66 Dart GT HT Whatsitgonnabe?

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I like the 300 and the new Challenger and Chargers. I actually rented a Challenger when I was in the US a couple of years ago. Not an SRT, though ...

I hope Chrysler stays in the game so they can afford to make the switch to fossil-free drive lines which I am certain will be coming before too long.
 
Yeah that would be great if they could make a super fuel sipper , or alt fuel car i could buy for back n forth to work. I currently drive a 2008 chevy HHR wagon to work. Its a 2.2L 16V ecotec with a 5 seed manual. I average about 31 MPG. It takes 14 gallons every 2 weeks to fill it, so thats not too bad.

Fords new F150 1/2 ton pickup i am starting to like. It has an all aluminum body and truck bed shedding 700 pounds, and an eco turbo 4 cylinder or eco turbo V6. This thing gets almost the same economy as my little pip squeak i drive now.

I still have gasoline in my veins, and probably always will. Was raised on big inch V8s love the sound. Also love the sound of old radial aircraft engines, and the rolls royce merlin V12 in the P51 mustangs.

BTW my plymouth center caps shown on the 5th ave rims i got at a flea market locally for $25. I felt like i stole them for that price. I see em on ebay for $200 set of 4.

Matt
 
I love the sound of big cams and high compression. There was this Swedish Mustang in Haapsalu that was there for the drag race. It sounded like it wanted to jump right out of the engine bay, through the hood. Street legal, too. So cool.

Yeah, those WWII airplane engines are awesome in the true sense of the word. A friend of my dad's got a Hawker Sea Fury. Look it up. It's got an 18-cylinder, 55 liter star engine.

Wait, you're a fly guy. You probably know all about it.

About the future of cars, I'm betting we will be able to fuel our gasoline cars at the regular filling stations for at least another 15-20 years and then probably be allowed to drive these "museum" vehicles almost indefinitely but we'll have to buy gas elsewhere. Like racing gas.

I believe it's inevitable and the large European car manufacturers who are winter testing their cars in the north of Sweden all run electric and hybrid drive lines. Many of them are asking for Hydrogen filling stations. Just sayin' ...
 
How do you all (especially you, Matt ;)) like my "I just want to get the thing running" electrical installation?
 

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Hi Anders,

i have done a fair bit of fankensteining stuff together for testing. make sure you ground that control box well or you may have a spark problem.

i would like to also recommend removing the K frame, and thoroughly degreasing it. caustic oven cleaner works very well on automotive grease, scrub with wire brushes, then rinse with water to neutralize.

then look at all the welds holding it together. what i did with mine was add an 1/8" skid plate/ stiffening plate to the center of mine, added gussets to the steering box mounts, and then i seam welded the K frame around its entire perimeter. i recommending welding it all with the bare K frame installed in the car as a fixture to help prevent warpage.

go to www.firmfeel.com and look at the pictures of their reworked early A body K frames. i bet you could duplicate their efforts to stiffen yours up with a little effort.

these cars are flexi flyers, and anything that can be done to stiffen up the unibody, and force the suspension to do its job is a welcomed improvement. there is a right way to add subframe connectors as well. it involves levelling the chassis before welding them in so your not adding in twist to the body structure. the methods on making them vary and all are good ideas.

i made mine out of 2"x3" rectangular tubing that was 1/8" wall thickness it was attached to 1/8" gusset plates on the transmission crossmember to spread the load from the connectors. i then rerouted my parking brake to inside the frame rails. i had to slot the rear footwell pans to run the connectors and when you lay the tubing 3 wide 2 high they only stick up thru the foot wells 1/2" . the carpet covers this up where its not noticable at all. additional padding on either side really hides them. my cost was about $35 in material.

if you decide to do this, let me know, i can send you pix of what i did, including the rerouting of the park brake cable, this is a big improvement in how the car feels and handles. if you look closely at my avatar, you will see the boxed in front and rear torque boxes i made from 1/8" thick steel plate, as well as the subframe connectors. i even drilled 3/4" holes in the bottom of each subframe connector in 3 locations each as drain holes trying to make everything appear as stock as possible.

