Welcome
to Shadetree Motorsports
Just kidding. Over the last several months, I
have been helping a couple friends of mine work on the '66 Plymouth Belvedere
you see here. It is their car, I am just sort of along for the ride, so
to speak. Although, I have to admit all three of us have worked pretty
hard on this project. We're getting there, slowly but surely. My friends
Bridger and Jaime (brothers) found this car in a field in Oklahoma after
a semi-intensive search- they had the motor and various other goodies sitting
in the garage and got a hankering to build a weekend toy of sorts. Like
I said, we're getting there...
This picture shows several things- 1) Why we joke around about calling
ourselves "Shadetree Motorsports" (okay, it's mostly my joke, but I think
it's pretty funny), 2) Our fabrication facility. Most of the work has been
done right where the car sits in this pic. 3) Just how damn ugly this car
is. That's what makes it perfect- it's a sleeper, alright? The body is
really pretty straight (for a 33 year old car that has been siting for
the last 20 or so in a field), but as you can see, the paint is... well...
different. That little hoop right in front of the windshield is for a fuel
pressure guage that has yet to be mounted. Project Belvedere here is a
work in progress. It won't always be this damn ugly, I promise.
Here is another shot of the driver's side. Like I said, the sheetmetal
is pretty damn straight. As big as the car looks, it is reasonably light-
we are estimating at about 3300-3400 pounds when it is all said and done,
perhaps a little less. It isn't that the passenger side is dinged up or
anything, I just couldn't really get a good angle on it because of the
racecar trailer next to it. There is a '67 Mustang in the trailer that's
well on it's way to becoming a pro street car- it already has the tube
chassis/rollcage, but just needs some time. Bridger and Jaime figured it'd
be easier to build another car that wasn't so involved than to finish the
Mustang. In retrospect, I don't know about that... the Belvedere here has
required a lot more than anyone figured it would.
Ahh, the business seat of Project Belvedere. As you can see, the carpet
is in great shape- and a different color than anything else on the interior.
For a reason. It's new. Anyhow, in this pic, you can get an idea of what
the paint originally looked like before it got all sunfaded. Still ugly.
What the fuck were they thinking in '66?? Like I said, this is a work in
progress; we have some wires to tuck up and a seat cover to install (damn
dogs). You can see the super-duper 60's era steering wheel and the non-tilt
column. Spiffy shit there. You can also see the shifter that is mounted
on a pedestal that was welded in by Jaime "the Master", as he calls himself...
:-) You can see the tach and the shiftlight, as well as a 2/3 empty three
guage pod under the dash. It won't be 2/3 empty for long. Sorry for the
bright photography- their house is white and that infamous Texas sun was
out. Yeah, that sun has made things pretty interesting at times when putting
this thing together.
"Damn
that thing's ugly; why the hell does he think it's anything special??"
Well, here you go- the heart of the beast. That's right, 446 inches of
pure Mopar power. 12.5:1 compression, ported heads (courtesy of Jaime "the
Master"), mechanical flat tappet cam, 1 7/8" primary headers, high rise
single plane intake... That's what I'm talking about. Like the rest of
the car, the engine compartment has a bit of work left in it... we need
to find molded radiator hoses for it (instead of those shitty flex hoses),
put the spark plug wires in looms, etc... You can see the line lock over
on the right side of the pic by the thimble sized master cylinder; it's
controlled by a button on the shifter. The carb is a vacuum secondary 750
(for now), and the distributor is a Mallory Unilite. That line going out
the left side of the pic is the lead for a temporary water temp guage...
we'll be getting another one and installing it soon, so we didn't want
to bother routing this one.
Here's a bit more of the same- you can see the Griffin radiator
and the tranny cooler from this angle.
Here you can see the little tray of MSD goodies that are on the car. You
can't really see it, but there is a 6AL under that tray with the two step
box and the two rev limiters on it. There are two rev limiters for a reason-
one of them is a low RPM limiter for launching (3500 stall converter and
235 width tires... should be real interesting), and the other to
keep from over-revving when those little tires break loose. The motor wraps
pretty quick, and it would be easy to over-rev it if you were high in the
RPM range when the tires smoked. The button to select low/high RPM rev
limiters is on the shifter. You can also see the 1/2" fuel line we plumbed
up from the tank. That's some big shit.
Here you can see the Griffin radiator a bit better, along with the custom
brackets that Bridger and I made. Shadetree Motorsports engineering at
it's finest there; you better believe it... :-) That temporary guage panel
is laying over there on the driver's side fender... it'll be removed soon.
Well, as you can see, the Belvedere still has some work that needs to
be done. As we make progress on it, I'll take more pics and post them-
it should be getting some Weld wheels this coming weekend, and I will try
to find a way to capture a .wav file of it running... man, it cams pretty
hard, even when idling at 1200 RPM. It'll thump at 800 RPM when
we get the carb tuned. I'll also post time slips when we start taking it
to the strip... hopefully by the end of the summer she'll make a couple
of passes.
The latest update on Project Belvedere is that we took it to the 1/8th
mile track a couple of weeks ago, and it ran a best of 8.101. That translates
into an approximate 1/4 mile time of a low to mid 12. We had several probs
this time out- a SEVERE traction problem coming out of the hole (I told
you it would be interesting with those 235 width tires), and some pretty
serious transmission shifting problems. Bridger was driving (of course),
and he was hitting the rev limiter pretty frequently because the tranny
just didn't want to go into gear at WOT. the 1-2 shift wasn't too bad,
but the 2-3 was attrocious... he was shooting for a shift point of about
5800, he was moving the shifter at 5200, and that still wasn't enough time
for the tranny to make up it's mind and shift. He was having to let off
to about 1/2 throttle before it would go into third. He ended up emailing
his Mopar list about it and one guy suggested that he wire the trans kickdown
all the way back so the trans would have more fluid pressure. Sure enough,
that did the trick- it shifts real solid now, even when you don't
want it to. Since the transmission thinks it's at WOT all the time, it
won't shift until about 5200, even when you aren't on it. When you are
on it, the 1-2 will damn near turn the car sideways. On the slick streets
of Denton it will, anyway. I haven't yet experienced the 2-3 shift, but
it should be equally interesting with the fluid pressure all built up the
way it is now. We are taking it to the track tonight and hoping to break
into the 7s; with the tranny shifting prob fixed and a different launching
technique I don't think it'll be a problem. After we get it hooked up,
we can concern ourselves with making more power; for now we have to hook
up the power that's available. I'll get more pics and post times soon.