You are a gluten for punishment! No mini starter

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2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!

12.70 @ 104.6

Nah, not on this one. On some of my cars, I want semi-originality or period correctness in place of all-out performance or weight savings. This starter "looks proper". It's no mini for sure. I have the same big honkin' Chrysler Gear reduction starter on the '69 Dart too. even though you cannot see it at all - It makes me happy to know that it is there.

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4/21/24:

I have about 14 hours in the front header pipes / down pipes etc. that connect the headers to the merge collector behind the cross member.
I got both the front and rear header collector pipes down to the suspension level and past the bell housing. The stuff I am making now will be much better than the previous owner's muffler shop garbage with aluminized pipe. poor fitting, leaking boogered MIG welds and clangy pipes that did not allow for a clutch linkage adjustment.

This chassis has to be the most difficult to complete this sort of custom down pipe fabrication on. With the 3 speed column to transmission rods, clutch linkage torque shaft, and giant power steering box, all in close proximity. I did this job on my 64 Dart before. I had slightly more room on that car, and I wanted this iteration to be better, so it is slower going.

I started with some of these:


For the front pipe I left the header collector reducer alone and began burning pipe right onto it.
The front pipe 90°'s down toward the frame rail, then bends again just above the torsion bar.



Here is what that pipe looks like semi completed:


When the gaps are right, the hot glue gun runs like butter:



For the rear pipe that was not possible, no way that long ~5" of stainless reducer would clear what is going on under the car.
So a little slicing and dicing to the stainless works part was needed:
I ended up with about ~ 1" of header reducer. Maybe not Ideal, but required for the packaging of this car - It aint' no E Body or Truck!




Little by little..



A lot of work was required to get to this point.
I realized that Here, I needed to order some more 45° Mandel bends to complete the job. So they are ordered.


Just another 2-3 feet to get from that monstrosity of front pipes, pie cuts, and bends to here:


But that will be the easy part (probably)!

These pipes sure look goofy because I have yet to figure out where to cut and at what angle, and if I need some more pie cuts it there too.





See you next time!

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Ahem... YES SIR!

First Fire Just for you Dan! I am not sure if that is the starter sound you want, as it is a parts store rebuild on there, sounds like an '80's starter to me.. But it's MoPar nonetheless. No nippondenso here that I can tell.

Enjoy!

Greg

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Nice vid. Engine sounds healthy! That starter is the large-frame 1.8-horsepower item first used on the 440 in '74. Factory-installed at random on everything from 225s on up through the '70s and until the end of the Chrysler-built starter ('87 was the last year for it). The extra size of that starter is aggravating your starter swap difficulty on that car; might want to put on a small-frame starter…which would also bring back that "like it's supposed to" cranking sound.

The large-frame starter is a reman № 3258. The small-frame reman is a № 3257. The correct starter fell out of the reman cattledogs long ago; it was a № 3250.

(Wanna see/hear me nerd out about Chrysler OSGR starters? Wanna see it again?)

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I think The proper starter is in my Yellow / beige ugly '62.. I will have to get you a quick video of that one gor you to confirm. There is one I pulled off the '62 170 powered parts car that I turned into the ValianTrailer.
I never heard that one run/ start. I just put it on my shelf 'o starters for when I am older I guess?

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5/2/24:


The exhaust is built and completed. The front downpipes were fitted, fitted, and fitted again before final welding.
With the exhaust complete, I was able to fire the engine for the first time. It ran and had good oil pressure. There are still small fiddly tasks to complete such as the valves need to be lashed, the timing set, as well as the idle speed, and the idle mixture set.

Some documentation:
The Right Pipe is connected with a 45° bend and a straight section to the merge collector.


The Left Pipe was getting mocked up with mostly the same configuration - a 45° angle, a long section of straight pipe, and also a pie cut to get the angle fitted with mostly no gaps. I also had to slice the long section of pipe with a 3° cut on it to get it merged onto the 45° angle with no gaps. That does not show up in the pictures.



Lots of hacked off bits of stainless left behind.


Fully Welded with tabs on as well.



Someone stopped by after lunch to help and lend a hand. She was helping to install spark plugs among other things.


