69 Dart 4 door cruiser

[Kern Dog]

For the cars I own, this is good enough for me. I'm enjoying this stuff.
I may not keep this car. Who knows? I'm having fun with the build though.

 

[nutz]

you going to use the flag like a vinyl roof and paint 01 on the door

 

[Kern Dog]

Ha ha...no.
Maybe paint it YELLOW and drive as a taxi for UBER.

 

[Darter6]

I enjoy the process of fabricating and making parts.

The art of Hot Rodding 101. Nothing like it !

 

[nutz]

Yes that's what I like about hot rodding is the art of engineering and fabrication

 

[340sFastback]

Nice work on that front suspension. I see its an AC car too based on firewall.

 

[barbee6043]

Yes, there are a lot of cool more doors, at least they are cool to me.
The only downside I have found with them is they are hard sells to get your $ back out if you want to sell. It takes the right 4 door car for the right guy, at the right place and time.

 

[nutz]

I kind of dig more door hard tops
Its a shame they only made them in c body

 

[Kern Dog]

The front end rebuild continues.
I had some help yesterday from
FABO member @RBConvert
We got the control arms and knuckles in. The sway bar end links are too. I mounted the knuckles to place the calipers to the rear.

I went back and decided to use the disc brake control arms that were on the car when I got it. There is a story that goes with that. I’ll get to that in a moment.

The red colored sway bar end links are a bit flashy for such a plain looking car.

The disc UCAs had bad ball joint grease boots. We tried like hell to unscrew the left upper ball joint with the UCA in the car for leverage. We had an old torque wrench with a 4 foot cheater bar and the damned socket kept slipping off the ball joint without backing it out a fraction of an inch. I felt the motion of the ball joint and since it wasn’t sticky or wobbly, screw it….I left both in place and just replaced the grease boots. WHY didn’t I use the Dr Diff adapters for the small ball joint UCAs?
Read on….

 

[Kern Dog]

I thought I had it figured out.
Seasoned, used 73-76 Disc A body UCAs go for at least $125 a pair around here. Tubular aftermarket ones are well over $400 so I thought I was smart by buying the adapter setup from Dr Diff for a measly fifty bucks or so.
I had several pairs of the 64-76 small upper ball joint upper control arms and thought I’d be able to use them. I replaced the bushings but the upper ball joints in them were still good. I gave them a cursory coat of semi flat black paint….

Rick Ehrenberg has written several times that the upper ball joints in these cars are often still in good condition even after many, many miles of use. I’ve found that to be true too.
The Dr Diff kit is simple but smart…

The 73-89 front disc knuckles use the big shank upper ball joint so this kit uses tapered spacers to allow the smaller shank ball joints to fit and work. He includes two nuts to fasten it together. In theory, it goes like this:

The spacer just slips on.

No adhesive, no lubricants either. Just assemble like any other time…

Here is where I encountered trouble.

The shank does not stick through the knuckle very far.

Can you put a nut on the end and pull the ball joint shank deeper in?
Not really. I used a clamp to compress the ball joint into the knuckle and didn’t get far. I ended up stripping the last two threads on the nut trying to draw it in. It gets worse though.

My first attempt was on a UCA with a ball joint that was threaded all the way to the end. A quickie look at other ball joints I have here show this:

Threads that start above the cotter key hole. The fully threaded shank was bad enough… this one couldn’t thread on at all.

 

[Kern Dog]

Someone must have been able to make this work though, right?
Cass has had this kit available for years. It seems that if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t be selling it. I saw this as a cheap way to make use of UCAs that I’d otherwise not need. For a moment, I thought that maybe they were not intended for use with the “A body” knuckle.

73-76 A on the left, later “B” knuckle on the right.
The later Knuckle was redesigned to be a bit lighter and taller. They leaned these out in a few places. Look at this A knuckle then the B and you can see where the B is slimmer around the caliper bracket mounts.

I thought that maybe the two varied in thickness at the top where the ball joint attaches.

No, they are the same. I gambled on the Dr Diff adapter kit and lost. I still wonder exactly what application this fits and works???

 

[Kern Dog]

The lower ball joints were fine so I just cleaned them up and used new grease boots from PST/Kanter.

