My '63 Valiant Signet Convertible Resto

[Useless]

I'm finally starting to make some progress on the Valiant so I figured now might be a good time to start one of these.

I've had a bunch of mopars over the years, including a '63 Dart GT Convertible, I sold that car to a friend back in 2002 and have missed it ever since.

I found this car thru a friend when one day we were talking mopars, I had a '63 Valiant 4-door at the time and said "after I get this thing done, I've love to find a '63-'65 Dart/Valiant Convertible". Lo and behold he happened to have a friend who had this one for sale, I talked to him about it, the price was right, I sold my 4-dr and this one came home a few months later.

The car is in decent shape for an early A convertible, but it has some oddball rust, mostly in the cowl area.

The previous owner did quite a bit to the car, it has:

• midly built 170 slant 6 with a healthy cam
• offenhauser dual 1-bbl intake with 2 holleys
• "dutra duals"
• MSD ignition
• newer mopar mini starter
• converted to large bolt pattern with a '73 8 1/4 rear and factory disc brakes up front, also has V8 torsion bars and leaf springs
• large bolt pattern rallyes
• rechromed bumpers
• car has factory power steering (works) and factory power top (doesn't work)

Before the previous owner got the car, it had a typical '90's bondo and paint job, so it will need to have the rear wheel openings and lower 1/4's replaced.

The prevous owner also started replacing the rusty floor pans a few years back with '70's A-body pans. They're plenty functional but far from 100% correct in fit and looks, but it really was the only thing possible to save this thing from the crusher back then. It's a fun car to drive for me rather than an investment, so it doesn't really bother me too much. I plan on doing subframe connectors in the future anyhow.

When I got the car, the right rear floor pan wasn't in the car, just a 3ftX3ft hole. So far I've got that pan welded in and started to do some finish work on the rest of the floors. I still need to finish that up and POR-15 the floors.

I've got big plans for the Valiant, taking the resto mod route sort of; though keeping it stock looking other than some torqu thrusts maybe. I hope to make it reliable and comfortable enough to take it on long trips and daily drive it in the summer if I want.

I'll update this as I gather parts or do work on the car. I hope to have the floors finished up within the month and hopefully have at least the front seats redone so I can drive it a little more often.

 

[63dartman]

A diamond in the ruff!! That will be a beautiful ride when compled:cheers:

 

[Useless]

Thanks, hopefully it'll be a beauty sooner rather than later.

New tail light lenses arrived and so did some por-15, hopefully it'll fight off the rust until I can get the windsheild and dash out so I can fix the cown rust.

 

[Useless]

Drove the car maybe 50-60 miles this weekend, it ran great. I now have a pretty good sunburn going on but I had a good time getting it.

Got my new tail light lenses in and cleaned up the engine bay a little. The new lenses look amazing; you can actually see the lights now!

Hope to POR-15 the floors and clean up the dash a little tomorrow. Pics to come!

 

[memike]

Outstanding Useless=P~=P~ You have thing going your way on that great vert.
Looks like a great ride for sure, Congrat's on the work you have dun.
I would have to where a hat or my shinny head would be burnt to.
I bet it was a fun day out on the road in it:cheers:
Here is my old 63 I sold to help build my cottage on the hill, all red int like yours :cheers:

 

[clifftt]

Nice start, keep us posted.

 

[Useless]

Well, I managed to get the passenger seat out and Por-15'd the passenger front floor this week, still need to do a little more finish welding and then top coat, but it looks pretty good I think.

I was amazed to see how much scale has built up on the bare floors just in the time I've owned the car, not enough to hurt anything, but they aren't nearly as smooth as they were when installed. The PO really should've coated them with something before they filled up with water for years on end. You can get an idea of how they looked before by looking at the drivers side.

I ground off all the scale with a wire wheel, marine-clean'd and metal-ready'd them. Painted the whole pan with 2 coats of POR-15 and then put a third on towards the back where water collects. If they rust out again, it isn't my fault!

My dad is on vacation next week, when he gets back in town we'll hopefully get the floors done other than a little cosmetic work in front of the back seat. I hope to get the entire drivers side floor pan POR'd this week if I still have enough. I also want to try to get my rust free trunk lid on the car this weekend.

Oh yeah, I also had a chance to talk to an upholstery guy this week, the second one I've talked to about doing the Valiant. Both times, I've explained exactly what I want done over the phone, get a rough estimate which increases dramatically when they find out it's an old mopar. :angry7: You can practically see the dollar signs in their eyes.

So it looks like I'm going to end up doing it myself. I wanted to go with white seats and door panels, black carpet and body colored upper door panels. Legendary doesn't make a white interior for a Valiant until 1966, which had different seats....but they make a '65 Dart interior in white and it doesn't look bad, so '65 Dart it is!

Anyway, onto the pics:

 

[goldfish65]

Nice car. I like the idea of changing the interior to white. Thanks for the pics.

 

[Useless]

Thanks for the compliments.

I've always wanted a mopar with white interior, and since I've got to pay for it anyway, might as well have it how I want. I still want a factory looking interior, something all the upholstery guys have told me "looks like s#!t"; it'll never be concours correct with the later model suspension and engine mods it has, but I'd like to keep the car all mopar.

Plus the white is cool on a hot day and enough of a neutral color I can get the seats done and enjoy driving it while I take some time to finish body work and figure out exactly what color I'm painting the car.

Right now I'm leaning toward silver, but B5 blue is something I've thought about a lot too, as well as plum crazy.

 

[Useless]

Ok, update time!

We have a big cruise/cruise in here every year before the fourth of July, so I wanted to get the car ready because it's this Friday.

I managed to get plates welded in around all the seat mounting holes, they were the inner holes (beside the hump) on both sides were about the size of quarters because of rust.

We cut some 3X4 inch plates for all the holes out of 12 gauge steel then drilled and welded them in. Attached the seats with some 1 1/2 stainless carriage bolts and big washers on the bottom. The seats aren't going anywhere now.

The drivers side was a mess, there were three bolts there, but in reality only 1 bolt was holding the seat in! Not only that, the pan had a 6 inch split that ran parallel to the rocker panel. There it split was just inboard of the drivers seat bracket, there is a groove there which apparently filled up wth water and rusted thru. I can't believe all of this wasn't taken care of by the previous owner when he did the front pans.

Anyhow, we welded the two halves back together then cut a 6X20inch, 12 gauge plate to cover both seat stud holes and overlap what is essentially now two panels. It was not at all what I wanted to do, but I didn't expect to find such a mess underneath. It is secure now and once the carpet is in it'll be impossible to tell.

While my dad was doing some welding (happy fathers day, thanks for the help) I managed to put my other trunk lid on. It's not at all the same color, but it's rust free and looks 100% better than the rusty one.

I also bought a passenger door a few weeks back and it finally arrived from California. I haven't unrapped it yet to see how dented it is, but I don't see any rust so I'm doing way better than I was.

Sorry for being long winded and sorry for the photo quality, camera phone was all I had.

New trunk lid on!

Dad welding

New door in the back of my daily driver

 

[63dartman]

I like that Dad is helping you out. I sure wish my Dad was here to jopin me in the fun. Thanks for the updates and pics.

 

[Useless]

I'm sure he finds it less fun than I do, but he's the one that bought a welder... he had to know this was what was going to happen.

Really though, he and my mom split up when I was about a year or two old, after that he was always on the road and I only got to see him 2-3 times a year until I was around 11/12, then I got to see him on the weekends. He's always been into cars, diehard Ford guy but I guess that's what got me into the car thing.

Honestly, it's likely we wouldn't have had any sort of relationship at all if it weren't for cars. We don't get to spend much time together, but it's nice that we have some sort of common interest that brings us together to make up for lost time.

This was his last old car, got to make a few car shows together before he sold it.

 

[crazybarracuda]

nice Convert 63 you have man. My dad and I just restored one for my mom a few years ago and its a fun car. we shoe horned in a 263 and converted ours into a pushbutton car. ill try getting pics to post up

 

[Useless]

nice Convert 63 you have man. My dad and I just restored one for my mom a few years ago and its a fun car. we shoe horned in a 263 and converted ours into a pushbutton car. ill try getting pics to post up

Thanks, I'd love to see it, post 'em up when you can!

 

[cudajim]

It's a major rust-bucket, why bother to fix it up when you could find another one in Arizona or California with no rust and it will last for years. Rust is like cancer, it keeps coming back.

 

[Useless]

You're right, it goes to the crusher tomorrow.......

What a douche. :thebirdm:

You've apparently never dealt an east coast car before, so STFU, it really isn't that bad.

Let's see, other than light surface rust which sands off pretty damn easy, floors are rust free now and barring a few pinholes in the left rear frame rail, the both the front and rear subframes are rust free.

No rust in either of the front fenders, no rust in either of the doors now, no rust in the hood, no rust in the deck lid, no rust in the trunk floor and no rust in the rockers.

So other than rear wheel area and cowl, I don't really see the problem. For the $800 this running, driving "rust bucket" cost me....I can deal with replacing a few panels.

BTW, I used to live in California so you can't hide behind the "all CA cars are rust free" card; I've seen life long west coast cars have problems in both of those areas.

All it takes is a handful of pine needles or leaves to kill an early A cowl in short order. As a matter of fact, the passenger door I just got from a Dart in So Cal. was parted because of rust in the floors and trunk. Tops leak, carpets get wet.....rust never sleeps no matter what coast you're on.

Maybe these guys should've done the same thing, $25 from the crusher is surely better than wasting time on some of these POS's

http://www.earlyabodyforum.com/board/messages/2/5961.html?1245374956

...and wtf is the point of coming in my thread telling me what a pile of s#!t my car is? Your self esteem really that low?