70 dart swinger slant turbo build and mild restoration

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jungles82

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So here goes my build I picked up a 70 dart swinger slant 6 auto for $2000 drove it home was gonna do a v8 swap but then I saw the build serj did and talked to bill and decided to go with a turbo instead. So I have an hx35 from a cummins I built years ago I bought a offy 4 barrel intake off another FABO member 65 Dartman and ordered a 3/8 header flange off ebay. I have a tubing bender that we use for making bumpers and stuff so I'm building it out of 1.75 schedule 40 pipe cause that's what I have . The build is gonna take a few different steps first going with the offy intake and hopefully a header then maybe a j pipe aka PHISTA pipe then with a custom turbo header I know it sounds like alot of work and time but I have plenty extra time and it would be nice to see the benefits of each setup and how they compare. So for right now I'm taking my intake to be ceramic coated and got a good deal for $80 to get it coated I will coat each piece so that it all is the same as far as heat disapation. Right now the car runs horribly has stock points single barrel intake and factory exhaust. The car is suprisingly clean and original it so I'm gonna try to to cut up anything on the body and I'm gonna paint it put a white bumblebee stripe and a go wing then swap out the drums to disks on the front and go to big bolt pattern wheels. I'm trying to figure out how to post pics. Right now I have a few profile pics and my intake now and then when I get it back so feel free to chime in I don't have a 4 barrel carb but I'm still trying to figure out which one I need and I would like to buy one that I can use in all stages. Well off to the coaters to have the intake done... I also got a door off ebay for $60 and am getting a fender from another member CudaJunction... I also am making the header myself and depending on how it goes I may make them have them coated and sell them on FABO I am getting a really good deal on coating and I am building them heavy enough so they won't need braced
 

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More pics
 

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I was looking at the manifold and wondered why don't I just polish it I have all the materials to do it and have done others before and used to do polishing for a living so I'm going to try to polish it and shave off all the excess stuff like the heat riser and casting marks and polish it out don't think there's an advantage but I have the time and why not? I have the whole setup from when I used to build bikes and have all the polishing stuff so here we go.
 
Ok so am I gonna need the heat riser stuff off this intake or can I just shave it all off and is there any advantages to coating it instead of polishing it or just easier to take care of? I am also ordering a snow performance water methanol system. I am going with boost, wide band o2 and egt gauges I know I need to get away from the idiot lights but I want to keep this looking as stock as possible and if I can find a fast efi system I'm gonna try that
 
Ok so am I gonna need the heat riser stuff off this intake or can I just shave it all off and is there any advantages to coating it instead of polishing it or just easier to take care of? I am also ordering a snow performance water methanol system. I am going with boost, wide band o2 and egt gauges I know I need to get away from the idiot lights but I want to keep this looking as stock as possible and if I can find a fast efi system I'm gonna try that

Sounds like you're doing a lot of thibgs right.... You should end up with a car that makes about 350 horsepower at 15 pounds of boost. That boost figure is low enough to allow you to run stock, cast pistons if you never take the boost any higher.... and, that will save you about $1,100.00 for pistons and rods, initially. your car should have a portred head with big valves (1.75" X 1.5") and with those parameters, Should run somewhere in the 12-second range... fast-enough to run away and hide from a 340 (stock) Duster...

The trouble with this plan is..... boost IS addictive, and you will find yourself wantng more, later.... more horsepower, more performanCe, more "grunt," eventually.

With the cast pistons, you can't have it. It is an invitation to a blown (up) motor, unless you opt for forged (Wiseco) pistons and (K-1) rods right now, in the building stage.

Biting the bullet and buying the good stuff now, will allow you to make up to 500 horsepower, later, with some degree of reliability. A friend has a '70 Dart with just such a 225 motor, and at 28 pounds of boost (!) he runs 11-flat at a little over 120 mph in the quarter... with a 2.76 rear gear. Here is a video of his car: [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAxRmoDgsdY"]Turbo charged Slant 6 11.02 @ 120.56 - YouTube[/ame]

Think twice before you build the short block...
 
