Jarvitron's 1973 Dodge Dart clown car

[jarvitron]

Well, here's the story so far, it's taken forever to get it running again because this sort of thing takes forever sometimes.

Bought this on CL for $650, running and registered. Interior was an 80's cloth coverup of the original vinyl B5 bench, no carpets, dashboard has "been into" a couple times before me, it's got a pretty clear JY marking on it and a half dozen attempted stereo installs. I didn't check to see if the numbers matched between the sweet sounding but tired 318 because this is a 1973 four door and nobody cares. It's ugly. Somebody painted it up like a zebra when they inherited it from Grandma and I haven't tried to see if there's any car paint under there yet.

I was planning on cruising it around this summer and fix up the electrics/interior while I built up a 5.9 Magnum but the 318 decided to spin a cam bearing on the way home one night so it got pulled earlier than expected.

5.9 is a stock 1996 Ram 1500 motor
Stock magnum flywheel
Stock cam
Stock Magnum "heavy duty" cast replacement heads
Edelbrock Performer RPM Air Gap Magnum
"Late" LA water neck (Diplomat)
Champion 26" eBay Radiator (had to redrill top mount holes, no shroud)

Nothing too impressive outside of the motor swap so far, just did some basic wiring fixes (it had "heavy duty" wiring from the factory, but there's still quirks and bad stereo hacking under the dash)

This is my crappy iPhone startup video, not first start, the engine is already warm, but it doesn't take much to get it to fire even cold. You can hear my exhaust leaks but it's coming together.

[ame="http://youtu.be/3CMj4HJ4Tyw"]My 5.9 Startup[/ame]

 

[V-100]

Barry Grant carb- this is neither here nor there, but did they go out of business about 15-18 months ago? It's kinda like Crane Cams- they went out of business, as far as I know, but still see stuff on occassion that makes wonder if they aren't doing some 'limited-capacity' work or sales.

Nice swap, BTW. The Magnums have gotten quite a bit cheaper since the 3-gen hemi came out, which is nice!

 

[ocdart]

Barry Grant carb- this is neither here nor there, but did they go out of business about 15-18 months ago? It's kinda like Crane Cams- they went out of business, as far as I know, but still see stuff on occassion that makes wonder if they aren't doing some 'limited-capacity' work or sales.

Yes, they did go out of business. But back in business with new ownership for over a year now. Check out their new products at http://www.demoncarbs.com/Index.asp

 

[jarvitron]

Barry Grant isn't at Demon Carburetion anymore, they went into bankruptcy and reincorporated as a new company (without the big BG). Jegs and Summit both stopped carrying their carbs (before they went under, with Jegs at least) but both got approached by the new company and Summit at least decided to carry them again.

The carb has been one of the nicer bits I've picked up. $350, brand new, and it was truly a take it out of the box and it starts up on the car carb. I touched nothing, not even adjusting the transfer slot exposure on the fast idle screw, put it onto the car and was able to start it immediately.

This video is after me taking the idle mixture screws down about a quarter turn and knocking about 200 rpm off the idle speed, that's it. Once my exhaust leak is fixed and I've gotten it a little more strapped down (air cleaner, etc), I'll do a more thorough tune.