Slant 6 Turbo 68Dart Project

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get that flex fan outa there. if you want reasons youtube it. they are dangerous.

are you sure its over heating and its not your gauge not working right? are you using the factory gauge or aftermarket?

with the constant exhaust leaks, save up some money and go with remflex. they are worth the extra $.
 
X2 on ditching the flex fan. They are junk, throw blades and contribute to, not solve, overheat problems. You would be way better off with a factory shroud and fan (preferably the big 7 blade one). Try the wrecking yards, look on the factory early 80's volares and aspens etc.
 
d55dave said:
X2 on ditching the flex fan. They are junk, throw blades and contribute to, not solve, overheat problems. You would be way better off with a factory shroud and fan (preferably the big 7 blade one). Try the wrecking yards, look on the factory early 80's volares and aspens etc.
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That's all good info to know. It was what I could get and the old fan was broken and off balance. It was a nice 7 blade fan off some kind of v-8 mopar engine and couldn't get it straightened out again. I'll be on the lookout for something.

Also Jr. It's an aftermarket sunpro mechanical gauge. The stock gauge was worthless to me for monitoring this kind of thing. It's accurate. I check it with a meat thermometer when I'm not sure. It's the same.
 
I found an electric fan setup I think I like. I did the math and since I have a 17x22" radiator, I will be using a 16" and a 7" electric fan. It gives more surface area than 2 10's or a 10 and a 12, so will cover more face area on the radiator to pull air.

I'm still debating if this would be a good cooling system or if a regular belt drive 19" 7 blade fan cools better. The 19" belt fan I had on there before cooled great. I have never used an electric fan on it though so I don't want it to be worse than what I have now...
 
For electric check out cfr performance they are down here in socal awesome fans and cheaper then some other name brands, I have one of their 12" soon to have a second in my 72 with a 440 and its pulls 2200cfm, highest output I've come across and when you turn it on wow. Its awesome
 
i made the switch to electric fans because my turbo wouldnt clear the mechanical one. im really happy with it. it gets up to temp faster and they dont come on unless they need too. they also run after i shut the car off if everything is still to hot. i like that. im running 2 10" staggered. easy to put on and work really well. temp drops fast when they kick on. on a normal cruise if im not getting on it they normally dont even come on. once in a while they will when i park it.
 
I finally situated on a 14" and a 10" electric fan. Should fit just right on the rad and work well. Ordered them already, now to just wait for them to come in the mail...
 
Well I didn't really think about it, but they meant that the fan itself is 14" the housing is about 3" larger... so both of them do not fit. I snugged the 14" up on the radiator, and it does a fine job of pulling air through the radiator, but it is still heating up undesirably. The temp is still reaching 190 with a 160 thermostat in it and climbing. I do not have the desire to see if it will heat up further if you know what I mean.

Since i have gone through literally every cooling/heating component on this car I am down to the thought that there is something in the water jacket that I can just not get to. I stuck a wire down the block when the head was off probing for anything, and it was really clean. The only thing I found was a chunk of metal that I pulled out. It looked like a choke rod or something, and had a lot of rust attached to it. I can only assume the previous owner or someone was digging with it to fix a similar issue and dropped it in there. I don't know.

So I am thinking maybe the only other option is to find a shop that still does reverse flushing? Maybe they can blow the whatever out of the block? I am just not seeing another option at all. I think it has been present the whole time I've owned the car, moved out of the way for about a year, and has now been moved back in the way, and heating up.
 
It is not uncommon to find wires like that inside head and block castings. My understanding is that they were used to hold the sand cores together when the block was cast, and after cast the sand is removed but the wire remains, or something to that effect.

Have you had the rad flushed / checked? "look"at the core with a infrared temp probe to see if it is hot and progressively cools, or if it appears that the coolant doesn't flow through portions of it due to being plugged up.
 
Originally I had gone through the process of the entire cooling system over the past 1 and a half years. The radiator is only a year old, a brand new aluminum unit. But I will check the rad for cold spots. It was flowing absolutely fine. Hoping it's not shot already.

Good info on that rod I found. That makes sense. I can flush the rad as well, but thinking I am dancing around an issue that may have been inside the block and has returned. But pumping water into the rad is free for me, but I'll test for cold spots first. I bought one of those infared guns specifically because this car used to overheat...
 
I got all my Moroso Gear in the mail. I got the battery disconnect for the outside of the car, and the battery box.

I can see why they'd want you to have the battery in this kind of box. It was about $70 and I can see it's way ahead of the $5.00 Walmart box I did have.

It comes with two huge through bolts with large fender washers, a zinc plated hold-down for the top of the battery, and the whole box has 1/2 turn screw releases to get the lid off. Then they include weather stripping for the box and a vent tube which attaches to a hole you drill through the floor of the car. I'll leave the hose somewhere remotely visible, in case someone wants to inspect it.

The battery switch is also not that ugly, I just have to find somewhere to put it. I'm still thinking behind the license plate, but maybe somewhere in the "DODGE" tail panel or somewhere less conspicuous. It'll take some thought as wherever I mount it it has to disable everything.



I made up some tool boxes that are getting bolted to the opposite side of the trunk as well. They will be on the opposite side.



I basically tore the whole trunk apart while the car is just sitting and I'm redoing all of it to look nicer and have more space. The subwoofer box is out and a stealth setup is what I'm making now to get back half my trunk. The spare will sit above the gas tank, similar to how a Crown Victoria or Mercury is set up. It will also have a carpet cover over it, and it'll look nice. This should drop about 30lbs off the trunk area.



