1970 Dart Swinger FINALLY UNDERWAY

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wow glad 90% of you is alright i always try and have someone with me just today i took my 7yr old with me to the wreckin yard while i removed a front suspension
 
Hope all is OK. I hope the Mopar gods don't do that to me for trying to put a Ford rear in my Mopar too.
Seriously though, I hope everything works out good for your hand and be careful with the pain pills.
 
Could be! I'll add a second warning for the painkiller's,especially oxy drugs. BE VERY CAREFULL. Highly addictive stuff,and only works well in the first few month's of taking it. After that it loses effectivness. You probably wont need the pain killers more than a week for that hand,I hope!

I was reminded of the time I knocked over my 8 1/4 m body diff. It too was on jackstands,and I swore to make a mobile cradle for the next time. Jackstands are great for supporting a car,but maybe not so great for diff's..
 
Starting to regain some feeling in the tip of my finger, more of a stinging numbness than anything, feels like my finger is asleep still can't feel pressure but it's definitely an improvement.

In other news I grabbed a holley carb off ebay for $15, it's a 600cfm 4160 that I will need to rebuild but it's complete and in decent shape. Vacuum secondaries and a manual choke. I have two other incomplete carbs in the garage that are the same model so I'm going to use the spare main bodies to experiment with grinding the choke horn off and using a die grinder to replicate the smoothed out funnel shape of a demon. Been wondering if maybe a 650 or a 750 might be more appropriate but the formula I used gave my 597cfm so I might as well give the 600 a shot and see how it runs. I don't want to over carb it since throttle response will be important for autoX
 
I'm glad that you are getting some feeling back. That's good news. I have a few of those holley carbs laying around too. It's nice to have parts.
 
Yeah I just ordered the rebuild kit that I need, going to get some extra jets too just in case I need to change them.

Put in the orders for the last of the parts I need to complete the engine, not a lot but some small stuff. Should have some boxes coming with my windage tray, valve spring retainers and keepers, new melling intake/exhaust valves, oil pump drive, and deep sump pickup. I discovered that my block has already had the oil pickup passage drilled out and tapped for the 1/2in hemi thread pickup. I'm going to have to plug or weld up the holes drilled in my 7qt pan from when it was used with an external oil pickup.
 
More boxes arrived today! Just waiting on one last box from 440source with my windage tray, pickup, and pilot bushing. Update on the finger, going in for another surgery this coming thursday, a lot of the flesh around the bone didn't survive and the doc needs to put me under so he can see what he has left to work with, wish me luck! Not lettin' it get me down, I still got a car to finish and now it owes me. :burnout:

What could be in these?

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Surprise! Lots of stuff!

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Melling intake valves and comp locks.

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Accel 8mm wire set, cut to fit. Will fit well with EVERYTHING else in my ignition system also being Accel and yellow.

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The air cleaner decal I ebay'd is surprisingly an actual mopar piece. Interesting.

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The new to me holley 4160 and super coil, 140001 for a points ignition, got the correct .85ohm ballast with my other order. Carb will need a rebuild and I'm tossing around the idea of milling off the choke.

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So today was a pretty un-productive day. Just got back from a week in the hospital yesterday so I figured I'd get something done on the car. Two friends dropped by and all we succeeded in doing was sitting around in the garage for a few hours BSing and talking about what needed to be done on the car. Sometimes I think my friends still need parental supervision, found an old knife in a tool box and the first thing he does is try to toss it at a log outside like a throwing knife, only for it to stick straight in the side of my recycling bin! I almost split my sides at the look on his face. :joker: Had another good laugh when my other pal scraped his fender on the side of my garage on the way out, at least it was a beater explorer. We weren't even drinking either! :angel8:

When all is said and done I did succeed in putting in my order to summit, bought a set of 450lb QA1 coils and strange engineering coilover shocks, as well as front and rear hotchkis sway bar kits. I chose to spend the extra bucks for the hotchkis bars because I really love the engineering that goes into them, they're very well thought out and I like the beefy mounting points they use front and rear.
 
Haha, pretty much. Having one finger all wrapped up makes more difficult to get work done because I have to be careful not to hit or on anything or get it dirty, and we all it's impossible to not knock your knuckles or get your hands greasy with these cars! So I just have more time so spend getting all the rest of my parts together, lots of orders!
 
My monthly christmas has arrived! Oh boy!

Don't know if anyone caught my thread in the BB section but I over filed a piston ring because I didn't know how quick the file was cutting. Should have been more careful, $26 for a new single ring isn't all that bad though and it was a good learning experience.

Small box has my new ring filer so I can actually do it correctly this time around, won't have the new ring until after june 4th though because it has to be special ordered by summit through federal mogul. I'm just glad I didn't have to buy a whole new ring set or I would not have been a happy camper. No picture of the intake/valley pan gasket and facing gaskets but they were in the big box too.

I want to un-box the sway bars soooo badly and take a look at them but I know once they are sans-box I'll just end having a hard time finding a place to put them.... I'm going to do it anyway.

