Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback

[1967 'cuda]

These are some more of the parts with the brake kit.

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[1967 'cuda]

These brake kits are so easy to install. With the axles out you begin by putting the bolts through the axle tube flange.

The next step is to add a spacer that makes up for the space normally used by your old brake backing plate.

Then you slide your axle back in.

The bracket shown here is then bolted to the axle flange where the bolts had been sticking through. It retains the axle.

Another series of bolts go through the bracket that was just bolted on. They stick in towards the center section of the rear end.

Next spacers are put over those bolts.

And now the second bracket is attached.

This is another view of the attached brackets.

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[1967 'cuda]

Time to slide the disc on.

The caliper install is pretty much self explanatory if you've worked on disc brakes before.

I still have to run the brake lines.

There was a time when I was too gun shy to attempt something such as installing disc brakes on a rear end. But with internet information on sites such as FABO it makes tackling jobs you're unfamiliar with possible.

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[1967 'cuda]

I had a bunch more pics that I had taken shortly after the car was painted. I figured I might as well post what I have.

One of the things that I hadn't mentioned earlier in this post was that I did change leaf springs. When I purchased the Barracuda it had a fairly new set of Eaton replacement leaf springs on it. They had an extra 2" of arch in them and I wanted to lower the back of the car down after adding those taller cheater slicks. If you go back and look at some of the pictures of the car from when I first bought it, you can see the difference.

I was able to polish out the sill plates that came with the car. It had been missing all of the windlacing too. So I bought a bulk supply of it and cut it to fit along the headliner and door jams.

One other thing that I'd done was to install a '68 grill. I liked the vertical lines more than the rectangular grid. I purchased the grill pieces from multiple people, re-polished them out and put 1/4" pinstripe tape back over the part that was originally painted black.

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[1967 'cuda]

Here's some pictures of my back yard. It's become sort of a parking lot where the cars each wait their turn to get into the garage for more work.

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[1967 'cuda]

Very nicely dun 1967 'cuda, great read and good choices :glasses7: it would be nice to get this much work dun in 2 days :cheers: or would it ;)

Thanks. It definitely takes less time to post the pictures than it does to do the work. I guess if a person could get the work done in a couple of days it'd be a lot less of an adventure.

 

[1967 'cuda]

When I installed the fiberglass hood I removed the hood springs to make sure they didn't put any upward pressure on the hood eventually causing it to bow. Of course without the hood springs I needed a hood prop. At first I used a rigid black plastic section of vacuum cleaner hose to keep the hood up. I kept it under the front seat.

But that seemed like a pretty rinky-dink way of supporting the hood. So I bought some 1/2" aluminum rod and made a hinged bracket so it could flip up, - similar to the way you see them done on modern non-sprung hoods.

But because the hood was fiberglass, putting a support only on one side made the hood look lopsided when it was open. So I decided to make a second support (similar to the first) that I'd put on the other side.

Well that created a new problem. When I flipped one side up into place it was easy. But after one support was up it had a tendency to fall back down when I reached for the second one.

To prevent that I had to reach to both sides with my hands at the same time while supporting the hood with my head. - Just not cool.

So to solve that problem I needed to tie both sides together with another section of aluminum rod. And the rod that connected the two side supports had to be formed to clear the engine when in the down position.

What had started out so simple was beginning to get out of control. But I went ahead and fabbed the pieces, welded them together and installed it. It actually works pretty good. The support rods line up with the hood pin holes and you can put it in place just as easily as you can on any of the new cars.

At this point you'd think I'd leave well enough alone. But it bothered me that the hood support assembly seemed so bulky. I didn't think that something designed to hold up a hood should be so big.... - Unless it was designed to do more than just hold up the hood.

This is where some of you will probably feel certain that I've become influenced by exhaust fumes or that someone should pad the walls in my garage. I decided to add LED lighting to the crossbar between the two supports. I thought that instead of viewing the hood support as an overgrown hatchet job, they might think of it as an ingenuous method of eliminating the need for a trouble light. ....Maybe the fumes are starting to get to me.

In these next three photos, the car is in an unlit garage at night. So they give a good indication of how well you could see the engine compartment if stranded at in the dark.

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[67 prostreet gt]

Nice hood prop I had the same problem so I just welded up a bunch of half inch extensions so that the bottom sits on the hood him and the other end goes through the hole in the hood and I can lock the rods in place with a clevis pin to prevent them from calling down if its windy out

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[1967 'cuda]

I didn't think the engine compartment was looking too bad, but I knew there was lots of room for improvement. I bought the red AAR clone while the '67 was still wrecked. Because the fastback wasn't going anywhere for a while it then became the donor car when I needed things for the clone. (You may have noticed that I was able to get the E340 plates for the clone.) The silver Chevelle next to it was my son's car that he just sold.

