My 74 Dart Swinger

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Dart Shawn

I wanna go fast!!!
Joined
Jan 17, 2009
Messages
129
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0
Location
Victorville CA
Howdy fella's,

I'm new to the board, let me start by introducing my self!, the names Shawn, I'm 19 and the Dart is my second card and second project, first car was a 68 Cougar 302, my first project was a 72 Chevy V8 Vega, I'll post up some pics for yall fella's to see if ya want to look at the other side of the auto realm:-D

Any ways, I bought the 74 about a year and a half ago and ran into a fair amount of problems at this point the car has no engine in it, I blew the front main seal on it and figured hell, I might as well just rebuild the engine! it had 342k miles on it so it was time any how. I pulled the engine and found more and more wrong with every step, the crank was bad, the cylinders need bored, the water cannals in the timing chain cover were rotted completely away, timing chain was stretched beyond belief, and the carb was bad. A friend of mine gave me a complete engine in pieces that was already 0.030 over so I took that to the shop and had em push it out to 0.060, deck the block, recon the heads completely-(3 angle valve job, double hand lapped, magnafluxed and the original seat/guides were drilled out and hardened guides and seats were installed), recon the rods and press on the new Pistons So far I have all new parts even a brand new Mopar high performance crank. I'm puting in a stage 1 cam, also got a Weiand 8007 high rise dual plane intake and a Holley 1850-3 600CFM single pumper carb. the car should run great when done and I am also gonna build a set of 2.02 heads as Summit racing sells castings for 2.02 318 heads I will build roller heads out of em with Crane aluminum rockers and stainles steel valves.

Heres a few pics of the car, I will also post pics of the engine, this thread will have a fair amount of pics in it, I hope thats OK with the mods here, if not just tell me I will pull the pics down.
 
Welcome to FABO! Nice looking car you have. Don't worry about to many pic's. There is no such thing around here. Good luck on your build.
 
Here are some pics!.

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Seeing a fresh block with fresh paint, is like candy in a bowl! Great pics! Welcome to the site!
 
Dart Shawn,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the PM. It's good to see other 74 Darts on here. I don't think my son and I will be undergoing as in depth of a build as you are, but we'll be watching your progress to learn from it as much as possible. And post as many pictures as you'd like, the more the better. A picture is truely worth a thousand words on this forum.

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Thanks fella's, seein that fresh block painted after it being coated a half inch thick in sludge is pretty nice I must admit! and no problem Button, you and your boy have a pretty bitchen ride there I always thought flat black paint looks way better then a vinyl top, I don't know why hehe.

More pics to come.

Shawn.
 
Thanks 74fldart!!,

I actually do need help, I am trying to pick up plastigauge for my crank install, the manual is saying my oil clearance for my main and rod journals is .0005-.0015 yet my engine tech who's been building engines since 1965 says if I were to go.0005-.0015 then it'd be to tight and I'd have problems so he'd go "one and a half" as he said, I am not sure what he means by this, does he mean .0015? even then I checked a second manual just to make sure the first isnt wrong and it said the same .0005-.0015 can you guys reccomend what to do? what Plastiguageshould I use? and what clearance should I put it to?

Shawn.


your build is looking good, you can get a lot of help here if you need it.
good luck
 
Looks like I'll be starting my build on Thursday, hopefully by then I get paid and I can pick up a ring grinder so I dont have to use a damn file!!, pictures soon to come.

Shawn.
 
Getting a little further here, I got a set of tires but I need to know if the rear's will fit on my stock rims as they are quite large! the rears are BFG Radial TA 245-60-14's, will these fit the stock 1974 Dart wheels? pretty wide I know, hope they will!.

Shawn.
 
Check out the tires / wheels section of forabodies.com. If I'm not mistaken someone on there may have mounted those same tires on the back of their car. They fit in the wheel wells, but I can't remember if they were on stock rims, and if they made any modifications to the springs and/or offset.
 
Got more parts back from the shop today but I have to take the crank back in to have it polished or even turned there are nicks in many of the journals, lets hope for the best!!! also would any one happen to have 4 of the long head bolts for a small block? some how I am missing 4 of em even though I pulled em out of the heads and labeled em I now need the long ones, if any of yall could help me out I'd be very very much appreciative!.

Heres the Weiand 8007 high rise intake and Holley 1850-3 dad bought me for my Birthday!
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Shawn.
 
They'll fit in the well, they are just cutting uncomfortably close to the outer inner lip of the wheel well I'm just gonna take my metal nibblers and cut a few notches in the inner lip and bend it up so it doesn't cut my tire I did the same on my 72 vega. my only question now is if I can get these huge tires to fit on such a small stock wheel but I have to do something as my tires are dry rotted, I bought coopers for the front and got the BFG's free as the y were just to wide for the stock wheel wells on the Vega especially with the shortened rear.

