Road Trip !!

-
A week ago I had the wagon out for a spin with my sweetie. We noticed the brakes were starting to make that scrunge-scrunge-scrunge noise so I figured I'd need to open it up fairly soon for a look-see. Then when I dropped her off at her house I noticed green fluid sitting in the bottom of the rim on the right rear wheel. Thinking it's impossible it could be antifreeze I check it out and it's oily. Ugh says I, it's either brake fluid or rear end oil. Time for a brake job so off to NAPA for supplies. And of course, this is all less than a week before the Mopar Nationals at Woodburn, and I'm going to take apart the only running Mopar I own. :BangHead:

* A quick aside, I am getting WAY too old to be doing brakes on the ground but the truck's still hogging the lift so I did it the hard way. Boy am I sore! *

Anyway, I start tearing the brakes apart and look around for the leak and there is none. The inside of the drum, the shoes and hardware, and the backing plates are dry as a popcorn fart. There was still decent meat on the shoes but I decided to do the brakes anyway. Two days later and we've gone from this moderately nasty mess...

20230705_193347.jpg


To this!

20230705_193306.jpg


And as always, my stalwart companion Mr. Spray Paint made his appearance to jazz up the drums. Who doesn't love freshly painted parts?

20230705_193222.jpg


I pulled off the front wheels to make sure there was nothing going on there, and found brand new pads and rotors, no need to touch them. Doing the rears was a good decision, as the scrungey noise went away and it stops smoothly and quietly. And it's done in time to take it to Woodburn, yay!
 
I’ll be looking for the wagon at woodburn. I won’t be driving any Mopars up this year as my 65 Dart transmission sprung a leak.
 
I am happy for you, Zack. I know that you've been looking for awhile.
 
Great looking wagon! The bottle cap hubcaps look 100% better. That color combo screams fire dept. car.
 
Dartsun said:
I’ll be looking for the wagon at woodburn. I won’t be driving any Mopars up this year as my 65 Dart transmission sprung a leak.
Click to expand...
How can you miss it!??.. lol..
I'm not sure if we've met in person?..
I should have my power wagon there...
 
I may be in the minority. I do not like the small hubcaps on anything but police cars. Full wheel covers aren't my favorite either.
I can understand the desire to aim for a certain look though. A car with no fancy chrome trim does look natural with the "dog dish" hubcaps.
 
Same to you, sir! When we get the Darts on the street we need to have a photo shoot. :)
 
It's time for an update on this saga. Since last summer I have driven the car a fair bit, with the only issue having lost the driveshaft on the way home from a car show one day. Oopsie! I guess the 50 year old U-joints can only be ignored for so long before they blow up. That was an easy fix and the car has been out for a bunch of around-town shake down time. No concerns so far.

The next project was the stereo. Or rather, the lack thereof. The car had a very nice AM radio that worked just fine and the speaker was good too. If it wasn't for the fact that AM radio programming is awful, I might have left it alone. However, that was not to be.

The radio is an oddball with both knobs to the left of the faceplate. I found a really slick repro radio that was a full modern unit but looked EXACTLY like the factory AM/FM unit. It was nice but I wound up returning it as it lacked some critical sound shaping capabilities. I then found another one that fit the bill, and also fit the dash.

20240203_210434.jpg


Out with the old............

20240308_214352.jpg


In with the new!

20240311_183443.jpg


Next up was laying all the wiring to the back speakers and the sub.

20240309_193920.jpg


20240309_193928.jpg


The front speaker was a 4x10. I have used the dual-voice coil version before and they sound is pretty good. I wanted better for this car, so it was a pair of 3-1/2" Infinities in an adapter plate instead.

20240316_190649.jpg


I'm still debating on the subwoofer. It's a Rockford 8" ported unit lying in the back foot well. Surprisingly for such a small driver, it puts out decent bass. More test driving will see if it is sufficient at cruising speed with the windows open. If not, there are bigger badder options out there. The wiring needs cleaned up when I get done fiddling with this.

20240408_210348.jpg


The rears are a pair of Focal 6x9's in some boxes from Amazon. It's not ideal but it's good enough - I'm not cutting holes in this car. For sure, they would sound better in the package shelf of a sedan but they are quite good as is.


