71 Dodge Dart Swinger in England

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Watched your youtube vids. Thats a really nice A body console. The aluminum colored insert on it makes it a 66-67 console insert. I believe 68 up use a woodgrain veneer in this area. Still always a cool addition to any A body mopar.
 
About $50 US thats a screaming assed good deal. All you need is the mounting brackets to get it in place. They pop up on fabo regularly. Theres a thread on here where guys have mounted B&M quiksilver shifters and hurst automatics in the stock console and made em look like factory installs. If you go that route, you only need the 4 speed brackets. Basically same fore and aft brackets as automatic minus the center bracket. Theres an ebay seller that makes carbon fiber inserts for this console too. I am doing my sons console chrome in satin black with carbon fiber inserts. Going to do his barracuda dash the same way.
 
Done a little more work. Steering column back in and Distributor refitted, is it correct static it is timed to 0 BTDC?. Interesting find under the carpet. Detroit Free Press newspaper dated 27th Nov 1970. Could this have been left in by the factory? My VIN is LH23C1R, where R means made at the Jefferson factory in Michigan, so seem to ring true. Any ideas?

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I bet it was tossed in there on the assembly line. The way this stuff was assembled back then, the line workers didnt care all that much. Nice time capsule snapshot on what was going on when it was being built though.
 
Ok small update. Ive gone through all the little jobs to start the engine. Installed new accelerator cable and kick down cable. Given the wiring a clean bill of health by removing any random stray cabling from previous dodgy owner dashboard rewiring. I had to run a new power cable to Alternator as the original feed goes via a dash mounted ammeter and its a know fact the wiring connector on the bulkhead are a poor fit and corrode then breakdown.

Engine has been cranked over and good oil pressure, So today's job is add fuel, get fuel to carbs, put plugs back in and hopefully fire up. I've left the exhaust off, so its on open headers for full affect! So the whole street will know when its running
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If you look on amazon.com the eddy carb kits are pretty inexpensive. I think last one i bought was about $25
 
Gong to replace the ignition service parts such as leads, plugs, dizzy cap, rotor arm and dizzy pick up coil, How do i know whether its lean burn or not?
 
Trust me its not. That crap came out in 1976. I dewired plenty of em and dumped em in the trash. You got a eddy carb, and a dizzy with vac advance your good. No lean burn.
 
moparmat2000 said:
Trust me its not. That crap came out in 1976. I dewired plenty of em and dumped em in the trash. You got a eddy carb, and a dizzy with vac advance your good. No lean burn.
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Excellent Thanks for feedback. The date stamp on block is 1978.so assume LA engine? Now its running again I'm chasing the engine vibration/misfire. It feels like anything above idle its cutting a cylinder However at idle pulling each plug lead drops a cylinder. Currently rebuilding carb as the bowls are quite dirty with sediment in the bottom. So eliminating the obvious first.
 
Yes LA which stands for Light A engine which replaced the earlier heavier A engine. These went all the way up to the "magnum" V8 which started in about 1992. Later LA engines in the 1980s came with roller camshafts. All magnums have roller camshafts A magnum 318 or 360 is a direct bolt in replacement for your LA engine if you eventually decide to go that direction. Trans and motor mounts bolt up, exhaust manifolds bolt up, and your distributor will bolt up. All your pulleys, and FEAD "front engine accessory drives" will bolt up. Alternator attach point might need a little modification though bacause heads are different. To do a magnum swap you need a 4bbl iintake manifold with a magnum bolt pattern.

When you crack the throttle open very slowly and advance it very slowly does the engine smoothly pick up RPM without a stumble?

If so, look at your distributor. Check the vacuum advance to see if its working properly. Easy way is attach a length of clean vacuum line to the vac advance and pull suction on it with a mityvac or your mouth and watch to see the arm pull in and the timer plate move. Stick your tongue over the hole on the hose, or if using a mityvac watch the gage. if the gage shows it leaking down, or it will not even hold vacuum, then the diaphragm on the vacuum advance is ruptured.

