69 Dart GT Conv. 340-6pak

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You've done a great work on your car. I love the work that you put on details. It will be super nice when finished!

Keep up the good work.
 
65dartcharger said:
You've done a great work on your car. I love the work that you put on details. It will be super nice when finished!

Keep up the good work.
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Thanks Ulf,
Coming from someone who's building a Dart Charger in the caliber that yours is in, is an honor. Your detail work is super impressive to say the least.
Martin
 
Well guys, after a long summer hibernation with home projects out the wazoo, its time for me to wake up and smell the grease once more. I had mega problems getting the six pack to clear the GTS hood, but its done! Wanting to use my custom air cleaner and not the oem style was a chore. After calling schumaker so many times he knows my voice, I have lowered the engine in the bay with no luck due to steering clearance and header clearance issues, raised and lowered each side multiple times, and finally milled .500" off the 3 carb bases. All thats left to do is to shorten or remake the choke rod for the center carb. All this taking aprox 10 weeks to figure out. So having said all this, Now the wiring harness is laid out in the engine bay and I am ready to start connecting all. I have also gotten all the steering column mounting parts glass beaded and painted, and ready to install. I'm waiting on the Stewart thermostat to come in and then put the top radiator hose back on. Im also sanding and polishing the air cleaner top.

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Welcome back Martin!
Glad to see you got things sorted out. IT looks great!
 
Well Christmas is passed and things are slowly getting back to normal. I finally had sometime to work on the Dart. I started to tackle the much dreaded under dash wiring. Having purchased a new harness i laid it in under the dash frame and started to mount the fuse box and realized that it made more sense to put the forward parts back on the firewall instead of taking up more room by having the harness mounted, so, I new my driver side fresh air vent had been butchered by the previous owner by mounting a speaker to the door. They had also broken one of the mounting stud hole while doing this. I disassembled the vent by drilling the rivets that hold the door hinge on, glass beaded the door and hinge, welded the holes up, did the filler work on it and went on to the vent itself. I used a plastic 2 part weld to fix the broken hole. After a super good cleaning, I sanded, and painted both pieces. Since my car is far from original it didn't bother me to use common rivets to mount the door hinge to the vent. I detailed the outer striker plate and we're done. Once the gasket from DMT arrives, I'll mount it on the car and its on to the next, the foot washer pump.

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Well in my never ending quest to fit a six pack under a flat hood, the next paragraph has been written. After milling .500" of the mounting bosses of the intake, and got the hood clearance I needed,I ran into another issue, the stainless top radiator hose I built was now touching the front carb. Since all Chrysler water necks for the 340 are straight up, I started looking at what I would need to lower the top hose away from the front carb. After looking at several, I landed on the early chevy (55-57) water neck. This neck will not accommodate the oem size thermostat that I'm using, so I started designing a 45 degree angled water neck for the small block. Using the chrysler o-ringed base measurements and the chevy top measurements, I had a Baker Machine mill 2 pieces out of aluminum and we tig welded them together. I then ground and sanded the entire housing starting with 40 grit all the way to 400 grit, then buffed it. Some 6 hrs later I have a 45 degree, O-ringed water neck. I put it on today and all fits great. Now its on to remaking the housing end of the hose to fit the 45 degree neck, and don't think it will be too big of a deal. Wish me luck.

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Looks beautiful! I didn't go through the entire post, so forgive me if I missed it, but why no sub-frame connectors and other chassis reinforcement? The made a dramatic night and day difference in handling, ride and launch response on my '68 convertible. I can't imaging how that much power isn't going to twist up that chassis and possibly even crack some things. I know my car was pretty flexible until I put in the entire US Cartool chassis stiffening kit.
 
jbc426 said:
Looks beautiful! I didn't go through the entire post, so forgive me if I missed it, but why no sub-frame connectors and other chassis reinforcement? The made a dramatic night and day difference in handling, ride and launch response on my '68 convertible. I can't imaging how that much power isn't going to twist up that chassis and possibly even crack some things. I know my car was pretty flexible until I put in the entire US Cartool chassis stiffening kit.[/QUOTE

Cracked windshields
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jbc426 said:
Looks beautiful! I didn't go through the entire post, so forgive me if I missed it, but why no sub-frame connectors and other chassis reinforcement? The made a dramatic night and day difference in handling, ride and launch response on my '68 convertible. I can't imaging how that much power isn't going to twist up that chassis and possibly even crack some things. I know my car was pretty flexible until I put in the entire US Cartool chassis stiffening kit.
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Hey guys,
Page 11 shows the subframe connectors being installed. I also welded the K member solid and added a flaming river close ratio steering gear for handling. I have tubular A's also, and a 1.250" sway bar.
 
Well since I have installed the 45 degree water neck on the motor, I now have to revamp the stainless top hose I had previously made. It'll take cutting it into three sections and adding one additional (aprox 18 degree) bend to get the angles back in sinc.

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2fine69s said:
Hey guys,
Page 11 shows the subframe connectors being installed. I also welded the K member solid and added a flaming river close ratio steering gear for handling. I have tubular A's also, and a 1.250" sway bar.
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My '68 'vert had significant cowl shake after installing the sub-frame connectors and under radiator brace. The under fender bracing and welding the shock towers to the inner fenderwells made a huge improvement. Before I welded them in, I noticed there were already cracks forming on the inner fenderwells where the shock towers were spot welded to the inner fenders. This was with a rust-free chassis and a stock Slant 6.


