67 Dart GT Racecar Rescue

Every car has a story, and this one, boy what a story.

It all starts when I was closing the deal on some parts with an old friend, including an A-body rear end I needed. I closed the deal, but I had to come back with a truck to haul the housing. As we shook hands my friend said "you wouldn't know anyone that would want to buy my racecar, would ya?"

"Tell me more," I said.

67 big block Dart, I found out, with a lot of great parts and even better, put together in a good combination by a guy who knew his mopars. He regaled me with accounts of what had gone into the motor and the car and how he had won so many street races with it.

It had long been at the back of my mind to find a vintage racecar and get involved at track days - I'm less than five miles from a major track which does NASCAR as well as local drag stuff. I'm not a racer, but I've always admired the spirit that exists around the best racers. At the same time, I knew the huge amount of trial and error work, breaking stuff and fixing it better that goes into real racing was beyond me for now. Much better, I thought, to start with a car built by someone who knew what they were doing, and learn from that.

That night when I got home I had a lot of thinking to do. I'm an early A-body freak, I have plenty of project cars already. When I showed up to haul the parts home, of course the racecar was much on my mind. I really needed to take a critical look, and be ready to say no.

"Can we look at your 67?" I asked.

"The Dart? Sure."

It was a BB-1 bright blue 67 Dart GT, and he went into details about how he'd built the motor and how great the car was to drive. He'd been a major player in his local street racing scene back in the day, and his beloved Dart was built to be the perfect cruiser-bruiser.

Except clearly, as I looked under the hood, it was a smallblock car. The story didn't line up. I had to listen to my gut - this deal was falling apart fast.

"273?"
"Yep! I was running 13 seconds with it before I blew up the 904!"

What? 13 seconds with a 273? And hold on, the car's transmission is blown? I had to face facts - I have my own 273 Darts that I love and I really need to focus my efforts on them, and not be distracted by another one that wasn't all together. My friend was going on about the good old days and the great times he'd had cruising in his 67 GT. I could tell he really loved the car, and I had respect for that too.

"And you're selling it? Sounds like you have all this important history with the car," I said.
"Oh no," he replied. "I could never sell it. I love this car, it's my baby."

OK.... I'm thinking. Say what?
"No, the car I'm selling is the racecar!" he said, pointing to the corner of the yard.


There behind some stuff was ANOTHER 67 Dart GT, also BB-1, but this one with a pro stock hood scoop and fat drag radials. As we uncovered the car, my heart was racing. This was it. A genuine vintage racecar built by a mopar guy who won races with it using good old-fashioned mopar technology until it was parked 20 years ago.

So the deal was, my friend was a hardcore street racer in the local scene 20 years ago, founding member of his local Mopars Unlimited chapter. In the 80s and 90s he built this car and won races with it.

But the thing was, he was a street racer. A serious one. And he had not one, but TWO BB-1 67 Dart GTs. The first one, which we'd looked at, was a 273 car with a manual body 904 and an upgraded 8 3/4, and he'd built it to be the perfect street cruiser.





"I called that car Baby," he told me, "and people used to always ask me, why do you call it that?"
"Because," he went on, "if they beat the baby car, I go home and get the racecar, and come back and ask for a rematch."



This was the secret. He had two cars, two BB-1 67 Dart GTs - one was a very hot streetable 273 car and the other was a rip-snorting built bigblock monster.



"383 bored and stroked out to 396, hemi cam and valvetrain on Stage 7 heads, manual valve body 727 with a hemi torque converter. Tunnel ram with a Holley 1150. We put it on the dyno and got 700hp at the rear wheels."

Way cool! Keep us posted on details.

Rear leaf springs were ditched for a pro-tuned coil-over and ladder system, and numerous details - the adjustable pinion snubber, the non-adjusting 8 3/4 upgrade - all tricks that show a true mopar racer was at the wheel. For a car at this power level, subframe connectors and a full cage were mandatory.

"We didn't do it for safety," he explained, "it was because of all the chassis flex with that motor otherwise."



But it was all on the street. He would win most races with the 273 car, but occasionally some joker would show up with a 5.0 and a bottle of juice to challenge the established order. Then he'd go home, get the racecar, and come back and ask for a rematch. Most guys who weren't into mopar wouldn't notice that the blue GT had somehow sprouted a pro stock hood scoop.

"I'd say 'I went home and got my other motor, can I have a rematch?'" he explained.



With a hot street machine and a pavement-pounding racer in the driveway, what could go wrong? Well, he was a street racer. A lot could go very, very wrong all at once, and finally one day luck caught up with him.

"Judge told me I had to take that car off the road or I'd go to prison," he explained, "and I had a kid on the way."




But the car and the racing didn't stop. He took off the front grille and headlights and made changes to make the car track-legal for NHRA events. This pic from 1994 shows the car launching at Seattle International Raceway.

Health issues and family demands caught up with him though, and finally the car was parked where it would sleep for 20 years, until I came along.



"You know, I came out here and looked at it after we talked," he said, "and thought about how I could fix 'er up, make her go even faster. That would be fun," he added. "But you know, I got grandkids now, and I got to thinking - if something were to go wrong and there was a crash and fire, I'm not sure I could get out of the car by myself," he explained, referencing the health issues which had intervened. "And then I knew it was time to hang it up."



And truly it's the best of both worlds, because he's still got his baby, the '67 273 car which he'd built to be the perfect cruiser.