So should I just have the manifold ceramic coated then and leave the stuff on the offy intake cause I wanna be able to make the header as sort of a production thing and I would hate to build mine and do a bunch of custom work then everyone has to do the same thing to use my header. I guess I will just coat it and leave all the stock heat riser stuff so to simplify this later down the road for others who want to run the same setup. I'm gonna borrow a buddy's car since his intake and exhaust is off to build the header then make a jig so I can get a couple a month built. I know if there was someone making an affordable turbo header I would have just bought one plus I can get them ceramic coated for $150 probably putting the final price around $550-$650 for a complete coated turbo header
 
Well bill I think your right again I think it's gonna be a carb over fuel injection 1st the ez-efi system is a 1 bar system so it runs only for normally aspirated engines there's other alternatives to run but I don't know if the headache and initial investment is gonna outweigh a carb. Yea it would be nice to be able to have a car that fires up and idles perfectly but that's not why I have the car if I wanted a nice idle I would just get in my new suburban with heated seats and ac so yea it maybe be a little old school but with a data logger and msd it will do what I need it to do which is make a funny noise and haul butt
 
Well bill I think your right again I think it's gonna be a carb over fuel injection 1st the ez-efi system is a 1 bar system so it runs only for normally aspirated engines there's other alternatives to run but I don't know if the headache and initial investment is gonna outweigh a carb. Yea it would be nice to be able to have a car that fires up and idles perfectly but that's not why I have the car if I wanted a nice idle I would just get in my new suburban with heated seats and ac so yea it maybe be a little old school but with a data logger and msd it will do what I need it to do which is make a funny noise and haul butt

The nice thing about these turbo motors is the camshaft, and the way it affects the, uh, "personallity" of the engine it's in. The normal modus operandus for a horsepower-effective cam in a naturally-aspirated engine is to employ high lift and long duration paramaters, to achieve high output for.ultimately, a fast car. These necessary specs for that cam, manifest themselves is some negative ways, such as premature cam-lobe wear due to the necessarily-aggressive nature of the lobe profile, coupled with the high spring pressures necesssary to control the high-rpm valve-event, a ragged idle, not much low-end torque, and a "peaky" torque curve. They also impose additional stress on the mixture tuning (carb) due to the overlap encountered.

Turbo camshafts have some significant advantages over the conventional, "full-race" version that usually goes along with a necessarily-radical profile, naturally-aspirated cam. First off, turbo engines cannot tolerate much overlap, so, the lobe profile must employ short duration. This has the effect of making the idle very much like the idle of a stock engine, and the low-end torque, plentiful. Driveability benefits greatly from this. If you choose not to get into boost, it's pretty much like driving a stock engine. Another positive aspect of these turbo cams is that they don't require a lot in terms of valve spring presssure because the rpm-limit is only about 5,500, and that is low enough so as not to require valve spring pressure that can cause a cam to go "flat," prematurely. This is important because roller cams are REALLY hard-to-get for slant sixes, primarely because, nobody makes a "blank" for a slant 6 roller-tappet cam. It can be done, of course, but it's outrageously expensive and basically, uneccessarily, given the easy life of a turbo cam (flat tappet) in one of these boosted engines. So, with a short, break-in and some ZDDP additive, a mild, flat-tappet cam can live a (cheap) long, healthy life in a 225 turbo motor. My cam has these (very mild) specs: 210-degrees duration at .050"-lift, ground with 215-degrees of lobe separartion (for less overlap,) and .484" of lift. Stock rocker arms (1.5:1 ratio) and stock pushrods.

It idles and drives with the impeccable manners of a stock motor, but comes on like gangbusters in a Jekyll/Hyde transformation, when called upon for performance.

At (only) 15 pounds of boost, it makes approximately 354 horsepower, which is just about the limit for a full-race naturally-aspirated 225, with its attendant, ragged-idle and cranky road manners. The turbo motor also LIKES a 2.76:1 rear end ratio, which gives you both hiway gears (no overdrive needed,) and the optimum drag strip gearing.... no 4.56 needed here, so the 8.25" ring gear rear (cheap and plentiful in junkyards) is the way to go.

Hope this helps...

The pictures are of some home-brewed 1.6:1 ratio rockers I made. They will give me over .500" of lift at the valve with my .484"-lift cam (stock ratio is 1.50:1.)
 

