it is a cool color in a two-stage urethane. Ours will get restored one of these years. I have been slowly collecting parts for the interior..man those a-body 4-speed consoles are pricey. There was a nice blue one for $500 recently.


I thought better of blowing the $500 on interior stuff and ordered a solid roller cam from PRH. : D

Some lifters, push rods and a set of Comp Pro-mags and I'll be ready for a cam swap.

Well it looks like racjng is canceled this weekend. That is not the worst thing considering I am coming off of 3rd shift. Headed off to do more tuning on the rollers. Happy Friday!

Yeah I painted it 68 charger red about 15 years ago. Wish I would have did it back to its original qq1 now that I’m a bit older.

What a cool car! We have two red mopars ('66 Coronet and Charger) so I totally understand! : D

I spent a little time tuning the QF1050AN yesterday before getting called out for work. I am really having a hard time getting the light throttle/cruise from being dead rich in the 10's. It was better with a higher HSB so maybe I will go that direction.

At this point I have it jetted 81/91, 4.5PV/Blocked, .067 PVCR (need to go .068-.070 with the 81 jet), top three emulsion holes in the primary are .037/.064/.066. Secondary t-slot about .010 and primary about .020. It idles at 900-950 with 14 initial and 36 total advance.

Next trip I will spend more time on the carb and pull the covers and check the valvetrain/lash. That way if my carb tuning session is a failure I'll have accomplished *something*. You all know how it goes!

I had to put a transfer slot restriction in my 4150/1050 AN carb. I thought I had the specs written down but I never did on that one. Mine runs like it fuel injected, just took some playing to get it there.

I think you are correct. My other 1050s needed the also. I would be interested to see where yours ended up.

Slowly collecting parts for the Dana swap. So far i have:

Housing
Ends
Power lock
28x9st M/Ts
3" studs

I need:

Perches
Offset hanger kit
15x8 steel wheels
Axle kit


I am still undecided on brakes, gear ratio, and to cal trac or not to cal trac.

I scored this low deck street dominator. Hopwfully it fits under the hood.

I milled off the egr and choke stove. It was really heavy to begin with.

I also struggled with cutting this winters casting with a bur that usually works well on aluminum. A friemd told me to try crisco and it actually worked. Easy clean up with simple green also.

I left the flange, plenum and ports unmodified. The plenum will need to be check against the spraybars in the nitrous plate before it gets bolted down.

Did you lighten it on the mill

There’s plenty of ugly stuff that can be cut off a SD manifold.

I’ll be looking forward to the chassis dyno results after you swap it out.

That intake is cool! Is it the same height as it started or did it get taller with the dominaor flange. I am considering milling my intake down to the runners and welding a HVH super sucker on it or something like that.

I went as far as i could without having to build a bunch of special fixtures. Then clean up my sins with the die grinder. The mill saved me hours. I also smoothed the runners at the unused plug boss on #8 and the 1/8-27 npt plug in the bottom of the plenum with some epoxy. I am uneecided on which direction to go with the intake. Whatever happens I'd like to keep the stock hood.

Well I missed eacing this weekend because of work call outs and air quality. I just didn't have it in me to go hang out in 95 degrees and smoke. It irked me as I was very excited to run the car but that's how the dice fall some times. The last event is on the calendar is Sept 10-11 so hopefully the stars will align for me to get down to the track.


I found some time yesterday to swap over the strip dominator intake and it feels good. I am still working on the carb recalibration but it is close. A little dar at cruise, 1/2 a point lean at WOT. Once I am comfortable with the driving around town AFR numbers we will put it on the rollers again.

Normally I would have just gone straight to the dyno but the wildfire smoke has been bad down in the valley. Much more comfortable tuning up here in the country out of that nasty smoke.

My other hurdle was my NOS nitrous plate. Apparently it is powder coated because when i started peeling the gaskets off the black powdercoat started coming with them. Sure as heck didn't want any of that stuff going through the engine so we switch to a ZEX perimeter plate while still retaining the same monte Smith/NOS big shot solenoids. I might buy another big shot plate to test against but probably not. The lesson here is buy a nitrous plate that is anodized and avoid the problem I described above.

