Tracked down Dave Anderson, the owner of Anderson Racing Inc(ARI) and builder of the original Engines that were put into the 1983 Dominator GT's. This sounds like what has been described as the Stage III. Here is what he had to say:
Steve, We built a 302 with forged TRW pistons, Moly rings clevite bearings, a solid camshaft, Large valves & springs, etc. in the heads,double roller timing. At first we were selling the manifold and carb witht he engine but later the dealership just bought the base longblock.
Later when the dealership became worried about the emissions factor and fines they simply put stickers ont he cars and did some minor things and sold cars based on the reputation of the "real" Dominators.
Someplace in the boxes of old records there is probably an invoice listing everything that we did, but I do not have time to dig.
Will tell you a cute story though. Several years after we had done some of the forst engines, I recieved a phone call from a Dr. in overland park. He wanted to know if we were the builders of the Dominator engines. I said yes, and He said I want to tell you something. And then He went on to say he had owned many a foreign sports car including a Porche and the Gt he owned was faster and more fun then any of them. then he wanted to know if we would do a tune up. We don;t do that and directed him to one of our racing customer shop owners who was capable of adjusting solid lifters as well as do the proper tuning. He stayed in touch over the years and a couple of years back sold the car to someone who called and obviously were not too car savvy, so don't know what happened to it beyond that. But the original ownere had it around twenty years. Our intention in building the engine was to improve on the original concept 271 Hspr used in the mustang in 1965. It biggest advantage was the slightly increased compression, larger valves and a solid cam that easily allowed 6500 RPM when you fed it the gas.
Hope that helps a little.
Dave Anderson
As Dave stated I hope this helps those of us trying to learn more about them. I have responded back to him requesting to go search through his records to find as much info as I can about them. I will keep you posted as to what I find.
Steve |