1969 Dart Street/Strip (Re)Build

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I've finished up buying most of the parts I need for the trans swap. Builder had some family issues come up and put him behind. He's supposed to get back on mine this week. Haven't been photographing much but here's some parts



JW lightweight flex plate and crank adapter.



Hughes deep pan



Lokar firewall mount locking dipstick



Have the FTI converter but I haven't even unboxed it yet. They have an amazing turn around for a custom built converter. It was only maybe a tad over a week till it was on my door step from the time I ordered it. And they have a MUCH better warranty than Dynamic offers. 3 year warranty on this converter!
 
I did start on the rear brakes. Things were going way too smoothly. So of course I found I had some parts there were still missing so I had to wait for some hardware to come in. But this part of the swap should be a breeze.



 
This is pretty bad/funny really. If anyone has dealt with safety wire, you know it's supposed to look like this.

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That's after I fixed it. This is how the "professional" shop did it. I bet a 2 year old could have done better. This is the exact reason why I trust just about no one.

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Ohhh, that bottom one looks awful! If I'd have done anything like that when I started servicing generators or changing tires, I reckon my boss would've skinned me.
 
REALLY REALLY PROFESSIONAL "*** hats" maybe. Christ my cat could do a better job than that holy crap. Good thing you checked it out. You should print those pics and take them and show them what an actual professional job looks like.
 
They didn't charge me to do the work so you get what you pay for I suppose. The thing is, the inner bolts weren't messed with and the safety wire was properly done there so they had a perfectly good example to look at. When I picked them up, I said "Uh, aren't the bolts able to back out with the wires like this?" Their reply was "Oh we don't safety wire. We just Loctite those and call it good." Then why the hell did they even put it on there? I'd rather they just left it alone and let me do the safety wire. Whatever wire they used was complete junk too. It kept breaking off every time you pulled on it. NO tensile strength whatsoever. And they were sloppy about cutting the original safety wire because I found clipped wire inside the hub sitting in the grease too. Glad I noticed that! That would have tore up everything in there if it got caught up in the bearings.
 
Over the weekend I got SOME things done. Was expecting to be driving it since I have all the parts I need but as usual, I keep running into hurdles. Denny and I are working through it though. I keep jumping from one end of the car to the other just trying to get done what I can. Feels like I have A.D.D. not concentrating on one thing at a time. The rear disk brakes are complete now with new lines. Once I got all the missing hardware, this was a total breeze. This is the Dr. Diff kit that uses mustang cobra rear disks and calipers. No more proportioning valve either.









Once I got the disks on and was spinning the driveline, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I could see from 5 feet away what I thought was the driveshaft moving up and down. So I put a dial indicator on it and sure enough it was wobbling .038 out of round! It was completely visual to see too. You could actually see the driveshaft wobbling! This really wouldn't irritate me that much except for the fact that I've been fighting a driveline noise and shake for a year and a half. Last year I took the driveshaft in and had the u joints replaced and all balanced. It made no difference whatsoever after I reinstalled it. Pinion angle and everything else was checking out so I didn't know what else to check. Now it's looking like the shop who balanced it somehow didn't catch the bent driveshaft. How they could have missed this is beyond me. They turn driveshafts at 3500 rpm so it should have been easily caught. I'm going to take it back and give them a nice *** chewing and get them to fix it like they should have the first time.
 
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One thing I ran into with the front end, with the 12" coilover, you can't have the ball joints attached when installing these. One of the ball joints has to be detached, install the coilover, then use a jack to compress the spring. One thing I've learned, don't torque the ball joints down until you're practically ready to drive it. I've separated the ball joints so many times and it's not fun when you're trying not to beat the crap out of everything and keep it all looking nice.



 
The R&P is set up now. All the steering rods are cut and fit. At first I had issues with one of the u joints binding up from too steep of an angle. The solution was to shorten the DD rod through the firewall and lengthen the transition rod. The transition rod is close to the headers but it works now with no binding. If I were to do it over again, I would get the short input shaft on the R&P instead of the longer one I got. It would get rid of some unwanted angularity. Didn't get any pics of the steering shaft setup yet. You can see where I relocated the dipstick fitting on the oil pan from the passenger side to the driver's side.







 
I've asked a lot of people about runout and very very few know anything about it or have ever measured it. But the ones that did know said I'm definitely going to feel the pedal on that, contrary to what only one person at Wilwood told me. I hope we're all wrong but I won't know till I drive it. So I've been busting tail the last several days to get it together. Almost there now. Carb linkage, starter, headers, steering joints, and brake bleed are all I lack at this point. I'm only 2 bolts from dropping the exhaust so I may lose that and drive it, loud as hell. Through the cutouts is noisy, but the open headers are a whole new level. I need it out of the way anyhow to drop the driveshaft so there's my reason lol.



 
I think anything over .003" of runout you would feel in a heavy vehicle but in yours probably .005". I don't know if this is a option for you but you could have them cut with an on car brake lathe if Wilwood doesn't step up. Basically surfaces rotors on the car so it takes up run out in hubs as well.
 
Just realized surfacing the rotors may not be an option because of cross drilling. Guess I should pay better attention! Ha!
 
Can you broach cut them or is the runout caused by a bad hub? I can't recall if you talked about this before...
 
I don't know that these can be turned with them being drilled and slotted. It would be news to me if it could be done. This is the second set of disks and it's the same issue. So right now I have a spare set of disks that I believe are still good. The hub itself is machined from a billet piece so you'd think that would be cut straight with it being CNC milled. The piece that I think is in question is the adapter plate. I measured excessive runout on that which Wilwood didn't listen to me about. "It's normally the disks that are the problem so we sent you new disks" was their answer. They didn't try to change anything at all. They measured runout and proved I was right that the disks measured out of spec. That took 5 weeks to accomplish when it's a 3 minute job for a novice like myself in my own garage with basic tools. But NEVER did they actually try to find the actual root of the issue. They held the brakes hostage for 5 weeks for a 3 minute check, didn't fix anything, and threw new disks back at me without even changing them on my existing hub assy ASSUMING that would fix my problem. And that's even after I specifically said that they need to check not only the disks, but the adapter plate and the hub because I was seeing an issue there. You'd think that they would want to make sure everything ran true before they spent the money to mail all this back to me. My buddy was wanting to get some Wilwoods and he's taking a step back and re-thinking his purchase on that. In his words, "Parts can be fixed, but you can't fix bad customer service". And I totally agree. I feel like they've done a poor job here in helping me get back on track. There are other options out there and next time around, I don't think I'll be looking at Wilwood. I've missed so many fun events and good weather lately it urks the **** out of me. Power Tour was going to be the big one this year and that's gone out the window. The Roadkill event at the end of the Power Tour in Kansas City was a possibility, but that's not going to be possible if the brakes are still hosed up either.
 
Been out for several days helping my dad with wheat harvest back in Oklahoma. Back now and fired the car up last night for the first time in months. I think my whole neighborhood knows the car is alive again! It has a nice crisp thundering tone to it that is just beautiful lol. I'm thinking that I'm going to eventually move the cutouts up to the front, similar to what Orangewagon did with his. That way they'll be in front of the X and have more of the actual open header sound. Wife helped me bleed the brakes and everything looks good so far. Don't know if I'll get time to get the wheels on and steering and suspension height set up due to a league tonight, but will probably get it done tomorrow and ready to drive for sure.
 
Wednesday brought in a mass of storms so no driving that day. But I did drive the car up to the local WAM Mopar club get together that was supposed to bring some Mopars off the Power Tour last night. Not a whole lot there by the time we showed up. So some good news, some not so great news. Overall, steering is very tight, I'd say it might be just a touch easier to steer than the FR 16:1 box but not a whole lot, feels stable in corners now, the front end doesn't feel like it's floating all over the place. And here's the kicker. Up to about 50 mph, I didn't feel any pedal shake. I'm very surprised! I'll need to get it aligned and get it up to higher speeds and try it out but I just can't believe that there's no noticeable shake so far. So thumbs up for that. Some things that I wasn't too pleased with. The current height is the lowest that the front end will go with this coilover package (preload adjusters all the way out) and is about where the ride height adjusters had it. It doesn't seem all that low to me and I'm thinking it's going to drop a little bit too after some driving and I can adjust that with preload. But I think it's already lowered too much and I think the rear is lowered a little too much as well. I like the stance, but apparently it's too low for driving. As I went through an intersection last night, the car bottomed out on the headers and bent the flanges up from the little bit I could see when I glanced at it when I got home. So that really sucks. I hope the damage is minimal. Headers look like they're somewhere between 2-3 inches off the ground at this ride height.
 
Oh and the other thing that was tested was the cooling system. Without the air dam and 100 degree weather, she stayed under 205 the whole time in the stop and go traffic. Won't be driving it that much when it's that hot but at least I know the cooling system will keep up in even the worst heat.
 
Apart from being low enough to scrape the headers or any other low hanging equipment, I think it looks sharp. One more plug for upgrading to an HDK suspension
 
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