1972 Canadian H-Code 340 Dart Swinger Special Resto - Finally started!
A little late getting my thread going, I started taking her apart back in late January but here we go. A brief history ( a bit more in some of my previous postings below if your interested ) I bought my Dart in 1979 when I was in high school and it had some definite 70s stuff going on and quite a bit of Smokey Lake Speed equipment on it ( thats for you Cliff ) and a paint scheme that wasnt speaking to me so after studying god knows how many muscle car magazines for several years before getting her I had to put my spin on it as you will see. Now I beg you all to remember 1981 was 34 years ago and we did some strange and dumb *** things that seemed cool at the time and if we were able to hang on to our ride now we get to reverse what we did!
Canadian Dart
History on this Canadian Dart Swinger 340 Special
I drove the car daily in the summer and repainted it black in 1981 then around 1984 parked it inside and it sat on stands and never left the garage again. Then decades later I was surfing the web in 2012 looking for information about Dart Swinger Specials and everything I found said this should be a slanty grocery getter with rubber mat then google spit out this web site called FABO and Bingo here are some postings by a dogged sleuth named Cliff Guinand one city away from me describing my car exactly - Dart Swinger 340 Special, big trans, big diff, hood scoop or scoops, special built for Canadian market only, keep an eye out for these cars.
I zipped out to the garage and pulled my rear seat off looking for my Build Sheet hoping it would confirm what seemed to be true and it was nicely folded between the springs and was in mint condition. As you can see it confirmed all that Cliff stated and also had Special Order box 39 filled in.
Needless to say I finally found some information that made sense of my car and I contacted Cliff to let him know that another one had survived the decades. Not only did I find some great info on FABO but have made some great new friends and their Mopar fanatics as well!!
The goal of this restoration is to take this car back as closely as I can to the way it was delivered to the dealership with one exception. Unfortunately when my experts, Cliff Guinand and Kevin (scatpacker ) came to check out the car they were able to confirm the block I was hoping was the numbers block that I had on a stand wasnt the numbers block. I had put in a new 340 and did a 4 speed conversion back when I painted the car black and the standard really made the car a lot more fun to drive so my intention is to keep it a 4 speed. I spent the last 2 1/2 years collecting most of the parts I need, its astonishing how many things disappeared in the first 7 years the car existed with previous owners. I managed to find what turned out to be the second owner, Morris, thanks to a posting I put on FABO whos in my area and got some information from the two years 1973 to 1975 that he owned the car. This is how the car had been sitting since around 1984
Enough history now my mayaculpa and yep your seeing what you think your seeing, I flared the quarters so I could get some fat tires on, damn 4 inch pattern made me do it, couldnt get any wheels that would work so out come the tin snips and some glass.
Time to get you all caught up on where Ive been since starting and where Im at currently.
Out comes the 80s
Carefully pull the back glass and stash it away in a very safe place!
Then it was time to remove the rest on the interior and carefully clean, label and box every component and nut and bolt with lots of photos, thank god for digital cameras!
Drop my pedal assembly into some Evaporust over night and comes out like new.
Rear diff and assorted stuff came out no problems, not running into to many problems with seized bolts.
I've no longer been Hi jacked! :cheers:
Its time to build my caster system and after giving it some thought I decided to take a bit different approach on these. I wanted them to be more flexible in that I wanted them to support the body the way the suspension did so the body wouldn't sag or flex especially in the back and I wanted them to roll but when Im cutting off panels etc. I wanted the car to sit firmly on the concrete and not move or wiggle around the way the tend to on casters and I wanted to be able to lower or raise the body as much as possible so this is my version of body cart or casters.
These bolt up in the rear using the old leaf springs as support and allows me to use the full depth of the wheel well to raise or lower the car. The casters fold out of the way and lower the car onto the flat rubber pad that grips the floor very well and the car doesn't move at all. I slide in a piece snug fitting tubing that adds some stability but mostly provides a place to jack the car from, its not really necessary and can be removed easily for more access to the underbody and slid back in afterwards. The hinges that hold the casters on allow for them to be removed if they are in your way easily by simply diving the pin out. They seem to work nicely and as you can see I can put the car nearly right on the floor or get it fairly high for working underneath. The front ones lock in the forward position by simply dropping a bolt into place for some control if rolling any distance, meant to add this to the back ones but haven't got around to it. I didnt skimp on the size of the steel as you can probably tell, I didnt want to take any chances. Pretty happy with how they work.
Sent the an assortment of Thermoquad parts, one of which is the numbers correct carb, down to Harms quite a while ago and got back a beautiful brand new looking piece, Thanks Scott, awesome workmanship.
