1st gear was the lowest I could find, converter listed as 400 rpm looser than stock. This big honking 4 door is heavy and was a dog at the lights with the original 2bbl big block. I wanted to give it a leg up at bottom end without sacrificing too much top end. I could have had the trans rebuilt stock and installed a 4:11, but then the motor would scream at 70 mph. So a low 1st gear & loose converter was a compromise. Trans cooler and a finned deep dish pan to keep it cool and maybe last a little longer. Last thing I wanted was to build a big block hot rod that gets humiliated at the lights by a Prius.
TBH, I haven't played with the fuel mix any, other than the idle mix to get the best vacuum. It ran great out of the box. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The rejet kit was bought while the engine was being built, anticipating a tune needed. It's still sitting on the shelf unopened.
Spark plugs wires do have a loom, or separator if you will, made of zip ties. One long tie around all the wires (spaced 8" apart) and another tie between each individual wire, so they all lay flat and parallel to each other. None of the wires touch. There's 1/4 to 3/8" between each wire. This is in addition to fiberglass heat braid on each wire. So ignition cross fire is kept at a minimum. And the whole assembly is held up with more zip ties to the long chrome Tee bolts on the valve covers. It looks neat & sharp, organized, away from the headers & all professional like, can't tell they're zip ties because the "clasp" is hidden behind or under the wires. Those never melted, only the insulated boots and the right angle plug caps. Those fat Indy Head primaries are dangerously close to plugs 2, 3, 6 & 7. The insulated boots sleeves scorch where they touch the header and cook the plug wire boots, leading to shorts, a dead firing cylinder and loss of power. I'm on my 2nd set of wires & insulators now and it's barely broken in.
When I said my wire looms melted, I meant the split loom that covers not the plug wires but other wires. They come in varying sizes and colors. I got a 4 pack of 10' each to organize and clean up the engine bay. The wires to the alternator used to run above the header, THAT'S the loom that melted. Burnt they one of the wires and dead shorted one of the field wires to the header, sending volts to 18 when I pulled over and fixed it. It's been replaced and routed along the intake now.
Not real sure what my timing is at, the timing mark is nowhere near TDC. It's off nearly 90°! Sometime during the 48 year lifespan the inertia ring on the damper has slipped. Mileage also unknown, speedo has never worked, even with a fresh cable and new worm gear in the tail shaft. Odo reads 8K and the title says mileage exempt, meaning it's rolled at least once. I use a GPS app on my phone to track my speed & mileage. But it's safe to say it's at least 108,000.
Radiator shop had the radiator 2 weeks, cost a pretty penny too on account of it being aluminum. Most radiator shops wouldn't touch it. They cleaned up all the rust and scale inside & fixed all the pinhole leaks. It flows really well.
Machine shop that did the block & heads vatted the motor, bored the cylinders, decked the block & heads, installed new cam bearings, freeze plugs and did a 3 angle valve job. We had 2 sets of heads, the original 2 bbl smog heads and a pair of motorhome heads we picked up at fleabay. They chose the best heads, valves and springs from both and provided me fresh heads and the rest in loose parts. We (my brother & I) assembled the rest of the motor ourselves. So yeah, there's no sludge in the block.
The original puke tank was missing when I got it. So I "recycled" a 24 oz NOS energy drink can. It's mounted with the NOS label showing, complete with a stainless braided hose and anodized fittings. The ignorant kids point to it and say, "Oh look! It has nitrous!" And it works, as a puke tank anyway. I keep it half full.
Thermostat was pulled after my last trip to Cars & Coffee to see if it would help the overheating issue. It didn't. Still got hot, just took longer to do so. It was a high flow 180° version. Playing with the timing didn't help. Retarding it makes it slow, advancing it makes it knock. So I guess I need to jet it up richer. I only feed it ethanol free super, 91 octane. When I built it I replaced ALL the rubber hose with ethanol friendly fuel lines & viton seals in the carb (expensive!), in the event that I was out of gas and have no choice but buy blended gas. Ethanol does burn cooler and cleaner, but it has less thermal BTUs, meaning less power. It also absorbs moisture, leading to gas tank rot, corrosion in the carb & fuel lines, and it separates over time. Seeing as my car may sit for weeks at a time, it's not an attractive option.
On a side note: There's a guy across the street with a 64 Corvair he's had me work on. Drives it maybe once a couple months, keeps the tank full of the cheapest gas he can buy (E15 blended 87 octane). And he wonders why it runs like ****. I've had to replace the fuel pump, filters and rebuild the carbs. Gas is yellowed, smells funky, carbs were varnished big time. And there were purple crystals in the carb horn vents, lots of funky green varnish inside and out. Ethanol. He doesn't live there, it's his vacation lake house, he keeps his Corvair parked there. My dad & I talked him into letting us (dad) take it with us to Cars & Coffee once a month, let it stretch it's legs, charge the battery, keep it running good.