Shawn.


Check out the tires / wheels section of forabodies.com. If I'm not mistaken someone on there may have mounted those same tires on the back of their car. They fit in the wheel wells, but I can't remember if they were on stock rims, and if they made any modifications to the springs and/or offset.
 
Well fellas, I just made my final parts order for the time being today! I won't have much money to spend for a while like I just did I just topped $2500.00 today on the engine and have a bit to go before its satisfactory, For now the engine will run strong and look damn good while its doing so!

This last little spending escapade bought me my ARP Header bolts, ARP valve cover studs, Edelbrock intake bolts,fel-pro printoseal intake gaskets, MR gasket copper header gaskets, a dipstick tube, a summit SFI harmonic balancer, a Mopar performance air cleaner, and a set of Mopar performance valve covers this last Bill has come to $405 bucks pushing the total engine cost to $2603.87 this is also including anything extra I had to buy to work on the engine with, I.E. shop towels, brake parts cleaner, sand paper ETC.

I will soon post my full build receipt.
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Shawn.
 
What all have you done with you 273? was it the 273 with the steel crank?? I looked and looked for a 273 steel crank for my 318 but had no luck.


A lot of guys would prolly think I'm crazy for spending $2600 on a friggin 318 but hell its all I had and the 2600 added up through time, sure if i had 2600 I'd just buy a complete 340.

Shawn

Hey I did the same thing but with a 273 and a duster but my 273 is now a 308 after the .060 bore lol
 
Shawn I've been exactly where you are. I ended up going completely over budget on my motor project as well. It's too easy to order the "cool stuff"!
 
Shawn I've been exactly where you are. I ended up going completely over budget on my motor project as well. It's too easy to order the "cool stuff"!

I totally agree, once you have the coin to buy the gear you think heh why not?? I can afford it and next thing ya know your dumping nearly 3K into a damn 318. The funny part is I bought mostly all cheap stuff, the engine shop had decent prices, the engine master kit was cheap so on and so fourth, $2600 is a hefty amount for a 318 yet this will have a full mandrel bent exhaust system with Edelbrock SDT mufflers, Hooker headers that I won for 83 bucks off eBay 8) and a lot of other things that were not really necessities yet I could afford it so I figured I should get it now instead of worrying about wanting to get it later when I'm broke again.

I will soon be in the military and I plan on building a very stout full roller 340 while I'm in, my dad taught me all I know so I will send him the money and tell him what to buy, I reckon after a year or so of buying and saving parts I will have a pretty sharp 340, I'll gut the 318 for the usable parts like the crank, intake, headers,ignition system-(getting that soon enough), I'll sell the crank, buy a forged crank, forged H beam rods, forged KB pistons, edelbrock aluminum 2.02 heads, a comp cams 280/280 roller cam, crane roller lifters, Crane roller rockers/adjustable push rods, a Holley or demon carb, I'll stick with my Weiand 8007 intake, it'll have a full MSD ignition, prolly 3K-3400 stall converter, a 4 speed trans and hopefully a nice 3.55 posi rear with hardened axles, I reckon that should be a peppy little engine and should only take me around 1/2 to 3/4 a year to afford it all lets see how it all goes!!
 
Well, did a bit more work on the engine today I figured why replace parts when the old ones just need a hefty cleaning, I had an extra full set of rockers, cleaned em all up and installed them, installed the TC cover, water pump and fuel pump painted my pulley's so they will look decent until I can afford my March aluminum pulley kit, started looking for other things to do and came across my fan spacer! my ugly *** dull cast aluminum fan spacer I figured hell I have nothing better to do, I went ahead and started to sand it moving from 230 grit all the way up to 1000 grit, this thing was bad it had an area with paint all over it thick enough that it ran down each side and the aluminum was fairly stained from years of use I'm sure your all familiar with how they usually look, well here's mine after 3 straight hours of sanding, polishing,buffing, then running back over it with thousand grit/WD40 and more polishing and buffing.

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Here's also how the engine sits right this moment less the intake and carb, they are just sitting on top, not actually bolted. The Black heads were not my idea, I even bought a can of mopar hemi orange just for the heads I don't understand why the shop didnt just use it!!!, now I dont have enough paint to spray the heads as its gonna take alot to cover that black-I have less then half a can. Also I never really believed that parts that have to be replaced should be painted, and yes the black timing chain cover was my idea, solid colors are so boring!Hemi orange engine block and heads, black valve covers, air cleaner, and timing chain cover and aluminum intake, water pump and fuel pump should all go together for a good looking offset in my opinion any ways.

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Shawn.
 
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