72 Scamp 440 Build
- Thread starter Jesse Martin
- Start date
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Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
She is a Australian Shepard Rottweiler mix.
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
Have got a fair amount done on the car in the last two months. Tonight got the subframe connectors from Magnum Force installed, They fit very nice only had to do a little trimming for the brake and fuel lines.
The biggest improvement that is the new rear end, a Moser Muscle Pak Dana 60. It has a 35 Spline Truetrac 3-Series with 3.73:1 ratio gears.
Here it is in the shipping container.
Out with the old in with the new, a side by side of the stock rear with the Dana.
Along with the new rear new stock height leaf springs and shocks were installed.
The gas tank and new 3/8 lines from Classic Industries are in along with new anti-squeak pads for the tank, the lines fit great, made the install process much faster than custom lines.
The biggest improvement that is the new rear end, a Moser Muscle Pak Dana 60. It has a 35 Spline Truetrac 3-Series with 3.73:1 ratio gears.
Here it is in the shipping container.
Out with the old in with the new, a side by side of the stock rear with the Dana.
Along with the new rear new stock height leaf springs and shocks were installed.
The gas tank and new 3/8 lines from Classic Industries are in along with new anti-squeak pads for the tank, the lines fit great, made the install process much faster than custom lines.
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
Today was the day finally got to take the car around the block, not much more till it's done, mainly just body and interior and it's finished. The car has a great stance, even though it took forever to get the wheels painted It really sets it off.
The process of getting the wheels finished took much longer than expected, I initially bought 15x8 wheels and 225 tires and after all of the work getting them painted I forgot to take in account that the Dana came with larger drums so they did not fit what so ever even if the lip was rolled it still would have rubbed... so I bit the bullet and just got another two 15x7s and run the 205 tire same as the front so I finally got around to painting them and now it sits on its own wheels after a year and a half on blocks. I'm glad I stuck with body color on the wheels. The Winchester grey form PPG looks great.
While waiting to get the wheels finished I decided to get the center console finished. I cleaned the chrome up and it looks good, not perfect but from outside of the car it looks like new. I got the new wood vinyl stickers from eBay and they completely changed the look of it. I originally wanted to have the stock Dart GT tach but seeing how much people are trying to get for them that way out of the question so an Autometer half sweep will do.
I wired the tach and console lights together and used a plug so the console can be removed easily
After installing and removing it the console base got pretty scratched up and since you couldn't see the texture because of the multiple layers of paint, a paint stripper was used to get rid of all the layers instead of sanding turns out that the console was originally white. Then a few coats of Trim black were used and now it looks like new.
Thinking that I was finally done with the dash I had buttoned it all up then the speedometer decided it wanted to break so out it came, that is the fifth time it's had to come out, luckily I had a replacement speedo but it had the wrong mileage, because the drivetrain is all new I popped the odometer out and set it to zero instead of the 86k that the car originally had.
The process of getting the wheels finished took much longer than expected, I initially bought 15x8 wheels and 225 tires and after all of the work getting them painted I forgot to take in account that the Dana came with larger drums so they did not fit what so ever even if the lip was rolled it still would have rubbed... so I bit the bullet and just got another two 15x7s and run the 205 tire same as the front so I finally got around to painting them and now it sits on its own wheels after a year and a half on blocks. I'm glad I stuck with body color on the wheels. The Winchester grey form PPG looks great.
While waiting to get the wheels finished I decided to get the center console finished. I cleaned the chrome up and it looks good, not perfect but from outside of the car it looks like new. I got the new wood vinyl stickers from eBay and they completely changed the look of it. I originally wanted to have the stock Dart GT tach but seeing how much people are trying to get for them that way out of the question so an Autometer half sweep will do.
I wired the tach and console lights together and used a plug so the console can be removed easily
After installing and removing it the console base got pretty scratched up and since you couldn't see the texture because of the multiple layers of paint, a paint stripper was used to get rid of all the layers instead of sanding turns out that the console was originally white. Then a few coats of Trim black were used and now it looks like new.
Thinking that I was finally done with the dash I had buttoned it all up then the speedometer decided it wanted to break so out it came, that is the fifth time it's had to come out, luckily I had a replacement speedo but it had the wrong mileage, because the drivetrain is all new I popped the odometer out and set it to zero instead of the 86k that the car originally had.
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
Well, it's been a year since I last made a post, a lot has happened since then after the last post there were problems with the project that slowed me down and problems in life as well this is what happened to the car. First I took the car to my school and did the alignment, then proceed to dive it 1.5 miles to the exhaust shop then there was the first big surprise... once the exhaust was on you could hear a loud top end noise it turned out that one of the rocker adjustment screws had come undone and allowed the pushrod to hit the rocker throwing aluminum through the head then into the oil, it was unknown how long this had been happening this put a pretty big kibosh on my plans.
To try and fix it oil was used to flush all to the chips into the pan to be drained most of it was removed but when the filter was inspected there was a lot of aluminum in it. To try and flush the rest of the system I proceeded to do an oil and filter change over every 50 miles this was done twice and with the last one there was no aluminum left in the engine, but the damage done was unknown.
Then once my faith in the engine was restored the second surprise happened... slowly there was more and more smoke and oil in the exhaust before the cause for that problem was found the third surprise happened... the one freeze plug that had given me trouble getting it in right blew out while testing how well the car could cool...