After fitting the front of the exhaust the tailpipe is all goobered up and will need to be sorted out, and rerouted for actual driving. It's good for now, however.

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5/6/24:

Over the weekend I got to doing a bit more work and sorting things on the Valiant wagon.

After running the engine for maybe ~4 minutes I was concerned that I was not seeing oil at the top of the engine...

I feared the worst!
* A mis-installed rearmost cam bearing?
* A head gasket with a missing block-to-head oil transfer passage?
* Something else dumb that I did not catch?

Let's spin the roulette wheel of Slant 6 maladies...

I went to the garage Sunday fully expecting to be pissed off when I found the cause of my dumbassery.
In preparation, I went to the hardware store and bought an 18" long 1/4" drill bit to poke around and clear obstructions etc. in the block to head oil passage. I removed the heater box from the firewall for proper head bolt and valve cover access.

I have learned on a new engine install such as this, to not hook up the heater lines so that when valve cover removal is needed for the break-in and initial lashings that I do not need to drain the core and make a coolant/water mess everywhere.


When I got the heater box off, I started the engine up - There was oil up there at the top, but it was spurting out the rearmost rocker shaft stud.. creating a pretty substantial rocker shaft leak so that the oil could not get to the rocker arms up past cylinder #5.

Pheww! I was relieved. I corrected my dumbassery this time with minimal amounts of depression or self-loathing. A quick tightening up of that rearmost rocker shaft bolt and bam - Oil pressure to all rockers!
I let the engine run and warm up, then set the hot lash.

So Timing, Idle, and Lash are all set. The next tuning task will be to get the O2 gauge on there and start tuning the PV and Jets on the little Holley 4 barrel - Or possibly trade it for an Edelbrock AFB 500.

Once I got the rocker cover screwed back on, then I set up the shop for a rough drivable alignment.
I was able to get -0.75°Camber on the right, which is what I wanted, but I struggled to get any negative Camber on the left side. Maybe -0.125° was all I could get.

Caster was set at +4.5° for both sides.
Toe at -1/16" toe in.

We shall see if the steering wheel is anywhere near straight.

it seems that I will have to install some Moog "Problem Solver" Upper Control Arm Bushings on the left side only. I had to do this same thing on my '69 Dart to get the camber in the negative range where I wanted it with stock-stamped arms and small upper ball joints. The right side seems to fall in place with no offset bushings. I am not sure if that is a coincidence or a trend? I do not have enough A Body data to compare it to as My Road Race '64 Dart has adjustable upper control arms.




Next, fix the rear exhaust, cut and re-angle the end of the tailpipe, and possibly add a rear tailspout.
I have a few more "leakers" on the manifold studs that need to be removed and wrapped excessively with Teflon thread sealer. They might eventually "rust seal themselves together too, but when there is pressure that builds in the cooling system, there are some weepers and leakers that drip onto the block.

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I forgot to mention that I have a Signal-Stat Flarestat Model № 127 as well as some 4 flat Trailer Wiring on order to add the the car later this month!

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Great stuff, Greg! Phew indeed. I spun a rear cam bearing once and that is a bit of work to fix...

For the alignment, I would suggest dialing back caster to +3 deg then put the camber where you want it. You really do not need +4 or more deg of caster on these cars. I have found that going too high (above +5 or 6) is not good and just feels weird with spirited driving, and both Rick Ehrenberg and Sam Powell had similar experiences. I have run really fast laps with +2.5 caster and I can't say I could tell a difference going to +4 or +6.

Looking forward to seeing this thing all together, and getting a ride sometime...

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

The '60 Valiant heater hose routing (water pump -> outward to RH inner fender --> rearward to firewall --> inward to heater fittings) is more service-friendly than the '61-up routing (water pump -->rearward along valve cover to heater fittings). Even with the stock-type routing on my '62, though, I never needed to drain coolant to pull the valve cover. Just a few inches of slack in the heater hoses—the amount you'd want anyhow, to keep from stressing the heater fittings with engine movement—allowed me to push the hoses toward the manifold and roll the valve cover outward-downward over the spark plugs, then pull it out from under the heater box.

Hawt!

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.