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So are u just cutting 10 thousandths out and welding them back together? I think I'm gonna wire the Watergate open on the hx35 and use another external one I also have another exhaust housing that I'm gonna use to cut down the large size on my spare turbo I thought about the log style manifold and multi port fuel injection but really I would rather just get it going and why complicate things

Is weisco the only company that make pistons for the slant it seems like a pain to have to buy special rods I did have a custom piston made once to make a big bore Honda old 200 3 wheeler I think made by ross. An affordable forged piston and an off the shelf turbo header would really make the whole process easier
 
So are u just cutting 10 thousandths out and welding them back together? I think I'm gonna wire the Watergate open on the hx35 and use another external one I also have another exhaust housing that I'm gonna use to cut down the large size on my spare turbo I thought about the log style manifold and multi port fuel injection but really I would rather just get it going and why complicate things

Is weisco the only company that make pistons for the slant it seems like a pain to have to buy special rods I did have a custom piston made once to make a big bore Honda old 200 3 wheeler I think made by ross. An affordable forged piston and an off the shelf turbo header would really make the whole process easier

The cutting wheel I used to make these 1.6:1 was .100"-inch thick. I annealed them first, because they were case-hardened and I thought they needed to be annealed before they were machined. I chucked up a 4"-diameter cutting wheel in a Bridgeport mill and ran it through on the line shown by the straw in the previous post's photograph. I had a welding shop T.I.G. weld them, then took them back to the heat-treating facility to have them re-hardened to the Rockwell hardness they were, originally. At the bottom of the page is a picture of the jig I made to hold them for welding. I have not used them, yet, but I am not expecting much of a performance increase with them, maybe a tenth at most...
 

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Is weisco the only company that make pistons for the slant it seems like a pain to have to buy special rods I did have a custom piston made once to make a big bore Honda old 200 3 wheeler I think made by ross. An affordable forged piston and an off the shelf turbo header would really make the whole process easier

The Wiseco pistons are a little over $400.00.... the rods are more like $650. The rods are spec-wise (center-to-center) 7.005", the same length as a 198 rod. IF you can find a set of useable 198 rods, it would save you the cost of buying them from K-1. They seem to be increasingly hard-to-find.

I would imagine you could get those pistons custom-made anywhere that manufactures forgings like that, and specify that the wrist-pin location be kept in the stock 225 place. You might or might not beat Wiseco's price. The stock rods wuld work fine, I'd bet.


Good luck! :cheers:

The Pishta Pipe is probably your best bet on exhaust, and I am afraid it might have to be a DIY project; I don't know of anybody making them for sale. There is surely a market for them...

Happy New Year!!!!:blob:
 
Yea I went to an exhaust shop and had my buddy bend me up some pieces for it I have the turbo and header flange and am gonna start building the header Monday I built a swedge piece to form the tube to the flange and I just heat it up and use my 37 ton woodsplitter as a press to form the pieces

And cool idea on the rockers btw
 
Thanks for the kind words. I'll feel a lot better about them, once I install them and find out whether or not they are going to turn into two pieces... LOL!

Send them my way I'll try them out lol So my buddy is dropping off a bunch of pipe and bends for me to use for my header I'm gonna head down to the shop and get started on it tomorrow I'll piece the 1st one together then get my 3 phase electricity setup to run the big bender to build the next ones.

Bill have u ever ran any data logging stuff or turbo timer on your car I'm assuming not on the timer cause it's more of a race car right or do u daily drive it?

Also what should I run to control timing a Petronics ignition then msd btm with a 2 step control box or is the 2 step kinda useless in a street car I'm not really gonna make it serious racer just burn rubber and beat up on v8 cars
 
Send them my way I'll try them out lol So my buddy is dropping off a bunch of pipe and bends for me to use for my header I'm gonna head down to the shop and get started on it tomorrow I'll piece the 1st one together then get my 3 phase electricity setup to run the big bender to build the next ones.

Bill have u ever ran any data logging stuff or turbo timer on your car I'm assuming not on the timer cause it's more of a race car right or do u daily drive it?

Also what should I run to control timing a Petronics ignition then msd btm with a 2 step control box or is the 2 step kinda useless in a street car I'm not really gonna make it serious racer just burn rubber and beat up on v8 cars

My F.A.S.T. wideband A/F meter is a datalogger, but I have never used that function. I built a bracket on my roll bar, right behind and, to the right of the driver's head to mount a video camera to record all the gauges' movements as the car goes down the drag strip, since I can't watch all three (boost, RPM and A/F ratio) at once, driving it.

The only thing serious about my car is the amount of money it has cost me... sad.

I drove my V8 car (360 Magnum with a Vortech V-1, S-trim, supercharger) on the street with its MSD boost timing master, with no problems for a while, but, the slant six car is a strip-only car that will never see the street.

