1969 Dart Street/Strip (Re)Build

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Oh and another thing that I was kinda surprised/disappointed about, I'm still having to press the brake pedal just as much as I used to with the old factory style disk/drum setup. That I don't get. These should be grabbing a lot harder I would think but I really see no difference thus far. Still have oil leaking issues coming from the back of the motor. Seem like it's actually worse now than it was before. I'll have to diaper this thing before I ever think about taking it to the track.

I put the exhaust back on too. I really wanted to leave it off for a little bit but I wanted to hear any issues that may occur while I get everything sorted out.
 
The header collector is the limiting factor on getting/staying low. The flange even adds a good 3/8", the lowest point on the silver Duster is that point (4-1/2"). Maybe I will look into an oval collector with a ball/socket type of flange.
 
HemiDenny said:
The header collector is the limiting factor on getting/staying low. The flange even adds a good 3/8", the lowest point on the silver Duster is that point (4-1/2"). Maybe I will look into an oval collector with a ball/socket type of flange.
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The headers are for sure the limiting factor. Although taller tires like you said would help. The shocks were on zero clicks so it was not properly set so the shocks compressed very easily. I set them on aggressive so I'll try that before I go raising it back up. When I bottomed out, it was because the intersection was raised and I was doing about 45 through it. It was when I came off the raised area in the back side is when the car came down quickly and hit the road. It looks like what hit mostly were the aluminum header gaskets at the collectors and a small spot on a driver's side tube. No too much damage. Also a lot of my oil leaking issues are actually where we moved the dipstick and patched. Both of those are weeping through holes that I can't even see in the welds.
 
Got a few more miles on the car over the weekend and made my first drive across town with it. Changed the shock settings to a more aggressive setting and it completely changed the way the car felt. I left the height alone. It was really surprising. No road scrapes on the headers but did scrape going over a sidewalk in the park on Saturday at a show. So will probably need to go up a little. Even with a terrible alignment, I can still just take my hands off the wheel and it will practically drive straight. Very tight feeling steering. Got caught up in rain and nearly sent the rear of the car out in front in a very butt puckering moment! I made sure and took it easy after that. Here's a couple shots from the weekend.

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The Dart was parked wonky on a hill here

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them QA1 shocks you have are they single or dual adjustable?

how are they pretty good?

iver got the dual and never got to use them yet....
 
clinteg said:
Received the QA1 double adjustable shocks. These are amazing in the sense that it's so easy to adjust compression and rebound. On the drag setting, the shock pulls very easily as it should. Then it has 3 more recommended settings for smooth ride, stiffer ride, and aggressive handling. Everything went together well here.



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This what he bought, two pages back. and yes they are double adjust.
 
Yep double adjustable as BDK mentioned. He knows my thread better than I do! HA! Dual adjustable is the only way to go if you need that adjustability and I definitely do. Rears are single adjustable and wish I had gone dual back there too.
 
i hear ya, I got Alda American coilovers in the rear, dual adjustable.

the shock it self weighs as much as a paper towel tube.
 
Hey, clinteg what color is your Dart if you don't mind me asking? Is it a stock color
 
muskoka dart said:
Been watching the progress from up north.
Love the look of this build
How did you get all your pictures to show up again?
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I use photobucket. It's pretty slow through the website but it works better through the app on my phone.

bkd said:
Hey, clinteg what color is your Dart if you don't mind me asking? Is it a stock color
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I believe it's Ford's Redfire Metallic. PO said it was a 2006 mustang color and that's the only one I can find that looks close.
 
Not much to post as of late. I did finally get the Dart in to get it aligned. Drives straight as an arrow and brakes straight as an arrow too! The brakes are really starting to grab a lot better with a few miles on them. I still have ZERO PEDAL SHAKE which I'm very pleased and quite surprised at the same time. So apparently the Wilwood sales manager knew what he was talking about and the tech guy didn't.

The alignment guy had a heck of a time getting it aligned because the car wouldn't sit at the same ride height every time for some reason. He'd lift it, drop it, bounce it and every time, the car was at a different ride height. So it sounds like something is binding up or is really tight in the suspension. He thought it was the lower control arm bushings causing the problem and those are not greasable. Could be the lower ball joints but I'd really doubt it. I know it's not the UBJ's because if anything those were relatively loose feeling. The LBJ's were quit tight though which I think they should be. So I don't know what to do about that other than drive it and see if it loosens up.

When the car was on the lift, I saw what appears to be a problem that is getting inherently worse. There's oil everywhere. The headers are coated, the oil pan, the trans, exhaust, everything that I had polished, cleaned, and painted. This small oil leak has turned into a full blown BP oil crisis! I counted 9 drops of oil on the ground just pulling into my driveway last night so it's obvious that this is a pretty good leak. To truly fix the rear leak, I need to pull the transmission. Can't race the car because it will leave an oil slick and I don't want to drive the car any more than I have to with it leaking so bad and spewing oil all over the place. So what it's looking like now is a full blown tear down again with only about 7 miles on the new front end after alignment. I may or may not pull the engine too and get it on a run stand or I may just run it in the car without the trans and ensure the leaks are stopped before I get it all back together. Weather right now is hot hot hot. Nearly 100 degrees every day and 109 heat index. Humid as hell. Ugh. Not really great driving weather so I guess it's not a bad time to just tear it down again. I keep telling myself that one of these days I'll get to enjoy the car lol!
 
That sucks to hear...I was looking forward to seeing some more video from this BEAST...but I can wait...hope you get everything figured out soon...I know you will, and I can't wait for the thrashing to begin again. :thumbsup:
 
clinteg said:
Not much to post as of late. I did finally get the Dart in to get it aligned. Drives straight as an arrow and brakes straight as an arrow too! The brakes are really starting to grab a lot better with a few miles on them. I still have ZERO PEDAL SHAKE which I'm very pleased and quite surprised at the same time. So apparently the Wilwood sales manager knew what he was talking about and the tech guy didn't.

The alignment guy had a heck of a time getting it aligned because the car wouldn't sit at the same ride height every time for some reason. He'd lift it, drop it, bounce it and every time, the car was at a different ride height. So it sounds like something is binding up or is really tight in the suspension. He thought it was the lower control arm bushings causing the problem and those are not greasable. Could be the lower ball joints but I'd really doubt it. I know it's not the UBJ's because if anything those were relatively loose feeling. The LBJ's were quit tight though which I think they should be. So I don't know what to do about that other than drive it and see if it loosens up.

When the car was on the lift, I saw what appears to be a problem that is getting inherently worse. There's oil everywhere. The headers are coated, the oil pan, the trans, exhaust, everything that I had polished, cleaned, and painted. This small oil leak has turned into a full blown BP oil crisis! I counted 9 drops of oil on the ground just pulling into my driveway last night so it's obvious that this is a pretty good leak. To truly fix the rear leak, I need to pull the transmission. Can't race the car because it will leave an oil slick and I don't want to drive the car any more than I have to with it leaking so bad and spewing oil all over the place. So what it's looking like now is a full blown tear down again with only about 7 miles on the new front end after alignment. I may or may not pull the engine too and get it on a run stand or I may just run it in the car without the trans and ensure the leaks are stopped before I get it all back together. Weather right now is hot hot hot. Nearly 100 degrees every day and 109 heat index. Humid as hell. Ugh. Not really great driving weather so I guess it's not a bad time to just tear it down again. I keep telling myself that one of these days I'll get to enjoy the car lol!
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Sounds like my luck. Two times the builder did rear main seal and couldn't get it right. I decided to do it myself and that's when I discovered other builder issues. Anyway the seals will never work unless the seal it self sticks out past the machined surface. The last one wasn't even close and silicon is not the answer
 
6pkScamp said:
Sounds like my luck. Two times the builder did rear main seal and couldn't get it right. I decided to do it myself and that's when I discovered other builder issues. Anyway the seals will never work unless the seal it self sticks out past the machined surface. The last one wasn't even close and silicon is not the answer
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This is the second rear main seal that's been put in it so I'd hate to think that would be the culprit but like you've found, it can happen. It could also be leaking down from the valve covers. I seem to notice oil around the rear corners now and then. Either way I'm sure I'll get it all figured out.
 
clinteg said:
This is the second rear main seal that's been put in it so I'd hate to think that would be the culprit but like you've found, it can happen. It could also be leaking down from the valve covers. I seem to notice oil around the rear corners now and then. Either way I'm sure I'll get it all figured out.
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Valve covers were an issue also, went ahead and spent the money for the rubber with the metal insert. No more leaks there. Dan Dvorak is the only guy who had the good rear seals. I think they were called red seals or something along that line. He guaranteed now more leaks. We will see. I'm waiting on him to finish my motor.
Good luck bro
 
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Seems like a lot of the oil must be coming from the rear seal of the pan. It's splashing on the flex plate which is flinging the oil everywhere. I have lots of cleaning to do.



 
Worked for a couple hours scrubbing the burnt oil on the headers off with a 0000 steel wool pad and some Mother's polish and everything looks almost like it did before. Almost. The steel wool tends to take the sheen from the glossy polished finish but it still looks fine. So that's all cleaned up.

I did find an alternate way to install the inspection cover and it worked. The oil drips straight down now and falls straight back to the trans pan and X pipe. Not an ideal situation but better than all over the headers.

Now since it's getting so late in the year, I could not decide if I wanted to really pull the motor to fix the leaks or leave it alone. If I pulled the motor, who knows how long I'd have it out or what other issues I'd run in to. Plus there's the trans swap which will take some time. I can't get an engine run stand for another few weeks and I really don't want to take it to a dyno shop (although I wouldn't mind seeing what kind of power it measures compared to what the hp is calculated by my track times). So after a little over a week of dragging my feet trying to make a choice on whether or not to pull the engine at this point, I've finally made a decision. Fall is right around the corner and winter will be shortly behind. I already know how this will go once I start blowing things apart. I'll end up maybe getting the car back together sometime in the winter and I want to drive the car in the fall. So I did a little bit of research and found some oil absorbing fire resistant pads. My idea is to place these pads in between the inspection cover and the oil pan and probably wrap them around the bottom of the pan as well. This should catch any oil that may drip and hopefully the flame resistant material will lessen the chance of a fire. This should allow me to go ahead and drive the car for the rest of the year until I blow it apart in the winter. I'll just need to keep an eye on the oil level. Depending on how it goes, I should be able to FINALLY go back to the track and start playing a little bit. Don't know that I will any time soon due to the freakin heat but for sure in the fall time. Hopefully this band-aid idea will work in the meantime.
 
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Spent some time this weekend getting valve lash set. I haven't done it in quite some time and my intention was to set it hot, come back and re-check it the next day when it was cooled to see what the cold lash was so I wouldn't have to set it hot all the time. Weirdest thing is that when you read online, people say it should be around .005 (give or take depending on what the setup is) smaller than hot. When I checked when it was cold, I couldn't measure ANY difference. Has anyone had this experience before? I did this on the driver's side so I set the passenger side cold at .020/.022 which is what COMP says to do hot. I don't get it.





I also tried some of those oil absorbing pads on the oil pan. I really thought this would do it, but I thought wrong. I had that stuff shoved up between the oil pan and inspection cover and even had a flap on a second piece that extended past the bell housing a couple inches that would hopefully catch anything beyond that. So here's what I had. Looks like pampers for hot rods lol.



I pulled the timing out of it back to around 28-30 degrees, grabbed my fire extinguisher and took it out for a drive. Drove it for about 10 miles, got on it pretty hard trying to get the heat to it. No burning or smoke yet so I had hope. Went a few miles out of town and launched from first gear. 1st was spin city. 2nd spin city. 3rd started going. Last time I pedaled I glanced down and speedo said I was doing around 85. It really shouldn't be spinning at that speed IMO. Had 28 lbs in the tires so that didn't help probably. I had the shocks set to extend as easily as possible but the car just didn't seem get up on it's *** and go. Maybe it's because there's not nearly as much travel with this suspension as there was with the torsion bars and it just doesn't appear like it's getting up there. I nailed it from 2nd earlier and it didn't spin much and went. I'm not sure why it spun through 1st and 2nd from a dig but grabbed from a 2nd gear roll. But after that run, I could smell something was getting hot. Pulled over and checked underneath. Oil was dripping about once per second off the flap that was sagging and saturated. WTH!? How can I be losing THAT much oil!? There must be a hole in the sealant on the back of the pan or something. When I get on it, the oil sloshes to the back and runs out at a fast rate is all I can come up with. This is irritating as hell. I could maybe add some more pads between the engine and trans pans but I'm wondering how long that will even last. I might have to pull the engine out after all. *cry*
 
That Suuuuuuuuuuuuucks. Sorry to here all this...that is a serious leak though, think it's time to find out where it is....
 
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