ps374

Okay guys, you all heard the song "Shut Down" where the fuel injection sting ray beats the 413 dodge dart. It seems the guys on the mopar forum say its all a bunch of rubbish. One car magazine several years ago supposedly matched these 2 together in an actual race with cars donated to them and sure enough the mopar beat the corvette. However, in the song the corvette has drag slicks which of course would give it better traction. The car in the re-enactment drag race did not have drag slicks. Do you think if the sting ray had drag slicks the beach boy song would have really been true or was it really a myth as the mopar guy states. Opinions?

Dan Hampton

Who cares. The Beach Boys were big Chevrolet fans and a favorable spin for the BowTie crowd was always in the cards--or should I say songs--of the Wilson Bros. Enjoy the music.

Tempus_Fugit

One of my favorite songs, you can practially smell the rubber burning. BTW the 413 wouldn't have been in a Dart, it would have been in a mid or full size.

I think the winner would depend on gearing and driver ability more than the machinery. Your tire coments are right on, getting the power is the hardest thing on vintage tires.

ps374

Yea the 62 Dart was a full size Dodge.

Scott333

http://100megsfree4.com/corvette/1960/vet63.htm


1963 Corvette, basic info:

327 V-8 with 11.25:1 compression ratio, manual transmission, and fuel injection

360 hp @ 6,000rpm

352 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm

Standard rear axle ratio 3.70:1 (options - 3.08:1, 3.38:1, 3.55:1, 4.11:1, 4.56:1)

Coupe weight: 3,150 lbs.

Convertible weight: 2,881 lbs.

Front / Rear weight ratio: 49 / 51?


(anybody know the Dodge Dart stats?)

Jim Dillon

Listening to the guys on the Mopar forum-what do you expect-come on. I had a 64 Plymouth with a 426 wedge and they ran pretty strong. I bought the engine out of a 63 Dodge that had all of the drag goodies (better heads, forged crank, headers) since the guy was swapping in a Hemi. It took a bit to dial in the engine to running on one carb and tried a couple of cams before getting it to run 12.90s. This was a street driven car so my gear was only a 3:90 if my memory is worth a damn.

In 62 they came out with the 413 and they had some of the drag goodies including the better heads and if a car was so equipped it could probably beat a stock fuelie. Not every 413 was equipped with all of the goodies so many of these tales are just old stories. I am sure there were Vettes that could beat 413s and 413s that could beat Vettes.

If the song was a bit more specific then maybe we could debate the topic but Chevy guys are going to give the nod to the Chevy and the Mopar guys to the Mopar. One night when I had a few guys in my 69 Chevelle (396/375) they egged me on to run a Hemi Charger. I figured I was toast but ended up beating him. Four out of five time he would probably beat me but not that night. My fiends never let the guy forget it. Was my car faster?-Jim

Glasshole

Well at the end of the day I can assure you the corvette guy had the gals.

Cheers,

Bob

Donny Brass

it's a song....

no matter what speed you play it at, the Corvette wins, if you play it backwards, the race is a tie.............


I looked back and a 413 Super Stock Dodge ran 13.44 @ 109 in Motor Trend in 1962....

My guess is the Dodge would win in 1963.....

sub006

The song ends before the race does. Never clear which car is ahead, but they're always within striking distance of each other.

The full-size Mopars were drastically downsized in the '62 model year. Most found the radical Valiant-inspired styling ugly on a full-size car but they were hundreds of pounds lighter than the bigger Impalas or Galaxies. I'd guess at most 3500 pounds or about 10% heavier than a Sting Ray coupe. With side-by-side dual quads on the long Ram Induction manifold, a 413 super stock wedge was making considerably more power than a '65 396, which we know too well could shut down the '63 FI quite handily while carrying a couple of hundred extra pounds.

With 4.11 gears on the '63 and the Dodge (the most popular ratio for weekend racers back in the day), the race is pretty close, to be decided by the hand-foot coordination of the drivers. So Brian and Roger got it right.

Some would say a pushbutton Torqueflite automatic should have been unbeatable, the word just hadn't gotten around yet. But that's another argument for another time.

65 vette dude

Motor Trend August 1962 413 Dart 415 hp@5600, 470 torque @ 3600, 0-60 5.8 sec., 1/4 mile 14.4 sec.@ 101 mph. My money is on the vette. A 1962 Dart was actually a mid size. it's wheelbase was 116 inch's, 1/2" shorter than the Ford Fairlane. Weight was 3260 lbs. Only 100 lbs heavier than the vette, and 300 lbs lighter than a Ford Galaxie.