Subframe connectors are a great place to start with to stiffen the chassis. Next best and easiest thing to add is a bar to tie the front frame rails together under and just behind the radiator(between the K-frame and lower radiator tank). The US Cartool one hangs down out of the way and is a nice point to jack the car up with a floor jack.

Then the under fender braces and welding the shock towers solidly to the inner fenders and finally fab up a triangulated Monty Carlo bar that bolts on in the engine compartment and ties together the cowl to both front fenders. It looked cool too. I used a few of the factory fender attaching bolts to mount it and added a few bolts to the rear attaching point above the wiper motor. It did require me to drill 3 small holes in the sheetmetal spot welded in above the wiper motor. Once all the other chassis improvements were welded in and the Monte Carlo bar was bolted in, the remaining cowl shake was not detectable. I had to remove the when I swapped engines from a Slant 6 to a Magnum, as the A/C compressor was in the way. I'm going to make another one when I get back from Spring Fling.

The biggest improvement from adding all these improvements was the way it made the chassis feel so much solid and composed when driving over rougher wash-board type roads. The car also felt like a solid platform for the suspension to work under harder braking, cornering and accelerating. It's hard to explain. The car just felt way better at all times when just cruising along and especially when enjoying a more spirited drive. Chassis stiffening is worth the effort if you really get into fine tuning your cars overall performance.

If you look closely, you can see barely see part of the lower frame tying bar.
 

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jbc426 said:
My '68 'vert had significant cowl shake after installing the sub-frame connectors and under radiator brace. The under fender bracing and welding the shock towers to the inner fenderwells made a huge improvement. Before I welded them in, I noticed there were already cracks forming on the inner fenderwells where the shock towers were spot welded to the inner fenders. This was with a rust-free chassis and a stock Slant 6.


Subframe connectors are a great place to start with to stiffen the chassis. Next best and easiest thing to add is a bar to tie the front frame rails together under and just behind the radiator(between the K-frame and lower radiator tank). The US Cartool one hangs down out of the way and is a nice point to jack the car up with a floor jack.

Then the under fender braces and welding the shock towers solidly to the inner fenders and finally fab up a triangulated Monty Carlo bar that bolts on in the engine compartment and ties together the cowl to both front fenders. It looked cool too. I used a few of the factory fender attaching bolts to mount it and added a few bolts to the rear attaching point above the wiper motor. It did require me to drill 3 small holes in the sheetmetal spot welded in above the wiper motor. Once all the other chassis improvements were welded in and the Monte Carlo bar was bolted in, the remaining cowl shake was not detectable. I had to remove the when I swapped engines from a Slant 6 to a Magnum, as the A/C compressor was in the way. I'm going to make another one when I get back from Spring Fling.

The biggest improvement from adding all these improvements was the way it made the chassis feel so much solid and composed when driving over rougher wash-board type roads. The car also felt like a solid platform for the suspension to work under harder braking, cornering and accelerating. It's hard to explain. The car just felt way better at all times when just cruising along and especially when enjoying a more spirited drive. Chassis stiffening is worth the effort if you really get into fine tuning your cars overall performance.

If you look closely, you can see barely see part of the lower frame tying bar.
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Great information, Thanks I really appreciate it
 
Today I worked on three different parts of the vert. I first reassembled the washer pump, which was all of a 2 minute job since the pump mounting bracket was already stripped and painted. I used an nos kit that I found out west. I then removed and disassembled the front and rear bumper brackets for sand blasting, but my blaster valve is on the fritz so i'll take them this week to be blasted. I glass beaded the 3 remaining interior trim pieces that go to the inside of the windshield post frame. I then sanded them and they are ready to be primed and painted. Little by Little...

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This weekend I started working on the brake pedal and emergency brake lever assembly. The pedal is blasted and ready for primer and the emergency brake lever assembly is apart and the repo handle came in yesterday. If the rain will clear up, I'll paint both this weekend.

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2fine69s said:
This weekend I started working on the brake pedal and emergency brake lever assembly. The pedal is blasted and ready for primer and the emergency brake lever assembly is apart and the repo handle came in yesterday. If the rain will clear up, I'll paint both this weekend.

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Wow Martin you Are really doing every little bit. Great detail!
 
Well as luck would have it the air cleaner was rubbing the hood insulation pad just enough to scuff up the AC top after it would be polished, so I made a decision to remove the OEM insulation pad and make my own which would be fitted inside the hood cut outs kinda like GM did. I made a template of each hole and then made each piece of insulation to fit the template. Gonna try to put them in the hood next week. I'll first have to trim the excess hood to inner brace glue that bleeds over into the openings. A bit of pucker factor on a finished hood but we do what we have to...

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Well today I finally had enough free time to get the hood insulation in. As usual for me, it was not as easy as I had hoped, but they are in. After I had made them it was just a matter of contact spray glue, taping up the hood and engine bay for over spray, and a $2.49 roller from Lowes. I followed the glue instructions to the letter. I have ordered 18 plugs to fill the OEM hood insulation clip holes and I will paint them body color. What do you guys think? Good or Bad?
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