I had robbed the ignition system including the red MSD spark plug wires. (which I later replaced with new pieces) They seemed to be an appropriate fit. (red wires on a red car)

So when it came time for new spark plug wires for the '67 I chose to go with a set of florescent orange wires from Taylor. I really like these wire holder/separators from Spectre. They're inexpensive (around $20) and do a really nice job keeping things orderly because there's so much adjustment to them. We've put a set of them on every vehicle we've done.

While I was at it I decided to cover the hoses with a stainless steel braid.

I added an orange 318 decal to the air cleaner.

The factory shroud did not fit on my replacement radiator from Champion so I fabbed a new one out of stainless steel and replaced the stock fan with an electric one. I also replaced the white plastic overflow tank with a stainless steel one that I got off eBay.

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[1967 'cuda]

After removing the stock hood I had pulled the spring off of the latch assembly but left the latch on the car. It no longer served any purpose because of the hood pins. So, when I reassembled the replacement fiberglass front clip I decided to eliminate the latch. That left the holes that weren't needed anymore exposed. While I was trying to clean up the engine compartment I figured I'd make a filler panel to cover them up.

After making some cardboard templates I cut some aluminum sheet metal to match.

After making a few bends in a brake and doing a little extra notching it slid into place. I even used the existing bolt holes in the under structure to attach to.

After about an hour of polishing it was ready to install.

I bought this MOPAR Racing decal off eBay. Because it had a chrome finish to it I thought it would give the appearance of being embossed when applied over the polished aluminum.

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[cawley]

Yo, this is cawley like I said before your cuda is sweet looking ! by the way I ordered a fg fender from that place you mentioned

 

[1967 'cuda]

Yo, this is cawley like I said before your cuda is sweet looking ! by the way I ordered a fg fender from that place you mentioned

Thanks. I hope you'll be happy with it. I guess you've had a chance to see several pictures of them on this thread. I wish I'd have taken some pictures of the fenders before I installed them. Be prepared to do a little tweeking, drilling, and a bit of grinding. Did you just order one? Or did you order a pair? If you just ordered one, I'd be curious to see how well the original tin matches it after it's installed. I think it would probably be hard to detect which was which. If nothing else, future rust shouldn't be an issue.

 

[1967 'cuda]

I'm pretty happy with the touches of orange that I've added to the car. It's not too in-your-face flashy with the gray/black paint, yet the orange does tend to catch your eye and keeps it from being totally blah.

I won't be able to install the Dana until I finish rebuilding a 727 for the Barracuda. I'd always heard that the 727s were much sturdier and that the 904s couldn't handle a whole lot of power. While I was doing the rest of the work on the car I also installed a new gas tank and sending unit. The old tank had a couple of holes in it that had been patched and was bent up.

I realize that in today's world the 904 now seems to be the transmission of choice with many drag racers. But if my research is correct, it is pretty costly to build the needed strength into them.

I found a 727 on Craigslist down in Texas that came with a stall converter and two valve bodies (one forward manual shift and the other a reverse manual shift). It was only $200 but I had to drive down there to get it. Before I put it in I want to go through it to make sure everything is OK. It's been almost 30 years since I rebuilt a transmission so I'm going to have to refresh my memory by hitting the books.

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[1967 'cuda]

I've got a buddy of mine in Rising City, Nebraska that owns a lime '68 notchback. As far as I know, we're the only two guys in the county that own early Barracudas.

His had been in his family for years and he restored it a few years back.

Ever since I got my 'Cuda I've wanted to get some snapshots of our two cars together.

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[1967 'cuda]

I had owned the Barracuda for several months before I noticed that the dash pad had been re-covered. Someone had sewn up some vinyl and stretched it over it. I'm satisfied with the way it looks so I don't think I'll do anything more with it.

Before I had lowered the car down in the rear, it was difficult to see out of the rear view mirror. In an attempt to solve that, I installed a reverse camera down by the license plate and mounted the monitor over the original mirror. The monitor had a reflective, mirror-like surface that acted as an actual mirror until the camera was turned on. Then it would switch to camera view. It worked great at dusk or whenever it wasn't either too light or too dark outside. But most of the time it wasn't much help.

I ended up putting the original mirror back on after I lowered the car. The red button on the turn signal arm was the method I had used to control the camera. I left it in place thinking that I might some day use it as a trigger for a line lock.

Just a few more pics of the Barracuda sitting in the driveway.

Because this was a '67, it did not have any of the stainless steel moldings around the windshield. I found some off of a '68 here on FABO. They polished out very nicely and look better than new.

