73 Dart Sport Reanimation

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fivetenchamp

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Joined
Apr 26, 2020
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Location
Lemon Grove Ca.
After pulling trans out to rebuild and finding the convertor snout broken and broken pump gears I checked the crank end play and found it clunking in and out about a 1/4" , well so much for a quick trans repair and start driving the car. I decided to pull the engine and freshen it up. Once I has the engine out the suspension and k member looked ripe for the picking so out that came. Once I had the suspension out my OCD kicked into overdrive and I couldn't put the Jeni back in the bottle. Off to harbor freight for a pressure pot sandblaster and a total of 21 50 lb bags of plaster sand from Home depot, several hours of eating grit and one hello of a mess, I had a clean engine bay and underside.

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Decided to fabricate some frame connectors while everything was apart and clean. Used .120 wall 1.5x2.5 rectangular tubing. Welded them in and the used a high zink primer on everything that was blasted raw. I went to my local auto body supply and had the original paint code mixed and put in aerosol cans with the little hardener pods. That was a mistake, every can started to sputter and misfire once it was down to half. So I gave up and had a quart of single stage PPG mixed and bought a cheap harbor freight gun and actually got some paint down

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fivetenchamp said:
Decided to fabricate some frame connectors while everything was apart and clean. Used .120 wall 1.5x2.5 rectangular tubing. Welded them in and the used a high zink primer on everything that was blasted raw. I went to my local auto body supply and had the original paint code mixed and put in aerosol cans with the little hardener pods. That was a mistake, every can started to sputter and misfire once it was down to half. So I gave up and had a quart of single stage PPG mixed and bought a cheap harbor freight gun and actually got some paint down

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My goodness i need some of that OCD stuff. Looking good and all in one day.... ;)
Welcome aboard.
 
You don't waste any time, do you?
Looks great, keep the pictures and posts coming!
 
Trust me I'm not that fast, I'm going to try and post daily and catch up the project to were it's at now. I have been reading about all cool projects on this site and it gave me the inspiration to go way beyond my original plan just drive it and tinker.
 
fivetenchamp said:
Trust me I'm not that fast, I'm going to try and post daily and catch up the project to were it's at now. I have been reading about all cool projects on this site and it gave me the inspiration to go way beyond my original plan just drive it and tinker.
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It's looking great. keep up the good work.
 
Decided to reinforce the K member and upgrade the suspension for future runs at the drag strip. I decided to ditch the rubber strut rod bushings and install monoball spherical bearings. The process was pretty straight forward. I hole sawed out the strut rod bushing hole to accept a 727 moog lower ball joint adapter, welded them in an screwed in the mono balls. The mono balls are used commonly for lower ball joints on stock cars and road race cars so the ball joint stud can be adjusted to change roll center height. I know there are strut rod conversions that use heim joints but I didn't like wheelbase change that occurred because the heim joint is behind the actual strut bushing centerline. Lower control arms mods to follow but I have to charge my phone.
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The lower arms got a set of delrin bushings that I turned on the lathe. I originally bought some trick poly type bushings but they distorted badly when I pressed them in. The delrin bushings have a steel sleeve that I pressed over the torsion stud to pivot on. Sorry I didn't take any pictures of the bushings. The arms got drilled and tapped to 3/4" fine where the original strut rod attached. I then used a Allen head cap screw threaded threw the arm for my new strut tube to screw onto and used 3/4" left hand threaded stud for the mono ball. Now the strut rod can be adjusted for and aft for slight wheelbase adjustment. Probably a little overkill but most this stuff was left over from my circle track days. The rest of the lower arm prep is the standard reinforcing plates. Upper a arm details next. I'm new to this forum stuff so I hope this a ok way present my build, and I not sure how about the size and amount of pictures to post. Any input would be welcome.

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You're doing great work! If you haven't already done it, check where the torsion stud in the LCA goes thru the k frame. The k frames are sometimes bad to crack where the tube the torsion stud goes thru. It will crack on one or both ends. The factory started welding big flat washers on the ends at some point to reinforce the area, and yours may or may not have that.
 
JDMopar said:
You're doing great work! If you haven't already done it, check where the torsion stud in the LCA goes thru the k frame. The k frames are sometimes bad to crack where the tube the torsion stud goes thru. It will crack on one or both ends. The factory started welding big flat washers on the ends at some point to reinforce the area, and yours may or may not have that.
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Thanks, mine do have the extra flats from the factory.
 
