Well, the older Chrysler car definately were well
designed. This seemed to slow down a bit as the FWD
era approached.
Take a 90's Imperial for example. The A604 can be one
pain in the you-know-what. There's a few approaches to
this. Leave it be, and pay a couple grand every few
years for a rebuild, buy a bunch of spares cheaply and
rebuild them yourself, try to beef one up (almost
impossible), or attempt a tranny swap.
And that's just the tranny side of things. Ever looked
at how the PCM system on the 3.3 N/A is setup? You
literally have to redesign the entire electronics and
fuel system to allow for boost. Chyrsler only
supported their 2.x turbo in-line 4's when it came to
PCM modification. Since the 3.3/3.8's PCM also is
required for the tranny and the TCM, the DIS, etc., it
makes replacing the electronics and PCM impossible.
Solution? Try to add fuel via larger injectors and
regulators (but that tries to supply fuel in a linear
way, when fuel demands are a curve on an engine!). Or-
you get a 2nd PCM to control a second fuel system.
Urg. Troubles. But this is all coming from me, and I
believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough
features yet:)
These problems make a simple bottomline- its worth it-
but only if the owner/builder wants to go through all
that work. I doubt it would be any more of a
money-sinkhole then most restoration projects. But
sadly, with most car projects, you never recover what
you put into them. If I had the money, I could grab a
70's Imperial from a field or yard, put $70k into it
to restore it, and never see that money again. Not
much different from grabing a FWD Imperial which
doesn't need to be restored, and throwing $10k at it
to go faster then the older high performance
Imperials.
Luckilly for me, I do have the ability to re-engineer
most of the car as I need to. Besides the engineer
friends & family, there are a lot of others looking to
do similar things with N/A FWD Mopars. I was willing
to go so far as to go and redesign and cast the 3.3
block to make it more boost-friendly, when I realized
that was a bit much. Since just about everyone in my
family is an engineer, I have access to a lot of
brains, tools, and toys that joe-smoe down the street
will never see (or know the existance of).
Personally, I'm avidly against speeding on streets.
When I want to go fast, I find a track. Otherwise I
rarely go more then 5 MPH over the limit. Speeds of
120, 140, etc don't scare me althat much... but I've
also grown up around people who do 170 with their
rides all the time. I guess I've seen enough crashes
though to see what happens when something goes wrong
@120+ mph, and that might be why I stay legal with it
(that and the fact that I know I'd never be able to
live with myself if I killed someone by going 100+ on
a roadway).
--- dardal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Quoting Dick Benjamin <DickB@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
> >
> > 200 MPH 67 Imperial! Bah - Humbug!
> >
> > Dick Benjamin
>
> Actually Dick, I am afraid I agree with you. One of
> the reasons I like
> Chrysler products is that they are well engineered
> by the factory, so you get
> good performance without having to re-engineer much.
> Therefore, you get the
> OEM reliability (remember, they had a 5 year 50K
> mile warranty on these cars)
> while still having a car that performs and handles
> well, and even can beat many
> modern expensive cars. Re-engineering a car to that
> extend that Tristan is
> talking opens a new can of worms. Without the
> resources of a car industry
> development lab, de-bugging such a car for street
> use is ... let's just say not
> easy. I am sure it can be done if a few engineers
> put a bunch of their energy
> into it. But I do not have the luxury to apply my
> engineering knowledge in a
> project that a) dooes not pay the bills and b) is a
> huge potential money sink.
> But I am glad Tristan has this luxury.
>
> Anyway, if/when I am ready to work on an expensive
> toy like that, I would
> probably build a home built airplane, where you
> could cruise at 200 mph
> anywhere. I would keep my Imperials stock at their
> boring top speed of 135-145
> mph. That's fast enough to scare me, I admit.
> D^2
>
>
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