Here is a list of parts and brands that I would recommend for building old Mopar engines. Most of these parts are available in Summit or Jegs magazines or on their websites. Noobies, take notes.
Carburetors - Intakes - Air Cleaners - Fuel Delivery - Cam - Ignition - Headers - Exhaust - Quick Chart Electrical System - Pistons - Gaskets - Timing Chains - NOS - Cosmetics - Crate Engines - Dark Horses - Links - Future of Dodge
Questions or comments can be mailed to Webmaster Dave
Green product are the ones that I plan on buying
Carbs are one of the most highly changed out parts in the old V-8 world. The way to determine what size of carb you need, there is a complicated equation: C.I. displacement * Max RPM / 3456 * a number between .85-.95 depending on how modified your engine is (.85= stock, .95= Top Fuel Dragster) Here's an example:
426*7000/3456*.9= 777 cfm I would get an 800 cfm Speed Demon. You try, but don't scroll or you'll get lost.
A tough lesson many drag strip regulars have learned the hard way is that when you over- carburate, you get better than usual very high end HP but extremely sluggish off the line.
Different carbs have different uses. Below is a list of my 3 most recommended for different situations.
| Towing | Off-road | Street/ Strip | Fuel Economy | Hardcore Racing |
| Edelbrock Performer | Holley Truck Avenger | Speed Demon | Edelbrock Performer | King Demon |
| Holley Double Pumper | Edelbrock Thunder Off-Road | Holley Street Avenger | Spread Bores | Holley Dominator |
| Road Demon | Holley Double Pumper | Road Demon/ RD Jr. | Avoid Holley! | Race Demon |
Now that you have a carb, you need something to put it on. Intakes vary in purpose similar to carbs. Most have an RPM power band of around 5000 RPMs where they give the best response. You can usually gain about 15-20 HP over stock if you pick the right one. Single planes are for higher RPMs usually, while dual planes are for low end. Raised intakes allow for better mixture and have slightly better torque. Spacers are available up to 2" to fit your needs. Below is another chart of my favorites.
| Towing/ Off-road | Street/ Strip | Fuel Economy | Hardcore Racing |
| Edelbrock Performer | Weiand Stealth | Stock (Saves Money) | Edel. Victor/V. Jr./ Super V.* |
| Weiand Stealth | Edelbrock Performer RPM/ RPM Air gap* | Edelbrock Performer | Any w/ Air gaps |
*RPM Air Gap and Victor series for 318's with 360 heads. I did some research and found from www.allpar.com that 318's were equipped with 360 heads in 1978.
Air Cleaners are a very important part of an engine. Without clean air, particles of dirt can get in your engine and reek havoc on internal components. Cold Air Intakes are recommended whenever possible as they give substantial increases in horsepower. in condition like off-roading and dirt tracks, K&N offers air cleaner wraps to catch larger particles of dirt before they reach your filter. Here's a list of my Top 3 brands of air filters.
| 1 | K&N- K&N has been the leading authority in clean air for a long time and have a great reputation |
| 1 | Rush- Barry Grant is my most respected figure in all of racing and always puts out great products |
| 1 | Accel Kool Blue- You cant go wrong when you can filter particles as small as 2.8 microns |
You may ask why all are ranked #1. They all use medical gauze coated in epoxy to filter particles.
The decision should be made by what color you prefer (K&N- Purple, Rush- Yellow and Purple, Accel- Blue)
Fuel Delivery (Pumps, Filters, Pressure regulators)
With great air and fuel mixing products out of the way, you have to get the gas to the carb. New fuel pumps and such aren't necessary if most of your motor is stock, but would help out high performance vehicles. Prices vary greatly, from about 60 bucks for slightly better than stock pumps to over $500 for dragster fuel pumps. I would advise that when buying pumps, filters and regulators, you buy the same brand or be sure to have similar size hose terminals. Mechanical pumps are cheaper than electric ones, but have a low ceiling on performace. If you get an electric pump, you need to fill the hole in the block where the pump went. PN 555-50506 in Jegs Mag. will do the job.
