Magnum swapping the 72 Scamp!

[snailpower]

Background: I started long ago having a 65 valiant /6 for my first car with dreams of V8 burnouts that never happened. That thing was pig slow but granny owned and clean for what it was. I sold it sometime around 2001ish and continued on with turbo mopars, having owned several GLHs, several Shelby chargers and an 86 GLHS. I always loved beating up on mustangs and crapmaros back in the day living in detroit and enjoying woodward the way god intended.

Life happened and I owned lots of turbo cars (non mopar) and now live in southern california. I never got to realize my V8 A body dreams... Until now? haha

Now I am probably a year and a half into the ownership of my 318 72 scamp. I really love it as a second car / cruiser, but after driving for a while and having front brake go out I started down the rabbit hole. My goal has been to create a car that handles and drives a bit more modern with some streetable power.

When I got it, it already had a 4bbl, dual exhaust, newer paint, AC, SBP discs up front (power).

I completely went through suspension last year:
BBP Cordoba big discs up front
Stainless flex lines front and rear
Bilstein RCDs all around
Firm Feel UCAs
Firm Feel front sway bar
Firm Feel 1.12 torsion bars
New steering components using the bigger diameter (C body?) units

Also had to obviously upgrade the rear to BBP around the same time so I went with an A body 8 3/4 with moser axles I found on CL. As luck would have it, I was cruising a junkyard in san diego and found myself a 3rd member from a 71ish tradesman van on half off day and got it for like $65. Rebuild cost was a lot more with 3.55 gears though. At least I got the part cheap.... ha

So in it went with some drum brakes.

Also I should mention we did most of this while I was living in downtown LA on the rooftop of my parking structure trying to avoid security when it was probably 100 degrees out in the sun. And to add to that there was a massive wildfire going on not too far away. Luckily some time around 9 am the winds shifted and we didnt have to inhale soot while doing it. Shout out to my awesome friends that helped. haha

Next up alignment:

Champion radiator install

And off to spring fling:

Upcoming in chapter 2... Magnum rebuild:

 

[BJs Duster]

Background: I started long ago having a 65 valiant /6 for my first car with dreams of V8 burnouts that never happened. That thing was pig slow but granny owned and clean for what it was. I sold it sometime around 2001ish and continued on with turbo mopars, having owned several GLHs, several Shelby chargers and an 86 GLHS. I always loved beating up on mustangs and crapmaros back in the day living in detroit and enjoying woodward the way god intended.

Life happened and I owned lots of turbo cars (non mopar) and now live in southern california. I never got to realize my V8 A body dreams... Until now? haha

Now I am probably a year and a half into the ownership of my 318 72 scamp. I really love it as a second car / cruiser, but after driving for a while and having front brake go out I started down the rabbit hole. My goal has been to create a car that handles and drives a bit more modern with some streetable power.

When I got it, it already had a 4bbl, dual exhaust, newer paint, AC, SBP discs up front (power).

I completely went through suspension last year:
BBP Cordoba big discs up front
Stainless flex lines front and rear
Bilstein RCDs all around
Firm Feel UCAs
Firm Feel front sway bar
Firm Feel 1.12 torsion bars
New steering components using the bigger diameter (C body?) units

View attachment 1715071286

View attachment 1715071287

Also had to obviously upgrade the rear to BBP around the same time so I went with an A body 8 3/4 with moser axles I found on CL. As luck would have it, I was cruising a junkyard in san diego and found myself a 3rd member from a 71ish tradesman van on half off day and got it for like $65. Rebuild cost was a lot more with 3.55 gears though. At least I got the part cheap.... ha

So in it went with some drum brakes.

View attachment 1715071295

Also I should mention we did most of this while I was living in downtown LA on the rooftop of my parking structure trying to avoid security when it was probably 100 degrees out in the sun. And to add to that there was a massive wildfire going on not too far away. Luckily some time around 9 am the winds shifted and we didnt have to inhale soot while doing it. Shout out to my awesome friends that helped. haha

View attachment 1715071296

View attachment 1715071298

View attachment 1715071299

Next up alignment:

View attachment 1715071300

Champion radiator install

View attachment 1715071301

And off to spring fling:

View attachment 1715071302

Upcoming in chapter 2... Magnum rebuild:

View attachment 1715071303

Nice car good luck with your magnum swap , lots of info in the magnum swap forum . Bob

 

[Plymouth 65]

Background: I started long ago having a 65 valiant /6 for my first car with dreams of V8 burnouts that never happened. That thing was pig slow but granny owned and clean for what it was. I sold it sometime around 2001ish and continued on with turbo mopars, having owned several GLHs, several Shelby chargers and an 86 GLHS. I always loved beating up on mustangs and crapmaros back in the day living in detroit and enjoying woodward the way god intended.

Life happened and I owned lots of turbo cars (non mopar) and now live in southern california. I never got to realize my V8 A body dreams... Until now? haha

Now I am probably a year and a half into the ownership of my 318 72 scamp. I really love it as a second car / cruiser, but after driving for a while and having front brake go out I started down the rabbit hole. My goal has been to create a car that handles and drives a bit more modern with some streetable power.