Matt
 
Hi Anders,

heres the neat thing about the hydrogen, a gasoline engine will run on it. no need for all the complicated stuff they are making to turn hydrogen to electricity to make electric power to run an electric motor on a car. i bet we will see devices to replace carburetors like the old propane carbs that used to be popular for propane conversions years ago. as a matter of fact, Los Angeles airport (LAX) has regular busses and passenger vans at the airport with injected gasoline piston engines engines running on hydrogen to keep the polution down. not an experiment, this is real world stuff.

i made a hydrogen generator a few years ago with stainless steel screen grids to convert salt water to hydrogen. you use water with baking soda and an anode and a cathode. the water in the middle. anode and cathode cannot touch each other. i was going to attach this on my chevy HHR and extend my mileage by having the engine suck in the hydrogen from splitting the atoms, however the container got very uncomfortably hot even with the output i got from it, and my car doesnt have enough room for a bigger container to keep the saline water cool enough. i wa thinking mini chernobyl under my hood wasnt a good thing.

i shelved the idea but it was fun. i think you will see conversions of some of the old muscle cars to alternate powerplants. electrics, hydrogen, etc. i wont do mine though.

Matt
 
Frame connectors is something I've really been thinking about. Have seen lots of solutions here on FABO and the one you apparently did, I saw only a couple of days ago. Brilliant, I think, and an awful lot cheaper than buying laser-cut profiles that follow the floor pan contour. If I do it, this is probably the way I'll go.

I'd love to see more about the parking brake re-routing.

Now I'm off to the TV to watch episode 2 of the third season of the excellent TV-series "The Bridge" with my daughter. Swedish/Danish. Very well executed, almost up to Hollywood standards.

Take care!
 
Hi Anders,

When you look at the pix I posted on fabo, you can see 2 subframe connector pix where the park brake cable was rerouted to inboard of the drivers side framerail.

Matt
 
Great pics, Matt!

It looks like you ran the frame rail connectors parallell to each other. When I flip between the last and the second to last pictures, it doesn't look like the front frame rail and the frame rail connector line up. I've seen where the frame rail connector is run at an angle to line up with the front and the rear frame rails.

What are your thoughts there?
 
They dont line up perfectly. If you run them straight and parallel from the rear framerails, this is where they end up at the front. Inside the transmission support is additional reinforcing from the factory for the original fwd rails, and i added the 1/8" thick transition plates to transfer the loading into the crossmember.

I got the basic idea off bigblockdart.com, and kinda polished up their idea. Also the inner side of the subframe connectors lines up parallel with the outer side of the existing front framerail. This along with internal stiffeners in the crossmember, and transition plates at this point it is plenty strong. Keep in mind you are trying to stop torsional or twisting stress with these.

Do you see the pix where the cable is routed in the front and out the back of the crossmember? It is now routed on the engine side of the subframe connectors. You can also see the factory reinforcing in the pix i have on fabo showing the crossmember install with the floor still out of the car.

Matt
 
Good morning, Matt!

Yeah, I saw the pictures. I just realized you meant between the frame rails. I thought you meant inside onf of the frame rail beams. :D

No, I don't doubt the stiffness is just as good or better than running the FRC to line up with existing FR:s. I guess it makes it a little easier to make the cuts in the floor and measure and fabricate the parts, too.

Did you see my comment? I found the cleco's interesting. :)
 
Good morning Anders,

Yes i saw your comment. Definitely easier to run em straight. You will notice most guys who do these run them straight, and put in transition plates, since the crossmember is only 1/16" thick, and the connectors are 1/8" thick, you have to transfer the load to the 1/8" transition plates, then out to the thinner crossmember, or over time you can have a stress crack form.

I had questions about the subframe connectors not lining up exactly. I have a local friend who is a mopar nut. Still builds ashphalt track and dirt track race cars out of them. He said what you got going on is plenty stout for a street car, and even a race car, as long as 1 side rail on the connector lines up with 1 side rail on the front frame, the reinforcements will do the rest. A lot of it is about load transitioning, and trying to see the push, pull, and twist forces that it will have.

I do these problems with my students. We talk about tension, shear, and torsional stresses in aircraft. Sometimes i use a bit of automobile stuff to keep em interested, and thinking.

Yes clecos. I have a huge box of em at the house. They come in handy for auto sheetmetal projects. I have a box of em at work as i am a sheetmetal structures instructor, and shop crewchief.

