This year (2000) a Dolly's Machine & Welding (Clinton, IL) 8-pt roll cage went in, a complete D&D Motorsports tube front-end with coil-overs and a new shortblock by JDC Engineering (AFM's head porter). This represented a lot of work and the project took about six months to complete.

The goal this year was to go with a Bassani 3" exhaust, complete with stepped longtube headers, cats and cat-back. An AFM N-66 cam was chosen and the goal was to be emissions legal with this more aggressive cam.

We ended up making a tick under 350 rwhp through the cats and tailpipes but unfortunately never had it emissions tested.
Click here for a description of the engine combo
and here for the dyno results.

4/27/00

Picked up the Cobra from Dolly's Machining.

Motor is in and am now installing the Bassani stepped longtubes - not easy!! - but should be worth it.

7/5/00

Finally got to the dragstrip a couple of weeks ago. With no tune, about 125 miles on the motor and old slicks (spun badly all three passes) I went 12.18, 12.17 and 12.15 with a best of 114.28 mph. Not too bad considering it's going to take a while to get the chassis tuned correctly.

The next step was to make a run up to the AFM dyno and I think we made some decent power. It was the most hp Rick has measured on a naturallly aspirated motor through cats and tailpipes, at 349 (see dyno graph below).

An interesting thing was evident from the dyno runs. We made a mistake by running the 1.7 rockers with the particular valve springs we had in. The extremely high ramp speeds of the N-66 coupled with the 1.7 ratio floats the valves above 6,000rpm. I will be putting a set of 1.6's in and going back to the dyno shortly.