Also restored my grille and some other parts quite awhile ago during the winter before I renovated my garage.
A little late getting my thread going, I started taking her apart back in late January but here we go. A brief history ( a bit more in some of my previous postings below if your interested ) I bought my Dart in 1979 when I was in high school and it had some definite 70s stuff going on and quite a bit of Smokey Lake Speed equipment on it ( thats for you Cliff ) and a paint scheme that wasnt speaking to me so after studying god knows how many muscle car magazines for several years before getting her I had to put my spin on it as you will see. Now I beg you all to remember 1981 was 34 years ago and we did some strange and dumb *** things that seemed cool at the time and if we were able to hang on to our ride now we get to reverse what we did!
Canadian Dart
History on this Canadian Dart Swinger 340 Special
I drove the car daily in the summer and repainted it black in 1981 then around 1984 parked it inside and it sat on stands and never left the garage again. Then decades later I was surfing the web in 2012 looking for information about Dart Swinger Specials and everything I found said this should be a slanty grocery getter with rubber mat then google spit out this web site called FABO and Bingo here are some postings by a dogged sleuth named Cliff Guinand one city away from me describing my car exactly - Dart Swinger 340 Special, big trans, big diff, hood scoop or scoops, special built for Canadian market only, keep an eye out for these cars.
I zipped out to the garage and pulled my rear seat off looking for my Build Sheet hoping it would confirm what seemed to be true and it was nicely folded between the springs and was in mint condition. As you can see it confirmed all that Cliff stated and also had Special Order box 39 filled in.
Needless to say I finally found some information that made sense of my car and I contacted Cliff to let him know that another one had survived the decades. Not only did I find some great info on FABO but have made some great new friends and their Mopar fanatics as well!!
The goal of this restoration is to take this car back as closely as I can to the way it was delivered to the dealership with one exception. Unfortunately when my experts, Cliff Guinand and Kevin (scatpacker ) came to check out the car they were able to confirm the block I was hoping was the numbers block that I had on a stand wasnt the numbers block. I had put in a new 340 and did a 4 speed conversion back when I painted the car black and the standard really made the car a lot more fun to drive so my intention is to keep it a 4 speed. I spent the last 2 1/2 years collecting most of the parts I need, its astonishing how many things disappeared in the first 7 years the car existed with previous owners. I managed to find what turned out to be the second owner, Morris, thanks to a posting I put on FABO whos in my area and got some information from the two years 1973 to 1975 that he owned the car. This is how the car had been sitting since around 1984
Enough history now my mayaculpa and yep your seeing what you think your seeing, I flared the quarters so I could get some fat tires on, damn 4 inch pattern made me do it, couldnt get any wheels that would work so out come the tin snips and some glass.
Time to get you all caught up on where Ive been since starting and where Im at currently.
Out comes the 80s
Carefully pull the back glass and stash it away in a very safe place!
Then it was time to remove the rest on the interior and carefully clean, label and box every component and nut and bolt with lots of photos, thank god for digital cameras!
Drop my pedal assembly into some Evaporust over night and comes out like new.
Rear diff and assorted stuff came out no problems, not running into to many problems with seized bolts.
I've no longer been Hi jacked! :cheers:
Its time to build my caster system and after giving it some thought I decided to take a bit different approach on these. I wanted them to be more flexible in that I wanted them to support the body the way the suspension did so the body wouldn't sag or flex especially in the back and I wanted them to roll but when Im cutting off panels etc. I wanted the car to sit firmly on the concrete and not move or wiggle around the way the tend to on casters and I wanted to be able to lower or raise the body as much as possible so this is my version of body cart or casters.
These bolt up in the rear using the old leaf springs as support and allows me to use the full depth of the wheel well to raise or lower the car. The casters fold out of the way and lower the car onto the flat rubber pad that grips the floor very well and the car doesn't move at all. I slide in a piece snug fitting tubing that adds some stability but mostly provides a place to jack the car from, its not really necessary and can be removed easily for more access to the underbody and slid back in afterwards. The hinges that hold the casters on allow for them to be removed if they are in your way easily by simply diving the pin out. They seem to work nicely and as you can see I can put the car nearly right on the floor or get it fairly high for working underneath. The front ones lock in the forward position by simply dropping a bolt into place for some control if rolling any distance, meant to add this to the back ones but haven't got around to it. I didnt skimp on the size of the steel as you can probably tell, I didnt want to take any chances. Pretty happy with how they work.
Sent the an assortment of Thermoquad parts, one of which is the numbers correct carb, down to Harms quite a while ago and got back a beautiful brand new looking piece, Thanks Scott, awesome workmanship.
Also restored my grille and some other parts quite awhile ago during the winter before I renovated my garage.