I've also got like 15 summit stickers now.... more wallpaper for the toolbox lol

Hotchkis bars are 1" rear adjustable and 1.5" front. Looking through all the different sway bar options I liked these the best. It was between these or the Hellwig pieces and the Hotchkis bars won out because of the rear bar's mounting system, I really like the weld on brackets instead of drilling my subframe. They're very beefy. My explorer has smaller sway bars but I've gotta take that 383 into account. :burnout: Glad I pulled the trigger on this purchase after staring at them for weeks on the summit site, I'm very pleased. As soon as my adjustable strut rods and tubular UCAs come in I'll have my front end complete.

Decided for good that I'm going to run leafs on the back instead of putting in a tri-4 link, for now. I've got a few guys in my unit telling me that my leaf springs won't be able to out-corner their 90's rice-rockets and I plan to show 'em up some american iron. :glasses7: Current plan for the rear is to put in the adjustable sway bar, I'm going have my stock 5 leaf springs re-arched and flip the front shackles so I can get the rear down near the same height as the front. Debating whether or not to toy around with a panhard rod or watts link back there but I don't know if I want to add any more bars cluttered under there. Any suggestions on a good shock for the rear?

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Strange single adjustable coilover shocks to go with badarts front end parts, 450lb/in QA1 springs. Total is going to be 10in collapsed and 13.84in extended, excited to test fit the wheels it should have a mean stance. When I'll be running it around on steelies with center caps for now because it's what I've got but in the future when I have the bucks I'd like to get some nice lightweight aluminum wheels. I'm a sucker for aluminum 5 spoke wheels, simple, light, and do their job, I know you usually see these on imports but if I find the right one I think I could make it fit nicely I've seen a few cars on here that pull it off.

When I get full use of my hand back I'm gonna have a lot of work to do!!

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Sounds like you've got quite the game plan. I'm looking forward to seeing how your front suspension turns out. I may convert mine to coil overs down the road if I ever decide to run a big block or go the pro touring route.

Keep me in the loop and let me know if you need a HAND around the garage.... see what I did there???
 
If you're still looking for pictures of a F4 Dart, PM and I'll send you several of my car
 
Progress with the engine today! Got the all the piston rings filed save for one that I'm waiting for. Crank is in, plastigaged the mains and set the rear main seal in. Was plenty liberal with the RTV on that cap. I will not be surprised if it leaks anyway lol. Should have the pistons plugged in by the end of the night. :happy1:

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Pistons in! Got a nice surprise once they were installed, I knew the block had been decked but I didn't know how much. It's been zero decked, pistons sitting nice and flush at TDC, should be good for compression.

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Yummy ,a zero deck motor!! Your gonna love it. Throttle response is sharp,idle always sounds soooooo crisp! Then you step on the throttle and get this amazing BARK!!!

I will be building a zero deck motor with my 451.

:blob:
 
Yeah I'm really excited to see how it will perform under the pedal! Though I would still like to bring compression up a bit higher, right now it'll be at 9.3:1 I'd like to get it up to 9.5 and was thinking I could just have the heads shaved a bit. Right now I have a pair of open chamber 906 heads, I'd prefer to keep them if only because they've already had port work done on them before I got a hold of them. Anybody have ideas how much I could reasonably shave off the heads?
 
SHE AIN'T DEAD YET!

Well I haven't moved much on my project in probably 3 months since I was on off work on medical for a while and ended up getting in a rut of discouragement on my car. Now that I've got money coming in again and I've been getting my energy back and my drive to finish things up.

Just got these babies back from the shop, crank polished out to fix the spots I knicked and the heads are all done. :glasses7: Machinist said he hadn't seen engle racing parts come through his shop in a long time :burnout:

We were initially going to use a set of 440 source spring retainers but couldn't get the correct installed height and seat pressure out of them. I ended up pulling a set off of a pair of stock heads I had lying around and that got us withing 10lbs of recommended. I had hardened seats installed, a slightly larger exhaust valve, 3-angle, valve guides machined for new seals, a little bit of bowl work, and resurfaced. I'd say I did quite good for $500, he had originally quoted me roughly $460 for the work but it ended up being at $613 total. I had just mentioned it as a side comment asking what had brought the price up and the owner immediately offered to "split the difference" at $500, a bit more than a split I'd say and just another reason why this guy has my business forever.

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Moving right along, I got the nice clean, freshly polished crank back in. Pistons will get done tomorrow and I'm damn sure they will have rubber over the rod bolts this time. :happy1: Then I went of to clean up my rockers getting ready to put them on my fresh heads. That's my high tech parts washing system complete with my screwdriver to stir the muck stew. By parts washer I mean "great way to get mild chemical burns and sometimes it cleans stuff." :cheers:

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I have the same parts cleaner works good in a pinch and it stores well lol.I use mineral spirits,cleans gunk with no "oh I need some water to get this cleaner off my hand".Motor is coming along nicly.
 
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