You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

The Chevy MK II 427 "Mystery Engine" was never developed for Drag Racing. It was strictly for NASCAR stock car racing and premiered at Daytona 1963. Drag racers had the 427 Z11 - the engine created from the MK I 409.




Just a bit of trivia: the MK II 427 was the first Chevy engine to use a Holley carb as it's float design was superior to that of the Carter AFB, what Chevy was using on all of it's engines with a 4 BBL carb.




Though it says " 427 HP" on the hood, the MK II 427 put out about 540 HP in race tune. More than 100 HP improvement over the MK I 409 which Chevy was using for NASCAR in 1962.

[Lee Stewart]

Here is the breakdown for the three choices of stripes for the 1970 Charger R/T

V6_ - Tape Stripe Longtitudinal: 49.3%

V8_ - Bumblebee Tape Stripe: 30.6%

V68 - Stripe Delete: 20.1%

9730 1970 Charger R/Ts were built in 1970.

Now . . . do some searching on the internet for the 1970 Charger R/T and you will see a whole different mix of the three options. IMO, they look like this:

V6_ = 5%

V8_ = 94%

V68 = 1%

From the first set of numbers the Long. Tape Stripes were more popular than the Bumble Bee stripes. But when these cars are restored, the BB stripe is clearly the choice. And I have seen very few 1970 Charger R/Ts with no stripes and there should be a lot of them . . . but there aren't.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

This was the standard stripe pattern for the 1968 Dart GTS. The Bumblebee stripe was a N/C option.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]