2inch Body Drop Mule

[BROCK]

Does anyone know how Dodge dropped the body over the subframes 2inches on what became the no 88 Daytona? 
I'd like to do this on a 3rd gen Charger.  All I know for sure is that the rockerboxes stay put.  Does the floor stay put
with subframes & crossmembers being raised?  Whats the trick

[Aero426]

I'd like to do this on a 3rd gen Charger. 

You must have lots of idle time on your hands.

[dads_69]

Unlike your last response... Try this web site. They have done work for the shop I worked at a few times, they could answer questions and build what you need. Your topic might get moved as well to suspension also vs. the Aero forum FYI.
www.alstonracing.com

Mark

[Aero426]

Here is some information courtesy of George Wallace, who is ex-Chrysler.   I did not have access to this last night.   George is responding to a question I asked him some time ago regarding the 1968 race cars.     My question to him was related to what were the exact changes were.   My recollection from talking to Larry Rathgeb a long time ago was that there were two different 2" changes, hence the name
2 x 2 (pronounced two by two).   But I could not remember exactly what they were.   My impression is the original 68 race car had the 2" change, and after that the special 2 x 2 car developed for the 1968 Firecracker 400 had the front of the body dropped an additional two inches.      Here are Georges comments verbatim. 


"When we started on the design for the original 1968 race car we totally disconnected the body from the floor pan/frame assembly. We angled the body relative to the floor pan. The Charger was 2.5° nose down and the Road Runner was 8° nose down. These angles were developed in the wind tunnel. Putting the Road Runner nose down got better attachment of the air flow to the back lite. On the Charger there was no way. The floor pan/sub frame assembly was kept relatively flat so that the suspension would have enough travel and the geometry would be good. At the same time the whole body was dropped 2". Then the body and floor were welded back together. I'm not sure if the 2" drop was the same for the whole length of the car or not.

"I was not involved in the design or building of that part of the car. I wasn't officially in the race group in 1967-68. When I was working for the race group, my job was to analyze data and to estimate the effects of different components on the overall performance of the vehicle. This memo is a good example of what I was supposed to be doing. Larry worked with the deign groups in designing and drawing the car. Nichels built all of the body in white assemblies (except for Petty possibly.) Larry designed a framing fixture for Nichels that kept the body and frame in the correct alignment as they were cut apart and then welded back together.Larry spent a couple of weeks at Nichels in late summer 1967 building the fixture and the first  car (Charger car 046). after that Larry's assistant oversaw production. for the next couple of months.

"When the 1968 Road Runner/Charger wasn't fast enough, the aero program was started and ended up with the Charger 500 and the Daytona. There was also a chassis program that developed the 2X2 concept. The idea was to lower the front of the car by 2". This was both for aero and to lower the CG. The difficulty in doing this was the engine height. The engines were still wet sump then and we had as shallow an oil pan as we could make work.,That left the area from the CL of the crank to the top of the air cleaner controlling the height of the front portion of the body.The block and heads were pretty well fixed in height, so was the carburetor. There was a minimum height between the top of the carburetor and the inside of the air cleaner that would flow enough air to let the engine make the necessary Horsepower. If we wanted to lower the front of the body by 2", we had to sink the carburetor 2" into the manifold. Engine design designed such a manifold and the prototype was fabricated from plate and sheet steel by welding. To make this all work the plenum area under the carburetor was about 2" below the bottom of the inlet ports. This   was barely acceptable for a race car but would never work on the street, Fuel would puddle up in the bottom the the plenum and the drivability would be unacceptable.

"The 2X2 manifold just barely worked. The phony #88 has a stock manifold, and as Larry and I saw when we looked at it (in the museum) the air cleaner has been cut down to fit under the hood. OK for testing, but there would never be enough power to race that engine. At least three 2X2 manifolds must have been made. They were probably scrapped when the X2 cars were outlawed."

[BROCK]

Well Doug, as for idle time?  I try not to spend much of it on the computer - unless it is in learning what I can on topics that interest me.  I'm a huge fan of the whole
MoPar rallye to dominate Ford in NASCAR back in the 60s.  Henry Jrs 'cost no object' attitude toward racing dominance is appreciated by me on tracks the likes of LeMans
& Nurburgring.  Yet, I'm much more a fan of the underdog with the best gun - MoPar!  If I could buy a Daytona or even a GT40 MKII, I would use the money to develop
a modernized version.

dads_69, has a way cool link in response to my question.  Alston looks to be top notch fabricators - especially if you want to go dragracing.  I believe I am qualified to do
the fab work, though. 

Doug!!  You have captured the escence of the real deal right down to the actual people that were there doing the development work

If there is a better answer than yours:  It would include pictures of the jig mentioned and of the welds themselves after the chassis and body were rejoined. 

As for my car selection:  My 70 is too rare to mod & my 72 is too common not to

[Mike DC]

 

My 70 is too rare to mod

An intact '70 might be rare, but you could use a totally rusted 2nd-gen body with no intact subframes.  Those kinds of bare-rusty-shell $400 hulks sure aren't very rare anymore.   

Once you're planning on cutting the entire floor/subframes structure loose from the sides & firewall of the car, then suddenly the chassis section doesn't have to be from the same hulk as the upper half.  the lower half could come out of any B-body within several years, including a 4-door.




If I was gonna take on a project that big, I would definitely build the car up to be whatever model-year that I really wanted most in the first place.