1968 Plymouth Valiant - The Varment
Back in 2003 I purchased my very first car; a primer grey, 4-door, Plymouth Valiant 100 with an itty bitty 225 under the hood. It was perfect! I was one of about five or six people in high school with an ol' classic. But there was a problem... it was slow. This had to change. So, in 2007 I decided to rip out the old slant six and throw in a rebuilt and bored .030 over 318. To say the least I was gung-ho about the whole project. Unfortunately when I was younger I didn't quite have the income I have now a days and ran out of cash and never got to see the engine in the car.
In 2010, thanks to some friends of mine that nagged the living hell out of me about getting the car back on the road I decided to open up shop again! This is where I have photos guys!!!
My first job was to get the garage worthy of putting a car back together because unfortunately working in the below photo is SO time consuming and annoying!
After the garage was cleaned up me and the friends got the new engine in and the old engine out!
The engine actually fit without hardly any issue, excluding a few giant gashes on the engine bay, but hey it's a daily driver, no show car! Anyways, we got the engine in and low and behold...a miss #-o. Talk about gut wrenching when you spend thousands to get the car running again and it doesn't run!!! After completing a compression test it was obvious cylinder #2 was not holding any pressure and when we tried blowing air through it when both valves were men't to be closed we came to the conclusion of exactly what we found, a stuck valve.
Since I don't own the equipment or knowledge to fix the head, it all came apart and the head went to the machine shop. They checked over the entire head, fixed the valve, and got it back to me a day later. That night ended up going till 2:00am and finally the car runs!!!
Also, somewhere between putting the engine in and getting it to run I completed all of the light body work needed ranging from small pin holes to slight dents, and the car got painted GM Torch Red by the local hot rod shop!
Here are the before and after paint shots:
Back in 2003 I purchased my very first car; a primer grey, 4-door, Plymouth Valiant 100 with an itty bitty 225 under the hood. It was perfect! I was one of about five or six people in high school with an ol' classic. But there was a problem... it was slow. This had to change. So, in 2007 I decided to rip out the old slant six and throw in a rebuilt and bored .030 over 318. To say the least I was gung-ho about the whole project. Unfortunately when I was younger I didn't quite have the income I have now a days and ran out of cash and never got to see the engine in the car.
In 2010, thanks to some friends of mine that nagged the living hell out of me about getting the car back on the road I decided to open up shop again! This is where I have photos guys!!!
My first job was to get the garage worthy of putting a car back together because unfortunately working in the below photo is SO time consuming and annoying!
After the garage was cleaned up me and the friends got the new engine in and the old engine out!
The engine actually fit without hardly any issue, excluding a few giant gashes on the engine bay, but hey it's a daily driver, no show car! Anyways, we got the engine in and low and behold...a miss #-o. Talk about gut wrenching when you spend thousands to get the car running again and it doesn't run!!! After completing a compression test it was obvious cylinder #2 was not holding any pressure and when we tried blowing air through it when both valves were men't to be closed we came to the conclusion of exactly what we found, a stuck valve.
Since I don't own the equipment or knowledge to fix the head, it all came apart and the head went to the machine shop. They checked over the entire head, fixed the valve, and got it back to me a day later. That night ended up going till 2:00am and finally the car runs!!!
Also, somewhere between putting the engine in and getting it to run I completed all of the light body work needed ranging from small pin holes to slight dents, and the car got painted GM Torch Red by the local hot rod shop!
Here are the before and after paint shots: