I had to turn it around so I drove it up to the cul-de-sac and back down into the garage. I took some pictures while it was out:







The passenger rear 1/4 has a small wave in the body line, but I am not going to stress it.

On a side note, the car starts much better now that it has gas and a fully charged battery.

Now it is time to get the brackets for the taillights welded in place, deal with the slight deformity in the passenger side tail light area, and move on to the mechanical projects.

(1) replace the gears in the rear axle with 3.2 gears. The old 2.2 gears and carrier need to come out so I will need to teach myself how to set up an 8 1/4 rear axle

(2) replace the worn out original four leaf rear springs with a pair of original 1974 six leaf HD rear springs

(3) finish the front end rebuild It needs the tie rod ends replaced and an alignment. Everything else is done. I will be looking for suggestions for alignment specs that will improve handling in a stock suspension.

(4) get the rest of the body ready for paint. Strip it to a shell and sand

(5) prep the front fenders for painting. Surface rust, minor dents, etc…

(6) Clean the engine and engine bay. Get engine bay ready for paint, re-gasket the whole engine and find out what is leaking on the trans.

(7) paint

(8) rewire whole car. Relays, ground loop, etc…

(9) repaint and reinstall motor

(10) repair the interior. Weld up brackets for the Sebring seats, wire in the brain box for the Sebring seats, get seats reupholstered

(11) repair the AC. Get the factory AC back up to working condition. Replace the compressor with a high efficiency Sanden unit, if possible. Replace the condenser with a parallel flow unit, if possible.

(12) install a stereo

(13) somewhere in there replace/repair the power steering pump and possibly the gearbox. Something leaks.

(14) fix the fuel gauge

(15) Fix whatever else crops up…….

reed,
The car is coming along real nice and its gonna be a nice cruiser. I vote for a Dart power bulge hood though. The car definitely has a mix of the coolest a-body bits! what are you calling it? Dartster? Demonart?

Thanks! I don't know about the power bulge hood. After seeing the recent thread about the D150 with the m90 Eaton supercharger my brother and I have decided to build a blown motor for the slant and have the scoop and blower poking out of the hood like Mad Max. I wouldn't want to cut up a power bulge hood for a blower.

As far as a name we don't have one. My brother had thought about D3- a Dodge Dart Duster, but then I remembered the Mighty Ducks movies and how D3 was the name of the third movie in the franchise. We'll see what name we come up with.

If we ever get this thing done I will have to bring it out to the track just to see how it does in the 1/4 mile.

Oh, yeah, while I was trying to get the car started at Maaco there wa an old timer creeping around the shop. He bought over a Craftsman jump starting machine and we got to talking about slants. He used to build fiberglass race car body panels and would haul them around inside and on top of his old 60 or 61 Valiant wagon powered by a 170! He said the 170 was completely gutless. I think that if he was building race cars back in the 60s then his frame of reference is slightly skewed. He also told me about the hopped up Ford 300 he put in a 56 Ford he used to own. Good times.

I don't blame you then if you are going that route with the engine/blower, but they do look really tough! kinda like a mini road runner.
His 170 may have been gutless but it was as reliable as the sun and he had good taste in cars. Since it was his work car, I am sure it didn't get any attention...boo hoo.
I'm hoping to have a lively 170 in my '60 Valiant! progress is slow but steady like your brothers car!
Definitely a neat/creative build!

At least the old guy acknowledged that he had spoken to slant racers who liked the 170 because it could rev up to 7 or 8k. I like the 170, I think it has lots of potential.

Hopefully the economy will pick up and we will have more money to get this Duster project moving forward faster. Fingers crossed!

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old hemi's and old mopar's forever

Well, nothing has happened since I dragged it home from the body shop, so there has been nothing to update. Plus my wire feed welder died and I need to get it fixed before I can weld in the tail light brackets. I figure I might as well upgrade to MIG while I am working on the welder since it is able to have MIG gas welding.

Meanwhile, the economy has slowed even more and my income has slowed as well. I am actually looking for a second line of work in order to pay the mortgage. Soooooo, with all that has been going on, wrenching on my brother's project car is not at the top of my to-do list. Then again, I have no immediately due work right now, so I might head out to the garage and at least pressure wash the engine bay or something that won't cost much money.

If you would like to donate money in order to receive more updates, I will be happy to give you my PO box mailing address so you can send me a money order, the more zeros the better.

A little bit of movement on the project. This is the weekend for at least upgrading the original worn out four leaf rear springs to a set of priginal six leaf springs I picked up cheap. New bushings will be installed when the new/used leafs go in.