| Low Budget | Super Fat Wallets |
| Carter | Magna Flow |
| Holley | Aeromotive |
| Summit Electric Pump Kit | Barry Grant Fuel Systems |
Now you have an awesome fuel system, but something else in your motor is lame and wont let you utilize all the gas your throwing at it. That would probably be your Cam. The cam moves lifters that open valves to let fuel into combustion chambers and lets out the exhaust. Cams are probably the second most important modification, next to a carburetor. You could gain upwards of 30-40 horses. The way to determine what cam you need to install is first, to figure what RPM range you are going to need the most power (Towing trucks will be low while race cars will be around 7-9k RPMs) And pick a correlating duration. 200 degrees should be the lowest you should go (for trucks) and 260 degrees is about as high as they go and is for serious racing. Street and strip people should go for around 220-240 degrees. It is very easy to make mistakes when choosing a cam. 220 degrees is generally the cutoff for stock torque converters. Manual transmissions are much more lenient to cams though. Best Cams for us Mopar guys are as follows:
| Trucks and General Performance | Race Cars |
| Crane Cams Energizer/ Truck Power | Mopar |
| Comp Cams High Energy | Comp Cams Magnum |
| Edelbrock Performer | Crane Cams |
| Lunati | Lunati |
As we continue our journey through the engine, our gas is in the combustion chamber. Your crappy ignition system won't ignite all of your gas and you are left running super rich and losing horsepower and torque. To fix this, you may want to consider getting new distributor cap, plugs and wires. If you have points still, I urge you to change over to an Electric Ignition. To do this you will need a number of things: Ignition box, coil, ballast resistor, distributor, spark plugs and wires. The way to get a good spark to your plugs are with high volts, which you get from a combination of high volt coil, good distributor, as low of a number of ohms per feet in plug wires as possible, multiple sparks per ignition from your ignition box, and preferably, as many spark terminals on a plug as you can (i.e. Splitfire). I would only use Splitfire plugs or the brand that has the platinum series, and I would also use MSD Superconductor 8.5 mm wires with only 40-50 ohms per foot compared to 150 of similarly priced wires and 2000 of stock. Crane cams fire wire is even lower at 30 ohms per foot. I will do some research on Crane Cams ignition to see if they are for real or throwing out great numbers they got in special lab conditions. There are basically only 4 brands to choose from for ignition boxes and those plus Mopar for distributors. Here they are in my personal favorite order:
| Med-High Performance | Race Cars |
| MSD- Standard for racing, same price for a whole 6 series system as Mallory | MSD- Lots of options, tested quality |
| Accel- great products, but ugly yellow color, cheap | Jacobs-Really close to MSD, but not enough options |
| Mallory- MSD copy cats, but made slight voltage improvement, questionable quality | Accel- No real high performance line |
| Jacobs- Very expensive, very high voltage | Mallory- No reason to compromise with a copycat when the race is on the line |
Your gas has exploded and turned into exhaust and has to get out. It leaves through Headers. The best headers have thick walls to prevent warping, bent smoothly to prevent resistance, and have large enough tubes to carry all of the required exhaust without backpressure. Ceramic coating is the best way to keep 'em looking good. Chrome and powder coated ones tend to rust up easily. I would have to say that putting heat blocking tape on your headers is a very smart idea, it adds life to other engine components that could be effected by the extreme heat coming off of the headers. There is a lot of competition in this field and decisions may be hard to come buy. We are Mopar people though, so we don't have as many choices as certain Bow-Tie or Oval people. I've done some research and found some good names that make exhaust for Mopars big and small:
| 1 | Heddman Hedders- make many different types for nearly all Mopar V-8's |
| 2 | Patriot Headers- makes exhaust primarily for very old cars, very nice looking ceramic coated headers |
| 3 | Hooker Headers- legendary performance, rather limited availability (none for my truck, in magazines at least) |
| 4 | Dynomax-Limited availability, but dyno proven performance gains |
Although many people would love to have the torque of open headers, the sound police would wet themselves. That means you need to the rest of the Exhaust down to the tailpipes. As far as sound, power and flow goes, I would recommend one of two things. 1. Get Car Chemistry INC. exhaust inserts that go in after catalytic converter and then run tail pipes (that's right, NO MUFFLER!!, but slight risk of being pulled over) or 2. In place of muffler, run a glasspack, long tube that reduces sound to legal levels, then get tailpipes. All cars should have a catalytic converter. Catco is the best choice for that by far. For exhaust tips, bigger is better, and provides a deeper sound. Below is a list of good brands for glasspacks and exhaust tips:
| Glasspacks | Exhaust Tips |
| Flowtech Purple Hornies- Quality, cheap, nice name | Heddman Big Wazoo- Cheap, Chrome or Stainless Steel |
| Patriot Glasspacks- Also cheap, hornies not in name :( | Suppertrapp- Tunable, unique, but very expensive |
