1972 Canadian H-Code 340 Dart Swinger Special Resto - Finally started!

[d55dave]

If you can straighten your original dust caps send them to me and I will cad plate them. Were they originally cad or zinc? Send me a pm if you are interested.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

If you can straighten your original dust caps send them to me and I will cad plate them. Were they originally cad or zinc? Send me a pm if you are interested.

Thanks for the offer, the one is pretty beat up but I’ll give it a try, I’m not sure if it’s cad or zinc plating

 

[d55dave]

I have a small set up at work for doing aircraft parts. I can do bare cad (silver), conversion coated cad (more durable, gold color) or zinc. You have done such an amazing job on that dart, if I can help out with a little plating it would be a privilege.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Thanks again for the kind words, I have some small parts like hood catch and the hood safety latch that need plating but the cost of a plating kit was pretty expensive so I was likely going to have to use some kind of paint, maybe I can send them to you and pay you to plate them? I would surely want to compensate you for your efforts.

 

[d55dave]

Sent you a pm

 

[cliff guinand]

I hate that after a week or more FABO stops sending prompts on the treads you comment on... I guess I should check a lot more because I missed a lot of your build here Danny. I thought you were sick or something, LOL. I'll do better.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

I hate that after a week or more FABO stops sending prompts on the treads you comment on... I guess I should check a lot more because I missed a lot of your build here Danny. I thought you were sick or something, LOL. I'll do better.

I am sick Cliff, sick of working on this carrrr!!! LOL! Just kidding, I do enjoy when I've got the energy putzing around working on the car. It's rewarding taking a scruffy old part and cleaning it up to look much like it did when the boys in 1972 were putting this car all together at the Windsor plant. Still lots to do so keep plugging along.

And that's some of what I've been doing lately, cleaned up and refurbished some my fuel tank sending unit and mounted my gas tank in place. But first I cleaned the surface really well and tried this product called " Sharkhide Metal Protectant " which was very easy to apply with a cotton rag and hopefully it will protect my tank but time will tell,

I used some thin self adhesive foam on my fuel tank mounting straps hoping that will prevent them from rubbing thru the surface to the steel causing rust,

And cleaned up some parts, blasted off the black paint from my Z-bar and buffed it up with the wire wheel and coated it leaving the bare metal look that Joel thinks is probably correct. Cleaned up my wiper mechanism and installed the Schumacher pivot grease nipples with a shot of grease and cleaned up my tranny crossmember and mount,

A little here a little there

 

[cliff guinand]

I am sick Cliff, sick of working on this carrrr!!! LOL! Just kidding, I do enjoy when I've got the energy putzing around working on the car. It's rewarding taking a scruffy old part and cleaning it up to look much like it did when the boys in 1972 were putting this car all together at the Windsor plant. Still lots to do so keep plugging along.

Well man, your so-called putzing and plugging along will payoff in spades. And before you know it it'll be all done, sparkling and looking like a million bucks - even tho it'll never really be done - but you can then show it off like I was able to do a couple weeks ago!!! It feels real good...

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Quick little restoration job on my wiper motor, had to use walnut shell for blasting media since it will remove the paint without damaging the ceramic parts and won't get inside and damage the motor. Remove the parts I can and the rubber grommets and the firewall seal and blast off the spray bomb orange and found a lot of surface rust underneath which came off with a red Scotch Brite pad,

Two coats of black epoxy as a sealer and one coat of satin black urethane, and reassembly which is a nice improvement and it only took a couple hours work,

Some before and after colour flip flop action,

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Making some progress on finishing and installing some sub-assembles, my gas peddle had a bit of corrosion but wasn't painted from factory appeared to be a black oxide finish so I blasted it with fine media and re-blackened it,

Then got the firewall insulation on and wiper assembly before getting the pedals and brake booster installed,

then time to turn my attention to my dash and start getting it assembled. Decided to repair my original instrument bezel since the chrome was better on it then the other two I have by fixing the two small holes the previous owner made in the woodgrain screwing something to it. Start removing the bezel and bevelling the spot with my mini grinder and applying some plastic filler and sanding flat. Then a good cleaning with degreaser and apply the woodgrain decal I got from Detroit Muscle which turned out pretty decent.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Then I gave the cluster front and back a careful cleaning and hand polished the lenses a bit and a bit of very low pressure air to blow out any dust. Put in new bulbs and reassemble, need to find my wiper knob in one of these boxes,

Decided this was the time to upgrade my old speaker which took about a week to get but should sound a bit better, eventually going to get one of my radios modernized with most of the new tech but not on the top of my list right now and its kind of expensive,

I was happy to see that my harness wasn't cut into at all which worried me with all the extra wires that were under my dash,

But it all came together nicely and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, just have to see if I can repair my original heater duct hoses.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

My sail panel boards made of cardboard with a very thin and fragile grain finish on them had some screw holes thru them, for lord knows what, posed a problem since these are getting near impossible to find anymore so I took a stab at repairing the holes. My plan was to carefully grind down the raised area from the screw keeping it as small as possible and then fill the hole from the back side with a two component black plastic repair product. When that set up I dabbed a small amount of filler on the face side and then when it began to stiffen up I used a small piece from my old dash pad, with a thin film of petroleum jelly to act as a release agent, to emboss the grain pattern in to the filler. Then I gave them 2 coats of SEM trim black, not a perfect repair but a big improvement over how they looked,

Oh and my Bilstein's, the correct ones this time, showed up and got those installed,

Keep pushing along and eventually will get to the end, PLEASE, lol!