Also, my brother's girlfriend works at a shop that does full custom fabrication, including a CNC machine! He is going to se if the shop will modify the Ford 300 distributor to fit in the slant six block for him for free! That would be VERY cool since that is the hardest part of the whole Ford fuel injection conversion I have been planning. He is going to take a core slant lean-burn distributor and my Ford 300 distributorup and talk to them about it next week.

We also got the complete rear axle reabuild kit from Randy's Ring and Pinion and will be doing the rear axle gear changeonver spoon, hopefully. I am very nervous about it since I have never really done any in-depth work on a rear axle before and I know setting the pinion depth is tricky. We'll see how it goes.

PROGRESS!!!!

The correct bushings arrived from Summit this afternoon so my brother came over and we swapped out the old worn out four leaf spring packs for the old not-worn-out six leaf spring packs. I can already feel that the back end is stiffer.

The next small project is rebuilding the rear axle and switching the gears from 2.2 to 3.2. THat will happen in a couple weeks, hopefully.

It sure is nice to be moving forward on this project again. The goal is to get it back on the road by the end if the year. Fingers crossed.

UPDATE! Well, it won't be back on the road y the end of the year, but we are moving forward. The rear axle housing is completely stripped down now. We got new axle bearings and seal installed in the housing, but were stalled by a pinion bearing that refused to come off with the cheap Harbor Freight bearing splitter set i got. I stopped when the tool started to break.

So this week I need to find a shop that will remove and reinstall the carrier bearings and pull the old pinion bearing. I also need to order a setup bearing since I confirmed that the original 2.2 gearset pinion has NO shims under it. I know I will be pulling the carrier and pinion multiple times to get the shims set right.

No exciting pictures to post, sorry. I will post more as it happens.

UPDATE 3-1-15

Well, much has happened since the last update. The 2.2 axle is no longer in the picture. After messing around with trying to change the 2.2 gear set to a 3.5 gear set, I finally decided I didn't know what I was doing and found another axle in Oregon.

A few weeks ago I made the ten hour round trip down to Umatilla, OR and picked up what was sold to me as a 1974 Dodge Dart 8 1/4 rear axle with 3.21 gears. I even got the correct 8 1/4 axle shock plates.

Today my brother and I finally got around to replacing the aborted 2.2 axle experiment with this factory original 3.21 8 1/4 axle. We wanted to keep the huge 11 inch drum brakes that were on the 2.2 axle, and to get the ten inch drum brakes off the 3.21 axle. Well, imagine my surprise when I pulled the cover off the 3.21 axle and saw this:



I didn't know it was a sure-grip, but I'll take it!

The rest of the swap went fairly smoothly. The brakes bolted on the new axle, the new axle sat on the springs fine, and the driveshaft hooked up great. For the first time in several months the Duster is back sitting on its own suspension with the rear wheels on.

A happy day indeed.

So, the rear axle and suspension on the Duster is now updated to the most heavy duty factory components possible- six leaf springs, 8 1/4 axle, sure-grip differential, and new heavy duty rubber bushings. Now on to fixing the trans leak, power steering leak, and the other png list of things that need fixing. It is good to finally be making progress again.

If you do and you don't have the big disc brakes up front, you need a prop valve to the rear brakes to slow things down a bit... A-body stock brake systems tend to lock the rears slightly ahead of the fronts, so with brig drums and no matching 11" drums up front or big discs to even things out, the rears will lock up and it just gets "fun" after that.... and a sure grip will make things really fun if you have not so ideal road conditions...

SCORE! on the sure-grip, Reed!

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"Louise", a 1976 Dart Custom project, (now sadly reverted to being just an "organ donor" to our other project Darts.)

Defintely food for thought. I swapped the front to standard BBP discs a few years ago, and when I rebuilt the 11 inch drums I used wheel cylinders with a larger bore in order to reduce the lockup issue. At least I think they were larger. I got advice from Dan about what wheel cylinders to use to reduce the rear lockup. An adjustable prop valve is something I will keep in mind once the car gets on the road and I begin fine tuning the brakes and suspension.

I was pretty surprised to see the sure grip. I have never had a car with any kind of non-peg-leg diff before. I need to get some of the correct friction modifier for the sure grip. Right now the diff is filled with synthetic hypoid gear oil only. I will say that it is MUCH easier to get the c-clips off of axles in a non-sure-grip differential.

smaller wheel cylinders will reduce drum braking power.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes