1970 Swinger 340 Hemi Orange 4 speed

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This car is going to be a 1000 times better then the factory built it.
This build should be a sticky for other members to follow on their restos.
 
txstang84 said:
I'm so glad you're posting all these pics...one hell of a restoration compendium.
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Yeah, this is going to be one long thread! Haha

WRB426 said:
This car is going to be a 1000 times better then the factory built it.
This build should be a sticky for other members to follow on their restos.
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Thanks! I think I've done everything I can to prevent rust on this car.. Luckily this is a pretty dry place and it'll never see bad weather again so it should last my lifetime!

I have went a little OCD and puttied all the grind marks and rust pits so it'll be a seamless repair once I paint under it. I also got the torque box in and yet another coat of epoxy on it. I will high build primer the bottom side where needed and sand it smooth when it comes time for paint (factory look)

Here's some more pics!

Painted black in behind the torque box.


Ground off epoxy where needed and applied weld thru primer.


Puttied where needed.




Welded up five holes where it appeared to have an electric fuel pump at one point.


Epoxied!










Now i get to do it all over again...
 
Swinger340Canuc said:
A wee bit of work Randy but it looks great as usual.:happy1:
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Thanks Danny! Yeah I think these rear rails are more work than clipping the car.

txstang84 said:
After you finish up the other side, do you have any other rust to fix?
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Just the one rail and rear crossmember is all that is left! I can't wait to be done with the rust repair. After that I'll work on the trunk pan, straightening it out and welding up the hitch holes.
 
As I've come to expect from this build.....nothing but outstanding work !!!!!
 
After that I'll work on the trunk pan, straightening it out and welding up the hitch holes.
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So just a couple more weeks worth of rust repair? (or less, hopefully)
 
76orangewagon said:
As I've come to expect from this build.....nothing but outstanding work !!!!!
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Thanks Ross!!!

txstang84 said:
So just a couple more weeks worth of rust repair? (or less, hopefully)
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I'd say another month and I'll be done with the rust repair and on to bodywork.. I can't wait!! I still have to order the AMD rear crossmember.

While it's on the rotisserie I'm also going to paint the roof and bottom side of the package tray area Hemi Orange since I hate painting upside down. I might take a week off work to speed things up.. We'll see how that goes.
 
Smart--if your painting is anything like your bodywork/fab, I'm confident it'll turn out top notch!
 
txstang84 said:
Smart--if your painting is anything like your bodywork/fab, I'm confident it'll turn out top notch!
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Haha thanks! I am confident painting sections of the car (like done in previous pages and previous builds) I will paint under the hood, trunk and passenger compartment as well as the underside with the factory look, but when it comes time to do the paint on the body I'll get my Dad to do that since he's a pro and paint is to expensive to potentially screw something up.

Rush4x4 said:
This thread is awesome! You really do fantastic work, what an inspiration!
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Thanks for the compliment! I am glad you're enjoying the build.
 
Some nice factory welds!



Hidden rust.. What was a slight bulge at the shackle mount turned out to be a big hole like the other side.






More bulging in this area, just like the other side.


I'll try to get the rail off by the weekend.
 
Good work!
Glad that you take the time to include lots of pictures of your progress, this is my favorite build thread on here.
I sure wish that i still had your patience, skills, and youth........
That being said, you'll have a great car when it's finished.
What will you do for an encore?
I remember test driving one like yours when it was about 8 years old on a used car lot.
I was very impressed with it, and almost bought it as my first car, but they wanted too much for it and wouldn't budge on the price of $1400.00
Same car as yours, all original (even tires), except it was a column automatic with 34,000 miles.
I think that orange is THE colour for these '70 340 Swingers.
I can't wait to see more..........
 
Dartnut said:
Good work!
Glad that you take the time to include lots of pictures of your progress, this is my favorite build thread on here.
I sure wish that i still had your patience, skills, and youth........
That being said, you'll have a great car when it's finished.
What will you do for an encore?
I remember test driving one like yours when it was about 8 years old on a used car lot.
I was very impressed with it, and almost bought it as my first car, but they wanted too much for it and wouldn't budge on the price of $1400.00
Same car as yours, all original (even tires), except it was a column automatic with 34,000 miles.
I think that orange is THE colour for these '70 340 Swingers.
I can't wait to see more..........
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Thanks for the compliment!! Your guys comments really help with the motivation on this car.. I have needed a lot of motivation to keep this project alive since it seemed like it was never ending, but it's so close now.

I haven't really thought about the encore of the car since it still seams so car away. I will definitely try to get it in a Mopar magazine and I plan on doing a cross country road trip thru the U.S. with it. I am going to drive it every chance I get, it'll not be a trailer queen.

That's really cool! I would have loved to be around when these care were new and even used on dealer lots. I wonder if that car is still around.. I would love to find out the history of my car, but i can't find anything on it. It was in southern Alberta (okotoks area) back in the 80's but that is as far as I have gotten.

I have to agree with you on the Hemi Orange, they look so mean in that colour!

I started chopping the rear rail out of the car yesterday and tomorrow I'll try to get the rest of the rail out and hopefully sandblast it by the weekend. This side doesn't have as much scale inside the rail/pans but it still needs replacing.



