The eventual goal for the Barracuda has always been a modern Hemi. Ten years ago, they were too expensive, so I went with the Magnum. The Magnum has been okay, but when keeping the factory fuel injection, it has its limitations. I keep having mystery issues pop up that are frustrating and keep me from trusting the car. A major part of the problem is that the system is now over 20 years old and I’m stuck with aftermarket sensors of dubious quality. I’ve had one distributor pickup go bad and two crank sensors. The computer is dumb enough that it can’t tell me what’s wrong, and I’m stuck with lengthy troubleshooting.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for donor vehicles to snag a Hemi for a while now. Older Hemis are now pretty affordable, but I had my eye on the 2009 and up version due to the better heads. My wait paid off this winter when a 2010 police car popped up on iaai.com. It looked complete from the pictures, but said that it didn’t run. The price was buy-it-now for $700. For that price, I figured I could fix anything wrong with it. After fees, it was $1200. (always check the fees!)
The other thing I didn’t realize when buying from iaai.com was that the car has to be picked up within a couple days or you start incurring storage fees. They also aren’t open on weekends, so I had to scramble to figure out how to get the car. Currently we’re truckless, so I didn’t have a truck to pull a trailer to get the car. Luckily, my dad said he could help and we went and got the car.
This particular car was a former Oregon State Police cruiser, but it had been purchased by a civilian. After a few years of ownership, it was stolen and vandalized. That’s how it ended up at the insurance auction. You can see some of the anti-police graffiti in the above picture. I covered most of it in duct tape.
It was a few months before the weather cleared enough to get the car to my house. We quickly found out why the car didn’t run- it didn’t have a battery. After throwing a battery in and some gas, the car started and ran! It didn’t run well, but it was running. The odometer stated 180K miles. We figured we could drive the car off the trailer, except we discovered the shifter wouldn’t come out of park! This led to 45 minutes of frustration while I tried to find a way to disable the shift-interlock. See, the police Charger uses a column shifter and I couldn’t find any information on how to disable the column shift. We ended up removing the cable from the shifter and found that we could shift it into reverse by pushing/pulling on the cable. Finally, it was off the trailer.
After it was off the trailer, I decided to see if I could figure out why it was running so poorly. I cycled the key and the trouble codes popped up in the gauge. There were codes for the throttle body and one of the coil packs. I checked out the throttle body and noticed that the wiring wasn’t fully pushed onto the connector. It clicked back into place and restarted the engine. It was smoother! Then I started checking the wiring to the coil packs. Same thing! One of the connectors wasn’t fully snapped on. Then the engine smoothed out and ran perfect! Next, I looked at the fuses underhood and found a few missing. I replaced them and then the shifter started working! Only one thing left to do… drive it!
It drove beautifully, except for some clunks in the front end. We also discovered that it does pretty good burnouts! Well, allegedly. I was tempted to drive it around town to see if everyone would be on their best behavior when they saw the car. Unfortunately, I found that there’s a whole process to get a salvage car back on the road. It was time to pull the engine.
Over Memorial Day weekend, we pulled the engine. It wasn’t too hard, other than finding lifting points on the Hemi. I’ll be fabricating a bracket to lift it when it’s time to put it in the Barracuda.
What’s the plan for this project?
Engine:
- SRT 392 cam with matching valve springs
- Hellcat lifters
- Whatever else needs cleaned up: bearings, valves, etc.
- Factory PCM with swap wiring harness
Everything else:
- Factory K-frame clearanced to work
- Custom motor mounts
- Borgeson steering box
- Radiators and fans from the Charger
- TKX transmission
- Air conditioning
- Paint engine bay
That’s the plan for now. Thanks for reading!
Special thanks for my dad for helping retrieve the car, my friend Esteban for helping pull the engine and my daughters for helping take the car apart.
Mechanical Engineer, Mopar guy, reluctant defender of the universe.
David Belau 
That is great, David! Congrats on the first steps of your new Hemi Cuda! A pretty good deal to get the entire car even for 1200 bucks. Enjoy the swap, I’ll be watching and rooting you on. 👍🔥🏁
Thanks!
Love it! What are your plans for exhaust?
I’d like to run manifolds for now. I’ve heard that the Jeep manifolds fit, Holley also has some swap manifolds. Reliability is what I’m after.
If it helps, this is what I saved years ago if I went with manifolds – PN 53013605AB, left; 53013606AB, right. Should be for ’05 GC manifolds. No promises, been a long time since I grabbed those numbers but pretty sure that is what was said to work.
Just to be sure you are aware, the Holley manifolds are designed around their engine location that is forward of the stock location by 1.75″ or so. Not saying their manifolds wouldn’t work (can’t see why it would matter), but just in case. And it’s a good thing you aren’t looking for headers from Holley, can’t find them on their website anymore.
Thanks for the part numbers. The DIYHemi guys are saying the 2009 and up manifold has larger outlets, so I started poking around. The 2009-2010 Jeep was still the old body but should have the larger outlets. 2011 and up might work, but they appear to cross-reference the truck manifolds, which may or may not work. I might snag both and add to the knowledge base.
I forgot the port changed with the Eagle motor. Curious to see if the 09/10 manifolds will work. Looks like the Holley manifolds work on all years, so at least the bolt pattern didn’t change.
Just tripped over this:
https://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/threads/73-scamp-5-7-swap.423219/
Looks like ’09-10 Jeep manifolds should be good.
Awesome news! Thanks for finding that.