The Charger, Part 10: Power Tour Killed The 360. But Fate Stepped In…

June 11th, 2024. That’s the day that the 360 in the ’76 Charger failed. You could’ve boiled an egg on my head, I was so pissed off. I had been thrashing on the car for half a year to get ready for the 2024 Hot Rod Power Tour. I had gone through the fun of swapping in a five-speed manual transmission into the car with the help of American Powertrain. I had frozen in the shop for months, laying under the car, doing things that medically I probably should not be doing to make this dream happen…and on the end of the second day of Power Tour, I manage to wound my first small-block Mopar. It’s not dead. But it is alive enough to know that it might as well be dead.

We don’t have a complete picture of what is wrong and I won’t have that until I open up the engine…which isn’t happening, as the car runs enough to yard-drive in and out of the garage. While I have not torn down the entire engine, Cylinder 5 told me enough. We knew the car was eating oil somewhere. Between this and the exhaust’s new tap-tap-tap popping sound, I suspect that a cam lobe is a lot flatter than it should be. I’ll be sure to showcase what I find when I do tear the 360 down. But don’t bank on that engine returning to the Charger anytime soon.

Fate Smiles Upon Thee

One of the people who has been following my adventures for years (think pre-BangShift) is a friend of mine named Brian Good. We “met” each other through Farley’s Page, a Dodge Diplomat-centric forum, back in the early 2000s and we’ve kept in touch since. Like me, we both realized that FMJ Mopars are pain. Unlike me, he scored a sweet barn-find 1969 Olds 442 to wrench on. And when he learned about my Charger’s misfortune, he decided to help me with the biggest mulligan I’ve ever been handed. His neighbor had an old police car that he felt might have the answer to my woes and for $500, I could purchase it. So I did.

What you are looking at is a 2009 Charger Police Package. It’s got something like 155,ooo miles on the clock (give or take, since the display packed up shortly after I bought the car) and it’s got Ohio levels of rot in the quarters. His neighbor’s price was legitimate and the car was better than I was led to believe by miles. Frankly, if it wasn’t for the rot, I’d have considered doing one of those Smyth ute conversions instead. It drove fine, did well as a daily driver, hell, even the A/C blew cold. But ultimately, there’s one reason I laid down the money: Gen III Hemi.

Let’s do the math: when sold new, the 360-2bbl was rated for 175 horsepower and 270 ft-lb of torque. By 1976 standards…okay, it would move the car. The 2009 Charger Police Package was rated for 368 horsepower and 395 lb-ft of torque. Double the horsepower and nearly the same factor in torque? Yeah, that’ll be nice. Now, let’s add one big key ingredient: MDS delete, VVT lockout, and a camshaft upgrade, something like 223/[email protected]. Care to guess how much a grind like that will help out a 5.7 Hemi? At least 75 horsepower, maybe pushing near 100.

When planning out the Charger’s final form, my goal was to have an honest 425-475 horsepower in the engine bay. I didn’t care if it was via a hellracious small-block Chrysler or a Gen III, I just didn’t want a big-block due to the weight gain. That’s now achievable, and I have the engine and the electronics parked in my driveway. So I’m now in the planning stages of how this build is going to work out.

Shortly after buying the cop car, I reached out to Erik Storms, the guy behind BFNY Performance and the man who turned the Angry Grandpa Chrysler 300C into a sleeper hit. Lucky for me, he had a customer who was having a newer Hemi shoved into an early 1970s Charger and I got to take some measurements. Since there isn’t much difference between a 1971 and 1976 B-body, it’s easy to see that it’s a very do-able process.

Some things are pretty much locked-in, like mounts, accessory drive parts, and I’m all but certain the exhaust situation is locked-in. I’m less sure about whether I’m going to leave the engine alone (minus the cam swap and required mods) or if I’m going to play with the cylinder heads or anything else like that. I’m pretty sure the only thing I’ll need to adapt the Hemi to the TKX will be a new pilot bushing, as the Gen III and the LA work like a small-block Chevrolet and the LS; all but one bolt lines up. And if I need to, the bellhousing adapter is a minor thing.

That being said, this won’t be a cheap or easy endeavor. A cut-down engine harness will cost money. Swap headers will cost money. And by myself, this is going to take some time…you saw how long it took to perform a transmission swap. It’s like that meme that shows Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants: “I don’t know. I never thought I’d get this far.”

If you’ve got suggestions on how to make the most of this, I’m all ears. Just don’t suggest “supercharger”. I’m staying naturally aspirated.

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