Well, its going on 3 years since I've been in the valley of the Phoenix. Have a new shop up, all wired and ready to do some other things down the road. The car was practically finished in the summer of 15 but had to stop to make a move to Phoenix. That was August of 15. Got the car down here in November of 15.
Much has happened since then. Basically working out all the bug especially the cooling and some cosmetic things. Major fupa was busting the front mounting tab of the driver side exhaust. As many of you know those don't grow on trees. Fortunately I found another 67 manifold and the broken manifold has been repaired. That may be flipped in the near future.
Anyway, the car has been pretty much been shaken down. There are a few things I still need to address. Pretty much the only miles on this car been local cruse ins. Mostly freeway miles and some stop and go. Still working on addressing the water temp issue. I think though I have that pretty much licked. Took the car to Springfling last month. Drove it on the cruise in LA traffic. With the Bilstein shocks the roads there beat the crap out of the car so I've been tightening loose hardware for the past several weeks. I like the Bilsteins in that they give a little better feel going around corners in this car. Never had an issue on the roads here because they are well maintained but the LA roads are really bad.
Before leaving I took the car into a local shop and had the motor flushed. Cleaned out a lot of garbage, mostly residue from the machining process. The car ran cool except when I had to idle in traffic lot. Temp tended to creep up above 200 but when in neutral I would bring the "Rs" up and it kept the temps down. I figured a clutch fan would help with that.
Put the clutch fan in last week so that should solve the idle temps. I'll be driving it to the last sub 100 degree cruis-in tomorrow vening. That will give me a chance to see how the clutch fan performs. I also decided against adding a remote mirror. Just didn't want to drill a hole in the door for the switch so I bought some new poverty mirrors which I'm installing. The car originally came with just the one mirror but I deviated from originality and added the passenger mirror before the car was painted. I like having that passenger mirror.
As far as the grill, been thinking about what Rhinodart has been saying, that the paint on the grill is for a standard Dart. When the temps drop this fall I'll be pulling off the grill and detailing it out so that its correct. Too hot in the summer to do that.
No matter how much you work on these things they are never really done.
Also attached some more back in the day pictures of the car. circa 1979 as well of some pics of last months Springfling.