In the last post I mentioned changing the n20 plate from a spray bar style to a ZEX perimeter plate due to the powder coating coming off. Interestingly the perimeter plate hits much, much softer than the spray bar plate even with a faster ramp in rate on the progressive.

I also had swapped out the DP4B/Performer to a Holley Street Dominator intake and it seems to have killed the bottle neck at 5800. I am now able to hit the limiter at 6300RPM which is interesting. It took a little getting used to having such a short legged engine when you are used to a 7000ish RPM redline. The intake seal went away after a few days so I removed it, cleaned everything and measured gaps at the bottom of all port flanges. I measured variances from .003-.010 and figured a .030 (uncompressed) gasket between the bathtub gasket and manifold would seal it up. Luckily it worked perfect and really helped me get the carb dialed in having steady AFR values. When the intake seal went loco AFR was all over the place. I think that might have been my last oil leak for this one..I hope.

Ran the No Prep event at Medford dragstrip this weekend! It was a good time and I made 10 n20 passes. By the end of the night I was launching it at 5k RPM with a .5s delay in the progressive starting at 80% and ramping for .5s. Left hard and "4-speed straight" with some shock tuning we did in the driveway last week. Still on the 235-60-14 M&H muscle car bias tire.

I'll repost some pictures from the track photographer when they come out. I tried so many times to post pics here but they are too big or sideways so I gave up. Hopefully I can hotlink some content. None of my friends or family showed up so as usual I was all by myself. Oh well.

There were a ton of cool mopars. At least 3 or 4 turbo cars from a 906 headed blow through deal to Gabe Cogswell's Devil Dart with the billet twin turbo HEMI. If you haven't seen Gabe's car google it. It's sick! He told me it went 174 in the 1/8th over the summer! Still wrapping my mind around that number lol.

I ended up being the *only* daily driver entry that stuck around (also only car in DD tuning Friday night) so after winning my class by default they bumped me into the 275 tire class. Now we are bringing a knife to a gun fight and the GTS is way outclassed. Running a group of cars with cal tracs and power adders. Purpose built cars for the most part. Luckily that made me continue to turn it up lol. Nothing like peer pressure huh.

Luckily I drew the bye (odd number of cars running) and then ran a blown, dual 4 barrel 64-65 Chevelle that had an oiling problem. He bought back in and I ran him in the semi's and aaaaaaaaalmost had him from the gate but he came around me when I hit the limiter in 3rd right at the 1/8th. Need that solid roller. It felt pretty good leaving on a blown BBC on a 275 tire and actually having a race with it in my very small tire 4 speed Dart with the factory exhaust manifolds, valve covers and air cleaner.

Really looking forward to 2022!

This winter my plans are:

Roller Cam/Lifter/Comp Pro Mag rockers
Seat foam/covers (my eyes are still burning lol)
Dana 60
28x9 slick or a DOT bias equivalent to the 275/60/15

Other than that the 451 still sounds great, clutch feels awesome and the transmission is holding up to WOT power shifting. To me having everything stay intact and functional is a win in itself.

Thanks for Cab, HardcoreB, Dwayne at PRH and a few other of my buddies that have answered questions and let me bounce tech questions off of them. It really came together at this last race.



Also thanks to AndyF for helping me with my throttle linkage at the last minute! His solution worked awesome as always.

LOL! That is awesome!!! Just tune your stuuf to optimum and run your race and sometimes...it's just your day! Thanks for the update and those changes will wake it up significantly! (ET wise anyway) I think Dwayne is a good source for a camshaft upgrade.

Thanks for a great write up and sharing what you have learned. Like your car a lot.

Thanks for taking the time for the update, very COOL !!!!!! what kind of times is it running now ?

Thank you for checking in. I never did get to run it with the clocks on again. 12's are no problem! : D

I guess this is the best pic they shot of the GTS. Not hard to understand considering the caliber of cars that showed up to race.

So neat, and so fun.......

Maybe I need to loan you "Rowdy" to see if you can make your car work with it

I am all ears! Extra gap on the rings please. : D

Ps I have another 400 block at lindvigs. Going to sonic it tomorrow. Will the 451 grow into a 511?


HardcoreB got me going on that project lol!