 

[cliff guinand]

Look at you go! Nice. So, when you repaired the little screw holes in your cluster, what and how did you get the wood grain back - was that a new skin of it or something? And yeah, love those cardboard headliners and sale panels - nice work there as well.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Look at you go! Nice. So, when you repaired the little screw holes in your cluster, what and how did you get the wood grain back - was that a new skin of it or something? And yeah, love those cardboard headliners and sale panels - nice work there as well.

A decal from Detroit Muscle for the wood grain Cliff, had to try something on the sail panels so I just winged it.

 

[limegreen70]

Do you have a link for this decal? Looks pretty good.

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Do you have a link for this decal? Looks pretty good.

View attachment 1715161544

You may have to give them a call since it doesn’t seem to come up when you search their web site but if you look in the catalog section you’ll find all the dash and console overlays. If I remember correctly I had to phone them to order it.

 

[69dartwant]

Just found this build, and it looks like you are doing a wonderful job! It really puts into perspective how big and time consuming a restoration is. Have always wanted to do one, and at age 62 yrs. young it's telling me to get moving if you want it to be a reality! Great job, and looking forward to continued reading! Looking for a '69 340, 4 speed swinger!

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

It’s a pretty big job to do one to this degree 69dartwant, and can be fairly expensive especially if you’re not able to most of the work yourself like I am. I’m pushing 56 and don’t think I have it in me to do another one but I’ve been working on cars every day for 38 years and am a bit worn out. Hopefully others can pick up some tips from this build to use on theirs, I know I have from other members.

 

[69dartwant]

Thanks Swinger340Canuc for your words of wisdom, and sharing all your hard work by posting it, which is MORE work of course! You are helping others in many ways I'm sure, and that is where joy comes from, helping others! Doing just for oneself I find isn't very rewarding! Wish I lived near you to be able to check out the car in person! Continued success!

 

[FC7freak]

Awesome work!

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Thanks fellas, I'm trying to do some during the weekday evenings and not just weekends to try and speed this up some.

Had to get to what sound deadening I'm going to use which for now is just the roof panel and inside the doors and quarters, I've never applied this stuff before so quickly found out to use pieces of a manageable size or I could end up as a sticky ball rolling around on the floor, lol.

Then if was time to tackle the job of installing the window regulators and glass, a tedious job at least on the first side tackled, start by unpacking the parts and giving them a good lube job with some lithium grease,

managed to get both rear regulators and glass in and they do work a lot better now that they've been cleaned and serviced and did have to replace one wheel on the right rear,

The front drivers regulator had a broken wheel which was a bit more work to repair, started by grinding the back of the post the roller is mounted on off so I could drive it out of the arm with a punch.

The wheels that I have didn't have the deep wide taper that the post requires, so I just put a taper in with a fine round file and it worked fine,

Then a couple of spot welds with some air to cool it quickly and grind it flat,

A bit of a pain when you don't do this very often but the side glass is in but will still need a bit of fine tuning after the rubber seals are in place,

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

I decided I wanted to take a stab at saving my dash air vent hoses which have some damage and are getting pretty fragile as the paper material is degraded over the decades,

What I ended up deciding to try was using a black cloth tape, so I cleaned the surface then stuffed some rags into the one thats torn in the middle to provide some support. Then I sprayed some 3M adhesive around the damaged area and put a couple of wraps around that area then sprayed the whole hose and started at one end and wrapped the entire hose and repeated the wrap on the other one that had less damage,

Pretty happy with the way they turn out, they seem to have a vintage car look and the aftermarket don't exactly matched either and this cost me maybe 10 bucks compared to over a hundred for those,

 

[Swinger340Canuc]

Made some progress this weekend starting with running most of the wiring from the dash back including some speaker wire should I do an audio upgrade in the future the wire is in place. Then I re-glued the cheesecloth like mesh on my roof insulation and glue the two pads up in place and installed the headliner and sail panels,

Then I got the dash mounted back in and then mounted the heater box, both went pretty smooth with no real problems,

Got to be so careful not to forget something or scratch something its a pretty slow process but the long list keeps getting smaller and thats a good thing!

View attachment 1715165566

View attachment 1715165567

 

[Dartnut]

Great work again as always!
Nice to see it coming together, the little things take a lot of time...........
FWIW, i have used black hockey stick tape on the heater hoses and it worked great for me.
Seems almost fitting for a Canadian car!

 

[TimsGT]

Wow @Swinger340Canuc that is looking so good!! Best build thread on FABO