At this point, I was done messing around the engine had to come out. The disassembly on the engine went smoothly, the aluminum had done only a little damage to one of the rod bearings nothing major but I wasn't taking any more chances and decided to just put new bearings in any way, better to be safe than sorry. Then came the heads the reason for the oil and smoke was because over half of the valve guides were leaking oil into the cylinders at a high rate at this point, I was done with the cheap crap from 440 source I threw the POS heads and rockers away and upgraded to Trick Flow 240 heads and Hughes roller rockers, with the new parts the refresh on the engine went smoothly and everything was cleaned multiple times to make sure that no aluminum was left. I'm very happy how it turned out I'm much more confident in it now not having to worry about cheaply made parts.
Here is the engine as it sits now until the bodywork is complete
To try and fix it oil was used to flush all to the chips into the pan to be drained most of it was removed but when the filter was inspected there was a lot of aluminum in it. To try and flush the rest of the system I proceeded to do an oil and filter change over every 50 miles this was done twice and with the last one there was no aluminum left in the engine, but the damage done was unknown.
Then once my faith in the engine was restored the second surprise happened... slowly there was more and more smoke and oil in the exhaust before the cause for that problem was found the third surprise happened... the one freeze plug that had given me trouble getting it in right blew out while testing how well the car could cool...
At this point, I was done messing around the engine had to come out. The disassembly on the engine went smoothly, the aluminum had done only a little damage to one of the rod bearings nothing major but I wasn't taking any more chances and decided to just put new bearings in any way, better to be safe than sorry. Then came the heads the reason for the oil and smoke was because over half of the valve guides were leaking oil into the cylinders at a high rate at this point, I was done with the cheap crap from 440 source I threw the POS heads and rockers away and upgraded to Trick Flow 240 heads and Hughes roller rockers, with the new parts the refresh on the engine went smoothly and everything was cleaned multiple times to make sure that no aluminum was left. I'm very happy how it turned out I'm much more confident in it now not having to worry about cheaply made parts.
Here is the engine as it sits now until the bodywork is complete
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
Once the engine was finished I took on the project of converting the dash from standard to Rallye that process can be seen here Standard To Rallye Dash
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
The car is now fully stiped and ready for bodywork. I ended up deciding I would much rather just remove the old paint to make 100% that there would be no contamination or problems, then that exposed a large problem... both the passenger and driver quarters that I had thought were straight turned out to be covered in accident damage that was partially repaired and some rust on the driver side both were covered in about 1/2 an inch of Bondo. I did not get any picture of the driverside before I started repairs, I tried my hand at doing the metalwork but as never doing it before and because of the amount of damage it was not made better, so I decided to just replace the quarter and it was not as hard as I expected. The AMD panel fit like a glove and required almost no trimming to fit.
Here it is with the quarter removed, with the correct spot weld drill and a spotweld chisel it did not take much work to remove it
This quarter was the last one I could find for 72 and up cars in the whole US, it seems as AMD has discontinued it. The fitment was perfect and attached very easily.
Before the panel was installed I wanted to apply the undercoating like from the factory, I tried to copy the pattern as close as possible from the original fender and I also painted it body color so I would not rust in the future, as for the undercoating I used the very good factory-style undercoating from Restorations by Rick Kreuziger
Here it is with the quarter removed, with the correct spot weld drill and a spotweld chisel it did not take much work to remove it
This quarter was the last one I could find for 72 and up cars in the whole US, it seems as AMD has discontinued it. The fitment was perfect and attached very easily.
Before the panel was installed I wanted to apply the undercoating like from the factory, I tried to copy the pattern as close as possible from the original fender and I also painted it body color so I would not rust in the future, as for the undercoating I used the very good factory-style undercoating from Restorations by Rick Kreuziger
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
After the quarter was installed and a lot of work trying to remove multiple layers of old paint I finally decided to just have the car sandblasted, this was done with Dustless Blasting and it came out very nice for only $800. The most annoying part I the amount of sand in every nook and cranny you could think of and it all needed to be removed fast so it could be primed before it flash rusted. I must have removed about 10lbs of blasting media from the car and even to this day there is still some coming out of small areas but it was all worth it to have a solid starting point for the body and paint
After the car was premiered I started on the passenger quarter as it was the second most damaged panel, This process took much longer than expected as I had never worked filler on this large of a panel before. The damage had already been brought out as much as I could have done but the body line had to be recreated, this was a learning experience with a lot of trial and errors, I finally got it down and now I think it looks very good and straight. The lifesaver during this was getting a straight line air sander, best $100 you can spend if it was not for that the sanding would have taken months to do.
The area that needed work
High Build Primer and sanding still needs to be done but here it is after just the filler work
Now, the post is up to date the last thing finished was the passenger door, now onto the fender then to the other side.
After the car was premiered I started on the passenger quarter as it was the second most damaged panel, This process took much longer than expected as I had never worked filler on this large of a panel before. The damage had already been brought out as much as I could have done but the body line had to be recreated, this was a learning experience with a lot of trial and errors, I finally got it down and now I think it looks very good and straight. The lifesaver during this was getting a straight line air sander, best $100 you can spend if it was not for that the sanding would have taken months to do.
The area that needed work
High Build Primer and sanding still needs to be done but here it is after just the filler work
Now, the post is up to date the last thing finished was the passenger door, now onto the fender then to the other side.
Scamp Rhonda
Well-Known Member
Nice to here your making good progress. A lot of time and energy goes into bringing these treasures back to life. Good luck! Steve
famous bob
mopar misfit
A lot of good work , but I think u screwed up, just like I did , you didnt mini tub it !!
Wish i had !!
Jesse Martin
Title Don't need no stinkin title!
I was really thinking of doing that but the rear end had already been built and still brand new and I don't want to spend any more on it lol
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