67 Dart 270...Project Old School
I must have been nuts to think I would get the transmission conversion finished in time to go on Power tour in June. One month to go and the trans is not even been trial fitted in the car. I have to admit I have been struggling to get clean welds on the car. I originally started with flux core, but it was just blowing holes in the thin sheet metal. I finally leased a 80 cubic foot bottle of argon/CO2. It took me a bit to get use to the gas settings and on the bench I was able to produce some nice looking welds. When I tried to weld on the car I was still blowing holes and getting sputtering. I traced part of the problem to a bad regulator.
Things improved, but I was still getting some snap crackle and pop. I increased the tension on the feed roller and that seemed to help some, but the culprit appears to be the grounding. Even though it looked like I had a good connection where I was clamping to the car, it wasn't. I did manage to get the 3/16" steel cross member welded in under the car and an 1/8" steel plate welded inside the car. I also made some plug welds between the two plate to ensure they were bonded through the floor.
Now that the tunnel is ready, I began swapping over all the linkages and fittings from the 904 to the A500. Everything work swimmingly until I hit the fittings for the transmission cooler lines. The port size on the A500 is much larger then the 904. I had to go search down some new fittings. I ended up finding what I needed at O'Reilly's autoparts.
In the picture the A500 fitting is on the left in comparison to the 904 fitting on the right. I am using 3/8" steel line to connect to my transmission cooler.
I hope to get the A500 into the car this week so I can finish fabbing up a cross member and take measurements to modify the driveshaft.
I must have been nuts to think I would get the transmission conversion finished in time to go on Power tour in June. One month to go and the trans is not even been trial fitted in the car. I have to admit I have been struggling to get clean welds on the car. I originally started with flux core, but it was just blowing holes in the thin sheet metal. I finally leased a 80 cubic foot bottle of argon/CO2. It took me a bit to get use to the gas settings and on the bench I was able to produce some nice looking welds. When I tried to weld on the car I was still blowing holes and getting sputtering. I traced part of the problem to a bad regulator.
Things improved, but I was still getting some snap crackle and pop. I increased the tension on the feed roller and that seemed to help some, but the culprit appears to be the grounding. Even though it looked like I had a good connection where I was clamping to the car, it wasn't. I did manage to get the 3/16" steel cross member welded in under the car and an 1/8" steel plate welded inside the car. I also made some plug welds between the two plate to ensure they were bonded through the floor.
Now that the tunnel is ready, I began swapping over all the linkages and fittings from the 904 to the A500. Everything work swimmingly until I hit the fittings for the transmission cooler lines. The port size on the A500 is much larger then the 904. I had to go search down some new fittings. I ended up finding what I needed at O'Reilly's autoparts.
In the picture the A500 fitting is on the left in comparison to the 904 fitting on the right. I am using 3/8" steel line to connect to my transmission cooler.
I hope to get the A500 into the car this week so I can finish fabbing up a cross member and take measurements to modify the driveshaft.