I also spent quite a bit of time straightening out the torque box. I think the car was jacked up by it at one time. I just have to clean up the old welds and epoxy it.




I also ordered the AMD rear crossmember so I should have that in about a week.
 
Well.....
To finish the story on the '70 orange 340 Swinger i test drove in in Cranbrook, B.C. in the fall of '78, it was sold to someone who smashed the front end up soon after he bought it.
It was a light hit, the front frame rail had a slight bend in it right at where the impact point is on the front where the factory designed it to take a hit. The hood had a slight bend in it, the grille was broken, the bumper was slightly bent, and the fender had minor damage to it.
ICBC wrote it off and it went to the junk yard. I looked at it and tried to buy it from them as is and complete and they wouldn't sell it to me. They were Mopar guys too, and all they wanted to do is part it out and keep the good stuff for themselves. They parted it out and it got stripped pretty good before it was finally crushed. They wouldn't even sell me the body before it was crushed. It was almost rust free.
A buddy of mine got the 340 hood scoops off of it and put them on his 340 '72 Demon, the owner's son sold them to him and boy was his dad pissed at him!
The car would have been a very easy fix back then, but they liked to write off cars that were over 6 years old, and especially muscle cars.
What a waste.......
 
That is a sad sad story...my Dad used to tell me about places like that when I was growing up. I shudder to think how many perfectly repairable cars were just wasted because of a quick buck.
 
txstang84 said:
That is a sad sad story...my Dad used to tell me about places like that when I was growing up. I shudder to think how many perfectly repairable cars were just wasted because of a quick buck.
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Yeah, and the owner of the junk yard loved his '67 Barracuda convertible.
It was a real pig with lipstick car all bondoed up with a shiny blue generic paint job.
I know the engine, trans, and 8 3/4 went into this p.o.s. from the Swinger.
And they had the gall to laugh about it. They paid $122.00 for the Swinger off of ICBC and boasted about it.
Suddenly, the p.o.s. Barracuda convertible had a 340, 727, and a 8 3/4 where the 318, 904, and 7 1/4 once was.
Don't get me wrong, i offered them $800 for the car and they laughed at me.
It was their attitude about it that pissed me off.
They said it was just a Swinger, a NOTHING car.
Now, a with a Barracuda, you've got something they said. :violent1:
Don't get me wrong, i know back in the day that these were just cars, and a lot of them were out there.
And i have nothing against Barracudas, but i feel that the Swinger was a cooler car.
But that's just me.........
Tom.
 
I hear ya loud and clear. I would love to have a 67-69 FB Barracuda, but I'm pretty happy with my Scamp despite it's "nothing" car status...but it's mine :) and it was a gift from my Dad who bought it from the original owner. Her (first owner) Dad bought it for her off the lot in the summer of '72 so she could have a fun little car to cruise and drive on the beach at Galveston (literally, on the beach--when that was still allowed...which also accounts for some of the rust issues).

I've been learning a good deal from Randy on here, and it gives me plenty of reason to think I can fix all the cancer in my car as long as I'm willing to put forth the effort. I just can't afford the new metal, so I'll be patching it with good metal after stripping it down.
 
Wow, that sucks to hear.. It sounds like it took a hit very similar to my car. My drivers front rail was kinked, the hood was buckled and the fender, bumper/brackets and lower valence were replaced and it looked to be a very old repair. If you see back on page one you can see the grille is split in half and the hood was full of bondo. That was part of the reason I clipped the car. I also did a vin check and it was never written off.. If my car had a salvage title I wouldn't have built it.



I wonder how many EV2 Swingers are actually left? I was looking for about 10yrs for a project car, which had to be an EV2 340 '70 Swinger and this was the first one that came up and I bought it sight unseen.. Looking back now I wished I would have looked it over a little more, haha.

I got the rest of the rail off today and then ground down the old spotwelds and test for the new rail. Everything seemed to fit nicely. Hopefully Monday I'll start sandblasting! This side seams a lot cleaner rust scale wise and doesn't appear to need any patches.



 
The frame rail on the one i have been talking about wasn't quite as bad as yours, but the same idea.
A buddy of mine sold an EV2 '70 Swinger 340 4 speed car about 10 years ago that was stolen and stripped when it was almost new to someone in the Okanagan in B.C.
Keep up the good work!
 
Dartnut said:
The frame rail on the one i have been talking about wasn't quite as bad as yours, but the same idea.
A buddy of mine sold an EV2 '70 Swinger 340 4 speed car about 10 years ago that was stolen and stripped when it was almost new to someone in the Okanagan in B.C.
Keep up the good work!
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That's sad it got wrote off over that.. I can see it not taking to hard of a hit from the bumper to bend the rail since there's nothing else there to absorb the impact. The shell was still kept around after being stripped for all those years?

Thanks!

I sandblasted today and I'm so glad to be finally done with that dirty job! I accomplished quite a bit today.

Sandblasted.


Holes drilled and epoxy sanded away.


Weld thru primed and painted black inside the rail.


Phosphoric acid applied to kill tiny rust pits and prevent flash rusting until I epoxy.
 
Got some epoxy on it tonight. Tomorrow I'll give it a coat of weld thru primer and it's ready to be welded on! Hopefully by early next week I'll be done with it and on to the AMD rear crossmember. (It should be here by then)



 
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