2nd and 5th Owner. 70 Dart Resto-Mod

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plumkrazee70

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I have been lurking here for a long time, and figured it is time to start a build thread. Sorry for the long post, but I think it is worth a read. :)

I am the 2nd and 5th owner of this 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger.

I bought it the first time in 2001 (I was 14) for $400, it was my first car. It was dark green and sporting a 318, 7.25 and column shift. I quickly threw headers and a 4 bbl on it.

I drove it all through high school and for my senior project my dad and I did a scuff and spray paint job on it. After high school I wanted to put a 440 into it, and got done with the short block but couldn't afford to finish it, especially right out of high school. I didn't know what I wanted to do life wise so I eventually sold the motor and then lost interest in the car.

My brother asked to buy it so I figured better than it just sitting there. He threw an 8 3/4 in but left the 318 untouched. A few years went by and I ran into my brother and asked where the car was and apparently he never insured the car and got it impounded during a routine traffic stop. He didn't have the funds to get it out of the impound so there it sat and was eventually sold at auction.

Fast forward to 2005, I was on my way home from work and saw the car for sale in my however, the guy that bought it from auction wanted $4k for it. I tried to get him to come down, telling him the story, but no dice. After that I never saw it again.

Fast forward to 2011, my wife and I bought our first house and while we were unpacking I found a copy of the registration for the car. I took that as a sign that I should see where it ended up.

I had the VIN # and the plate # from the registration and an old poloroid sporting the way it looked when I sold it. So I posted an ad on the forums, craigslist and social media. No real hits, until one day someone called me up from Georgia and said that a friend of his saw the ad and realized it was his brother's car and to call me.

The guy said his brother bought it for $1500 and drove it up to Portland (5 hours north of me) So now came the tricky part, the guy that called me was in the military, so couldn't confirm if his brother still had it, but knew for sure he did within the last year. He gave me a number to call, however when I called it turned out that the owner of the car had just gone to jail and sold the car before he went in.

BUT he was due to be released soon. So I waited for him to call me back so I could get a lead on who he sold it to. He eventually called and turned out he had sold the car months earlier, so I was barely too late. He described it and sent me pictures and it looked identical as to when I saw it last (2005).

Now I was tasked to find the new owner, which proved to be the most difficult of all because as it it turns out the current owner of the car just went to prison on some massive drug raid charge. The previous owner and current owner were friends. I looked him up in the inmate system and he wasn't getting out anytime soon and the previous owner was not to associate with anyone of his past, so for all he knew it was still parked at the dude's house.

So from then on all I had was a name of the current owner, so I scoured Facebook and found his profile and his friends, non of whom returned any of my messages. So I searched Google for weeks and somehow found his previous landlord who gave me the place where his girlfriend worked. I called there and left her a message and sure enough she called back. She had the car in her possession and was willing to sell it, but for a hefty price.

She wanted $5k for it (no doubt seeing dollar signs from the story) I drove up to see it anyway and talked her down to $3k figured it still had a running motor, 8 3/4, MSD ignition, demon carb, etc. Some really good parts and the body was fairly straight minus the lower quarter rust. So we towed it home.

So that is my story. Now onto the build.

The plan has always to build it the way I want it, nothing too crazy just a fun street car that was comfortable and looked good. Here is how it looked the day we brought it home.

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The 318 was pretty tired but still ran fine. The drum brakes were shot. The goal was to first just to get it running well and driving. That didn't last long when I was browsing CL and found a complete 340 core for $300. So I quickly snagged that and headed to the machine shop to check it out.

It had been bored .030 over previously and would need to go to .040 over to clean it up. The crank and rods were in decent enough shape to clean up and reuse. The heads however, were cracked. In the mean time I was tearing out the 318 and realized that it had a set of J heads on it. Intrigued I took a closer look and they were the 2.02 intake heads. So I had the machine shop go over them and they were ironically freshened up not long ago, so I went with them as is.

