1974 Dodge Dart Diesel

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I'd love to see what had to be done in the realm of chassis mods. Diesel engines seem to weigh at least 150% of what a comparable sizes gasoline engine does. Fuel lines, Torsion bars, cooling mods...I'd love to see more!
 
That is really cool, DieselDartGuy. I didn't know that Mopar ever sourced a Nissan diesel engine, let alone that they offered it in a Dart.

Chrysler must have been pretty hard up for diesel engines when the gas crunch hit in the '70s, because they sourced another diesel engine, this one from Mitsubishi, which they offered in Dodge pickups in 1978. It was expensive, and a flop, and only lasted one year, IIRC. It was a real dog and made significantly less power than the slant 6, and the slant was available for far less money than the diesel, so hardly anybody bought them. Just about the only Mitsubishi diesel pickups Mopar sold that year were for airport tugs and the like.
 
Bill Crowell said:
That is really cool, DieselDartGuy. I didn't know that Mopar ever sourced a Nissan diesel engine, let alone that they offered it in a Dart.

Chrysler must have been pretty hard up for diesel engines when the gas crunch hit in the '70s, because they sourced another diesel engine, this one from Mitsubishi, which they offered in Dodge pickups in 1978. It was expensive, and a flop, and only lasted one year, IIRC. It was a real dog and made significantly less power than the slant 6, and the slant was available for far less money than the diesel, so hardly anybody bought them. Just about the only Mitsubishi diesel pickups Mopar sold that year were for airport tugs and the like.
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It's funny you mention airport tugs, because we actually have one of those as well. It's a jeep CJ10a powered by none other than the same sd33 diesel that's in my dart, and it is also hooked up to the 727 torqueflite. We use it as a farm truck, originally a 2wd we extended the bed and set it up for 4wd. I've looked for others and they are also very hard to find.
 
That Diesel Dodge truck was a 4wd and the engine made an abysmal amount of HP. Something like 78 ??? The zero to 60 was something like 4 days or so. Fuel economy may have been okay but holy crap it would have sucked *** to drive that turd.
 
Kern Dog, at the risk of hijacking DieselDartGuy's thread, you know the weird thing about the '78 Dodge truck was that the FSM consisted of a thin green Supplement to the '77 FSM, and you were supposed to use the '77 FSM for anything not covered by the '78 Supplement. When you look through the Supplement, the whole thing seems to be devoted to servicing and repairing the Mitsubishi diesel engine, EXCEPT that there are about 10 easily-overlooked pages in the back that show the revised wiring diagrams for all the '78 trucks, and the wiring was SIGNIFICANTLY CHANGED in '78! It is really easy to miss the revised wiring diagrams in the '78 book and mistakenly look at the '77 wiring diagrams instead. That will drive you crazy really fast!
 
There was a deisel 6cyl turbo truck in a yard in western RI (Harry's) a few years ago. First I'd seen of that body style with a deisel... Must have been a '78. Same yellow color on it too.
 
This is really cool. It would be interesting to know who did the engineering on the conversion and fabbed up any special pieces needed.

Back in '74 I helped a co-worker swap one of these engines into a '74 Nova. The engine was $1500 new on a skid. It took a little doing, but we got it going. The car was a real slug, painfully slow, but got in the high 20s for MPG. I distinctly remember that it said CHRYSLERNISSAN on the cast aluminum valve cover.
 
67redcudavert said:
This is really cool. It would be interesting to know who did the engineering on the conversion and fabbed up any special pieces needed.

Back in '74 I helped a co-worker swap one of these engines into a '74 Nova. The engine was $1500 new on a skid. It took a little doing, but we got it going. The car was a real slug, painfully slow, but got in the high 20s for MPG. I distinctly remember that it said CHRYSLERNISSAN on the cast aluminum valve cover.
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That's awesome. I've loved hearing about the different conversions people have done, the motors are definitely slugs but equally unique. There's a company called Wilcap owned by Tony Capanna back in the day, and it seems to me that he actually came up with the idea of putting those diesels in darts, his company manufactured the adapter plates and I have reason to believe that the dealerships ordered up the adapter plates or the engine/adapter plate/transmission altogether to do the conversions. If you go on to Wilcap's website, there's actually info on Mr. Wilcap's interest in these diesels, and it even mentions him building a diesel dart with a turbo and running it in an emissions rally back in the day. I've done a lot of research but I still can't be sure if the adapter plates or the whole setup was purchased from his company by the dealerships, but it makes sense to me, as he had a close friendship with the manufacturer of those diesels. Pretty cool stuff.
 
I went to the Wilcap website and read the history part, pretty interesting. I've long been aware of Wilcap but didn't really know much about them. I wonder where he first saw one of those engines and decided it would be good swap material.

I'm not sure how my co-worker found the engine either, I just remember going to a heavy equipment repair shop where we picked up a new engine. Both of us were working in the engineering lab of an auto parts manufacturer at the time. One day he approached me, told me what he wanted to do and asked me if I would help him. We were able to use the shop at work after hours to make what we needed to do the conversion. He was an engineer and I was a technician, so he designed the pieces and he and I then made them.

His ultimate goal was to start a company doing diesel conversions using these engines. He figured there would be interest in doing this because the first gas crisis was in full swing and diesel fuel was really cheap then. Several conversions were done before he gave up on the idea, it didn't work out because it was too expensive, the engine alone was $1500, a lot of money in'74. Do you have any idea how much the diesel swap into the Dart added to the price back then?

One funny story about the first conversion: since he wanted to start a company doing these swaps he was always on the lookout for potential investors. One time he was going to make a 3 hour one way trip to talk to some people. On the way he stopped at a truck stop to fill the car up. The attendant was reluctant to do so but did fill it up. On his way back he stopped at the same place to top it off and check mileage and the same attendant was still there. This time the attendant refused to fill it up, saying how Novas don't come with diesels and he was going to ruin the engine in his car. So my friend had get out of the car, open the hood and show this guy the engine so he would fill the tank.

