Been working on a 68 Dart that I picked up a little while back. I started on it the beginnning of October and figured that I would start a thread and post some occasional updates for those that are interested. Will go back and start at the beginning, adding pics and will get caught up to current progress in the following days.
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About a year ago I started thinking about maybe picking up an old Dart to fix up that would keep me busy. A hobby Dart sort of project, that I would work away at over the winter months with no deadline. Retired, and living in Canada, winters can be long. So having a heated garage is a must! To add to the project, there's an 11 year old Grandson who is itching to be part of the project and who has plans of his own 5 or 6 years down the road... The grandson is no stranger to Mopars, and racing, as he comes along with me in the summer months when we hit the local track with an old Plymouth.
So in the hunt for an old Dart a few were dug up. It didn't take long to find that anything out there had a ridiculous price and all in need of major repair. Complete floor pans, trunks, exterior sheet metal and so on. Months went by and eventually I heard about one, a 67, located just over the border in MT. Approx April of this year I whipped over and had a look. It turned out to be a 68, not a 67 and it had been sitting for a very long time. It needed work, but amazingly in pretty good overall condition, considering... I contacted the owner and yep, he would sell his lawn ornament. He had long lost the keys, the title and had no interest in finding or replacing either. A few pictures when first looking at the Dart.
Tires flat and rotted. No idea of how many years it had sat in this spot.
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A GT. Slant 6, buckets, no console, column shift. 100% complete.
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Headlights bust out and a bent front bumper. Parked behind an old Church, and home to church mice..
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Damage to the left fender, left door and quarter panel. Obviously taken off the road decades ago because of an accident.
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A deal was made. 2 problems though. The title was long lost and the owner couldn't be bothered to obtain a replacement. No problem, I'll just replace the title on my own. Wrong, in order to obtain a title I needed to be a MT resident. So the Dart was bought as parts and that's the way it came home, in parts. Some pics.
Spent a day in late August disassembling and loaded up a trailer full of parts.
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Grandson was right into it and that was fine with me!
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Amazingly, only 1 or 2 bolts gave any trouble. It came apart like a breeze, came with a full tank of gas too. Whew..
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Damaged quarter panel. The fender and door also had some damage, not too bad. In the back seat however was a mint left front fender that went with the car! Now the plan was to remove the rear seat and pop the trunk from the inside (no keys). When we removed the rear seat, damned, the trunk was full... No climbing in.... Thank goodness I just happened to have a set of long extensions with me, we undid the trunk lock and we were in. And as luck would have it, a mint left side door was in the trunk!
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With a trailer load of dart parts we headed home, crossed the border, said the trailer was full of old Mopar parts and we were waved on, all good.. A couple of weeks later we headed back again for the carcass. Crossing the border, no issues, carry on. Not wanting the motor / trans, I took the engine hoist along and that was left behind.
You can see by the grass where the Dart sat. As was the deal, the motor / trans was left behind and we took a minute to make sure it was left in it's exact spot! The owner laughed and said he's gonna call the mayor and say the car vanished except for the driveline. Aliens!
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October first the Dart was rolled into the garage and the project got into full swing. Stay tuned.