1974 Dart Swinger

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My son and I went back to the yard today and removed the stainless trim from the rear window today. The black paint will have to be removed eventually. We also pulled a passenger mirror from a Duster and a dome light lense that we needed. Next weekend we hope to go pull the cars brakes, (front and rear) as well as the rubber portion between the rear bumper and the body. Ours is dry-rotted the this yard car has an intact one.

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Today we made our way back to the Budget Pick and Pull. My son removed the rubber strip between the bumper and body which on our Dart is dry-rotted and falling apart. This car was in tact and we had not been able to find one through Year-One or the Paddock so we quickly took this part. The front seat was very firm and didn't sag like we were sitting on the floor so we grabbed it as well. I know it's from a 4-door but we never planned on people sitting in the back of the Swinger anyways so we pulled the front seat as well as the back seat since neither had rips or tears. Next came the front brake rotors. Our Swingers are pretty bad, (grooved). The drums on this 4-door were ruined so we left them but we did pound out some wheel studs that we needed for the Swinger. We also found a 6 blade "flex-fan" blade on a 318 powered truck that I believe should bolt right onto the Swinger. We cleaned it this evening and will polish it up this week and install it before the car show.
After we were done with the Dart, we headed over to a truck to remove a chrome bumper to replace the crappy metal/white one on my 1972 D100 that I will be starting on this summer.
We plan to attend a car show next weekend, (the 22nd) with the Swinger. It is sponsored by a local Dodge dealership, Dodge Country here in Killeen. The show runs from 1100-300pm. I'll be sure to post more pictures as we go.

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In the first photo, you can see my son removing the dingy fan blade from an old 1980's truck that had what was left of an old 318 engine. Well we used some Simple Green and a green-pad and scrubbed it up in the kitchen sink last night. Then this evening we used some "Never-Dull" wadding and polished out the entire fans surface areas. She cleaned up nicely and we hope to install her in the Swinger this week before this weekends car show. I also found this old steering wheel laying in the dirt amoung the old Dodge trucks. I picked it up thinking I might clean it up and hang it on a wall but now I'm thinking it will go into my 1972 D100 I'm planning on cleaning up over this summer. I still need to clean the rubber a little more but the chrome spokes shined nicely with the Never-Dull. Just goes to show what some elbow grease can do with old parts.

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Well tonight while my son was at his Drivers Training Course, I installed the freshly polished fan blade. Not the easiest thing in the world to do without an extra set of hands, trying not to mash any of the cooling fins of the radiator. The comparison of the 4 blade vs the 6 blade is quite obvious. The 6 blade mounted closer to the radiator and really seemed to blow much more air over the engine, which should translate into sucking more air through the radiator as well. The blue color of the fan actually matches the battery mount pretty well so it doesn't look out of place in the engine bay. Once this was done, I cleaned up the rubber pieces that go between the rear bumper and the body. Wednesday night we'll paint those pieces and then install them Thursday evening. Can't wait to get back to the local pick-and-pull to see what else we can find for the car!

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Tonight we removed the rubber strip between the rear bumper and the body which as you can plainly see, was dry-rotted and falling apart towards the drivers side. These picture show the old parts before we removed them and the replacement pieces from the pick-and-pull on the table about to be repainted black. We couldn't find these rubber parts through the Paddack or YearOne, so we were locky to find them at the yard. Thursday night we will install the freshly painted parts and do a little waxing to the car to prep her for Saturdays local Dodge Dealership car show.

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i would get a fan shroud if i were, my buddy just about lost his fingers while working on his elcamino, cause he has no fan shroud
 
Today we took the Dart to a local car show held with Dodge Country and Connell Chevrolet. The first picture shows the rubber we installed between the bumper and body. The rest are of the car and us at the show. Ran into some people from last years show as well a making some new aqaintences. Had a pretty good time and when people we talked to found out we got the Dart for $1,000, they couldn't believe it! I will follow up shortly with pictures from the rest of the show.

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Here are a few more shots and cars from the show.
1970 Challenger, (last years over-all winner)
Ford T-bucket with 440
76 Cordoba
70 Dar GT
Barracuda w/ monster motor
Satelite w/ 4-speed

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This "Rat-Rod" was jusr awesome! Loved the wasp nest over the passenger seat, the Farmall tractor grill, and zoomie pipes.

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This old military M37 was the show winner! It was certainly the choice of my entire family as well. The owner actually takes the car to Fort Hood and welcomes troops home with it. Besides being a military vehicle, it also served in Florida as a grass fire truck hauling a water tank in the back. The vehicle was completely restored and hot-rodded and the owner put this Dodge factory race engine in it and according to what I heard, he paid $30,000 for the engine alone. It cranks 1,400 HP at idle! You should have heard this beast.

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Jeff looked like a great show. Glad you had fun. Good luck hanging in there for 30.
 
We need a little, (or a lot) of help. Our current problem started before the show when the car would occasionaly let out a small backfire when idleing the few days before the show. Then when driving, it ran very rough, accelerating poorly and feeling as if it was on 7 cylinders. We got to the show and were coming home when the car died two blocks from home, suddenly dying and rolling to a stop. It would turn over and fuel wasn't an issue as we could see it getting plenty. But it sounded as if it just wasn't getting any spark. An old man came out to the road from his house and said he thought our coil was bad. It was an Accel Super coil pulled from a junk yard Dodge truck over a year ago and had been doing fine. However I thought I'd swap out the Accel with the stock one and see what happened. No change, it still just turns over spewing fuel out of the carb and not firing. The wires, distributor, cap and rotor are all new. I'm dumb-founded on what the problem is. Any ideas? And, what should the "ideal" timing be set at? Would this greatly affect the car? The distributor is not loose. Man, of all the things to deal with on a car, I HATE electrical problems!