MikeM

Both cars, showroom stock, it'd be a close race.

With open exhausts and tires that stick, no contest. MoPar, hands down. The MoPar would be a mid 12 second car in that state. The Corvette about low 13's.

By the way, ask the MoPar guys why it told you in the owner's manual supplement for that Hi-Po engine why it said to "do not hold the engine full throttle for more than 15 seconds or severe engine damage could occur".

DSR

Being a '65 Corvette owner and a past Mopar owner '67 Hemi GTX, I'd say the Mopar would blow the doors off the vette!

Dave

MikeM

A lot of your big cubic inch muscle cars were something of a slug on the street because they couldn't get traction and they couldn't breathe in stock form. In drag strip form, different story.

That includes the 440 MoPars and the Hemi's.

The SHP small blocks didn't have that much of a problem and could quite often win the race with a decent driver at the wheel.

DansYellow66

The 14.4 at 101 mph sounds a little soft to me for one of these cars . The 13.44 @ 109 for the 62 sounds more like what I remember. The 7.75 tires they ran were probably about useless for traction until second gear. But you bring up a good point that most of Chrysler Corp cars in this time frame were somewhat smaller than their GM and Ford equivalents and later in 1965 were carried forward as intermediates when a new, larger C-body full size car was introduced. As noted they were light also. The max-wedge 413 and 426 cars were animals. But from my younger street "chasing" days, I also have a healthy respect for a warmed over 327 in a lighter body with steep gears. I remember a 327 Malibu that I challenged one night with what must have been 4.88 gears that nearly scared me to death when he nailed it from a rolling start.

Dan

Dan Hampton

With 4.11 gears on the '63 and the Dodge (the most popular ratio for weekend racers back in the day), the race is pretty close, to be decided by the hand-foot coordination of the drivers. So Brian and Roger got it right.


The Dart was restricted to either a 3-speed manual or a Torqueflight in '62; in '63 the 273 cid engine was the largest motor available for the Dart which had evolved into a compact by then.

Dan Hampton

I had a friend in college who owned a '64 L76 Coupe. He had a friend in the Twin Cities who was also on campus who owned a Hemi GTX. They used to go out on I-94 and compete with one another. The GTX never beat the Corvette. The bigger question is: how do two 19 yr. old kids afford expensive hardware like that at such a young age while in college?

MikeM

My cousin bought a new 1962 13.5-1 compression RamCharger. TorqueFlite, 4.56, factory installed cast iron race headers. With just addition of 7 inch M/H's, it'd consistently run 12.5's @ 112 mph. That thing blew every 409 Chevy and every 406 Ford around into the weeds!

After scattering two of the 13.5 compression engines, he replaced the short block with the lower performance 11-1 compression engine. The best the same would now do was 13.2 @ 1?? mph.

Jim Dillon

In looking up the song I see it was released in 1963 and dealt with a 62 Super Stock Dodge with a 413 vs a 63 Fuel Injected Stingray and dealt with a drag race between the two. Although I have heard the song numerous times I guess I never paid too much attention. In a drag race at the strip in 63 I would put my money on the 413 if it was the high horsepower motor even though the two were in two different classes. These cars ran in SS/SA and ran in the mid twelves in "stock" form. The Stingray could never match that, irrespective of what trans the 413s were running. In 62 at the Nationals Eckstrand ran a 12.72 in SS/SA for the win with his 413, driving for the Ramchargers. This was with his 420 hp with the 13.5 compression with the new heads (drag package). I am not so sure about the 11.00 compression motor and if it ran anything like the later 383s then my Massey Ferguson could beat it. In 63 the 426 wedge (Stage 1 and Stage 2) came out with even better flowing heads and all bets were off. Dodges and Plymouths were pretty much smoking all of the competition, save for a time or two when they were caught napping.

But if the song dealt with a drag race on the street (oh God forbid the horror of it all) then anything could happen. When I had an A-frame set up in my backyard in summer we didn't discuss how to keep the cars stock but how to make them run. In a couple of years Larry Lombardo's 61 Corvette with his little 283/270 based motor would be turning low 12s to take F/S at Indy. With guys that new how to build and tune cars and as Mike pointed out lack of traction (or poor tuning) anything could happen street light to street light.-Jim

Dan Hampton

Larry Lombardo.....now there is a name from the past. Won Stock Eliminator at Indy in '68, if memory serves. Sam Gianino (sp) won Comp. Eliminator that year in his '57 Corvette. Remember it well.

Didn't Lombardo go on to work as a crew member for Bill Jenkins?

MikeM

Speaking of a 327 vs a Street Hemi.