Description: Here is your opportunity to own some really cool Mopar and Racing history. These are the remnants of Don Nichols Shadow Power Mopar CanAm engines. We picked these up from Legendary Mopar racer Paul Rossi and he purchased them from Don Nichols estate. These engines were featured in the June 2024 Issue of Mopar Collectors Guide Magazine (see written article below) and I have also shown them on my YouTube channel Shade Tree Vintage Auto. These are the real deal! What is here? Well, these are 305ci Mopar Small blocks. They are very similar to the engines used in the real Trans Am series raced Mopars as well as Nascar and even drag racing. They are supposed to be good for over 8500rpm. The cranks were built by Keith Black and are numbered, the blocks were specially built by Chrysler, and the W2 Heads are not the base W2 Eco heads. The blocks feature four bolt manes and are sleeved. This lot consists of two blocks, four cranks, six heads (one has been cut for testing), one complete set of rockers, one set of rods, and a bunch more. Be sure to look at the photos, watch the video, and ask any questions. For the video, go to YouTube and search; We purchase Mopar History and hear stories first hand from Legendary Racer Paul Rossi As for shipping. I would prefer that these are picked up in person near Logan, UT 84321. That being said, I can palatize everything and ship as long as the buyer sets everything up. Payment in full is to be made within 10 days of purchase via bank transfer or cash in person. Article written by Mopar Collectors Guide Magazine Jeremy Macdonald came splashing onto the Mopar scene in a big way last year with his retro beater/barn find Max Wedge, “Student Driver,” station wagon which appeared on the cover of our October 2023 issue of MCG. Jeremy’s been building a major following on YouTube with his Shade Tree Vintage Auto channel showing his friends and him finding cool old Mopars that generally end up where he works at DD Auto & Salvage out in Logan, Utah, which is a great playground for any Mopar fanatic. This isn’t a place that primarily deals with late model collision work, on the contrary, they scour the country for old unwanted Dodges, Chryslers, and Plymouths of all kinds, and nowadays, several extremely cool cars and thousands of parts sit out there in the Utah sun waiting for a chance at redemption, or at worst, waiting to do their bit as parts donors for major restorations. At the 2023 MuscleCars At The Strip event in Las Vegas, there was a mass gathering of “rustified” Mopar muscle, all of which looked like it had just been pulled out of a barn, but which all ran like bats out-of-hades. They were onto a winning formula, and a lot of cars from DD Auto have since been built by people all over the West Coast into semi-modern versions of rat rods; old decayed Mopars with heavy-firepower engines, transmissions, and rear ends in them. They were on the tip-of-the-spear with that movement, and it led to Jeremy to attending a lot more national Mopar events in 2023 with their Ratty Max Wedge station wagon. And at one of those events he met legendary racer Paul Rossi, who was making the rounds with his reborn Challenger, which is synonymous with mid-seventies vintage Direct Connection ads and printed material. When you said Direct Connection back then, Paul’s Challenger was likely the car that popped into your brain. Not surprisingly, since both Paul Rossi and Jeremy are two really nice guys, they struck up a fast friendship, and in short order, Paul Rossi told him about a big stash of race engine parts he’d bought from Don Nichols about eight years ago that he didn’t know what to do with, and he thought Jeremy and his guys would be the ideal new custodians of these parts. Take a quick look at what you’re seeing, especially the blocks, because what you have here is major mechanical Mopar history. According to Paul Rossi, it was about eight years ago that Mopar’s Bob Tarozzi, one of the most iconic engineers of Chrysler performance parts ever and the guy who largely assembled the famed Direct Connection “Bible” that all of us had in the late seventies and early eighties, rang Paul up. Paul and Bob had remained good friends through the years, and Bob told Rossi there was a stash of leftover experimental 305” Can-Am and Trans Am stroker motor parts down at Don Nichols’ place, and Paul needed to go grab ‘em because Don wanted them out of the way. Presumably, the parts had been there since the seventies, but as Rossi stated, “When Bob Tarozzi told me I needed to buy something, I usually went and bought it as quickly as possible, even if I had no idea what I was going to do with it.” Such was the case here. Sure enough, Nichols had a good assortment of experimental and race-only parts leftover from the program, largely due to his involvement in running open-wheel Formula-1 and Can-Am series cars throughout the seventies, with the legendary Jackie Oliver serving as one of his drivers. So, Paul got in his truck and headed over to Nichols’s shop, buying everything Nichols said belonged with those motors, and admittedly, he had no idea what he’d ever do with it! Rossi ended up with two blocks that looked unused, four unique Keith Black cranks, rods, a handful of pistons, some unique dry-sump oil pans, valve covers, heads, and loads of smaller parts, but notably missing were any intake manifolds. Looking at contemporary photos, it looks like they were using some type of Hilborn-style fuel injection unit up top, but where those parts got off to, heaven only knows. Regardless, Paul Rossi brought all of it back to his garage/shop in California and there it remained, largely forgotten and overlooked by historians and collectors alike, until Paul Rossi bumped into