When I got it, it already had a 4bbl, dual exhaust, newer paint, AC, SBP discs up front (power).

I completely went through suspension last year:
BBP Cordoba big discs up front
Stainless flex lines front and rear
Bilstein RCDs all around
Firm Feel UCAs
Firm Feel front sway bar
Firm Feel 1.12 torsion bars
New steering components using the bigger diameter (C body?) units

View attachment 1715071286

View attachment 1715071287

Also had to obviously upgrade the rear to BBP around the same time so I went with an A body 8 3/4 with moser axles I found on CL. As luck would have it, I was cruising a junkyard in san diego and found myself a 3rd member from a 71ish tradesman van on half off day and got it for like $65. Rebuild cost was a lot more with 3.55 gears though. At least I got the part cheap.... ha

So in it went with some drum brakes.

View attachment 1715071295

Also I should mention we did most of this while I was living in downtown LA on the rooftop of my parking structure trying to avoid security when it was probably 100 degrees out in the sun. And to add to that there was a massive wildfire going on not too far away. Luckily some time around 9 am the winds shifted and we didnt have to inhale soot while doing it. Shout out to my awesome friends that helped. haha

View attachment 1715071296

View attachment 1715071298

View attachment 1715071299

Next up alignment:

View attachment 1715071300

Champion radiator install

View attachment 1715071301

And off to spring fling:

View attachment 1715071302

Upcoming in chapter 2... Magnum rebuild:

View attachment 1715071303

Bro, you might have left Detroit but the "D" didn't leave you! That's some back alley mechanics right there, nice ride! 65'

 

[ScampMike]

exceptional!! that sir is a dang nice car!

 

[Woody'sScamp]

That is one nice looking Scamp! I love it. I got a '75 318 Scamp Brougham & I'm interested in where you got the 318 4-bbl decal for your air cleaner? I have not seen that one with 4-bbl in the middle. I've cleaned up and painted an old 340 air cleaner for mine, and I would love to put that decal on it!
Thanks in advance,
Woody

 

[snailpower]

Nice car good luck with your magnum swap , lots of info in the magnum swap forum . Bob

Thanks been reading quite a bit!

Bro, you might have left Detroit but the "D" didn't leave you! That's some back alley mechanics right there, nice ride! 65'

Ha! yeah no kidding right? thankfully I now have a (one car) garage at my disposal. It definitely sucked dodging security and lugging all my tools down 5 floors, then back up 5 floors of garage every time I wanted to work on something.

Would appreciate using one of my friends in the D garage or lift honestly but no big deal. haha.... ironically my parents live like probably a mile or two from mancini (and seemingly every other company). Talk about convenient.

exceptional!! that sir is a dang nice car!

Thank you sir! Its a work in progress.

That is one nice looking Scamp! I love it. I got a '75 318 Scamp Brougham & I'm interested in where you got the 318 4-bbl decal for your air cleaner? I have not seen that one with 4-bbl in the middle. I've cleaned up and painted an old 340 air cleaner for mine, and I would love to put that decal on it!
Thanks in advance,
Woody

It actually came with the air cleaner on it when I bought it. I believe the PO mentioned it was from australia. Very unique piece, happy I have it!

 

[snailpower]

Heres a couple of the other more fun projects I have done since owning. I have done lots of small stuff but I will stick to the larger stuff.

First big improvement was installing an HEI from classic hei (member here). Man did that make a difference in idle quality especially when using the AC. The coil does buzz a bit tho so I have to figure that out.

I wanted some tunes and the factory head unit wasn't producing any. I really liked the idea of keeping the single speaker so I put in a redirad AM converter, and got the correct speaker from another vendor. Then I just use spotify or whatever on my phone through the single speaker. Got an awesome old school sound but not stuck listening to just AM radio.

One thing that has really bugged me being tall is how close and high the bench seat sits to the wheel, not to mention sliding off of it around turns with the stiffened up suspension. So in the nature of craigslist spirit I scored some E46 BMW sport leather seats for a couple hundred bucks or so at some point and put them in. The look is probably not for everyone but damn if it doesn't make driving it SO much nicer. (don't have a photo of it done but they are both in there now)

In the process also found a couple copies of the build sheet under the carpet in the back.

 

[snailpower]

As for magnum swap, I feel like I got a bit lucky in some respects and found a donor 99 durango someone was parting out near work and scored the whole engine and wire harness for $250. It had 130k miles on it but seemed decent and I was hoping to keep the bottom end in tact and just do it cheap.

I never planned on going this far engine wise but it (of course) doesn't feel fast enough anymore having owned a handful of 12 second and better street cars. So... F it. haha

Brought it home one night after work fully intact with only hearing it crank but never fire. The donor car was too torn apart to hear it fire, just getting it to crank was a lot of work.

Beginning tear down

Looks like this pie has been in the oven too long.

First indication this is going to start costing more $. haha

Heads off and cleaned up a bit.