So I picked up some Keith Black Hypers, a RPM Air Gap, the big valve heads and a relatively small cam (Comp 268H) 218 @.050 .454 lift. I was afraid to go too big here, and back then I just wanted it on the road. I realize now that I might have left some power on the table.

Here are some pics of it going together. Sorry they are kinds out of order.

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With the motor nearly complete, it was time to drop it into the car. I don't think I have pics of the 318 coming out, but here is the 340 going in.

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I broke in the cam and it was alive and running. The brakes were really bad and would only stop the car from an idle and putting your foot through the floor. So I pushed the car out front and washed it up. That 10+ Year old paint really popped in the sun. :) It was definitely a 20ft paint job though.

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Now that engine was running. It was on to the brakes.

I did a scarebird front disc conversion. Pretty neat as it keeps the drum knuckles and allows you to keep your sbp wheels.

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The car had Rally wheels on the front, but the back ones were some Les Schwab specials. I was talking to my dad about it and he said he had the matching rear set. I guess my brother got a flat and messed up the front wheels so he bought bought the set of Rallys and just put the fronts on.

So I got all 4 cleaned, blasted and painted with Duplicolor Hyper Silver. Not a bad match to Mopar Argent. I wanted the centers to be darker, so I opted for VHT grey metallic. I think they turned out pretty well. It still surprises me how good the body looks in pictures, in the sun. lol. Just shows you that pictures don't always tell the whole story. :)

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Looking good and glad to see you found your car, Are you going keep moving along and restore everything.

Jeff
 
Next on the list was to tackle the interior. When I got it had plastic racing seats, the headliner was crumbling, the carpet was toast and someone had cut up the dash. So I gutted the interior and used hush mat (sound and heat dampener) under the headliner and on the floor. I also got some jute and glued it to the hush mat under the headliner and the carpet.

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The dash was also cut to **** and a complete mess wiring wise. Since the market doesn't offer a dash insert for the 70 model, I found a dash from a 74 Duster that had the square instrument cluster. So I painted the dash and got an plastic insert and some round gauges with white led's to back light it. I also had the dash pad recovered by a local shop.

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So the car was pretty much set as far as running and driving. The trouble was the suspension was so worn out, it was actually a bit nerve racking to drive. I admit I didn't even think about rebuilding the front suspension when I did the brakes. (Live and learn, I guess). So I decided that if I was gonna drive this thing, I better start rebuilding the front suspension. So I started with the front. Pulled the motor to get the K-frame painted up as well.

I used Rustoleum enamel primer and paint thined 15% with Acetone on all the parts. They came out great.

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Since everything was out I made a conscious decision to repaint the engine bay. I had always planned on repainting the entire car at some point and I figured I might as well start now while everything is out. So I sat down with a lot of motivation from this forum to do it right and do it once. Ignore the Kmember in the pictures, that one came with the car that the first owner modified to fit a v8, it was originally a slant car from the factory. The painted K is from a V8 car.

The paint is TCP Global Plum Crazy Metallic Single Stage with their Expoxy Primer.

So here is how the bay progressed and turned out.

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After that I knew if I was going to go all in I might as well go all in. I borrow a rotisserie from my dad and cleaned up the underside of all the undercoating and sprayed it with flat black Rustoleum enamel.

Worst job ever... lol.

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I installed some US car Tool Sub Frame connectors. They took a bunch of triming with a grinder but finally got the fit well enough to weld em in.

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Now it is time to fix the rusty quarters, but I'am a little nervous to tackle that so I cleaned up the motor and changed the color to Hemi orange using POR 15 engine enamel. Also got my hood latch panel primed and painted as well.

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The next thing to work on is the rust in the lower quarters. I will post pics of my progress.

Feel free to ask questions, comment, etc. :)
 
Vary nice, I guess I should have said redo everything to your liking! Keep up the good work you have some serious skills.

Jeff
 
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