Did you notice the beefy 1/8" thick torque boxes i fabricated and installed as well?

Matt
 
4 square plates the 2 in the back are fwd of the wheel openings and have rectangular access holes so you can get to the nuts that hold the leaf spring fwd eye brackets to the frame. They tie to the rear framerails, the spring eye mount pad, the floor pan, and the rocker panels. These boxing plates in the back are similar to ones used in big block 4 speed cars and all convertibles. On high horsepower cars it keeps the fwd leaf spring bracket from moving under hard launch. Ex. 6,000 Rpm side stepping of the clutch.

The front ones are behind the front wheel wells. And tie the front framerails to the rocker panel , the floor, and the existing triangle gusset. You notice they have large round access holes in them. These were used on big block 4 speed cars and convertibles to eliminate or reduce cowl shake, and torsional flex induced by a heavier big block being told to turn at a high rate of speed.

I will also be removing the thin sheetmetal lower radiator support, and.building one out of 2"x2" boxed steel running it under the radiator. This will tie the framerails together at the front to prevent torsional flex ahead of the K frame.

Most people forget that on a unibody car, the rocker panels are a structural element. They ARE your framerail.

Matt
 
Heres pics,

I hate the upside down pix LOL. You should get the gist of the pictures though. Rails are dead even with the rocker panels. Look crooked but its the photo angles. In the first pic you can see i have one of the rear torque box reinforcements just taped into place. Notice from this, that the subframe connectors went in first, then the boxing plates overlap the subframe connectors.

Matt
 

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360DartGT66 said:
I think I might have mentioned early on that I was in Estonia and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. There was a US car show in the little town of Haapsalu which actually is the town where my grand mother was born. Well, she lived a little outside, but still.

Here are some of the nice mopars we saw.
Click to expand...

I see American cars are alive and well in Europe!
 
Thanks, Matt! When I get this far, I will probably have more questions.

And yes, Ulf, there were some really nice ones there. That Camaro SS convertible was beautiful. Well, the 68 Charger wasn't too bad either. :)

(Jumping up and down waiting for your package...)
 
Yep, getting parts in the mail is always fun. Its like Christmas morning all year round LOL.
 
Btw, your package is on its way to Don. Barely made it to the post office. My junkyard buddy has a tire machine at his place. So i go there at 3:30 after i get out of work. Anyway my little commuter car only holds 2 wheels w tires at a time. As i am demounting the 2 tires, he tells me that starting tomorrow he wont be there for a week as he is having surgery, but will be there for one more hour today. I demount the tires quickly, run home to get the other 2, run back get em both demounted in 8 minutes, load em up, and haul *** to get to the post office with 5 minutes to spare.

Anders, after all my craziness today, your package should be in Dons hands by thursday.

Matt
 
Sorry to cause you grievance, Matt. Like I said, I hope to make it up to you some day. :thumblef:
 
360DartGT66 said:
Sorry to cause you grievance, Matt. Like I said, I hope to make it up to you some day. :thumblef:
Click to expand...

No trouble at all, i am as excited to get you these parts, as you are to get them, plus i didnt expect my friend to be getting surgery. He had not mentioned it at all until yesterday when i was demounting the first 2 tires, so I had to rush to demount all 4 tires so i could put these rims in storage. I took it as a challenge. I demounted the second 2 tires in 8 minutes with his machine. Now thats fast, and i was pretty happy with myself. Then i was back on the road with everything in my trunk headed for the post office.
 
Impressive.

Well, today I've been fixing part of our living room wall. We had a leaky roof which left a stained wall paper and some mold on the drywall beneath. Cut a part of the old drywall out for inspection and replacement and put a new piece up.

Being who I am, I took a few things for granted and didn't measure the thickness of the original drywall. Turned out to be 9 mm and the one I bought is 1/2", 12.7mm. #-o

Big bucket of filler on the shopping list ...

Here's a couple of pictures, at least.
 

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65dartcharger said:
Are you going to build sub-frames Anders on your car?
Click to expand...

The last post was in response to Matt's post.

I think so, Ulf. I'd like my Dart to have the best handling possible. I've never driven an old US car but I have a feeling they cab be improved on. I'd like the car to sound mean, look cool and handle really well.

Do you have any thoughts on it?
 
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