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Pull a plug, connect a wire to it, place it on a ground (exhaust manifold) crank and see if there's spark at the plug. If not, start with the ballast resistor on the fire wall, many times they, or the control module, fail and you're just DIW (dead in the water).

As for the timing, if it was running fine before then that's a good place to start - check the manual and set at the recommended advance/retard then tweak to your desire.

I'm betting it's the ballast resistor or the control module.
 
We replaced the Ballast resistor today, with a $4.32 new one from Auto Zone. I was really hopeing this would work considering the condition when I removed it from the firewall. But the car continued to NOT start, so now it's on to something else. More to follow.

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look in the picture right under your ignition box pull it and see if it looks melted on the back of it

that may be your problem
 
That ignition box has been replaced before. What you see melted is from the previous box from when we bought the car. It might be next weekend before we get a chance to re-check the car with our busy schedules.
My son and I went out and checked a 69 RoadRunner with a 383/4-speed that a guy told me about for $2500. Needless to say, we aren't interested in the RR, but we did find two Darts and the wrecked one we already spoke about buying for it's parts. Hope to work out a deal with him this week for the interior and then possibly the motor on down the road. The rear fin will be ours but he's keeping the hood scoops for a Satelite he has.

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How about the gap on the magnetic sending unit (where points on a non-elec dist would be) if memory serves me correctly it should be 0.010 or 0.008", make certain to use a brass (non-magnetic) feeler gage to check.

Are you getting spark? I'd take a look at the control module even though you replaced it already - I used to go through them like crazy with mine - back in the day.
 
Is that runner ralley green I believe its called. Would make a great looking original mopar but thats a lot of work. That dart looks like a pretty good parts car, hope it all goes well for you.
 
Well today my son and I spent some quality time pulling out the interior from the 1971 Dart to put into our 74 Dart. When we got there I mentioned to the owner that I wished I had brought a weed-eater to knock the over-growth down around the base of the car since we needed underneath to unbolt the seats. He told me to look out for wasps, black widdows, brown recluse, and rattlers before coming back with his mower and getting as close as he could to the car, scalping the ground around the car. The only thing I had to look out for under the car was red ants and I was grateful that the bolts came off easily.
First bit of business was lowering the windows since it was already in the 80's at 1030 in the morning. Then we set to removing the steering wheel which ended up being an original "Tuff-Wheel". Then we removed the front seat which came out suprising easy. The only thing we had to look out for were the ants which did get a few bites in.
After removing the front seat we moved to the rear seat the the "package tray" under the rear window. Our current package tray didn't have speaker openings so getting this one was great and it had backing and wasn't too badly sun faded and water damaged. We also pulled all four arm rests of which, three had ashtrays, (one had been re-upolstered without one). We removed the rear window trim and the glove box door as well as the Pioneer am/fm CD player, dome light lense, lighter, driver's door sill plate, and the drivers side seat belt, (passenger side was faded tan).
Once we got home we wiped everything down with water soaked rags to remove the dirt and mold. Then we went over everything with Armor-All which the assorted pieces soaked right up but looked real good afterwards. We did find a tag under the seat that said the seat covers were from "Legendary" which was a plus since they are a good reputable muscle car restoration source. The date on the tag indicated they were recovered back in 1998.
The carpet was faded way to bad to replace ours and the headliner would not match ours since it was made of vynil and ours is a board type material and our 74 uses "sail panels" on each side of the rear window and the 71 doesn't have these pieces. We also didn't mess with the dash pad as we already have a good one which we will color black that came from the 1975 4-door at the "pick-and-pull".
So I guess the next thing we will do is order a carpet set, headliner, and "sail panels". Plus we will order the mounting kit and horn button for the "Tuff Wheel". We will use, and will have to change the color on the dash pad we acquired from the 1975, 4-door Dart. Once this is all done, the interior will be nearly completely re-done and should look 100% better than it does now which you can see in the final pictures.
You should hear my son talk about his car to his friends. Today one of his friends asked him what he was doing on a Saturday, while we went to watch one of his friends play summer baseball. He went on to tell them of his "74 Dodge Dart" that he is working on and how we were going to replace the interior with parts we had found. He has learned a great deal about cars and their care. He knows alot more than his friends, that's for sure!
Enjoy the pictures, there will be more coming soon as we replace the dried out / faded interior that is there now.

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Here are pictures of this afternoons clean-up with water and then the treatment of Armor-All, plus pictures of the interior of the car right now that we will replace.

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Great stuff! A thought came to mind about the carpet you found being faded too badly for use. I've had good success in the past dying carpet, especially if the original color is the same as you need to dye it. Hang the carpet over a fence and pressure wash it, not too much pressure that it will ruin, but just enough to clean it real good. Obviously make certain all the pad/sound deadener is remove if it sticks to the back of the carpet. Let it sun dry for a few days then lay it out and vacuum. Once you have it to where you can apply a spray dye made specifically for material/carpet (I think Scotsguard makes one), brush all nap in one direction, spray on dye per instructions. Then brush the nap the opposite way and re-spray. Allow to dry as per instructions on the can, vacuum, brush, spot light areas and allow to dry if needed before installation.

I think the reason one of the armrests doesn't have an ashtray "could" be because one is not needed on the drivers door? It would be kind of hard to use while driving and the one on the dash is more safe/convenient.
 
Just an update as to what we've been up to lately with the Dart and my new toy/project, a 1972 D100 we picked up off a ranch nearby for $1400. I wanted to save this truck so it wouldn't suffer a bad fate in someone elses hands, ie; run into the ground. You can see the actual thread which is now 4 pages long at,
http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?p=993108#post993108

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