The wife's lil' ole 65 Dart

[Mr2.4]

Well I have my projects, so my wife decided that she wanted her own. Some of you may remember this car. Boosted here on the forums had it. I bought it off of him for my wife. The deal is she does most of the work with my help here and there. I will do the mechanic side of it. Boosted had planned on building a turbocharged 440 car out of it, but I have to make it more driver friendly. My wife wants to be able to drive this car regularly. So I found a 93' Dakota with a 5.2 auto 2wd to use as a donor. I will be using the motor, trans, steering rack, and what ever else I can manage to use. Well enough with the typing I know most of you are like me and would rather see pics so here you go...

The Dart!

The donor Dak!

The wife gettin busy:-D "hey this should be in the Hot Babes with Mopars"

Boy look at that horrible fender. I know that the body filler had to be atleast 1/2" thick in some places.

Think I can fix it? I think maybe...

The front all taken apart.

Time for stripping of the old paint.

The bad in the engine bay. Easy fix though.

We got a new toy in the shop. A set of pinstriping brushes, and paint. I've been going nut's with it. I have been painting everything trying to learn how to do pinstripping. This is the splash guard on the passenger side. I cleaned it up and secretly painted it after the wifey said NO PAINTING ON MY CAR!:twisted:

That's it for now. I will have more pics by this weekend. We are trying to have the engine bay in paint by then.

 

[65barracudadude]

MY GOD!!!! You must have pulled a crap load of bondo out of that fender.

 

[Mr2.4]

I would say about a gallon. I could piece the filler back together and have a mold of the fender almost. lol

 

[pettybludart]

I had been following threads by Boosted back in Dec.,that is when I got my 66 Dart from Alabama.I,ve been busy while laidoff work.Here,s some before and after pics.of where I am with this project.It,s now fit for the road,just waiting for spring to be driven.This car has never seen salt,and won,t aslong as I have it.It,s great to see you and your wife working together on your project!Good luck with the project!

 

[OldVart]

Great project. And you're right, those shots should be in the Hot Mopar Babes thread. Any lady that gets her hands dirty working on a Mopar is definitely a hot Mopar babe. I see you have the normal gas cap delete like most of us.

 

[Keith Mopar]

That's a great project. With the 5.2 and mpfi it will be a good vehicle to tool around town with and also get some great mileage. It will be a tight for with the trans in the tunnel. by the way what trans is in the Dak?

 

[Mr2.4]

Keith Mopar i'm not sure what tranny is in the Dak. All I know is that it's the overdrive automatic.

The wife got more work done over the weekend. Not as much as she would have liked though. We we're hoping to have the engine bay in paint but we only got to primer.

After sandblasting! Something she loves to do for some reason. Hey she can sandblast all of my projects when they need it!:cheers:

Here you can see the rot that need's to be fixed.

I have been showing the wife have to make this stuff out of flat metal.

The start of repair

She is even learning how to weld. Here she is welding the patches in... She did really good considering that it's sheetmetal. Much easier to learn on the thick stuff.

Now all welded, grinded and ready for some mud.

Mud work almost done...

Here it is ready for primer.

All done. Next stop block sand, and paint.

Well thats it for now. More to come by the end of the week. The weather is finally nice enough to work late.

 

[pettybludart]

Moving along quite nicely!What colour are you painting?

 

[66340SEDAN]

You tell your Mopar babe she is doing a great job! (you are too...8)) That car is really comming along, keep the pictures flowing!

 

[Mr2.4]

Thanks fella's. She is gonna paint it pearl pink, and white with the two colors being broke with a flame pinstriped in blue. It's a real cool design. And she dosn't have to worry about me driving the car being that it will be pink. LOL

 

[65 bearascuda]

i mean the car of course!L.O.L well i have the same problem! my father-n-law was an X-drag racer!which my wife was raised on the track! daddys first car was a 69 gtx he bought brand new! named it hemi-X (yes it had a hemi in it which he bought for 800.00 outa junkyard in 1980) finally retiring after nasty crash! it was in alchohl funnycar,barrell rolling 42 times and still running a 10 sec. threw the traps! i have a 65 cuda(360,904,dana60,4.10) for the wife! i got stuck doing the work for her only cuz she is pregnant!she is helping me produce my baby so i must help produce hers! but now i have a good excuse to get away from her!L.O.L:bootysha:

 

[Mr2.4]

Thats a cool story you got there 65 bearacuda. It is very similar to mine.:cheers: My wife's maiden name is Garlits. She's not Big Daddy's daugter but a Garlits none the less. Her dad used to race all up and down the east coast here.