I'm also curious about Chrysler's connection with this engine, as I mentioned before it said CHRYSLERNISSAN on the cast aluminum valve cover.
 
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It's funny your co-worker had to deal with that, I have had that happen so many times, especially since I'm young, so people assume I'm young and dumb and putting the wrong fuel in, I actually put a big DIESEL sticker on the back window to help with that haha I still get the occasional confused look.

As to the price difference, I actually am not sure, the news ad I have said something like $5000-$6000 which seems to be pretty expensive compared to the other vehicles in the ad, so it must have been a more expensive option, could explain the small number I have found.

I've thought of multiple vehicles I would love to plop those diesels in, and I have two spare engines to do it so some day I just might do it. I do not recall where I saw this but I remember seeing somewhere an article or something about Wilcap's last diesel conversion was the turbocharged Nissan diesel swapped into the Datsun 240. I think I would swap it into an old jeepster commando. That's interesting that they were so expensive then, I managed to pickup two well used motors for $300, granted they aren't new and ready to go but good for parts.
 
I have another diesel swap story. For years I had full sized vans, really liked them but the mileage sucked. In the 80s when GM was putting the Olds 350 diesel in big cars they would get mid to high 20s for mileage, it started me thinking about swapping some kind of diesel into my van.

In 89 when Dodge started using the Cummins engine it really started me thinking. An inline engine would fit in the van a lot easier than a V-8 would. So in 92 I went out and found an 89 engine at a junkyard, bought it and proceeded to stuff it into my 75 Dodge B300. It took me about 6 months and wasn't easy. But it was worth it, the performance exceeded my expectations. The van with a 360 and 4:10s ALWAYS got 9-11 mpg, no matter what the load was or how you drove it. With the diesel it always got at least 15 mpg, usually higher. On the road it would get low 20s at 70 mph. In Sept. of 93 I towed a car to the Bonneville salt flats to race. The ease in which we went over the Rockies made all the work worth it. When we were crossing Neb. we were getting 17 mpg at 70 mph, moving about 13,000 lbs. But after 24 hours on the road I wasn't real alert and managed to pump 20 gallons of gas into the van. The pump had diesel on one side and gas on the other. I just saw diesel when we rolled past the pump and I did not pay attention. I saw what I did when I was finishing up and saw that it said premium right above the numbers spinning over. So I had to siphon all the gas out and refill with diesel.

People are swapping Cummins 4bt engines into all different kinds of vehicles, go to 4bt swaps.com and check it out. Hope you're able to enjoy that Dart for along time yet, I like it, pretty cool!
 
rustycowll69 said:
that era was special for the OPEC oil embargo. The Arabs were punishing the US for supporting Israel, so they were restricting oil to the West. So we had gasoline shortages. We had all kinds of economy fads going on. I remember seeing Mopar had an option on their cars, whereby if you stepped too hard on the gas pedal, the engine vacuum would drop, and it would trigger the left fender-mounted turn signal to flicker, reminding you to not be "fuelish". LOL.
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Lol! I have one of those switches,....used it to trigger water/alky injection on a SB oh......mid 80'sish....
 
TheDieselDartguy said:
Yeah I'd love to take it to a real car show, so far I've only taken it to our local tractor show, and it sure brought a crowd
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Absolutely, that ride will get more attn. than almost any other Mopar dude, have a laminated copy of that ad laying there & jaws will be dropping!
Thanks for posting this & welcome to FABO!
 
Man that is to cool!!! I wish I would have had that to start out with. It would of made my life so much easier. I'm putting a 4bt in a 72 Dart, and it's taking a lot of changing things around to get it to work.
 
dusterbnb said:
Man that is to cool!!! I wish I would have had that to start out with. It would of made my life so much easier. I'm putting a 4bt in a 72 Dart, and it's taking a lot of changing things around to get it to work.
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Thank you! And I always that it would be awesome to plop a 4bt in a dart, more power and you can still pull awesome mileage out of them. Should send me some pics once you get it all together!
 
TheDieselDartguy said:
Thank you! And I always that it would be awesome to plop a 4bt in a dart, more power and you can still pull awesome mileage out of them. Should send me some pics once you get it all together!
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I sure will send some pics. I have a thread going. It's slow, but it's getting there. It under 4bt dart.

The fuel mileage is the main reason I'm building it. I'm hoping to be getting well over 30. Based on the fact of me talking to 2 people that have done this in 2 B-bodies. One a 68 Satilite wagon and the other a 74 Satilite. So, both a lot heavier than the Dart, and they are getting 32-35mpg. We will see.
 
That is really cool, DieselDartGuy. I didn't know that Mopar ever sourced a Nissan diesel engine, let alone that they offered it in a Dart.
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It was pure aftermarket. As mentioned, it was an outfit called Wilcap, out of Torrance CA. Here's the article (downloadable PDF...I've configured it so you can zoom in for E-Z reading).

IIRC, MA mopar investigated converting the /6 to diesel.
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Yes, and about the only thing the turbo diesel Slant-6 had in common with the gasoline-fired one was bore, stroke, and six cylinders at a 30-degree angle. Chrysler got very far along in the process (somewhere past prototype and into preproduction testing -- see here) when the plug was pulled. It was a great deal better engineering job than GM's halfassed work on the Olds 350, and that slack garbage by GM is what torpedoed the Chrysler program; see here (search page for diesel).
 
only 2 ways to get power outta a diesel,..iron pistons and lotta fuel,...or a turbo! just way thay are! be surprised what 10-15 lbs of bost will do for it!
 
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