| Car Chemistry- Barely legal, but very expensive |
It seems that we have come to the end of our journey now that the exhaust is gone right? WRONG. There are a few other engine components that haven't been addressed yet. Those include starters, oiling systems, cooling systems, pulleys, electrical systems, heads, pistons, gaskets, cosmetics, rockers, valve springs, timing chains, suspension, transmissions, rear ends, and brakes. Wow, how much more can your wallet take? Luckily, when doing an engine rebuild, you probably will only need a few of these things, electrical system, pistons, gaskets, cosmetics and a timing chain. I will make a quick list of the other things though:
| Starters | Powermaster |
| Batteries | Optima |
| Oiling | Milodon Pans, Melling Pumps |
| Cooling | Milodon, Flow Cooler Pumps, Mopar Viscous Fans, Be Cool Radiator ($500) |
| Pulleys | Bouchillon Performance or March (all but small block w/ A/C) |
| Heads | Edelbrock Performer RPM, Mopar Performance Commando |
| Rockers | Harland Sharp, Proform, Crane Cams |
| Valve Springs | Mopar (Lifters should come with cam), Crane Cams, Comp Cams |
| Valves | Milodon or Manley |
| Transmission | B&M or TCI Street Fighter/ Super Street Fighter |
| Rear End | Dana 44 or 60 Bulletproofed |
| Brakes | SSBC, always rotors |
The Electrical System is a very tedious part of an engine build/ rebuild. It gets electricity where it needs to be, like playing your $1000 system, so it's important to keep it in good shape. Some companies have made this task much easier by pre-wiring kits for cars. There are two good companies that I know of that you can get quality wiring harnesses from:
| 1 | Wire-Works- Rather expensive, but very complete |
| 2 | Painless Wiring- No Mopar specific like wire-works, only 12 & 18 fuse blocks, cheaper though |
Pistons are important in engine building. They set the compression ratio on your engine and move the crank which powers your transmission. When buying pistons, you will want them to be forged or hypereutectic, have compression ratio's that your engine can handle (usually below 12:1). I don't know of any particular brand that's better than another, but I'm sure Mopar Performance would be a safe bet.
Gaskets keep fluids from leaking all over the place, so its important to have quality gaskets. Although it is hard to tell how good gaskets are by looking at them, I have to endorse two different brands that do make quality gaskets:
| 1 | Fel-Pro- The gaskets NASCAR uses have to be good |
| 2 | Mr. Gasket- Another high quality company with a good reputation |
Timing Chains keep your cam in time with your crank. When a chain gets stretched, your motor may backfire, which could damage engine components and make you look pretty dumb driving down the road. True or True Double Roller chains are much much better than stock, they reduce friction and build HP. For higher performance I would recommend getting timing gears, they can't stretch and provide perfect timing all the time. Here are my Top 3:
| 1 | Cloyes- Variety of chains and gears for all budgets ($20-250) |
| 2 | Comp Cams- Good for racing |
| 3 | Edelbrock- Really heavy duty chains |
NOS is expensive, rather dangerous and bad for an engine. It also provides up to 600 extra horses for short periods of time. I personally think it should only be used on a drag strip... or to impress friends. NOS is usually injected into your fuel system in one of two ways: through nitrous bosses in manifolds or between your carb and manifold on what called a base plate injector. The latter seems to be much easier to install, but has a lower horsepower ceiling than NOS boss injection. IMPORTANT: don't hook a 600 HP NOS boost to a 100 HP 4 cylinder or smaller V-8. I'm not very familiar with NOS, but from what I can tell, there are four serious competitors, here is my semi-educated preferences:
| 1 | NOS- The leader in NOS for many years, they offer every type of injection and horsepower imaginable |
| 2 | Nitrous Works- Fewer options than NOS but good for inexpensive power boosts |
| 3 | Nitrous Express- offers 600 horsepower boost, but is really expensive |
| 4 | Edelbrock- Someone needs to tell them to go home. Low power boosts and expensive. WTF??? |
Lets play Dress Up! Cosmetics are some of the easiest parts to buy. You find parts that look nice and fit your engine and buy them and stick 'em on. When picking things for your engine, try to stay consitant with your materials; for instance, don't get blue valve covers and an orange air cleaner top. I can't tell you which parts look best to you, but I can give you some possible parts that could be dressed up: Air cleaners, valve covers, timing chain covers, oil and transmission pans, dipsticks, radiator caps, alternators, differential covers, polished intakes, pulleys, engine bolts, battery trays/ boxes, hose fittings and wire coverings. Most of these things are easy to install and make a big difference on the way the engine looks. Proform is one of my personal favorites for adding some class to my engine, as they provide cheap chrome for all over your engine compartment. The only problem I have with chrome is that it rusts rather easily. I am going to do an experiment though when I get some chrome valve covers. The plan is to put a coat of heat resistant clear coat paint on top of the covers, that should eliminate a need to polish them, increase shine, and resist rust. It may take a while to tell if it works or not though.
