In a message dated 98-07-23 10:24:45 EDT, you write:
<< Perhaps
I'll just do the headers, throttle body, milder cam and stage one
porting and
se
how the green monster does. What do ya'll think??. >>
I think your thinking reasonably. In a recent round of priverate e-mail
messages we came to the same conclusion as they did. The Daks are not
infallible and you have to come to a point where you either settle down
or
figure to spend a BUNCH of money to keep going faster. I'm just fine
tuning at
this point and hope to keep it together.
Bill
You are right. MY brother and I love racing. I had an '83 Regal with a
V-6. Then we put a 455 Buick in it. Then we fabbed up a Ford 9 inch
rear end to go in it. Then it got stolen and trashed. So we gutted the
interior and took it to the track. The best it had run in the 1/4
before it was stolen was 13.94. After we got it back and got rid of a
ton of weight, carpet, pad, seats, power window motors, inner fenders,
put the battery in the truck, it went 12.99 one night. Still that
wasn't fast enough, so after tons of more money, buying a 34 foot
enclosed trailer, back halfing the car and going to alcohol injection
and aluminum heads, we were running 10 flat. Not shabby in a 3500 lb
car. BUT it didn't take us long to realize that if we could get down to
24-2600 pounds we could go much faster and be easier on trannys and ring
gears. So we're building a fiberglass body 55 Buick special to sit on
an Alson chassis.
My point to all of this is: there are a lot of things you can do to a
stock Dakota that will give you a high return on your investment as far
as performance. Exhaust, TB Mods, Cams, Computer upgrades and shift
kits. Then there are tweaks you can do, ram air kit, different plugs or
temp range, different tires, and gears. These don't make as big an
increase, but are still worth the tweaking to some. At that point you
either stop and enjoy the handiwork, or have to decide if you want to go
farther. Going farther is relocating the battery to the rear, going to
aftermarket heads and an aggressive cam, which then means you either
dump the computer or PAY someone to custom calibrate it to run with your
cam. Of course an easy way to go fast is to get lighter...usually with
'glass or carbon fiber. When you get 'glass bumpers, hood, fenders,
etc, that will pretty much eliminate your truck being a daily driver as
the mosquitos around here would break holes in the 'glass hood at 55
mph.
Anyway that's my .02 worth. You have to decide how fast you want to
go. Then decide if you have enough money to go that fast! Like the man
says, speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?
-- Drew Schofield 1998 Sport 4x4 5.2 CC Black
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