We got some more work done this afternoon. It's in white paint now.

Here is the 2k primer ready to be sanded.

Now after the wife did all that sanding we got it all sealed up.

And finally some white paint!

That white paint is BRIGHT! Tommorow the plan is to scuff alittle trash off the white base and tape out the flame's and spray pink. Stay tuned!

 

[howco4]

Will be a cool car. Wife involvement: something seldom seen. My wife tolerates my car hobby. Good luck.

 

[65barracudadude]

Damn!!!! You guy's are making me look bad. I thought I've been moving along fast. You even have your wife welding. That is totally cool. Keep it up. That makes me want to go out and work on mine.

 

[Mr2.4]

We're moving pretty fast at the moment. I suspect it will slow down once the engine compartment is done though. I will have alot of fabrication work to do then.

We did however get more work done this afternoon. It's in paint but not yet finished.

here it is all taped out, ready for some pink!

Now the base coat pink. Look's like pepto! yum

Now the pearl hot pink.

and all of the tape removed. It's starting to look cool huh.

Here I sprayed the pink pearl coat over the white. I put more coats up high to give it a fade going down. It fudged up on me on the center of the firewall.

My wife isn't so sure she likes it this way now. So she may be taping the flames up so I will respray white and leave it at that. Then I will be pinstriping the flames with a blue line, and also be adding a drop shadow to the flames. Whew what alot of work!

 

[toolmanmike]

Wow looks great. those flames look good there. I didn't realise the power steering is up on the column and not in the steering gear. toolman

 

[Tammy13]

Wow, that looks nice!!

 

[pettybludart]

So much work in such little time!Great job,and the pink..well it is your wifes!God eye Toolman on the P.steering,I,ve never seen it like that before.New to me!

 

[Mr2.4]

Thanks guy's. It's been fun so far teaching my wife and being able to spend quailty time with her doing something that floats my boat.:-D

BTW. Thats not power steering on the column. It's the shifter mechanisim. The weirdest thing I have ever seen.

 

[Mr2.4]

Well go alittle more work done this afternoon. The wife decided on taking the white with pink pearl back to just bright white. So that is done and the flames have been striped. All thats left to do now is clear the entire engine bay. After that it's on me to make the Dakota stuff fit.

Repainted and removing the tape & paper.

Here is the look we're after. All striped in blue to break the two colors.

What ya think! Not bad for a girl's car huh.

 

[varlo]

Cool!!!!!!

 

[csx452]

That is such a chick car!!!! LOL!!! It looks awesome. Your wife is a lucky girl. Can't wait to see it done. Love how she is helping do it also. Hmmmm!!! Guess that makes you a lucky guy too!!!!

 

[daredevil]

Can I borrow your wife when youre done with her? just kidding,looks great. I,m gonna show my wife and daughter. I have a feeling the 69 notch may be pink with white interior.

 

[Dartnewbie]

Please let me know when I can send my car down to you. At the rate you work, it could be done in a week!! Very nice job so far. Your wife does great work, and you of course. I can't get mine to check the oil let alone any other work. Keep the pictures coming.

 

[Mr2.4]

Well it's been more then a month without any updates. The wife had surgery, and was down for a few weeks. So I had other obligations to take care of. Well we are finally back on her car. I have been modifying the k-member to accept the Dakota power steering rack. This is a fun little task. here are the pics.

here is the rack just hangin with wire on the mounting plate that I cut out, and tacked in. Notice my cut of the K-member is alittle off.

Here you see the front view. The white area is where I need to notch to clear the bolt's. These will be boxed in.

The template I cut to cut out my mounting plate, and the spacers I needed to make to mount the rack.

Here it is notched and the rack hung by the bolts. I need to get longer bolts!

I still have a long way to go but it seems to be coming together nicely. I will be boxing the top of the k-member for strength and adding a skid plate on the bottom to avoid any kind of damage if the the wife hit's any high objects on the road.

The wife managed to clean the motor up and put some paint on it. She went with Chrysler blue. It should be a real good contrast with the blue stripping around the flames.

Well thats it for the moment. More to come. If anybody has questions or comments feel free to ask or post.