For Toploaders, the ONLY place I would call is David Kee in San Antonio. I am just luck he is in the same town as me, but he is the Toploader Guru. The website is not much, but David knows his stuff and he can customize a toploader in 100 different ways. It took 2 or 3 versions, but he came up with a combination that has been surviving my 383 stroker.

As for drive shafts, I am running the stock drive drive shaft just cut down a little and with upgraded u joints. Some of the lightweight stuff will vibrate easier causing strange noises. I have just stayed with the steel one and it has worked fine.

 

i was on his website and he looks legit. im going to give him a call. I wonder if he can set me up with everything i need since id be converting an auto car to a 4 speed. hopefully itll handle the highway ok with my 3.70s in my new rear. was your trans expensive? also, i wanted to build a 383 stroker but i cant find any ford kits. all i find is 393 or 408 stroker kits. where did you get yours? your car looks awesome, good job on the build!

 

Yes, David is very legit. His trannys range in price depending on how much you build it up. I am running a custom small spline input shaft, big block output shaft, wide ratio gearing, with upgraded synchros and dogs, in a new beefy case, with a dual disc McLeod clutch and a Lakewood scatter shield. Like I said, he builds everything from totally stock to serious.

As for your rear gear, you are going to hate that 3.70 on the highway with a 1:1 final gear. I am running a 3.50 and turn 3300 at 70mph. I would like to run more gear for the track, but compromised with a 3.50 to save on some rpm on the highway.

383Ws are 3.75 stroke with 4.030 bore. A 393W is with a 3.85 stroke and 4.030 bore. A 409W is a 4.0 stroke with a 4.030 bore.

I put a totally custom motor together, so I did not use a kit. I built it off a large journal 9.5" Dart block. I used Eagle crank and rods and had Ross make me some custom pistons to hit 10.2:1 CR exactly for the AFR 205cc heads I picked out. If you are going to get serious, do not think kit. They never fit right. The compression ratios they claim are never right as it all depends on the heads you are running. You have to custom make the piston to fit the deck to piston height you are shooting for. That is based on a bunch of other things, so pick everything out and then call a good piston manufacturer and have them make a custom piston for you. It is not much more expensive than the off the shelf stuff.

I chose a 383 because I wanted a little more torque than I could make with a 3.5 stroke 351W. As it turns out, the car could never handle the torque from anything more because I shattered pretty much everything behind the flywheel at least once. I say all the time, torque kills parts and 450-500ft*lbs is plenty to trash most drive-lines. Even in my classic drag car that I am planning, I will run a big inch small block but still will stay around 3.75 stroke to save on piston speed. I feel that big stroke strokers are missing the mark and are just potentially creating parts failure issues due to piston speed. Frankly, I am not sure why guys do it when you can build crazy power from just a little bit more stroke and most muscle cars cannot handle much more than a 3.75 stroke motor can produce.

Good luck and keep asking questions. A piece of advise. I spent a bunch of money fixing tranny/clutch issues over and over again. Do not skemp on this. Be realistic with David on how much torque, horsepower, and rpm you plan to run and what kind of driving you will be doing so you do not have to go through 2 or 3 iterations of it like I did. It may cost more upfront, but will save you in the long run...I promise.

 

thanks Cowboy. I will definitely call up David. Modern Driveline quoted me $4,492.23 for a full TKO600 conversion package. It comes with everything i need, clutch and all, but do you think thats a little pricey? I definitely think im going to keep my stock drive shaft.

As for the motor, i definitely want a 351w stroker. It seems like you're not a fan of the 408w/409w due to the long stroke? which i agree with you on. That's why i dont like 347's, because of the long stroke and the wrist pin intersecting the rings. I assume that would happen on a 408 also? I'll look into going with my own custom kit, i just don't have enough knowledge yet to build my own kit. I wanna go 383-393 (not that theres much of a difference), compression around 10.5:1 with a nice cam, not tooo much lope and AFR 205cc heads like you are using. Im hoping to make around 500 ft/lbs.

 

Just got my driveshaft back in. They cut 1 1/16" off of it and upgraded both u-joints to solid 1350s. Wow, it made a huge difference in the ride. My rear suspension actually works now!

 

nice! good to hear. how many leafs are you running on that suspension? im putting in a 5 leaf spring on mine

 

I have TCP 4.5 mid eye springs on there right now with a TCP sway bar and CE Slide-A-Link traction bars. They rear setup is pretty stiff although it is better now that the driveshaft can move a little. I ordered a set of standard eye GT springs from NPD to try and see if they work any better on the track. I think the TCP springs are 165# or in that range while the GT springs are around 115#. Stock springs were in the 90s. I like the little bit stiffer spring performance in the turns, but a bump in the road throws my head into the head liner which get a little annoying.

 

thats awesome. maybe ill go for the 4.5 instead of the 5. its going to be a street car so i don't need it to be harsh when i hit bumps. also, where did you get that 3.75" Eagle Crank and rods from. Directly from eagle or from summit? and how long are your rods? (well, that sounds dirty but you know what i mean. CONNECTING rods haha)

 

I got the whole rotating assembly from a distributor called AD Performance out of Washington. I would not recommend them as they were not very responsive, but they did get me good parts. When I build my next motor, I will just go direct or through a major distributor and have the whole thing sent off to be balanced.

As for the rods, I bought there 4340 H-Beam 6.250 rods with the top-of-tjhe-line ARP bolts. The ARP stuff is expensive (around $800 for full set of engine bolts, nuts, etc), but I have total confidence in their product. The rod bolts are almost always what fails first, so don't skimp there.

You can play some games with rod to stroke ratios and piston compression height in an effort to minimize the stress the piston and cylinder wall will see. I think there is a little something to that if you are running a super short rod or a super short piston, but I just try to stay in the middle of things. My setup is a 1.667 rod-to-stroke ratio, and I am running a 1.37" piston compression height .005" in the hole, and I have had not issues spinning my motor to 7k pretty regularly and running it at 3500-4000 continuously on pump gas with no detonation...after I got a good carburetor and learned to tune it. I have about 8k miles on it so far and no issues.

 

ok awesome. do you run a forged crank? i've heard they're not necessary but i've also heard from other people to just go for it.