I used flashing to hold my ply down while the insulator cures. Then I will glass over the whole thing to smooth it out and strengthen it. The material of choice is FinBirch Aircraft grade plywood, used for constructing aircraft firewalls. I've run this setup in the last three cars I've owned and it always works out well. I got window flashing to hold it down while the stuff sticks. I also coated the lower part of the spare tire well with paint and scraped off the surface rust. It's ugly now, but trust me it'll look good when I'm done.



This was the civic I used to have where I did it, except this time I think the sub will sit right side up since i have the depth to use. Pretty subtle. The construction was the same.

 
Well I glassed the trunk, ran my wiring, installed the new Moroso battery box and vented it to a hole in the trunk floor, and bolted my tool boxes to the floor. Looks pretty darn good back there now.







Another stealth subwoofer install complete.
 
Serj22 said:
Well I glassed the trunk, ran my wiring, installed the new Moroso battery box and vented it to a hole in the trunk floor, and bolted my tool boxes to the floor. Looks pretty darn good back there now.
Another stealth subwoofer install complete.
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Looks great!!!! Nice job!!! Love those low-frequency sounds... Do you use a crossover network in that system?
 
Bill Dedman said:
Looks great!!!! Nice job!!! Love those low-frequency sounds... Do you use a crossover network in that system?
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Thanks!

Yes I do. There's a crossover built into the head unit, and I also have one in each side of the dash to allow two tweeters and the door speakers to function without putting out lower frequencies. There's also a low pass built into a digital amplifier so the subwoofer only picks up 80hz.
 
Serj22 said:
Thanks!

Yes I do. There's a crossover built into the head unit, and I also have one in each side of the dash to allow two tweeters and the door speakers to function without putting out lower frequencies. There's also a low pass built into a digital amplifier so the subwoofer only picks up 80hz.
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I'll bet that sounds awesome!!!:cheers:
 
Well i got a 7" fan to replace the 10" that I couldn't fit anywhere on the rad, and managed to sneak the 7 onto the front of the rad below the intercooler which will take up the rest of the surface area for the most part. It's behind the bumper and pretty secure from rocks, and hidden from sight.

There's still an obvious issue going on with exhaust or some kind of pressure getting into the water jacket. The car gets up to 190 degrees with fan on, no thermostat, at idle, 900rpm, in the driveway in park - no load. Also if you pop the radiator cap is off, and you spool the engine a little, coolant shoots out of the radiator cap opening. I don't believe that's supposed to do that unless there's pressure behind it. I'm thinking the block is cracked, or the head bolts weren't torqued down right or something. I just took all the bolts out one by one, following TQ sequence for the head, and retightened them again to 65lbs twice. Tomorrow i'll put the valve cover back on, put coolant back in the system, and see what happens. It's all drained for now.
 
Borrow a tool (even if you have to rent one from your local auto parts store) to pressurize the cooling system. Leave it on and see if it holds pressure. If it does not try to determine where the coolant is leaking to.
 
I was working on a theory, that the head bolts were possibly trash, so I bought new ones, and torqued to 65flbs twice. The radiator is no longer blowing coolant out with the cap off. I borrowed a pressure tester from my dad's friend who comes by the shop sometimes. He also let me borrow a block checker and fluid. The block checker yielded no exhaust in the coolant, and the system held pressure before i refilled it. It was all set. I'm thinking the head bolts were not tightening down, so now I am going to finish putting it all back together. I have to wait till tomorrow. I put a thermostat back in and broke the water outlet in half. I guess i tightened it too hard and it cracked in two. Autozone had one for $9.00 but it won't be there till 10 am.

More waiting.

Well, after I broke that I decided to put my new seats in. I really want this car done both for the car show on the 26th and I want to go do some Wednesday night drags at Sonoma now that I comply with everything. I'm excited.





 
Matts440 said:
Looks awesome. What make of seats?
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I have no idea. They're nameless. They resemble a scorpion, but the vinyl on them is nicer than scorpions I've had in the past. These are $300/pair. I was just hunting down something that matched the rear seat upholstery I made and finally found them. Bought instantly.
 
Well I have finally gotten an upper hand on the overheating issue. I have gotten it to heat up slower, and I call that a minor victory. I can drive it around for a while before I have to shut down. I have drained the coolant several times in the last couple weeks. I've changed fans and I've retorqued the head bolts (that helped get the exhaust out of the coolant) and I've even block checked it. The fluid no longer turns yellow. Now what I can see is that the radiator has little balls of rust in it I believe were inside the block and got flushed out into the rad over the last year and a half or so. None of this is turbo related fortunately.

I believe what started this is the warping of the head due to head bolt stretch, and then me "bench racing" by changing all the components I could think of to try and fix it. I'm almost back to how I had it in a 100% functioning state, but I believe the coolant/water isn't flowing well and still want to find someone to do a reverse flush on the whole deal. Then it's back to turbo tuning. I want to make 14psi here eventually.
 
buckshotbishop said:
good to see progress even if its just fixing normal issues. are you going to spring fling next weekend?
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A new friend a couple blocks away (who has a valiant) was telling me there was a big Mopar show coming up. I believe that's what he was talking about. I would love to go. I have to get the car running. I am registering it for the local car show on the 26th because I know it will at least make it that far in its current state. I hope this issue is solved soon because I'd like to hit the spring fling.
 
Serj22 said:
A new friend a couple blocks away (who has a valiant) was telling me there was a big Mopar show coming up. I believe that's what he was talking about. I would love to go. I have to get the car running. I am registering it for the local car show on the 26th because I know it will at least make it that far in its current state. I hope this issue is solved soon because I'd like to hit the spring fling.
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Spring Fling is way down here. I don't think the Dart will make it, but I may show up to look at cars and buy parts.
 
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