My 69 Dart "AKA" The Blue Mutt
after a reasonnable time evaluating and a few hammer adjustments headers are in and motor and tranny are locked down for good, took care of a few misc things, grease fittings in and everything greased for suspension, its all tight, need to put in a few more cotter pins and that will be it until the steering linkage goes back in. got started on the exhaust - between the original chop of the summit kit by the PO and the overall crappiness of the Summit kit it took a lot to get things going, got things fitted up to the mufflers, realized one more cut for the connection from the H pipe to the muffler on the passenger side and it will be ready to weld together. probably just going to do some downturns after the mufflers if it is going to take as much time tweaking the over axle pipes since I want to get this thing fired back up and there is still plenty to do once Im out from under the car for a while. Looking at this summit kit I am quite sure it was designed originally by Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder was his assistant, you could use as is but it is some of the most misaligned bunch of anything I have ever seen, unless you want to completely rework the pipes I would not recommend. One other comparison I did was the Summit H-pipe kit to the Jegs X pipe Kit - Summit wins on that one. I dropped the driveshaft off Friday to get stretched and didn't want to weld or lock anything down until it was back in the car to make sure I get the clearance and alignment I want, should have it back Thursday so the saga will continue - luckily its been mostly sunny and nice here - a lot more light when the garage door is open. One thing I can tell is the motor is aligned better and is lower on the nose, before I started jacking things around the valve cover on the DS was almost against the wiring block, plenty of clearance now.
after a reasonnable time evaluating and a few hammer adjustments headers are in and motor and tranny are locked down for good, took care of a few misc things, grease fittings in and everything greased for suspension, its all tight, need to put in a few more cotter pins and that will be it until the steering linkage goes back in. got started on the exhaust - between the original chop of the summit kit by the PO and the overall crappiness of the Summit kit it took a lot to get things going, got things fitted up to the mufflers, realized one more cut for the connection from the H pipe to the muffler on the passenger side and it will be ready to weld together. probably just going to do some downturns after the mufflers if it is going to take as much time tweaking the over axle pipes since I want to get this thing fired back up and there is still plenty to do once Im out from under the car for a while. Looking at this summit kit I am quite sure it was designed originally by Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder was his assistant, you could use as is but it is some of the most misaligned bunch of anything I have ever seen, unless you want to completely rework the pipes I would not recommend. One other comparison I did was the Summit H-pipe kit to the Jegs X pipe Kit - Summit wins on that one. I dropped the driveshaft off Friday to get stretched and didn't want to weld or lock anything down until it was back in the car to make sure I get the clearance and alignment I want, should have it back Thursday so the saga will continue - luckily its been mostly sunny and nice here - a lot more light when the garage door is open. One thing I can tell is the motor is aligned better and is lower on the nose, before I started jacking things around the valve cover on the DS was almost against the wiring block, plenty of clearance now.