Crate Engines are a popular way for inexperienced people with big wallets get good horsepower and torque numbers. Seems simple enough, drop 5 grand and get 400 horsepower. The problem with crate motors are that they are entirely to expensive for what you get, and even the expensive ones don't use the best parts available. Hundreds of horsepower can be gained by doing it yourself. One should be able to get horsepower of about 1.25 times the cubic inches of a motor without supercharging if done correctly.
An advantage crates have over doing it yourself though, is that you can access larger blocks like a 528 Hemi (600hp, 650 lb ft torque, $15k), all the components are matched to work well together, and they are pre-assembled. That means you don't need many tools or see a chiropractor. To sum it up, crate engines are a double edged sword.
A dark horse by my definition is a product or company that is rather unknown but could possibly be better than the leading products or companies in it's category. When buying a dark horse product though, you risk the chance of it being a lemon, while when buying a companies product like Holley, Edelbrock, or MSD, you are guaranteed a product that is good, but probably isn't the best out there. These dark horses include companies like anything from Barry Grant, Mallory Ignition, Proform, Jacobs Electronics, Crane Cams Ignitions, Offenhauser Manifolds, TD Performance, Spectre Hoses and anything that Jegs and Summit put under their names. Some of them have misleading statistics that would have you believe far fetched performance values (Crane Cams Ignition says their HI-6 box and LX-92 coil produce 2x spark of a competitors box. They are probably referring to an $80 MSD-5 stock replacement box with a stock coil. Summit's fuel pump kit says it flows 140 GPM at 18 PSI, but only gives you a pressure regulator with 5-12 PSI settings... but I'm going to get one anyway. Another idiotic thing I'm going to do is entrust a roller rocker purchase into a company called Proform. They cost 60% of what Harland-Sharp ones do and they come with the shafts to mount them). Beware of ploys like these, when an outrageous claim like this is made, the product is probably a dud.
There is always the chance that the products are good though. Dodge had an awful reputation for vehicles shortly after mine was made, but I don't think setting it on fire and putting it in a destruction derby could make it brake down. I'm a firm believer that the old Dodges are some of the best vehicles ever made, and the new ones for that matter. Out of 20 testimonials for Demon carburetors, I only saw one that had anything negative to say, a vacuum secondary carb didn't work and he had to get a refund. Demons are found on 4 or 5 of a magazines 12 winning motor combinations. Not bad for only owning a very small portion of the carburetor market. Jacobs ignition provides hard numbers to back up their high price. Their Pro Street Kit gives 120% the primary voltage of MSD-6 Ignitions and the same as MSD-7 and costs $200 less ($350).
Sometimes, you just can't find out about a company. Offenhauser doesn't have a website. Poor guys. Even I have a website. I was going to buy one of their manifolds until I found out I could put an Air Gap on my truck. If I had some hard numbers, I could be swayed. When considering buying from a dark horse, do your research, if you can't find anything out, DON'T BUY IT!!! And don't be like me and get things you know probably won't work to well.
This page is a quality product of David Wills, owner of a 1978 D-100.
