Life Long Drag Racer, Finally Building First Car

Hello All!

Born and raised in Northcentral Iowa, with a five year stay in Northcentral Missouri.  My Father took me to my first drag race when I was fairly young, probably around five years old.  Grew up a Mopar lover.  I guess my Grandfather turned me into a Ford guy once I became an adult.  Never a GM fan.  Love Triumph motorcycles.  When I was younger, my Father had a front engine dragster, and crewed on a Top Alcohol Funny Car.  Straight out of high school, I had the chance to drive an altered at my local 1/8th mile.  That was all it took, and I have been trying to build my own car since.  In my late 20's, I crewed on a Nostalgia Top Fueler.  My kids are almost out of school, so now it's time for me to play!

I recently bought a front engine dragster.  It has a floater 9" in it already.  I have a bunch of C4 cores, so I am building a shorty C4 for this car.  I would love to put a Boss 429 based engine in it someday.  For now, it's getting half of that.  I am collecting parts to build a Mercury Marine MerCruiser 224" four cylinder. It will get a Boss head from TM Enterprises (he is local to me).  I am shooting for high 9's to start, so I can get my competition license.  I would like to end up in the mid 7's with or without a supercharger.

That's a very cool start into drag racing! Hey MOPAR's are cool, I love me some of them too!

A hemi headed SC Merc 224" in a front engine dragster would be very cool to see!!!!

can that little 4 be bored and stroked?i would guess it could be built to 500 hp pretty easy with out supercharger,if its half of a boss 429,lets say a 557 can make a 1,000 with a single 4 carb.so a 278 ci?

Anything is possible, at a cost.  OEM sleeves are not suppose to go past .030, or so I have read.  Several racers have bored out the OEM sleeves, and pressed in very thick aftermarket ones.  Stroking the crank opens more problems, as vibration becomes a big issue the more you stroke it.  A guy built a .200 stroker, and ran 184mph at Bonneville in a coupe on a mild pass.  He sleeved and overbored a different engine .200.  One of the engine builder internet magazines (E-Zine) ran an article a while back with one of these engines in a dragster and a wedge head that put out 571hp.  I think they ran in the low 8's or high 7's.

I am looking for at least 380hp (double OEM rating) and no more than 570hp (triple OEM rating) with a first try.  The biggest hurdle right now is finding stack injection.  These engines have bad reservation if the cam specs aren't just right.  Long runners help fight that.  Plenums and short runners are not the right thing to do with them.

My hope is that I can run 9.90-9.50 with the first version, so I can get my competition license.  If I could run 7.90-7.50 without a blower later on, that would be sweet.  I would really love to run injected nitro with one of these engines, but I'll worry about that way down the road.  Clint Neff has a custom block and a wedge head in his Comp altered that run 7.40s.  So it's all very doable.

OEM specs are:

4.36” Bore, 3.75” Stroke, 223.95”  -  3.66L

It was offered in 165hp and 180hp two barrel versions and 190hp with a four barrel.

Calkins wrote:OEM specs are:

4.36” Bore, 3.75” Stroke, 223.95”  -  3.66L

It was offered in 165hp and 180hp two barrel versions and 190hp with a four barrel.

Yup, That's them...

I have worked on and built a couple for boats in the past..

If you can’t find the Mechanical injection maybe try a big ass split dominator

Not much for progress here.  I did borrow a block from my Father for I could start mocking stuff up. I am still looking for a "cheap" Boss 429 head that I can use for mock up. I am not far enough along to order the TM head that I plan to use in the race motor.

Why don't you start a thread in the "Dragsters" section of the forum ?
You could post pics of the entire build...car and engine ...

I will when I get more parts piled up. I am hoping to be ready for the chassis shop next Winter, and will probably start a build thread at that time.