1967 Valiant Signet Build

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davalf

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Joined
Jan 6, 2014
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california
As the title says, I am redoing a 67 Valient.

First, the story of how I came to own the car. I have some really good neighbors in this rural community that I live in. The neighbor that is closest to me has a small shop and flips cars to make a little extra cash. Needless to say, I was always over there helping out and talking about what I wanted to eventually do. My wife would always hear my talking about building a shop and then redoing a car. One day after a few glasses of wine, she gave me the go ahead to build the shop. Before she could sober up, I had placed an order for a 24' x 31' x 11' tall shop. After a few anxious months of waiting, I had my shop. One small problem, I had nothing to work on in it.

So, I have always been a Mopar fan, in fact, all we own are Dodges. I began to search the net to find a project and fell in love with the 67 style Dodge Dart's. It turned out, I just really liked most A-Body's. One afternoon my neighbor gave me a call and asked if I would share the driving duty to Maricopa Arizona to pick up a 69 Charger. After a 24 hour round trip, my neighbor had his next project, a virtually rust free 69 charger, and once again, I was extremely jealous. A few weeks go by and we get the Charger running and I cannot wait to get my own project.

Once again, my neighbor calls me, and says, "I have your car on its way here right now!" I was dumb founded. Sure enough, a couple of hours later, a 67 Valient shows up. My neighbor, Brian, was selling a 86 Ford pickup and the buyer offered cash plus the Valient for a trade. Brian had me in mind and said bring it on over. He told me if I wanted it I just needed to give him the difference in the asking price of the truck, which totaled out to be $1000.

So now I have my project. 1967 Valient Signet 2 door post car with a 360, 727 trans, and I am pretty sure a 8 and 3/4 rear end out of a 70 Charger. The only rust in the car is right under the battery tray.

I do not plan on restoring the car, just building it up to be a nice weekend driver and maybe an occasional run at the track.

To get you up to date, I pulled the motor, sent the block to the machinist for some heavy cleaning, cleaned up the heads to include reseating the valves. Ordered all new piston rings, cam bearings, and rod bearings. Got the block back, painted it, installed crack, pistons, and heads.

I am running short on time for todays post because I have to drive to LA to go to work tonight. I will post more detailed pics of the engine and car when I get back this weekend. Thanks for reading. I want to apologize now for any spelling and/or grammar errors, I didn't get a chance to proof read.

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Fun looking project-depending on where you in Cali, there are probably a couple dozen active members near you that would like to see it rolling. Unless those parts just aren't in pictures, looks like you need a hood and some grille parts...

Welcome to FABO, and I'm sure we'll all be looking forward to your freshening!
 
I know I said I was going to get some more pictures of the car today, but I got busy working on the motor. I will try to take some more detailed pics tomorrow. Today I got the oil pan, timing chain cover, water pump, and intake installed and painted. My order from Summit and National Carburetors cam so I mocked everything up and took some pics.

I really like the look of this engine. I hope I do not upset some of the die hard mopar guys, but I really can't stand the look of an engine that is painted mopar orange. Sounds funny saying it about an engine that goes in a classic car, but the orange looks dated. So I chose the black and aluminum look. I also can't stand a bunch of chrome.

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Now I have a question for the experts out there. I cannot remember which heads are on there. I have the numbers written down somewhere but hopefully you can help me out anyway. On the exhaust ports for the heads, there is a small hole below each port. The headers I have do not cover it up. I was thinking of taping the hole and putting a small allen screw in to block it up. Did those small holes have something to do with smog? Thank you for the help in advance.
 
I guess I could mention, the carb is en Edelbrock 1407 750cfm. Headers are just Summit non coated.
 
Dartn440 your car is beautiful. For the color on the Valiant, I was watching an episode of overhaulin when they painted an old Bronco matte gray. I loved the color so that may be an option.

Another question for the experts. Is there a decent place to get fiberglass hoods with scoops? Or is it just better to add a scoops to the stock hood?

The valve covers I bought are hitting the intake. Is it common practice to grind them down a bit?
 
Thanks! Having fun, though at times it can be frustrating. Stick with it. As far as valve covers go I have seen them ground down and notched. As long as the gasket seal is not affected. I had a stock hood fitted with scoop and not blown away with the quality of the bodywork, but it can be done. I was budgeting, not sure where you could look for a good one. As far as picking paint I spent ton of time with the chip books at NAPA. Be sure to walk outside and look at them in bright sun too. I chose Mopar colors, but in my opinion BMW has some sweet greys.
 
I paint all my motors black including the slant six currently in my 68 valiant. I think it gives it a cleaner look.
 
It has been a long time since I have given an update. I have been slowly plugging away on the car between work and family time.

The motor runs! Installed the motor the other night. The next morning we swapped the driver's side motor mount for the shorter one to get the header to clear. Installed the headers, temporarily hooked up the wiring and I swear it fired after 1 or 2 turns. This is the first motor I have ever built and it is really satisfying to hear it run. The video below is the engine running on 6 cylinders. We were looking for vacuum leaks to figure out why. It turns out, my neighbor (the long haired one in the video), put the fuel hoses on the fuel pump backwards. The engine was starving for fuel and was only firing on 6. As you can see, we do not have the radiator installed or any cooling so we were very limited in how long we could run the engine. We let the engine cool for a few hours, swapped the hoses, and it runs beautifully.

I have a whole new motivation for working on the car now that I heard it run. And I love the sound of the open headers. It will be a shame to have to put exhaust on it.

[ame]http://youtu.be/wC2hPPfIIIc[/ame]
 
Nice! Glad to see you post again man, and happy to know it's running well. I know exactly how you feel about hearing it run on open exhaust-loud is cool. But, john q law doesn't care for it...spoiled sports. Anyway-I'm diggin' it man!
 
As I thought it would, hearing the motor run really motivated me. To keep the engine cool, I needed a radiator. I posted a question in the small black tech area, of which aftermarket radiator would work. Some of the guys there turned me onto challengergary who is a champion radiator dealer. I read the entire thread on the champion radiator and they seem to have pretty good reviews. I emailed gary, placed my order for an A body radiator on the 12th, and by the 13th I had a brand new radiator sitting in the car. The radiator is really nice for the price, and the shipping was unbelievably fast.

I made a trip to Pep-Boys, bought an alternator, thermostat, belt, and all the hoses to keep the engine cool. Now that I have the engine pretty much done and running, minus the fuel tank, I need to make her move.

I measured my drive shaft and it turned out it was about 2.75 inches too long. I took it down to drive line service of Fresno, and a day later it was the proper length. I bought a new tranny mount which I will put in after I get done watching Nascar at Bristol.

Next weekend my father in-law, who is a welder for the city of Fresno, will come up and help me build a tunnel to go over the tranny. I hope to install the b&m shifter and be able to take her around the block for the first time.

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Rain in Bristol got me back outside. Before I knew it, I had the shifter cable hooked up, the drive shaft in, and tranny mount on. The car can move! I am pretty happy because I didn't know if the transmission was any good. I just pulled it out of the shop, and then back in. I did find out that it does have pozzy and there are two marks on my shop floor. Overall, a good day.
 
Believe it or not, windshields aren't that expensive to buy from a local glass store unless the places local to you are gouging...before I left Abilene, one of the local businesses stated they could sell the glass to me for $165, but they were slightly reluctant to do the install...
 
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