Since I got goofy with the lower arms I decided to make some tube uppers. Again I used screw in ball joint sleeves that were left over from when I was racing modified circle track. Just so happens the stock a body upper ball joint screwed rite in so it was game on. I used my old arms to make a jig with some flat plate and hold everything in alainment when welding. Heim joints are 5/8 left hand thread and the clevis stud are right hand. The stud was just a grade 8 bolt I cut the head off. I made aluminium spacers to keep the hems from binding and allow them to work with the 1/2 eccentric bolts. This also gave me more adjustment range with tubes and eccentrics. I did have to move the rubber bump stops over and redrill the holes to line up with the tube.

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Well on to the engine and trans. When I started this project my original goal was to get it running and drive it and work on it as I go. The 318 ran but the trans lealeaked fluid as fast as you could pour it in. After pulling the trans and finding a broken converter snout and buggered front pump I discovered the thrust bearing was bad in the engine. I dont know which occured first but the engine had to come out. At this point I really didn't want a 318 but after several months of of searching for a 360 core at a reasonable cost I figured I would just run the 318 till something better came along. The block was in good shape only having .003 taper so I honed it to straighten out the bores and loosen it up a bit in anticipation of running a bit of nitrous. I ended up with .004 piston clearance with the stock cast piston. For a cam shaft I went with a Comp 268 hydraulic grind. On the heads I spent about 40 hours working on the ports. I used stock replacement 318 ex valve and 1.88 intakes. I opened up the throats to 88 percent of valve dia. And lowered and profiled the guide bosses, opened up the push rod pinch as much as I dared. I also unshrouded the larger intakes trying to preserve compression as much as possible.I milled the heads .060 and also milled the intake faces instead of the intake manifold in case I wanted to try other manifolds. I flowed heads in stock form and after all my work on a friends super flow 600 bench. I was not real excited with the results and sort of left with my tail between legs. 211 CFM at 450 lift and it sort stalls out after that. Most of my head porting experience has been with Chevys and I am certainly a novice porter. I see lots of head porting info on this subject in the small block section of the site and some of it seems a bit contentious so I figure I wouldn't stick my nose in it. I simply wanted to see what I could do on the cheap. More to come later but I gotta get to work.

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Valve diameter isn't as important as "curtain area", which is valve circumference X valve lift. In reality, the combustion chamber & cylinder walls will shroud part of the curtain area, so figure about 90% effective curtain area. I try to keep velocity fairly consistent; start at the manifold, slight taper back to the choke point (the valve guide area), then spend considerable time blending around the seats.

Most heads flow 95% of potential around the manifold openings, 75% at the choke point, and only around 55% past the seats. Keeping that in mind while porting, most folks spend most of their porting efforts where they get the least gains (port matching).

Looking at your pictures, the only thing I would definitely flag is the sharp edges around the valves in the combustion chamber. I'd use a sanding roll to flatten & radius them. Sharp edges in the combustion chamber promotes detonation.
 
Thanks for the input, I know theirs a ton of smart people on the forum and am always learning. My buddy's all thought I was nuts to spend the time on some lowly 318 heads but I wanted to see what I could do. I only recently in the last couple of years gotten access to a flow bench and dyno and its really opened my eyes and quite honestly humbled me. For the last 30 years all my engine builds has been seat of the pants and track time but no real data. Land speed racing realy opened my eyes about what it takes to make power and make last, Bonneville is a five mile long Dyno pull. First trip to Bonneville I left a rod on the salt on my 3rd run and a hole in the block I could stick my hand into. I did radius those edges and relieve around the intakes and polish the chambers. I also did the 3 angle valve job and back cut the intakes, but non of that work got photoed. I did this work several months ago and just recently got the nerve up to get on the forum. Thanks again for following my build.
 
57 cc. The pistons were a mile down in the hole, and I ccd them with a little white grease around the rings and looked up the head gasket volume for the Felpros I used. Came up with a whopping 9.2-1 compression.
 
I finished up my engine build using a cast iron 340 intake that I matched to my head ports, some comp cams springs and a set .050 shorter push rods from summit. A can of engine primer and 2 cans of Chrysler blue paint finished her off.

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That turned out real nice, if it runs 1/2 as good as it looks, it will be fun while you find/build that 360 you want.
 
I was is a similar spot with my current car. My 318 pistons were .090 in the hole, I got lucky and came up in a set of fresh 302 castings. I did very similar bowl work as you.. I forget the number, but I’m somewhere in the mid -highs 8s for compression. Luckily I have some converter and gear, so it’s fun to drive. What cam did you install?
 
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