I did put washers in between the ball joints and knuckles to increase negative camber.

The tie rod ends all have cracked grease boots. Two tie rod ends are sort of sticky in movement so I’ll replace those.
I used to have a bunch of grease “seals” which are generic covers. The boots are what you really want because they snap into place on the tie rods and seal out everything as long as they are not split open. Unfortunately, most aftermarket tie rod ends are not machined for the boots.
I hope I’m stating this right…. I’m thinking that the seals are the ones that just lay over the guts of the tie rod ends, sort of like umbrellas. Set me straight if I have this wrong.

The boots (I think) are the ones that fit snug and don’t let stuff get in.
Ehrenberg has stated that the seals are not ideal but do work okay… you just need to lube the components on a tighter schedule. That will also flush out road grime as new grease gets pumped in.
I bought seals from PST before but these here were bought locally.

Cheap!

I bought four pair! I may go back for more.

I went through the front end of my Duster last August, replaced a couple seals on my Charger and recently helped a friend with his car. This explains where the seals went.
I was quite happy to find them this cheap and close by too.

 

[mopowers]

Can you get the appropriate tapered reamer and open the hole in the knuckle up a smidge? Not that that should be a justified "fix," but just spit-ballin' here. You can't be the only one to have that issue with those adapters.

 

[Kern Dog]

When I get motivated to revisit this, I’ll see if there is a way to make it work.
I set these large ball joint UCAs aside just to save them for some future project. I thought I was going to be able to make use of those small ball joint arms. I convert everything to the later disc setup so the 3 pair of small ball joint UCAs I gave in the shed are pretty much worthless to me.
The thick top section of the knuckles seems like overkill but there is no way I’d grind them thinner just to make this work!
One of the reasons that I like the calipers mounted toward the back is the routing of the brake hoses is better. In the stock front mount, the brake hose right at the caliper has a hard line that runs right under the upper ball joint shank and nut. It is crowded in there that way.
I like the look of the rear mounted calipers....

 

[Kern Dog]

Front suspension is done and greased. That sway bar looks huge !

I used urethane for the strut rod and sway bar bushings. The rest are rubber.

I only had to replace one outer tie rod end but I did replace all the grease boots. I had spare brake lines from cars I’ve parted out so the hard lines were as simple as can be. I had a 15/16” master cylinder I pulled from a friends nice 68 Satellite.

I’m about ready to bleed the brakes.
I reused the 2.75" FMJ single piston calipers used on most every RWD Mopar from 1976 and later.

The brake pads were in these calipers when I had them in my Charger. Carbon metallic …. Whatever that means!
Everything fit like stock. I ran a D/A sander over the pads to deglaze them a bit.

It sure is easy to reach all this stuff without the engine and transmission in place.

I have to slip on the coupler. I’ll get the wife to assist with that.

Oh yeah….I forgot to mention that I have counterfeit Konis up front too!

I like to have functional brakes for even the cars without engines here. Sometimes I push cars around the yard to make room for something else and it sure is great to be able to stop. Everything in the suspension has been pulled from stuff I already had except the tie rod end grease boots. Even the brake fluid was free.....The local dump has a recycling center where people drop off stuff. I got some oil, anti freeze, brake fluid and other stuff still unopened. Score!

 

[Kern Dog]

Even with no engine or transmission in there I wanted to play with ride heights.

The center of the k member is 7 1/8” from the floor. I may set the height here when the car is done.

I like the slight nose down rake and tire reveal at the fender. I was happy to see the sway bar ends tucked up better than I expected.

You can’t even see the right side from here. That is great. It isn’t like I’m going trail running where the bar would have been dragging rocks but tucked up tight is still better than hanging down.

There is about 5/8”” from the top of the bump stop to the frame. The bump stops are rubber too so this should be fine.
I may see how the alignment looks tomorrow. I put the washers in between the lower ball joints and knuckles so I hope to get some decent readings.
Cheers!

 

[mopowers]

You're right, that sway bar does look huge. I like the idea of repurposing an old piece from an auto wrecking yard. I may borrow that idea for my '68 Dart.

Interesting idea on putting washers at the lower ball joints. I wonder how much caster you can end up with. Look like you used regular upper control arm bushings?

