1968 SS Dart in progress

Well, I tore the heads down this weekend and was pretty disappointed by a complete lack of lube used during factory assembly! Valve guides and locks were dry as a bone! No back cut on the valves and a nice chunk of metal about the size of 2 grains of rice came out of one of the castings. The castings themselves look really good but it just goes to prove, yet again, trust no ones work but your own! Doesn't matter who supplies your heads. Always tear them down and inspect them for yourself! There, time to step off of the soap box now .
We went ahead and set one of the heads up with checker springs placed on block without head gasket and had plenty of clearance from intake and exhaust valves to pistons so no worries there. Head gaskets are Cometic 4.380 with compressed thickness of .040. Perfect fit for my .060 over block. Also completed was check for proper pushrod length including thickness of head gaskets installed and minus .010 for thickness of pushrod cups. I completed some minor port work and I mean minor. These castings out of the box flow well but there are some sharp ridges on the intake ports which needed a slight massage.
Dad will be taking the heads to Chuck's speed center to have them check the factory installed valve guides for proper alignment and clearances, back cut the valves, double check valve seal to seats, and shave .010 off to bump compression up a little more. Correct springs, retainers, and locks to be ordered this week and we should be able to finish building the heads in the next couple of weeks.
The transmission is built and a 4000 stall converter will be ordered soon as well. Won't be too much longer and I will be able to trailer the car up to my Dad's shop for completion of wiring and engine install .

Hope all of you in the U.S.A. had a great Thanksgiving holiday. I spent this past Friday through Sunday building the heads and finishing off the long block.
After receiving the heads from Chuck's Speed Center here in Phoenix AZ. I proceeded to give them a good soapy bath to remove any residual dirt, oil, etc.. After rinsing them, I used the blower to dry them off and a nice big piece of aluminum blew out of one of the water ports! It is pictured and appears to be from the factory. Perhaps from the process of milling the ports? Good thing I had Chuck's check the heads. All of the valve guides needed opened up to proper clearances. All of them were too tight! Never trust a set of box stock heads. Not even for general street use. Chuck' also milled .010 off the heads to bump compression per our request and back cut the valves. After cleaning the heads and drying them off, I completed shimming the Hughes double springs to their recommended installed height of 1.880 of which some required as little as .030 and most required .090 worth of shims not including spring seats!
I cleaned the block surfaces off, prepared the Cometic gaskets with .040 compressed height and installed them followed by the heads using ARP 12 point head bolts and ARP ultra torque also sourced from 440 source.
I proceeded to check fitment of the 440 source roller rockers, and as you can see in the picture, some gentle massaging was required on all 16 rockers to clear the Hughes spring retainers. Fortunately, the 440 source rockers are very thick and provided plenty of material without sacrificing their integrity. After thoroughly cleaning the rockers they went into a shallow bath of 20w50 to saturate the roller tips. 30 minutes later, rocker shaft assembly began and I have a few tricks for those of you using the 440 source hardware. First of all, make sure you order their hold downs, 2 packs of 36 .015 shims, and their .650 spacers. I shimmed end play to .015 per cylinder bank and made sure to center the roller tips on valves. My installation required no shimming of the rocker shafts although I had purchased those as well, just in case. Here's a huge time saving tip for installation of the rocker shafts once all of your shim packs are installed. Make sure you have numbered each of your hold downs with matching numeric markings on your heads and that they match. Next, lightly snug your hold downs using the supplied ARP hardware and place an additional .015 shim somewhere in one area of each rocker pair. Just insert it on top of rocker shaft between an already installed shim pack. This will ensure that as you tighten/torque your hold downs, the shaft will not shift and change all of your clearances! Trust me on this one, it took me a few attempts before I finally wised up to what was happening but they are perfectly spaced to .015 end play at each cylinder bank. The Smith Brothers pushrods just barely clear the top of the head wall upon valve close! It does not look like it in the picture, but with all valves properly lased, you can freely spin all of the pushrods. There is absolutely no binding! Sure as heel thought they were touching upon first examination.
I have prepped the valley pan and hold downs for the Hemi orange paint as well as the block and heads. The Holley 850 double pumper is with Bob Reems at Imagine Injection here in Glendale AZ. getting customized to flow 900 cfm+ and should be finished shortly. The 727 Torqueflite is built complete with manual reverse valve body and a 4000 stall convertor is on order. Wont be long now .

Beautiful car :cheers: Good thing you found those pieces of metal, could have been nasty :banghead:

You are right! Pays to go through a new set of heads.

No Hemi?

Nope too expensive for my pocketbook. This motor will be putting down plenty of power and torque anyway.

looking nice, and would be sweet to see in person since you're in the same area

Sure. Just PM me.

Happy Holidays everyone . Progression yet again with motor assembly complete and painted. I think the orange motor will be a wicked contrast to the yellow engine bay. All I need is a 4000 stall converter and I can assemble trans components, headers, and check fit in engine bay. Pictured is custom roll bar padding I will be having made by my upholsterer soon. Hope you all enjoy your Holidays .

Very nice moving right along.

Nice job. Looks awesome.

Sure is exciting! Can't wait to hear it run for the first time.

I just found this thread. Your car is coming out AWESOME!

Good luck................Ted

Thank you DusTed74. Nearly 5 years in the making at this point! Hope to fire it here in January !!!!

Those Holley covers are a great choice.
I recently made a roll bar pad for a thunderbolt
Fairlane and did them in a diamond pattern with
chrome button head snaps. Used white contrast thread to stitch up the diamond pattern. Had a real vintage look.
Nice build.

Thanks for the compliment on valve cover choice. Those are vintage and factory polished. Don't want to go too modern with this build. The roll bar covers sound killer. I would love to see some pics .

132068Dodge said:

Thanks for the compliment on valve cover choice. Those are vintage and factory polished. Don't want to go too modern with this build. The roll bar covers sound killer. I would love to see some pics .

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I haven't posted much on your thread but man-O-man it's looking killer!

Thanks HemiMark . This last stretch feels like the longest one yet!

Just found and read your thread and you do very nice work the car looks awesome and I love the color and wheel's keep up the good work should be running in no time .

Mike

Thanks Mike. The converter will be arriving this week and should be trailering the car up to my Dad's shop near the end of January to begin the final fit/installation of mechanicals.

Hmmm that must have been your Edge converter i tripped over! Andre is the man, your gonna love it!

What brand hood are you using? Love the way the scoop looks!

The hood and scoop are both from Glasstek. They sell both pin on light weight race and bolt on hoods with scoop installed now. I have the race weight pin on. They did not sell the scoop pre-installed back when I purchased mine. Check them out at www.glasstek.com

Yep! That's my converter alright Lol.

I just found this thread, hell of a job!!! Looking great, I can only hope my Dart comes out looking this good.:burnout: