Back in Time
Well-Known Member
Not my cup of tea..I'm far from a purist but I find it butt ugly.
Frankenstein on CL
- Thread starter 69DartMatt
- Start date
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aaadave
Well-Known Member
this car did belong to a good friend of mine's son. he put it belly first in about a 8 ft deep ditch going around a curve. when he sold it to this guy, it looked like a twisted up pretzel. he either did some serious frame straightening, or is using one of the air shocks to level it out. i wish i still had the picture of it after being wrecked.
340doc
Well-Known Member
Its not bad, seen worse!
Coastie
Well-Known Member
How hard would it be to put a 67-69 front clip on a 72 swinger?
Not very, there would only be a couple additional things to do compared to removing and reinstalling a the '72 front clip really.
You just unbolt the grille, hood, fenders, hood latch support, bumper and bumper brackets on the '72 and then bolt on the corresponding '67-69 pieces. The '72 has the right bumper mount locations on the frame rail, so the whole operation should almost be bolt on. There might be a couple of little things that don't line up depending on the model year of front clip you change to, a couple of the front fender structure to radiator support bolt holes moved slightly, you might need to add a grille bracket or two to the radiator support. But that's about it, drill a couple of new holes for mounting stuff. Just take everything that comes with the front clip though, headlight buckets and some of the support stuff changed so you don't want to mix and match those.
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kesteb
Well-Known Member
What doesn't line up.
The '68 grill needs to use the '68 hood support or it won't line up. You need to drill misc holes for the support brackets. The '74 headlight buckets fit fine on the '68 fenders. The '68 turn signals don't fit. They have a 3" pigtail that dosen't fit the '74 radiator shell. So you need to drill holes for clearance. The '74 turn signal wiring has 3 wires the '68 has 2. The online wiring diagrams don't show this. Once the grill is bolted on, you can't remove it without dropping the bumper or removing the radiator.
On my car, the '68 bumper didn't align up correctly. As far as I can tell the frame is straight. The X measurements were the same when I checked. The brackets don't appear to be bent, and the bumper is straight. But when bolted on, the passenger side is 1/2" to far down an 1/2" to far forward. Nothing a cutting torch and die grinder can't fix. Both sides are now within 1/8" of each other.
The fenders bolt on, but the gaps are way off. The top of the fenders are farther out then the bottoms. To fix this you can shim the front up 1/2" but then everything else is off. So you live with it. Or you take the time and weld the fender edges to adjust the gap.
The hood bolts on, but is a bear to align. You can get the side gaps even with the fenders, but the gap between to hood and cowl is 1/2".
Maybe this is normal for the times, I don't know. I haven't owned a '67 - '69 Dart. But with some work this is all fixable. Just time consuming.
My '65 Dart has much better gap control.
The '68 grill needs to use the '68 hood support or it won't line up. You need to drill misc holes for the support brackets. The '74 headlight buckets fit fine on the '68 fenders. The '68 turn signals don't fit. They have a 3" pigtail that dosen't fit the '74 radiator shell. So you need to drill holes for clearance. The '74 turn signal wiring has 3 wires the '68 has 2. The online wiring diagrams don't show this. Once the grill is bolted on, you can't remove it without dropping the bumper or removing the radiator.
On my car, the '68 bumper didn't align up correctly. As far as I can tell the frame is straight. The X measurements were the same when I checked. The brackets don't appear to be bent, and the bumper is straight. But when bolted on, the passenger side is 1/2" to far down an 1/2" to far forward. Nothing a cutting torch and die grinder can't fix. Both sides are now within 1/8" of each other.
The fenders bolt on, but the gaps are way off. The top of the fenders are farther out then the bottoms. To fix this you can shim the front up 1/2" but then everything else is off. So you live with it. Or you take the time and weld the fender edges to adjust the gap.
The hood bolts on, but is a bear to align. You can get the side gaps even with the fenders, but the gap between to hood and cowl is 1/2".
Maybe this is normal for the times, I don't know. I haven't owned a '67 - '69 Dart. But with some work this is all fixable. Just time consuming.
My '65 Dart has much better gap control.
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There's no reason the bumper shouldn't line up unless something is bent. The frame rails on these cars had the same dimensions for the entire run, the bumper mounts did change when front switched over to shock mount bumpers. But that's pretty obvious, there's only one mounting bolt for those and it's not anywhere near the right spot. So if you used the '68 brackets and had mounting holes, the bumper should line up fine when properly adjusted.
The fenders have the same overall dimensions, there's no reason the gaps should be off further than basic adjustments. On that note, the factory did used spacers on some the fender mounts to get the gaps lined up, it's pretty common to find the 1/8" factory spacers in several locations or even stacked on occasion. There definitely shouldn't be any welding on the fenders required to adjust gaps (swapping marker lights to match is a different story). There are several members on this board that have successfully used '74 fenders on their 67-69 cars.
The hood has the same dimensions, so if there's a 1/2" gap anywhere you still have alignment work to do.
The basic chassis from the firewall forward is dimensionally the same, so, nothing should be harder to line up after swapping the front bodywork with a different model year. There may be a few mounting hole location differences, and as you pointed out some of the wire harness pigtails may need to be lengthened or modified because of minor changes in the wiring depending on what years you're swapping. But you shouldn't need a cutting torch, die grinder, or welder to make anything fit unless you're swapping a non-shock mount bumper onto a car that came with shock mounts.
Basic panel alignment is all it takes.
Coastie
Well-Known Member
Alright, now what about the back?
j par
Well-hung Member
About the car that this thread started with, isn't that a Hang Ten interior?
What about the back? This was regarding front clip swaps. My car is a full ‘71 Demon clone, so yes, I changed the tail panel over to a Demon piece. But with a 67-69 front clip swap there’s no back to swap.
Nope. Similar style but not a hang 10. Those things were white and orange. Even more loud and obnoxious.
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