 

[Kern Dog]

I did use the offset upper control arm bushings but they are not made by Moog. The local NAPA stores sold off all their Moog stock and are using a different manufacturer for front end parts.
AR Engineering used this image to advertise these spacers:

They listed these as making a 2 degree difference in camber. Just an estimate but they look about 3/16" thick. That is .187". The washers that I used were about half that... .090.
I have a buddy, the one that gave me this car. He has an old circle track Mopar that had spacers on the right side over ONE inch thick!

 

[abdywgn]

I like to have functional brakes for even the cars without engines here. Sometimes I push cars around the yard to make room for something else and it sure is great to be able to stop.

I would just push them around with a hunk of 4X4 on the fender and toss it under a tire to stop it. usually did after it skidded the block a foot or so.

 

[Kern Dog]

Years ago I bought a stash of parts from a guy that got out of the hobby. In with all the good stuff was this:

Remember these? 3/4” universal fit rear sway bar made by Addco and sold through Direct Connection. This is the lazy mount one that attaches to the axle instead of to the frame. To mock it up I used some zip ties looped together.

These Addco bars were fine but their hardware was crappy. It uses flimsy brackets that can allow the bar to move around even with the brackets tight.

This U shaped bracket is supposed to wrap around the axle housing but these often bend or warp.

The end links attach to these flimsy brackets that get bolted to the frame.

There isn’t much room in there to stuff a bushing, washer and then get a nut on it.

 

[Kern Dog]

The U bolt allows a bolt in deal which would be fine if it all went together nicely. It doesn’t so I modified the U brackets…

After bending the ends in a few degrees, I cut them down.

Trial fit…

This now allows the bar to be retained by simpler 3/8” 1 inch bolts.

The end links attach brackets were a simple fix…..

I just used some scrap steel I had here.

This is thicker than the Addco bracket and will allow more room to attach the end links.
The car is on the lift but I did put jack stands under it, then lowered the lift so it sat on the axle in an attempt to get the axle to sit about where it will with the car on the ground.

My goal was to have the sway bar side sections parallel with the leaf springs with the car on its tires. This is harder to do than it sounds.

 

[Kern Dog]

Weld ‘er up…..

The U brackets got buzzed to the housing and below that, a flat plate was welded to give the “D” bushing bracket at attachment point.

The bend in the middle will clear the center section just fine.
End link brackets are in and the sway bar looks even with the springs.

 

[Kern Dog]

THEN I set it down and with the actual weight on the suspension, the sway bar arms point down a bit.

It isn’t extreme.

I don’t think they would hit speed bumps unless I had the ex wife in the trunk to really load the suspension.

I could simply use shorter end links to get the ends of the sway bar up a bit. Right now, it poses no risk of hitting anything since the car isn’t running and driving yet.

As I may have mentioned, my goal here was to get the suspension, brakes and steering sorted so when the engine goes in, the car will be closer to roadworthy. The engine for this car is still in this car:

It is a standard bore mid 70s 360. I do have a A500 for it so I’ll be cutting and welding to fit that dude in the car.
For now I’m going to bleed the brakes and align it.
Tomorrow…,

 

[nutz]

THEN I set it down and with the actual weight on the suspension, the sway bar arms point down a bit.

View attachment 1716430902

It isn’t extreme.

View attachment 1716430903

I don’t think they would hit speed bumps unless I had the ex wife in the trunk to really load the suspension.

View attachment 1716430904

View attachment 1716430905

I could simply use shorter end links to get the ends of the sway bar up a bit. Right now, it poses no risk of hitting anything since the car isn’t running and driving yet.

View attachment 1716430906

As I may have mentioned, my goal here was to get the suspension, brakes and steering sorted so when the engine goes in, the car will be closer to roadworthy. The engine for this car is still in this car:

View attachment 1716430907

It is a standard bore mid 70s 360. I do have a A500 for it so I’ll be cutting and welding to fit that dude in the car.
For now I’m going to bleed the brakes and align

So a shorter 3/8 bolt and cut the spacer

 

[mopowers]

Nice work, Greg! I like the shorter bolt/spacer idea @nutz had. Either way, great progress.