and became friends with this notably enthusiastic young man named Jeremy Macdonald. A few months after their first meeting, Jeremy and some of his friends were at Paul Rossi’s shop to see just what all these mysterious race engine components were all about. Honestly, Jeremy wasn’t prepared for the oddities he was about to encounter, nor that Rossi would part company with all this stuff for a really good price, just because he wanted it to go to a good home. That began a couple of days Jeremy will never forget. Dragging the stuff out from under work benches and off of shelves, they soon assembled a wild selection of parts, some of it uniquely off of the 305” stroker motor program, and some of it just other racing parts that Rossi had managed to bring into the tent during the last thirty years or so. Allow us to go over some of the stuff that Jeremy and DD Auto & Salvage ended up with (they financed the deal, knowing to trust Jeremy when he said something like this was important). At the heart of it all are two absolutely bizarre Chrysler small blocks. Have a look at these two; they’re smooth castings, meaning there’s no outside cast-iron bracing on the blocks to cut down on their weight. There’s also no place to attach an oil filter on these blocks, as they were intended to be dry-sump oilers with remote oil filters. And they’re four-bolt main cap blocks – ever seen anything like these before? These were made by Chrysler strictly for racing and testing in the early seventies when they made their first appearances in the Trans Am racing series between the rails of Challengers and ‘Cudas in 1970. Chrysler continued the development of these motors for Can-Am and Formula 1 use until the late seventies, and you only have to take one look at these blocks to realize how radically different they are from a stock 340 or 360 motor. Better still, if these two were used at some point, it wasn’t for long, or perhaps they were just test engines because both of them show little to no wear. In short, you’re not likely to find these hanging out under any old machine shop’s work bench – no one we know of can say for sure, but given the limited field they were playing in, we can’t imagine Chrysler would’ve produced more than thirty-to-fifty of these blocks, period. And most of those that got raced and ended up in the scrap pile decades ago. Along with the blocks came two extremely shallow sump aluminum oil pans, anodized gold, with fittings along the side to attach them to the remote oil filter and oil tank system. Then, heads – heads all over the place! Most of the heads Jeremy returned with are straight-up W2 racing heads, with the rocker stands in other boxes and the lightweight special rocker arms, which all look brand-new. A good helping of lightweight racing pistons came with the deal, along with a good many main rods, but only four of the pistons in the box full of pistons appear to be made for these blocks; the rest are fairly conventional, lightweight, small block racing pistons. There were boxes of bearings that had never been opened, rocker shafts with bushings attached to them, revealing them to be for use on the W2 racing heads, and no less than four unique Keith Black crankshafts, some still in their original shipping crates, each one of them inscribed with the machinist’s name who made them and the date (presumably) they were made. None of those looked to have ever been used. Then, bunches of very cool finned aluminum valve covers, some bearing the wording “Dodge” cast into them prominently, others having the “Shadow Racing” logo boldly atop the cover. The cool thing about these is, when you look at Don Nichols’ DN4 and DN6 Formula race cars, the valve covers are prominently and clearly in view! And it doesn’t take but a minute to look at these heads, check out the exhaust ports and intake ports, and note the way the rocker shaft mountings are way off from what we’re used to seeing on street engines. So, Jeremy and his guys got everything home to Utah and began sorting through everything and investigating what little data still exists on the seventies 305” stroker motor program. They also researched just about everything they could find about Don Nichols’s racing back then, and the whole crew just marveled that all this state-of-the-art racing hardware had survived, and most of it looked like it had never been used, or used very little, if any. And now, the battle as to what to do with this stuff starts all over again! Jeremy tells us they want the parts to go to a museum, or better still, to someone who’s restoring a seventies vintage Mopar race car that these motors would be appropriate in; that would likely mean any legit 1970 Trans Am car, a seventies Shadow-series Can-Am or Formula car, or even a stock car that was limited to the smaller motors due to class rules in ARCA, NASCAR, or USAC. If you’ve got a legit race car and you want an incredible chance to own perhaps the last two disassembled and largely intact factory small block strokers, here’s your chance. Drop Jeremy a line at his email address Shadetreevintageauto******. He’ll be glad to talk shop with you, and after sitting for around fifty years or more, it’s about time somebody put this exotic hardware to use! Well done to Paul Rossi for saving these rare bits of our history, and well done to Jeremy for wanting to see them go into restored original race cars. It just goes to show you that when you go to a major Mopar event and strike up a friendly conversation, almost anything can happen!
Price: 27500 USD
Location: Logan, Utah
End Time: 2024-08-27T18:43:36.000Z
Shipping Cost: 0 USD
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Returns Accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Brand: Mopar
