1965 Dodge Dart 270 Wagon

Alright. So today I decided to go ahead and put in a mini starter. Taking the old one out was a huge pain, but it's done and hopefully I won't have to deal with that again any time soon.

I hadn't mentioned that the car wasn't starting over the weekend. I'm pretty sure I need to go ahead and replace the battery. I got the new starter in and had enough charge in the battery to get it running. Here's what I learned:

1. The old voltage regulator for the dash was clearly bad, despite my bench test indicating otherwise.

2. My gas tank is almost empty which means putting in the new one won't be as bad as I thought. Hooray for small victories!

3. My car is not constantly running hot! Well, we'll see for sure once I get it to where I can drive it around a bit.

With it being dark out I was able to get a good look at the now cleaned up gauges. I also replaced burnt out bulbs when I had it out. I would've replaced them all, but the parts store only had 4 bulbs out of the 7 I needed. :( In either case they look way better and I am actually able to read them in the dark with the dash lights now!

That's about it. I grabbed some chrome paint for the light housings from the parts store when I picked up the starter. Way too late and tired to deal with that now. Hopefully tomorrow. I've also been talking with slantsixdan some more and I think I'm going to swap the tailgate lights out. I'll be putting some 1157 dual filament LEDs and wiring them so that the tailgate lights give me both running lights and brake lights. I just have to find an 1157 socket that gets the light source into the right spot. The sockets in the outer lights hold the filament 1/4" higher than the factory 1095 sockets for the tailgate.