Steve is MOPAR Happy. My really cool, well restored 1970 Challenger never quite ran tops, despite my finding a variety of helpers. Today I had great expertise from a young mechanic. He diagnosed an obscure engine build problem, made that adjustment, then made the cascade of timing and carb adjustments. We took it for several "spins". The big 440 engine squeels the tires with ease. Boys and toys...pour me another Chardonay to celebrate

 

Sweet..what did he do? A 440 should roast the tires at will. Enjoy but don't get caught.

 

In the original engine rebuild, the distributor drive gear was inserted not in proper position (about 3 gear teeth off). as a result one or more cylinders never fired, and some others misfired. really kinda incredible that it ran at all. Wes pulled the distributor and then reached in and moved that drive gear. He's a knowldegable 440 guy and knew just by looking that the slot the distributor shaft sits in was not in correct position with cyl #1 at TDC. After moving the gear, then reset all tuning specs and adj carb setings and linkage. I'm very happy.

 

Now Steve... go out and burn some rubber. Thats like a muzzle on a fight dog. That beast needs to stretch its legs. Glad to hear you have her in top tune.

 

Congrats on that, must be like a new car now.

 

Steve if you are truley looking for smoooother performance out of your 440---put in a billet mechanical advance distributor(MSD). Unfortunately it won't look Original--but it will run better all the way around. The cap on the factory units put the spark towers close together allowing for arching and the vaccum advance seldom provides the correct adjustment for todays fuel. I bought a brand new crate hemi and messed with the jets and timing for a week before I found out the vaccum advance wasn't working properly. I've owned alot of big-blocks in 35 years of driving & racing--with alot of different cam & intake combos--but the ONE THING that made ALL my MOPAR engines run better was the distributor swap--better spark and smoother timing adjustments. Hope this helps