Turbo Magnum Swapped Valiant

So for the past few months I have been making some great progress on my Valiant, and figured I would share what has been taking place. A little back story on the car.

I bought the car out of Johannesburg South African back in December of last year. I have some friends that are in Durban that do right hand drive conversions on all types of cars, mainly Mustangs, new and old. I met them a few years ago thru my work where we sell them lots of parts, and also find a buy cars for them that they as for. Anyways, a couple of years ago I was asking them about what kinds of cars that they have over there, and found out that they have had Chrysler's there for many years. Well, that really peaked my interest, so I started doing a little looking on their local website "Gumtree" which is basically the same as Craigslist here. I found that they have Valiants ranging from the early sixties to the early eighties. Now finding one that hasn't been driven in to the ground was a huge problem. Most of these cars were used as taxis there, and because of this they are really beat to hell. Now in 1972 they switched over from the American bodied cars to Australian bodied cars. They are pretty much identical to what you would find in Australia, but the only power plant available was the slant six, no V8 option, or a Hemi six. The body style is way different than ours, and that's what really made my decision to go with the later car.

Back in December I located my valiant on Gumtree and asked my friend Leon to go take a look. Johannesburg is about a 6 hour drive from him, but he was actually planning on being there that weekend to see family so it worked out. The car is a 1974 Valiant Regal Formula S. That's a mouth full lol. The car only has 110,000 kilometers on it, and was with its second owner. Very clean and basically all original. Been re sprayed at some point but the paint is still holding up pretty well. The interior is immaculate and original. The slant six was in decent running condition, but needed a valve job. It was a 2 barrel, which is what the Formula S indicates as far as I know. After some light negotiations we made a deal with the guy, and the car was on its way back to Durban. Once there it took the South African authority almost 3 months to authorize the car to be loaded on a ship. Nothing over there happens quickly. So after 2 months or so on the boat, the car arrived in Long Beach California where I picked it up. Had to jump through many many hoops to get the car through customs, but all in all it wasn't too bad of a process. I picked the car up, and the next day it was registered and insured in Arizona.

Now during all of the waiting I came up with a plan for what I wanted to do with it. I can't leave well enough alone. I decided that a magnum swap was in order, but I wanted to do something a little different. I have always wanted a turboed V8. I found a low mile 2000 5.9 magnum out of s Durango, along with the harness. I didn't go with overdrive because I didn't want to modify the floor in the car, at least not yet lol. I had a pretty stout 727 laying around and went that route. The lame little 7.25 had to go, and I went with a ford explorer diff out of a 99 model with 3.55's and a limited slip.

I didn't do a whole lot to the short block except swap out the cam for a Hughes piece, and installed Arp head studs. Bolted a set of Eq cylinder heads on, Hughes air gap intake, and big mouth throttle body. We modified the stock Durango harness and made it stand alone and used the factory ecm. The turbo is a small gt35 unit. We flipped the factory manifolds around and built our own y pipe using the factory y pipe from the Durango. Bought a set of Schumacher motor mounts for the slant six to 360 swap and everything bolted right in. I'm now working on getting the tune dialed in with my guy remotely. So far so good, a few more tweaks and we should be good to go! Here are some photos of what we have done.