The car was also missing the trim that should have been on the roof gutters. The ones on the car now also came from someone on FABO.

The rear window seal was bad on the car. It was split at the bottom and had a 1" gap that allowed rain to run inside the back. I found a new seal on eBay and then purchased the '68 rear window trim off FABO.

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[1967 'cuda]

One other modification I'd like to make is to paint my air cleaner lid orange. I was messaging back and forth with Jim Lusk about creating a CUDA themed replacement decal for the top of his air cleaner lid. He's got an old air grabber air cleaner off of a Roadrunner that he's been using. It still has the 'COYOTE DUSTER' decal on it but it's badly weathered now.

I wanted to choose a design that was most likely to be familiar to people so I went back to the caricature I'd started with for my tail stripe.

After taking some measurements he sent me a picture of it. Taking the dimensions that he'd given me I attempted to fit the CUDA emblem into the same space.

Rather than make a single color decal like I did fr my rear quarters, this would need to be full colored to properly mimic the look Plymouth would have used if they'd made it. The engine size portion would have to be a separate piece so that it would work on different vehicles.

I sent my designs to a local vinyl shop to have some made. It's taking them longer than I expected. I'm hoping that the design will fit both the oval and the round air cleaner lids. If it doesn't, I'll make two different ones.

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[cawley]

Yep, just ordered one. Cant wait to get it to see how it looks. The guy told me that they don't keep that year in stock so they had to make me one. Ill let you know how I make out.

 

[1967 'cuda]

Yep, just ordered one. Cant wait to get it to see how it looks. The guy told me that they don't keep that year in stock so they had to make me one. Ill let you know how I make out.

As I recall they had to make me a fresh pair too. It seems to me that theirs were supposed to be a lot stronger than some of the others out there because they hand laminate as opposed to using a chopper gun.

 

[cawley]

I was looking at the list of cars that you own & other than being a barracuda fan I love the 68-70 chargers. In my younger days I had a 70 charger, original 383 4spd & yellow. Like a dumb a$$$$ I sold it, young & stupid lol

 

[1967 'cuda]

I posted a Charger build thread on here if you want to check it out.

Charger

 

[1967 'cuda]

I love my son dearly, but he refuses to give the 318 in the 'Cuda any respect. I'm still determined to keep a small block in the car. So I guess it's time to do some small block stroker research. So far I'm leaning towards one of the 408s that Summit is advertizing. They're claiming 445 HP. It'd be nice to have a fresh motor to drop in at the same time as the rear end/transmission swap. I'd love to have the one stroked out to a 440 but it's too rich for my blood.

 

[1967 'cuda]

Well I sent a check off today to Mike at MRL. He's going to put together a 500+ HP 408 for me. I had started another thread on FABO where I sought out advice on where to buy a complete stroker. As I had expected, a bunch of you guys came through for me. If Mike is as good as everybody says, I should be real happy with the new engine.

I don't know about everybody else, but I tend to ignore ads on the internet. Because they're everywhere I tune them out. So while seeking advice from everybody, I'm told that MRL has an ad on the right hand side of the screen. I look, and sure enough, it's been there all along. I guess the ads on some of these forums are worth paying attention to.

4 to 10 week build time, so I've got that time frame in which to get everything else done on the car. - I still have to rebuild that torqueflite and install the Dana. There are a number of other things I should take care of too. I'd like to figure out a way to dress up the underside of the hood. It's still got that rough fiberglass texture to it. I wish now that I had smoothed it out by filling and sanding before I had the car painted.

 

[1967 'cuda]

A while back Hyper Pak Posted a thread showing a picture of a practice drag race Christmas tree he bought at an antique shop. I thought it would make an awesome prop next to a drag car at a car show. I tried to coax him into selling it to me, but no luck. - I can't blame him for saying NO.

So I'd been looking for a used one online ever since. Last week I found one on RacingJunk.com. It should be arriving by the end of next week.

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[1967 'cuda]

I may have to stop asking you folks on FABO for advice. It seems like every time I do you guys find something else for me to add to my list of work I need to do. I guess I'm going to be putting frame rail connectors on the blackboard. - From everything I'm hearing it sounds like it'd be worthwhile.

1) may reduce body flex
2) may actually aid in handling
3)may eliminate any future body squeaks and rattles
4)may improve traction control

Although no one is guaranteeing that I'll see all of these benefits, a bunch of guys have said that these were some of the improvements they'd noticed on their cars.

I want this car to be a blast to drive when it's done. I want everything to work. I don't want it to rattle or squeak. I may be building it more like a straight line car but I don't want it to handle like a pig.

As always, thanks to everybody for your advice.

 

[bkbond12]

I love it. Thanks for sharing.