Second thing to check is the mechanical advance. Under the timer plate theres a pair of mechanical advance weights and springs. If its a mopar electronic distributor under the distributor rotor theres a small felt pad. Every time the car is tuned up its supposed to get several drops of clean motor oil dripped on the pad. There is a c clip under the pad, and an internal shaft that works the mechanical advance. A lot of times people dont oil the shaft under the rotor and the shaft starts to bind or stick. An easy check is to turn the rotor while its on the shaft clockwise to check the mechanical advance it should move roughly between 1/8" - 3/16" when you let go of it, the rotor should snap back to its original position quickly. If it doesnt snap back, or moves back very slowly, then you probably need to take the distributor apart to unstick and lubricate the advance weights, and unstick the shaft under the rotor.

Not sure how much you know on ignition systems however this setup uses a combination of vacuum and centrifugal (mechanical) advance to keep engine time as the engine speeds up so you dont get a hesitation or stumble.
 
Post a good pic of the inside of the distributor with the cap off so i can verify what distributor it is just in case thats where the problem is.
 
Whilst I sort out the rough running I'm still making other small improvements such as under dash wiring.
Also tried the Jag XK8 seats and centre console in place. Think I prefer these to the bench seat

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Yep mopar factory electronic distributor. Easy to set air gap on magnetic pick up is use brass or stainless shim stock the desired thickness so it wont stick to the magnet. It may be a fuel issue if vac advance and mechanical advance is up to snuff. If theres swarf in the distributor, prob be ok to just blow it out with compressed air.

May just be a fuel related issue. However, you can soup up that stock distributor setup by ditching the ignition ballast resistor, the stock mopar electronic module and wire in a GM HEI 4 pin electronic ignition module. Use a GM E coil, or a pertronix coil with a .3 ohm primary. I used a neat adaptor bracket for the GM module that allows it to install on the mopar distributor. Gives a waaaay hotter spark. Quicker startup, better off idle and part throttle acceleration, better fuel mileage. The gold tone aluminum bracket is made by www.designed2drive.com its about $25. It threads in where the 2 existing distributor drain plug holes are. The custom adaptor plug from GM to mopar i homemade for my distributor .

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moparmat2000 said:
I used a neat adaptor bracket for the GM module that allows it to install on the mopar distributor. Gives a waaaay hotter spark. Quicker startup, better off idle and part throttle acceleration, better fuel mileage. The gold tone aluminum bracket is made by www.designed2drive.com its about $25. It threads in where the 2 existing distributor drain plug holes are. The custom adaptor plug from GM to mopar i homemade for my distributor .

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I bought the same adapter for the HEI that I will use on my electronic dizzy. Nice piece!
 
I like that, good idea and much neater. Would be nice to also eliminate the old electronic ignition.

What would you set the timing at for tickover, say 800 rpm. 8 Deg BTDC with vac disconnected?

Also whats the purpose of this plate between carb and manifold?

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Yep it's really well made. Its like a "Po Boy" MSD. Gonna run it in my 67, and in my sons 69. I hollowed out the ballast resistor and soldered in a jumper wire in it. This way my ballast resistor is the jumper wire while appearing stock, and if i ever decide to put it back stock i just put a real ballast back
 
moparmat2000 said:
Yep it's really well made. Its like a "Po Boy" MSD. Gonna run it in my 67, and in my sons 69. I hollowed out the ballast resistor and soldered in a jumper wire in it. This way my ballast resistor is the jumper wire while appearing stock, and if i ever decide to put it back stock i just put a real ballast back
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Wish I'd thought about using the GM HEI on my 58 GMC Apache before splashing out on an MSD unit. Also I can see you can easily carry a spare HEI module on board, much cheaper and smaller than an MSD.
 
Yep. If using an oil filled coil look for the pertronix with the .32 ohm primary otherwise this setup will cook the coil. As a side note, years ago a buddy of mines mom had a Jaguar XJ12 and its ignition box went out. Was expensive, so we cracked it open to see if we could fix it. We were budding aircraft mechanics in training. I said why not it doesnt work anyways, cant hurt it much worse. When we opened it, this thing had a GM 4 pin module inside this elaborate Jag ignition box lol. He replaced her leaking lucas coil with the accel super stock coil from his road runner lol.
 
Start at 10 BTDC and adjust it as necessary. Kinda hard to determine exactly what its going to need if its got a non stock cam.
 
Yup thats the baby. Either Delco, or Standard. I had a few issues with delphi modules not working correctly. The pinout on my schematic from the magnetic pickup to the ignition module should be correct if you wire it that way and it doesn't run properly just swap the leads going from the magnetic pickup to the module and then it should run fine
 
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