The Good!! The Bad!! And The Ugly!!!!!

The Good!! The Bad!! And The Ugly!!!!! Or have you lost your mind, what the H#** were you thinking, at least that is what my wife thinks.
Well I have officially taken the plunge into a “Muscle Car Build”. As a 20 year old I bought my first new car, a 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger 340 4 speed. It was Blue with a while vinyl top and white bumble-bee stripe. That was very likely my first true love. Here I am 45 years later, older and wiser (my wife doesn’t see it that way), and ready to jump in head first. This will be my first attempt at anything like this. With that said I decided to spend a little more up front to not have to deal with a lot of rust, I also wanted to start out with a car that would at least run and be capable driving on and off of a trailer. That kind of insured me of getting most of the big parts. Now I’m starting to get picky so that really starts narrowing down the field. I didn’t find my 69 Swinger but I did find a 67 Dart 270 V8 car. So here we go.

The Good
This is a Northern California car and about as rust free as one could ever hope to find. Some minor surface rust in the spare tire well and passenger floor pan. A little soap, water and White Vinager with a stiff brush should take care of that.
Fresh 360 engine with; hypereutectic pistons, Comp Cams Hi-Lift series 275HL hydraulic flat tappet cam, Edelbrock # 60779 Performer RPM heads, Elderbrock # 7176 Performer RPM intake, Holley 600cfm 4150-series Double Pumper carb', Hooker 1 3/4" Super Comp series headers .
A727 TorqueFlyte, 3000RPM stall converter with the matching flexplate, Hurst Quarter Stick shifter.
Front Disk Brakes.
8 3/4" Mopar rear-end housing with 741 differential (whatever that is) 3.91 gears with Dutchman Axles.
NEW IN THE BOX John Calvert Racing components rear suspension with split mono leaf springs (whatever that means) Calvert calibrated shocks front and rear, and CalTracs traction bars.
The car came with front and rear bench seats, also with a set of 67 GT low back buckets with the GT center console.

The Bad
Cracked windshield will see if it can be repaired, no windshield trim.
No door sill plates.
No rear deck.
Missing front hood chrome trim piece (headlight trim and other grill trim is there)
The car has a decent 25 foot pain job. Once you get inside that you see they didn’t do things like fixing door ding dents, removing all of the trim, removing front and back windows, or spraying inside the door jambs. It looks like the original color was a light blue so it was painted with a medium metallic blue. I guess they thought the color was close enough. In all fairness it wasn’t sold as excellent paint, only okay.

The Ugly
Finishing someone else’s project and not knowing all of their ideas.
Unfinished TUB job. I don’t like the way the part of it that is done looks and will most likely re-do-it. If I had the old fender wells I would most likely weld them back in.

Next Steps
I have decent mechanical skills and have always done a lot of work with my hands, so I’m not a stranger to getting dirty. I also know how to measure once and cut twice, or is that measure twice and cut once. I can never keep that straight. I do know that no matter how many times I cut on something it is still too short. Oh well such is life.
I wish I were smart enough to know and understand everything that needed doing and just do it, but I think I’ll get me a white board and start a list of things and kind of prioritize them.
First thing on my agenda is getting the vehicle to the mechanical point where I can get the Texas vehicle inspection done. I would like to be able to drive it around a little while I’m doing the majority of the work. That will also let me know if there are any nasty unexpected surprises.
I’m sure the updates will not happen quickly as I am still in the ranks of the gainfully employed and spend around 150-200 nights a year in hotel rooms. Working on this will not relieve me of family duties, I’m hoping for 6-8 hours a week of working time.

All for now.