what is old feels new again

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Backtobasics

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Smaller update.
I have been driving the crap out of the Dart. It recently tried to die on the highway. I formed a plan, and borrowed a lift for a night.

The stalling was clogged vent tube for tank. It was not breathing, so the tank was under vacuum and not vented.

At the same time, I went to Redline synthetic fluid in trans and rear end. There used to be a lot of noise out of rear end. Most of the noise was old exhaust hitting the driveshaft. The rear end has some age on it, but it did get quieter with the better fluid. We also built a new exhaust from transmission crossmember back. We used sections from the old exhaust, added a 2.25 Thrush welded muffler, dumped at the axle. The car had a couple hiccups on the drive home (water in tank from rinsing out the gunk).
The sound is awesome, almost a 5.0 Mustang with flowmaster at idle, and rams up with RPM. Minimal resonance.

The synthetic fluid makes shifting easier (I wanted to shim and grease shifter but ran out of time and energy), proper fule delivery makes throttle better, and single high flow exhaust give it much more torque and power. All these, combined with no rattle from exhaust banging frame and driveshaft, makes the drive a DREAM!
 
Put Seafoam in the tank; every fillup from now on. Water gone, and cleans the system, and stabilizes.
 
Here are pics of the exhaust butchery. It actually worked really well to cut 2 sections from the old exhaust, and build.
 
Turbo003-1.jpg

We cut at the transmission cross member.

Turbo002-1.jpg


Turbo001-1.jpg

Shot of muffler after install. I have since blacked out the muffler, it looked a bit "unbalanced" with one muffler, all bright and shiny. Now it's flat black and blends better.

Here is video of it. The mic on the camera give it a lot of "ricer" sound but it is much more mellow, Mustang 5.0 with flowmaster sound to it.
 
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