Below is the dyno sheet for the 3.340-pound, V8 car. It has run 11.80 on a slick strip, spinning all the way through first gear (904 with 3,000 rpm stall.) The retard in the boost timing master always worked well and probably save me some grief, because it has cast pistons. It uses a maximum of 10 pounds of boost.
 

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Send them my way I'll try them out lol So my buddy is dropping off a bunch of pipe and bends for me to use for my header I'm gonna head down to the shop and get started on it tomorrow I'll piece the 1st one together then get my 3 phase electricity setup to run the big bender to build the next ones.

Bill have u ever ran any data logging stuff or turbo timer on your car I'm assuming not on the timer cause it's more of a race car right or do u daily drive it?

Also what should I run to control timing a Petronics ignition then msd btm with a 2 step control box or is the 2 step kinda useless in a street car I'm not really gonna make it serious racer just burn rubber and beat up on v8 cars

I am not sure what you could do with a 2-step on the street. I have never used one, nor have I any experience with a turbo timer; don't know how they work. Enlighten me, please.
 
Well a turbo timer from what I know is basically a timer that runs the car until the turbo has cooled down so u don't run the crap out of your car then just shut it off without letting it cool off and the 2 step is basically a 2 stage Rev limiter that you release once u have left so it holds back the rpms until you release it then the full rpms come on.

What do you run for ignition in your slant? And neat idea recording your gauges but look into your data logger if you know how to get on the computer and do what u do here on fabo then you can figure that thing out
 
Well a turbo timer from what I know is basically a timer that runs the car until the turbo has cooled down so u don't run the crap out of your car then just shut it off without letting it cool off and the 2 step is basically a 2 stage Rev limiter that you release once u have left so it holds back the rpms until you release it then the full rpms come on.

What do you run for ignition in your slant? And neat idea recording your gauges but look into your data logger if you know how to get on the computer and do what u do here on fabo then you can figure that thing out

The cars I am famiar with use a 2-step to limit the rpm during stall, so the throttle can be floorboarded to get the carb circuits worrking in that mode, and it won't "walk-trhough" the timing lights on the starting line, due to excessive RPM because of having been floorboarded. When the brake is released, the de-activated cylinder come alive as the car launches. I can't imagine doing this on the street...

My car makes a pass, then idles up the return road to the pits ad the turbo is usually cooled off, by the time I get back to my parking area, so no "timer" is neeeded. I never drive this thing on the street.

My ignition system is brutally simple. It consistes of two pieces... an original Lean Burn distributor that contains neither a centrifugal advance mechanism nor a vacumn advance cannister. It has, in effect, a "locked plate." No advance of any kind. The other piece is an MSD 6-AL box that provides 40,000 volts to tthe plugs. Period. I run 18 degrees of total advance, period. NO CURVE. It makes 351 horsepower (according to the times it turnd) like that. I enter its eighth-mile MPH (91.5) into the Wallace online calculator, and that's what it says for a 3,000-pound vehicle. The car actually weighs 2,680 pounds, but that run was made with a driver and a passenger, so, the total weight was 3,000+.

I can get away with this "no curve" deal, because as I said, this car lives its entire active life on the drag strip. It goes and comes back home on a trailer. If I drove it on the street, I would definitely, have to equip it with a spark advance curve and a vacumn cannister (for some reasonable fuel economy.)

But, it is what it is... simple. Like me.:banghead:
 

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I got my header flanges in today ordered them off ebay very nice stuff

Do I need to build a flange and put a bov in my header like u did bill?
 

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So I'm laying out the design for my header kinda eyeballing it right now and there's about and 1/8th inch difference between the offy intake and my header flange should I have the intake milled down so there the same or are there tabs I can buy that will make up the difference between the 2 or go to a 1/2 header flange remember I wanna go into production with the headers so milling the intake is kinda out because I want the customer to have this as easy as possible because anyone who's built one of these knows they are overwhelming at 1st
 
I got my header flanges in today ordered them off ebay very nice stuff

Do I need to build a flange and put a bov in my header like u did bill?

My ex-partner did 100% of the work on thar header; I never touched it, so I am afeaid I can't help you. Sorry... here are some [ictures that might have some useful information in them, dunno... Sorry!
 

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I got my header flanges in today ordered them off ebay very nice stuff

Do I need to build a flange and put a bov in my header like u did bill?

That flange is for a wastegate; the bov goes in the carb hat.

Don't make the mistake we did and put the wastegate orifice on one side of the collector; it won't work. It has to be centered, so it "sees" ALL the exhaust.

We had to move that one...:eek:ops:
 
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