Meanwhile the racecar is with me now, and getting ready to teach this mopar lover a few new racing tricks. We're staying in touch and I'm tapping his knowledge to get the car back where it should, but on the track, not the street.





"It's... street-legal," he explained to me, "if you stretch the concept of street-legal as far as it can possibly go."

Why would a street racer have a box of roofing nails under the seat? You tell me.

In addition to a coat of BB-1 tinted sealer/basecoat, she recently got her grille back.



She looks good in photos, but she's rough, and that's OK. The goal isn't to turn this vintage racecar into a show car, but to preserve and maintain it pretty much as it is, a well- engineered car that can drive to the track and run passes all day.
This first round of cosmetic touchup helps her look better in the driveway, mechanical work comes next.

Great story !!!
Love the Dart !!!
Can wait to see it back to racing.

Great story, thanks for sharing. Good luck with it.

Congratulations!
Sounds like he had his fun with the car and now it's your turn.
Keep in touch with him, his knowledge of the car as you work on it ill be priceless, and when it finally gets on the track, i'll bet he will be thrilled to help you any way he can.
Good luck, and enjoy it!

Amazing

There's more stories. The car was amazingly lucky too - somebody's family car at first, then likely second owner, maybe given to the kids to drive. By the 80's it was in a salvage yard, a shell stripped for parts.

Poor thing was loaded on a truck and sent to the crusher when my friend the street racer pulled up. He actually stopped the truck and argued the driver into unloading it and selling him the rolling body of this blue Dart just like his.

With the stash of 67 GT parts he had for his driver plus a bunch of racing parts he put together this second car as the heavy backup hitter. That's also why much of the car had been stripped to begin with anyway, like the dash. It was the perfect platform to build a race car.



In restoring this car now, I have to make a choice about what I'm aiming for. The background story is great, and I want to include that in its nature. At the same time I want to enjoy the car in a way I like, which likely means more like the street machine it was at first than the track-only racer it was reformed to be.

So I've got dash parts to go back in, it's reasonable for a street-driven car to have a speedo, and I'd guess if it had originally been there they would have left it. (evidence: the right-hand dash panel with glove box is still there, because it wasn't valuable to the scrap yard. If a racer had stripped out the speedo part of the dash to be more racery they'd certainly have taken the whole thing out.)

I'll replace the super ratty seats, not original to the car, for nicer ones of original color. Not looking to add carpet though, nor headliner. That's restoring it to be too nice.

The B&M shifter is cool, still getting used to it. Seems like a lockup for doing hard shifts without breaking stuff. Any advice on it?

I'm gonna end up with a lot questions about this thing and how to do it right that might be better in the Racers Forum, so let me know if I should take it over there.

Man ,, that’s a fun build ,,
I have to set a game plan on my car
Weather finally doesn’t hurt my face to go outside

So, was it an original big block car?

Probably not in 67. The fendertag is long gone with the original front clip. This big block is mounted with elephant ears, when I get it up on a lift I'll look for evidence of what motor was originally installed.

No biggie I was just curious. That would make this story even better. I love this stuff. Enjoy yourself.

I hooked up a battery in the trunk to see if I could get the motor to turn over. It wasn't stuck, I could budge it, and there was a starter bolted in, so first thing was to see if I could get some life.

And nothing. Everything was dead. I was stymied for a while, and got out my voltmeter to start testing wires. Before I could even hook it up, though, it dawned on me - it's a race car, it has a kill switch on the rear bumper.

Flipped the kill switch and everything came to life. (Not the dash, there's a mess to address under there later.) The starter cranked right on over, so I checked the oil level and cranked it for a while to get the fluids moving around again.

And then of course I had a little gas can around, and even though there was no carb yet, I thought, why not, and splashed some down the intake. Like you do.



Woo hoo! I call that life. She wants to run, and damn those headers sound good.

Test fitting with a 1050 Dominator. Plenty of clearance.

paulclark said:

Test fitting with a 1050 Dominator. Plenty of clearance.

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I started thumbing thru these posts "didn`t read all of them' , after the 700h.p. w/ a hemi cam statement . A 68 stock hemi cam was less then .500 lift. if ur talking about specs. If talking literally, wont fit , lobes are in a diff. location. B.S. ___

Cool story, not sure why I did not see it back in January - keep the updates coming!

famous bob said:

A 68 stock hemi cam was less then .500 lift. if ur talking about specs. If talking literally, wont fit , lobes are in a diff. location. B.S. ___

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NO doubt. Racecar stories are like fish stories. It will be interesting to find out what it actually does.

I have heard people talk about the purple cam in the 383 super commandos as a 'hemi cam' and that isn't neccesarily accurate either. This motor was from a 68 Roadrunner so I assume that's what is meant.

Cool story.

Lots of progress for not much time I've been able to spend on her. Got her started and idling, got the fuel system sorted now. More pics and details to come, but here's a pic with the temporary fuel IV bottle at first. Runs -very- well, I am not touching a thing as far as tuning right now.

Cooling system is next - been running her for only a few minutes at a time until I get that sorted out.

paulclark said:

NO doubt. Racecar stories are like fish stories. It will be interesting to find out what it actually does.

I have heard people talk about the purple cam in the 383 super commandos as a 'hemi cam' and that isn't neccesarily accurate either. This motor was from a 68 Roadrunner so I assume that's what is meant.

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That Purple cam is actually called "Hemi Grind Cam", as it has the Hemi cam lobe specs ground onto a wedge-compatible camshaft.