don, sorry for being late jumping into this fray. from what you have indicated, it sounds as if you already have a stout combination. i think that you can get to the 11 second promised land with engine and suspension tuning. obviously, scraping the undercoating will lighten the load -- i scraped over 70lbs off of my '64 fury; so that is free except for your time and the cost of beer. also, moving the battery to the trunk helps change the weight bias as early B bodies are nose heavy. by all means DO NOT change your dana for an 8 3/4 as the weight is right were you want it. i have read extensively on sprung vs.un-sprung weight and it is mostly an academic exercise unless you are class racing were consistency and every hundredths of a second counts. after watching your youtube video, you are not transferring the weight of your car on launch. get yourself a set of 90/10 from calvert racing (http://calvertracing.com/frontshocks.php) for $120 and remove your upper control bump stops. change to lighter torsion bars, but that will affect the streetability of your car. get adjustable rear shocks from either qa1 or calvert. the pinion angle for the street is 4 degrees and 5 to 7 degrees for the track. keep a 2 to 3 degree nose down attitude at the sill (adjust this with your torsion bars). also check the front end alignment. i think you need some carburetor/timing tuning done also as your car looks lazy coming off the line. as you suggest -- time spent on chassis dyno may be a good investment. although i'm not a fan of throwing money at 40 year old cast iron heads i think bolting on a set of edelbrock RPMs may not give you the desired results. that discussion could turn into a dissertation. you also need to spend more time at the track. that will allow you to test different combinations. you should consider changing your launch technique. do not pre-load your suspension on the starting line -- in other words do not power brake the car to the point it starts raising the rear end. leaf spring cars do not respond to pre-loading the suspension. i have a 5100 stall convertor and i launch at 1600 RPM. if you want to power brake then get yourself a transbrake. hope that helps, mike On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 2:50 PM, Donald Gallimore <dongallimore@xxxxxxx> wrote: > After my one journey to the strip this year, there is no improvement over last > year and I'm still 0.20 seconds from cracking into the 11s with my near 3800# > 1965 Belvedere. How do I pick up that two tenths or so without a spending a > fortune. Keep it under $2,000 (or a lot less). > > My first thought is reduce weight. Scrape off the undercoating and take out the > jack and spare. But I don't want to get carried away with weight reduction as I > want the car to look "stock". > > I'm pondering a serious day at a chassis dyno with someone who knows carbs - > that might cost me $500 or so. > > Other more expensive options is changing the pistons to get a quench motor with > the existing open chamber 452 heads (is that even possible?). $300 for KB > Hypertech step pistons. Plus rings, gaskets, etc.and a engine rebalance. > > Next step is to go to Performer RPM heads. I'm concerned about power loss as I > already have a Stage 1 port job by Koffels on the 452. One restriction is I want > to run pump gas - 93 octane. Bare heads in the $1,200 a pair range plus maybe a > $100 to install the valves out of the 452 heads. > > I'm already running a near 550 lift Comp Cam and think that will not change. > > 60 foots are in the 1.73-1.74 and it looks a little sluggish off the line. (see > "Don Gallimore at Pinks All Out" on YouTube) The rear's a 4.10. Maybe a 4.56 > with the existing 4100rpm flash stall converter might do the trick. The 9" tires > are not stressed now so I think they can handle the additional torque > multiplication. It's a Dana 60 so it's not a low cost changeover. Could fixed > one of my 8 3/4 units - destroyed a good number of them in my 4 speed days - so > I've got a lot of parts. That'll cut another 50# off, too. Can it take the load? > That'll cost me less that $500. > > > Anyone care to offer some suggestions? Thanks in advance. > > Akron Don > > -- > -- > Please address private mail -- mail of interest to only one person -- directly to that person. That is, send parts/car transactions and negotiations as well as other personal messages only to the intended recipient, not to the Clubhouse public address. This practice will protect your privacy, reduce the total volume of mail and fine tune the content signal to Mopar topic. Thanks! > > 1962 to 1965 Mopar Clubhouse Discussion Guidelines: > http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/mletiq.html and http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.com/general_disclaimer.html. > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The 1962 to 1965 Mopar Mail List Clubhouse" group. > http://groups.google.com/group/1962to1965mopars?hl=en. > -- -- Please address private mail -- mail of interest to only one person -- directly to that person. That is, send parts/car transactions and negotiations as well as other personal messages only to the intended recipient, not to the Clubhouse public address. This practice will protect your privacy, reduce the total volume of mail and fine tune the content signal to Mopar topic. Thanks! 1962 to 1965 Mopar Clubhouse Discussion Guidelines: http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/mletiq.html and http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.com/general_disclaimer.html. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The 1962 to 1965 Mopar Mail List Clubhouse" group. http://groups.google.com/group/1962to1965mopars?hl=en.