65 Barracuda AutoX

I know i must be crazy, but I am a Mopar Nut. I plan to build this car to showcase some of the chassis parts that I build for A,B&E body mopars and be a test mule of sorts. Why an early A body? Light, cheap and super cool.

I picked up this 65 Barracuda a couple of years ago for under 1K. It's not a Formula S, but it is a hipo 273 Commando car. For now I plan on freshening up the 235hp little 273 run the 904 that is in it for the first year (the previous owner had the 904 rebuilt before it was parked, I found a receipt) Bonus. Eventually I will get around to building a 318 stroker out to 390 cubes and back it up with a 833 4 speed. I have all of the parts, just need to get the block to the machine shop. Other plans include all of the other go fast goodies to build a torque monster. I will add more details later. I will be installing my coil-over conversion on the front end of the car to remove the torsion bars and eventually go to a triangulated 4 link in the rear. Sway bars front and rear. This will be a budget build in a way because I will be doing all of the fabricating, metal work, paint and engine work myself.

Here is what I am starting with. The video is of me getting the car running after sitting for around 20 years. No Lie. http://s1021.beta.photobucket.com/user/badart360/media/Video.mp4.html

Here are a couple of pics of what I am starting with.

I did a compression check on the motor and decided to pull the heads. The cylinder bores look really good so I am assuming that I don't have hardened valve seats so I picked up a set of rebuilt 318 LA heads for $75. They have a fresh valve job and hardened seats unlike my 273 heads. I tore them down and cc'd each side and came up with 67-68 cc's. Which should put me around 8.72:1 with an .028 head gasket. I can live with that until the 318 stroker build is complete. This will also allow me to run a bigger selection of intakes for this motor. In 65 the 273 heads had a different bolt patttern for the intake.

I have also started cleaning up the intake runners while I have them tore apart.

Keep in mind this is kind of only Stage I of this build. Sand blasted the springs last night. They are from a 73 340 4 speed car. The 8 1/4 with 3.55s will be the next step.

Out with the old weak factory 7 1/4 rear and overload springs and air shocks lol

In with the freshened up 8 1/4 rear sure grip with 3.55 gears and also changes the axle studs to 5 x 4.5 so wheel selection will be much bigger.

I pulled the front quarters off getting ready to weld in the coilover hoops and pull the 273, just to make it easier while swapping the heads. This will also give me a chance to make modifications to the K member. I am hoping to have the engine pulled in a couple of days. I am impressed by how rust free the front end of this car is, only surface rust. I wish the floor pans and back quarters were the same way.

I did get the lower radiator support welded in and I also scraped all of the under coating from the drivers side inner fender. It took me like 5 hours to just do that. The good news is once again, no rust wahoo.

Pulled the 273 today. Look at how much the little pistons stick out of the hole, should work good for the open 318 heads. There is not even what I would call a lip in the cylinders. I will just clean up the pistons and install the new heads with .028" head gaskets.

Well I took some time to pull the K member the last few days and do some stiffening to the steering box area, idler arm mount and motor mount pads. I put it in the parts washer and scrubbed for about an hour, then the blast cabinet. At some point in the cars life someone thought they were Bo Duke and dented the K member pretty bad in the bottom. Rather than fight the dented area I cut it out and bent some 10ga and and welded it in. I figure the new pad on the bottom will be a good place to go ahead and mount a tow hook too for down the road. I installed the K member about 3 times while welding it to avoid warping it. Even after all of the cleaning I still had old grease coming from everywhere and had to use the mig in a few places. No issues at all and it is dead straight.

Wow. Moving right along.

I like this thread. Those earlier Barracudas are some of the coolest cars Mopar ever built...

I'll be following this one. Love the narrow-body A's.

Too bad about those extra cylinders.

This is one of those "not necessarily what I'd do, but still pretty cool" cars.

I started doing some to the modifications to the factory K member in order to install my coilover setup.

slantvaliant wrote: I'll be following this one. Love the narrow-body A's. Too bad about those extra cylinders. This is one of those "not necessarily what I'd do, but still pretty cool" cars.

Ah you must be one of those slant lovers. LOL I have owned a few of those engines. They just keep going and going.

Decided to pull the car outside and blast some of the little bit of rust from the front of the car. I also got my cheap sway bars today and started mocking them up. I am just going to weld a couple of tabs on the gussets of my arms. The brackets to mount the sway bars from Addco suck, I mean they are horrible. I should have the entire front suspension mocked up tonight including coilovers to get an idea of ride height.

Ooooooohhhh ...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Sweet! Are you planning to speed up the steering box ratio?

This is going to be awesome! Keep up the work, looks great so far.

Very cool project. I assume this is to be a CP car when it is done?

Very nice to watch...

Oooo, watching this one with great interest!

slantvaliant wrote: Ooooooohhhh ... Sorry, couldn't resist.

LOL

Curmudgeon wrote: Sweet! Are you planning to speed up the steering box ratio?

Down the road I do plan on addressing this. Either with a steering quickener, quicker ratio box or longer pitman/idler arm.

ST_ZX2 wrote: Very cool project. I assume this is to be a CP car when it is done?

Well this will a hard decision. Right now the 273 ci comes in in at 4500cc which is well under the 5,100 cc limit for 2,700 which might be hard to get the car down to that weight, especially if I still plan to drive this thing on the street once in a while. I have built a few nasty 318ci motors in the past, but would put me above the 5,100 cc limit and would put me with big displacement cars.