1969 Dart Street/Strip (Re)Build

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Hung out at my in-law's over the weekend. Always enjoy going there and taking some high end muscle cars out for a short trip. Which one did I drive? The Hemi Barracuda of course!

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Man LOVE THAT Cuda DAMN son I want to drive it lol...boy that well both are gorgeous...how's yours coming along?????????????
 
New main seal in, pan sealed, about ready to fire it up! Had a different guy weld up the oil pan. He found 5 holes in the original welds my buddy did. He fixed them, checked for leaks, and off I went. Well you can see what happened at the end of this post. Ugh. But that Reid bellhousing and JW flexplate came in handy!

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Not long after I poured the oil in, a missed leak exposed itself. Now I have to tear everything back down again.

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Got it set up on the run stand and ran flawlessly. That was, until the battery ran out of juice lol. It fired on the first hit so I must have had the timing pretty close when I reassembled it! All total I had 4 recording devices. Most of the time it was just 3. One was a Panasonic hand held camcorder (the one that has a sensitive microphone that gets blown out at high noise levels), the DSLR my wife was holding, the GoPro on the car next the engine, and my Iphone 6. Damn I love the sound this lil small block produces.

 
Had my old 2.5" exhaust laying outside so I was curious how the idle would be with no X or H pipe compared to the X. Sounds pretty good at idle I'd say. Those mufflers are so rusted out that they blew chunks all over the driveway. Even with these on, revving still killed my ears. I like the X better at rev and no X at idle.

 
Been a slow process but the engine is off the run stand and back on the engine stand. Removed the oil pan yet again and bent the heck out of it due to having all the Right Stuff sealer on it. That stuff was like concrete. The welder couldn't get the leak to stop. There was contamination coming through the welds from in between the patch and the pan. So he took and cut a giant hole in the side of the pan and butt welded in a whole new patch. With the butt weld, the contamination issue goes away. That was bad on my part in the first place. Lesson learned. Pan is back on and about to set everything back up on the run stand again to check for leaks. Fingers crossed. Ugh.
 
Here's some pics of the oil dye under blacklight. Hard to tell in the pics but this stuff really glows bright! Talk about finding oil leaks the easy way. Why didn't I get this stuff before?

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Oil soaked valve cover gaskets

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Bleeding down the side and bottom of pan

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The engine has been ran a couple more times now with a newly sealed and welded oil pan. It's sat for several days now and still dry as a bone. The double lip rear main seal from Mancini is holding up and that was my biggest concern. The pan is easy to seal up when it's out of the car so I was more concerned about another weld leaking. But that appears to be holding up now since he cut a big chunk out of the side of the pan and butt welded in a new piece correctly like I should have done in the first place. This is the first time that I haven't seen an oil leak on this motor since it was rebuilt.

Focused on some touching up of the paint in the engine bay. It's crazy when you don't think there's that many little chips until you get up real close and you find like 100 places to touch up! All I need to do now is clean up the headers from the oil and start putting the engine back in.

Does anyone know how many times you can re-use a header gasket? I've re-used a set of these TTi gaskets 3 times now and haven't noticed any leaks. Is that normal? If so, I'm going to quit replacing them every time.
 
Been driving the car around the last couple of days and things have been looking good so far. Got it done Friday night ready for a car show Saturday. Water temps seem to run 100 hotter than the air temp. Was 40 degrees going to the car show yesterday morning and the car ran 140 all the way there. They night before it was about 60 degrees out and the car ran 165 when driving. Show went well. I was entered into the pro street class and there was only one other car in that class which was a big tire, big block 1st gen Camaro. It's actually a really nice car. But I ended up with the plaque at the end of the day. That's my buddie's 512 Challenger next to me. Later on Troy brought his 8 second beast out. Heck of a car.

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A buddy and I went out to the Hot Rod Reunion at Mo-Kan Dragway yesterday to see how we could do. My buddy didn't fair well as he went out first round to a guy .01 off his time. Tough to beat. This being my first time to ever bracket race, read the tree, and the first time I've had it to the track all year without knowing what the new changes would do, I didn't think I'd fair too well but I was going to give it a shot. I've only done grudge races and time trials and never paid attention to the tree since I was just trying to see what the car would do. First time trial was a 10.70 @ 127 mph off the trailer with a DA of 3445 ft when we checked it (not very good around here). I wasn't going to change anything today due to needing consistency and I've always knew the car was consistent anyhow from test and tune. Second time trial netted a 10.68 @ 127 mph. Disappointed, my 60ft times, if anything, have decreased with the new front end. It doesn't appear to be extending and transferring weight like it should. With 60+ lbs off the front, I'd hoped for a 1.4X 60' slightly pulling the wheels but I never got it. Something needs changed up front. I think the wrong spring is in it but I'm not sure what the deal is yet. Anyhow, I dialed a 10.68 in first round eliminations and we both broke out. Here's the slip. Turned out in my favor anyhow! This was my fastest run of the day too.

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Made it two more rounds after that and I couldn't believe it. I was in the semi finals! Out of 30+ cars, here I was in the last four with no real racing experience prior to this. I was flipping ecstatic! But that's where the fun ended. I red lit and he broke out bad. I could have went to the finals against another Dart (which won) if that didn't happen. Oh well not bad for my first time out. All the runs I made were within .030 seconds of each other except the time I let out and when I red lit. If I can learn to tree better, it will be a strong competition car. That's my buddy's 330 next to me.

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AWESOME Clint man that's awesome dude. GREAT time out that's fantastic and pics to boot....where the Hell is a video!!!! LOL just kidding sounds like that car is a beast buddy...is that the new trans as well....and how do you like it
 
AWESOME Clint man that's awesome dude. GREAT time out that's fantastic and pics to boot....where the Hell is a video!!!! LOL just kidding sounds like that car is a beast buddy...is that the new trans as well....and how do you like it

Video right here bud!

This is still the same 727 trans I've been running. Holding off on the trans swap until winter.
 
Tulsa in November when and where! My daughter wants to see these cars. She has a 2014 Dart I know a Neon per say. But she loves the Dodges and she wants us to sell our Jeep to do a early 70 or 69 Dart. Wife needs to see this in person to realize what can be had! :D Sorry if my daughter hugs your car when she sees it LOL. :p
 
That's what I'm talkin bout...Sweet Buddy that car is bad ***...Love it, cool on the trans sounds like a plan...keep the smoke pouring off the meats....

Brad
 
Tulsa in November when and where! My daughter wants to see these cars. She has a 2014 Dart I know a Neon per say. But she loves the Dodges and she wants us to sell our Jeep to do a early 70 or 69 Dart. Wife needs to see this in person to realize what can be had! :D Sorry if my daughter hugs your car when she sees it LOL. :p

November 5th Mopars at the Park, Tulsa Raceway. Stop on by!
 
That's what I'm talkin bout...Sweet Buddy that car is bad ***...Love it, cool on the trans sounds like a plan...keep the smoke pouring off the meats....

Brad

Oh man I posted the wrong video. Fixed.
 
Keep posting videos..... I could watch this stuff all night.
I'm considering the fuel cell you got too.
I have a 5 gallon cell.
 
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