Hello fellow Mopar Enthusiasts! I am the one doing the 540/6.1 Hemi swap for Cudabuyer (Joel) That 540 was just overkill for the weak chassis of the convertible, also it requires maintenance such as adjusting the 2 4 barrels, adjusting the valves (removing the ac lines and power booster PIA!) and it would require about 1.68 gallons of gas per mile! On the puny stock tank, you would need a tanker truck following you around! THe race hemi clutch took both hands on the wheel and pushing with both feet to get the clutch down, not fun for cruising in town or traffic. I think the 6.1 will have plenty of power and be way more streetable, practical and reliable than a 100% aftermarket, 710 hp 540ci custom race Hemi. I like to use as much factory parts and engineering whenever possible.
Its been pretty Challenging (pardon the pun) getting the 6.1 to work with all the things already done to his car. Great thing is there is alot of support for these swaps out there. Since we already had the alterktion front end, we called Bill Rielly up and got a set of his very nice engine mounts for the new hemi. Plasma out the old ones, and the new ones line up perfectly. He also worked with TTI on the header design and everything fit great. The next big challenge was mating the 6.1 to the old 833 4 speed. After calling Passon performance about the swap, they said they could sell us a bellhousing and clutch setup for $1500! I thought this was just crazy, i mean all it takes is an old small block bellhousing, and mopar performance makes the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate and starter so what do i need passon for?? So after ALOT of research, hunting at the local mopar graveyard, alot of measuring and a couple of trips to the machine shop, it all went together. I could write a book on all the small things that went into the swap, so if anyone is interested, just drop me a line, maybe oneday when we get caught up, i can put together a parts list for the swap, most of the stuff came from mopar performance, aka the local dodge dealer and cost about half what passon wanted.
The wiring was easy and very clean thanks to Tony Squire and his crew (hotwireauto.com) who sold us the computer, wiring harness, misc parts and tech info to get it done. It uses an 04 1500 truck computer which had the manual trans option. So far this is the only way to keep it simple without a custom, time consuming laptop/dyno tune for now as the security in the 6.1 computers has yet to be broken. Now i know you are saying performance has got to suffer with the 5.7 computer, but Squire has done a few of these 6.1 harnesses with the 5.7 computer and by using the Superchips 3815 flashpaq to raise the rev limit to the proper 6200 rpm and a few other things, they are claiming upwards of 500 hp at the flywheel with headers and an air intake. I have not verified this, but we should have his car driving soon, and I should have an idea of where we are at horsepower wise.
The cool air induction will be the short 90 degree polished pipe from street and performance, but i ordered an extra 18" of polished tube with a K&N at the end to get it out of the radiator.
I will have more pics and possibly a video of the car later...
