Red Ram Hemi

[Mike P]

........" Good afternoon Mike,

Just read the great post on adapting the early hemi's. My question is the physical differences between the Red Ram hemi's and the larger displacement engines. Are they the same size externally or smaller.

There's one for sale locally but fitting a full size hemi into our 37 Dodge PU would be a PITA. I saw how you shoehorned yours in, but I'd like to avaoid cutting sheetmetal if possible.

Thanks, Mark".....



I got this trough a PM, just for information I usually only check my Club Hot Rod mail box every couple of months. I prefer to answer questions on the forum (if I can) as I feel that someone else may have the same question. It also acts a good check and balance as someone may disagree or have a better way of doing things.



As far as your question Mark, I know the Dodge Red Rams are physically smaller than the Chrysler Fire Powers (both narrower and shorter), but I don't know by how much. You might check http://www.hothemiheads.com/ and see if they list the dimensions. If not another option would be for you to go over and measure the Red Ram. I can provide the critial measurements on my hemi and how much I had to trim latter this evening so you can compare them. It may work.

[MAW]

Thanks for the response Mike. I used the PM because I thought the question may be too specific to waste forum bandwidth on. Seeing another question being posed this morning which raises the same questions proves otherwise.

I'll try to get a tape measure on the Red Ram, then post the results here.

I have been told that the Red Ram would be a bolt-in swap for my flathead six, that the motor mounts and transmission patterns are the same.

If I go this route I'll have a fresh 360 Mopar for sale with a choice of 727 TF or A833 transmissions. (Shame on you for posting that picture of your 37 PU with the Hemi sitting in the engine bay)

Thanks again, regards,

Mark

[Mike P]

Hi Mark, a little bit about my 37 Dodge PU. I bought it as a basket case that someone had lost intrest in after they had installed a Mustang II front end (surprisingly well considering the rest of the truck), 2.8 V6 Ford, C3 and 4 bolt 8" rear end in. They had torched out a large part of the firewall (I don't have a clue why) pulled the steering column and cut a hole in the glove box door for a cheap tape deck and thats about as far as they got.

Most of the hotrodded 37 Dodge Pickups I've seen (all of them small block chevy conversions) have the engine sitting very low. I suspect the major reason is to retain the flat cab floor and not have to build a tranny tunnel. When I trial fit the Hemi and SB 727 I tried to get the centerline of the crank close to it's original location (as eyeballed from the manual crank hole in the grill). Another goal for me was to center the fan close to the center of the radiator. This resulted in the height of the engine being where it ended up at. Any lower would have resulted in more fender material having to be removed, and any higher would have resulted a bigger transmission tunnel having to be fabricated (lessening the foot room in the cab).

Where the engine sits resulted in the following. The valve covers (20" long) are as close to the firewall as I could get then (about 1/2" away) The widest point of the engine that has to clear the front fenders (just above the valve covers) is 27" wide, and the trimming I did on the front fenders resulted in the hole being 29" at it's widest point (as you can see the resuilting cuts were tapered and about 3" deep at the widest point). The front edge of the cut is 9 1/2" from the very rear edge of the grill shell.

The picture of the truck I post is when I was pretty much done mocking up everything. It is currently a back burner project while I concentrate on building my 57 Plymouth. I do have the steering column and linkage figured out and mocked up (although it may get changed as I'm going to use headers instead of manifolds), and the swing peddle and bracket has been fabricated and master cylinder located on the firewall. Once I get back to it, I'll be boxing the frame, building a new fire wall, edging the fenders where they were trimmed etc etc.

Anyway, any help I can give you, I'll do my best.