1969 Dart Street/Strip (Re)Build

winstoninwisc said
dam aftermarket junk But love the car and the year hope things go smoother I neeed to sell and get a 12 month a year heated shop , this weather has been crazy luv the color
keep pushn on

Yeah that was a big disappointment with the Wilwoods. Nothing new to me. Everything I buy ends up being half assed junk it feels like. I'm NOT disappointed with the HDK kit though!

wade said
hey clint, your doing an awesome job on that thing. hey do you have a part number for the willwood break lines? im running the same one and need the flexable lines for my dart

Thanks! Line kit is Wil-220-7056

dukeboy_318 said
First off, nice car you got going. Looking good

Second, any chance the car may have been repaired after an accident at some point in it's life? Just curious as the amount of fabbing you had to do to get the HDK in there seems excessive to me.

Also, in regards to the inner fender crushing down 3/16ths of an inch, could you have sourced longer bolts and maybe shimmed it to help prevent that? Not sure I like the idea of my inner fender crushing that far.

Anything is possible. I had to do a lot of frame and UCA mount repair in the front a couple years ago so things could have gotten tweaked when I cut the top of the frame out. I also had the extra plate on the shock tower support behind that corner fitting which pushed it out. That's why the passenger side hoop gap was so bad. The only amount of fabbing I actually had to do were the shims. And keep in mind, I'm really anal about little stuff like that. I don't like to put any preload into bolts. Working as an Aircraft Engineer has made me more aware of things like this. Most people wouldn't even think twice about it, put the bolts in and go. It probably would be fine.

As I mentioned earlier, a longer bushing would prevent the inner fender from pulling in. Or you could try some washers between the fender and shock tower support. I'm not sure where you got that the fender caved in 3/16ths but I don't believe it was near that much. I don't have the straightest car out there and Denny probably made the kit based on a good clean straight car. My inner fenders have bondo in them and are wavy so it's not really ideal to use it as a good reference. Pretty sure that's why the paint cracked so easily. I'm working with a nice kit and putting it into a car that has questionable bodywork and a lot of metal repair. Check out YoungGun2.0's install. He started with a good car and his install went really smooth. That's the difference when you have a straight car and a car that's questionably straight. I can't knock the HDK kit. It's the nicest stuff I've ordered for this car, period.

Dartswinger70 said
I had my fill of body guys, and most of it was other peoples horror stories. it will be ok, its a long road, but in the end your car will be right. Its worth the effort.

I feel like I already arrived at end of the road when I got the car together and was able to take it to the track, local shows, etc. It was a long road to get to that point and it felt like I was driving through the ditch the whole time to get there! Stuff I'm doing now is just going above and beyond to make it nicer to drive. I hate fixing other people's "mods" but like you said, it will be right when I fix it.