On the positive cyls look OK with some good crosshatch

Heads cracked (because of course they were).

Some more delicious pie crust under the rear freeze plug.

More teardown in next post.

 

[snailpower]

At this point I kept the bottom end together for a bit and didnt wrench on it too much. I ended up painting it hoping I could keep the bottom end together but things went sideways when I pulled the cam and got a look at the cam bearings.

Clearly not a good thing.

So of course at the cross roads I had to look at the main and rod bearings and to nobodies surprise they were all in not such good shape.

Also started ordering up some parts for the swap

Gotta love coming home to mopar boxes Water pump this time

Also put some paint on a few parts.

Painted up the kevko oil pan to give it some oem stealth (orange is stealth right? haha)

Got a Hughes 222/226 110 Lsa roller cam. Plan on using the 2200 stall in it now and 3.55 gears so this should be a decent fit.

Off to the machine shop the bottom end went. Who said you can't hoist an engine into a hatch back? hahaha

The machine shop has been awesome to deal with, super old school. Really wanted to use IMM out in Indio but the 2 hour drive stopped me. Just couldn't set aside the time to get out there so I used one closer to work / home called Vellios that I have read a bit about between here / hot rod mag etc.

 

[snailpower]

To bring it all up to date, I got the engine back from the machine shop the other day. They said it didnt need to be bored and pretty much everything checked out. So I got a hone and hot tank and had them check the pistons out. He said the pistons were a little tight so they resized them to be correct. Also had the crank polished and new cam bearings installed.

Back out of the hatch.

New rings and bearings

Bonus, found this at an antique store. haha

 

[SwingerLSX75]

Good luck, keep up the push and keep it clean. Should be a lot better once you get that magnum in there.

 

[txstang84]

Hey, your kevko oil pan--it's for a 360, correct?

 

[txstang84]

Good luck, keep up the push and keep it clean. Should be a lot better once you get that magnum in there.

Agreed

 

[snailpower]

Hey, your kevko oil pan--it's for a 360, correct?

Its the M302, I think the M301 is 318-340. Any particular reason you ask?

 

[txstang84]

Because magnums all use a 360 spec pan...just wanted to make sure. I had to buy a new pan when I swapped from a 318 to a 5.2.

 

[snailpower]

ah yeah, definitely got myself a 360 pan thankfully!

 

[snailpower]

Had some time to get rolling on reassembly. I got the block cleaned / painted, reinstalled a few of the freeze plugs and got about half of the pistons cleaned. Hoping to get some of the bottom end together in the next few days if all goes well.

 

[jedrattle]

Beautiful car!! I want my wheels back!

 

[snailpower]

Beautiful car!! I want my wheels back!

Ha didn't know you'd be on here. Thanks again!

 

[snailpower]

Almost done with cleaning all pistons. They are turning out really good. Using Berryman chemdip, some light scraping with a cut off zip tie and basically after the dip most of the carbon wipes right off.

 

[jedrattle]

Ha didn't know you'd be on here. Thanks again!

Been in here for a min or two. I'll be hunting for a '68 Dart late next year. Keep up the good work. We need some better overall shots of the car

 

[snailpower]

Been in here for a min or two. I'll be hunting for a '68 Dart late next year. Keep up the good work. We need some better overall shots of the car

Very nice!

I don't have a ton of photos for whatever reason but here are a couple before and after type shots.

 

[snailpower]

Small update, got the tedious stuff out of the way... checked all ring end gaps, plastiguage on the crank and rod bearings. Very excited to have most pistons and the crank in the block finally. Feels like its been a long road just to get to this point... haha

 

[snailpower]

A little progress update.

Ran into a small hiccup with the kevko oil pan (per another thread) when I realized I didn't have the correct stud to attach the pickup to on the #3 main. I sawed off the tab hoping maybe I could get away with it loose but after installing it, it really didn't give me good feelings. So at the advice of a few here and elsewhere I had it welded back on and had a small stud welded to the bottom of the main bolt.

Its a good thing I did as well because after checking the pickup distance from the bottom of the pan I had to bend the tab down a bit and use a couple washers underneath the tab to get it dialed in. Now its sitting about 3/8" off the bottom with gasket measuring using clay

I also check the cam timing, not too hard and good piece of mind but it all came back really square and matched cam card.

I got a set of EQ heads from Brian at Imm and went with his recommendations on top end parts. According to him some light bowl work and a light shave off the heads. I kept the valves stock sized due to using stock pistons and the risk of larger valves not clearing without valve reliefs. They also got a nice coat of hemi orange.

New lifters installed

Used some ARP head bolts and heads are now on!

 

[snailpower]

This is kinda cool to see after working on this thing so much. Apparently the guys at classic industries liked it enough to put it on the cover of their latest catalog.

I pop in there every once and a while to get odds and ends since their showroom is close by my work. One day a guy came in asking who’s green Plymouth was parked outside and asked if he could shoot some photos for their Facebook / instagram. Then like 6 months later I see this. . Even funnier I found out from someone I bought some parts from off craigslist.