There is no heat blanket lining the hood of the Chrysler, and after a 20 minute drive the hood is too hot to touch or sit on. I haven't used my IR gun on it yet, but next time I go to Cars & Coffee (August 21, my birthday) I'll bring it to see. I'll also check the headers, radiator, and other places too.
Thanks for the information and clarifications!
I'll tend to concur on the torque converter, but it can still be a tad loose for a street engine with normal rear axle ratios, which should be a 2.71 unless it had the optional 3.21. Be that as it may. But the 1.77 low gear makes no sense, as the orig TF low gear is 2.45.
There was a 440 Motorhome Head and a normal 440 cyl head that could be on a motorhome. The real MH heads have individual exhaust ports and a normal intake port side, with what looks to be to be a LA open chamber combustion chamber. Two different breeds of B/RB head, but the real MH head has exhaust ports which seem to be better than the normal B/RB cyl heads.
Many people like to talk about "smog heads" as if they are all bad, but after somebody actually put some Chry 452s on a flow bench and ported them like they would do a 906 head, they seemed to be surprised that both castings were really very close together. Enough so that the former condemnations were invalidated. On flow numbers, that is. What is also important is combustion dynamics, not just hard and fast flow numbers. Which makes the quench dome pistons with an open chamber head work so well, in that it makes that open chamber act like a closed chamber head, getting more active air flow, which usually means a better burn of the mixture. A side note.
Spark plug/wire touching the headers IS usually a normal part of exhaust header installation. Just have to find the correct routing (sometimes from underneath or from behind the rear cyls to get things done. Parallel routing of the wires can look good, BUT at some point in their paths, the wires usually need to cross at a 90 degree angle so better minimize near-wire cross-firing.
One of the real purposes of the underhood fiberglass "insulator" is to (as the late, old-line Chrysler service manager at the local dealership told me back in the 1960s, the real purpose of that pad is not to dampen noise (as it does), but to keep engine heat from cooking the paint off of the outside of the hood, with time. Add that to heat from the TX sun, so the paint is attacked from both sides of the metal. Which, even with a hood pad, means that the horizontal paint surfaces would fade after a year or so as the vertical surfaces would look shiney and newer, especially the lighter metallic colors on GM cars.
Crank dampers don't just turn on their hubs with age, they also usually move outward as they turn. This is usually a visual situation. But there usually is a physical relationship between where the crankshaft keyway is and the connecting rod angle when #1 is at TDC. For example, on a SBC, which is very similar to a B/RB Chrysler in many architectural areas, when #! is at TDC, the keyway's projected path parallels the #1 connecting rod (crankshaft certer to center of the piston pin), regardless of where the timing mark on the balancer might be. Have you checked the timing using #6 cyl, as it's 180 degrees after when #1 cyl fires? Just a reference point. In any event, might chase down a new balancer before the inertia ring on your existing one flies off and hurts something expensive, for good measure.
Timing "by ear" can be troublesome and problematic. It was done decades ago when having a timing light was something that only serious racers or repair shops had (their relative expense was an issue, plus availability), but now that they are comparatively inexpensive (with many turning up on online auctions, even the dial-back ones), everybody really needs one. A "light trace rattle" on mild acceleration is not that bad, but a big solid clatter at WOT or heavy throttle is. Both are not desired, but one is more critical than the other one is. It is possible that you can have well past the 12.5 degrees BTDC (initial timing on our '66 383 2bbl Newport) and the engine still start pretty good and quickly. Unless somebody has modified the advance curve from stock, there can be other "too much" issues when the vacuum advance is working. Like at part throttle cruising speeds on the highway, sometimes. But knowing exactly where the ignition timing is is important. A good dwell tach and a dial-back timing light are good items to have for accurate tuning and diagnosis. Better solutions than the old "timing tape" we used to stick to the dampers in the '60s-'70s.
In the mean time, set the timing to prevent ignition clatter (regardless of how slow the car might feel) and go out and drive it about 10 miles or more on the highway. Use the IR heat gun to check underhood temps (radiator tank, radiator core, radiator hoses, surrounding sheet metal body parts). 180 is where things used to run, with particular engine areas being a little bit hotter, with 20-30 degrees F not really being that critical for coolant temps, but when things get close to 260 degrees F, THATS when concerns of non-performance should become operative on a 16psi pressurized cooling system, by observation. Also reference where the needle on the instrument panel gauge is while all of this is happening, too.
For good measure, find a factory-style coolant recovery jug for the car. Your "catch can" might have been legal for drag strips, but unless the cooling system is "tank full" ultimate cooling capacity can be compromised a bit (which is usually compensated for in the original sizing of the radiator and such).
Unfortunately, you've got some more "playing" to do as you learn about, diagnose, and tune the engine in the car. Part of the fun of making things work as well as they can, together, and THEN knowing how to operate the car for optimum obtainable results. Like only part-throttle from a dead stop before applying WOT under hard acceleration. Heavy car with good traction is not a mix for "giant smokey burnouts", usually, without a much deeper rear axle ratio. Or some upgraqded u-joints!
Enjoy!
CBODY67