20240408_210356.jpg


Overall I'm pretty happy with the upgrade. I have AM, FM, CD, BlueTooth, two AUX inputs, lots of power and best of all with the exception of the rear speakers it's pretty low key.

20240408_210338.jpg


Next up is getting the 4-barrel conversion underway.

20240308_213107.jpg
 
I just saw this thread, ni e score! I always love a road trip to retrieve an old Mopar. I've picked up cars in Medford Oregon, Indianapolis, Indiana, Blaine Washington, and my '71 Monaco wagon in Saint Anthony Idaho. Gotta go where the good cars are! With that rear gear and 318, you should be able to get some pretty good mileage on the road. Have fun enjoying the wagon!
 
You did better than me. I didn't even make it out of the car show before my electronic distributor pooped...
My tried and true MSD distributor and MSD6AL cure that problem....
While I expected a nice air conditioner ride home in a truck, I wasn't expecting a Chauffeur...
20230709_154439.jpg
 
Last edited:
LocuMob said:
With that rear gear and 318, you should be able to get some pretty good mileage on the road.
Click to expand...
You would think so, buy my mileage sucks. I've had it around town and also on the freeway for 100 miles or more and it gets maybe 10-12 MPG. As mentioned above, there has been very little work done on the car to keep it up to snuff. I suspect all the PO's just kept it running and drove it. I think the carb (Carter BBD) is just plain tired. All of that should improve with the 4-bbl upgrade.

j par said:
You did better than me. I didn't even make it out of the car show before my electronic distributor pooped...
My tried and true MSD distributor and MSD6AL cure that problem....
While I expected a nice air conditioner ride home in a truck, I wasn't expecting a Chauffeur...
Click to expand...
Well that's no fun. Hard to believe my clunker made it home and your completely rebuilt everything beauty did not.
 
ProjectBazza said:
Did someone say clinker?



Oooohhhh! "Clunker"!

:lol:
Click to expand...

Haha, funny stuff!

I'll be starting a TQ rebuild thread for help on that business, and should have time today to drop off the intake to get the broken stud out. Forward progress is a wonderful thing!
 
Love that radio Zach, what was the source and how spendy?
 
halfafish said:
You would think so, buy my mileage sucks. I've had it around town and also on the freeway for 100 miles or more and it gets maybe 10-12 MPG. As mentioned above, there has been very little work done on the car to keep it up to snuff. I suspect all the PO's just kept it running and drove it. I think the carb (Carter BBD) is just plain tired. All of that should improve with the 4-bbl upgrade.


Well that's no fun. Hard to believe my clunker made it home and your completely rebuilt everything beauty did not.
Click to expand...
Lucky the summit $400 hei distributor was still under warranty... I just got my money back as I didn't want that to happen again...
It took 20 minutes for the tow truck and it was the first time I ever used my Haggardy Towing...
It only took me an hour or so to put my MSD distributor in and MSD box and start it up and drive it into the garage for the night till I could come back and make a nice clean install the next morning...
 
str12-340 said:
Love that radio Zach, what was the source and how spendy?
Click to expand...
It's from Custom Auto Sound, here's a link. It was about $375 and worth every penny. I forgot to mention when turned off, the dial looks like a standard AM radio - a good theft deterrent in my book.

Custom Audio

I had to order one for a 72 RoadRunner as they didn't specifically list a 72 Coronet. However, the unit fit fine other than the faceplate is square and my dash hole has very slightly rounded corners. I am not putting any holes in the car, so I just mounted the radio by the shaft nuts at the right depth that the faceplate just touches the back of the dash hole but does not come through. The radio is super light and I put a rear support strap on it so I'm not concerned at all about this being an issue. If you rounded off the faceplate or squared off the dash hole you'd have a perfect fit. It wouldn't take much to get it to slide into place.

It sounds good and has a ton of sound adjustments to suit your preferences. So far I'm very pleased with it.
 
I looked through their offerings but nothing that would fit a dash that has the bezel bar between the dial window and the buttons:(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top