"Something in the Orange"

[like_A_pike]

10-4. If an item is still the way I did it at the time, I will take a current photo for more clarity.

There is my spoiler “from Randy??” (edit: yes 67-69 Barracuda | spoilersbyrandy) mounted below the valance rather than on it (for example)

 

[like_A_pike]

One (maybe the most significant) drawback to putting miles on your classic- Rock chips and bulls eyes. That one is on one of my new parking lights! The paint up there looks like the surface of the moon and I keep "touching up" the spots. Well in late 2017 I got a pretty good rock to the windscreen and thought replacing it would kill two birds. (since it was leaking too) What a fiasco. A Lufkin windshield shop didn't want anything to do with my old car. They recomended these two guys that would come to one's home to do it... Anyway the guys put a new windshield in but it leaked worse than before. I ended up buying a new gasket and trying it myself. I used a little silicone around the bottom corners and it came out pretty good. Handling the glass was hair raising but I hated putting the chrome back on the most.

 

[like_A_pike]

I have a feeling the clip retaining tool will get used again someday…a must have for that windshield trim btw

 

[like_A_pike]

My beat up notebook reveals the installation of slapper bars in 2017. I guess my two conflicting objectives with the car are one to go as fast as I can without having to install a roll bar and two resemble the “street freaks” I thought were cool growing up in the ‘70s. I realize that there is a snubber and that traction bars break the second of the Mopar commandments that were going around last year - but I can’t let ‘em go.
In other silliness; Apparently while changing jets I closed a pair of luv bugs inside the float bowl which caused some stumbling issues and that Betty sticker is actually covering a dent I inflicted turning the rotating assembly with a breaker bar.

Feels good to get all that off my chest!

 

[like_A_pike]

 

[like_A_pike]

I can't leave 2017 without mentioning:

• the old Federal pump and I split ways, replaced with Saginaw and purchased a bracket from a member
• Orange Box had to be replaced, went with a chrome box and a new coil shows up too
• I sold that first set of Hoosiers on Craigslist, not sure what happened there
• the last front end alignment at Sears - like they went outta business the very next week?
• the back seat lever stuck in the closed position at some point. Took the cam apart and replaced a couple of missing 9/32" screws
• I decided to try racing without that seat after realizing how heavy it was!

 

[like_A_pike]

This was right after getting that rear window chrome off Ebay I think. That time stamp is incorrect.

A brake caliper came loose, I finally got real 340 motor mounts (from an A bodies member), and I learned that my wife's stained glass solder is terrible for electrical connections.
The brushes in the alternator went bad too early in 2018 and I tried to have a local guy rebuild it. I think the guy left out a couple spacers on the housing and it ate itself up almost immediately. I bought a new chrome Powermaster and got back on the road.......

 

[like_A_pike]

something ELSE in the orange! This is the forecast for this week at our old house. Living in southeast Texas with orange car was really great about 8 months of the year but it never had an air conditioner. My garage didn't either. I actually put insulation on my aluminum garage doors to keep that morning sun from baking the hell out of it.
My wife and I called this time of year Texas' Winter since one pretty much stayed indoors. If I ran the car, it was in the morning and we tried to get back by 10. I still went to Livingston once a month and coming home on 59 at 4 was ok at 80 miles an hour but sitting at lights (3 in Diboll) sucked! I was running the original radiator and a clutch fan set pretty close but no shroud. Much of that fiddling around with the distributor and vacuum advance between road time and the race track was to get back to a sweet spot that the car ran coolest on the road in the summer. I swear that the low mounted spoiler reduced airflow from the bottom. I don't remember as many vapor lock issues until that showed up. I tried a lot of things to get around that going forward. The high is fixin' to be 66 here today btw !!!

 

[mpgmike]

Sometimes you buy into the story someone else tells, only to find it doesn't work for you the way the story teller claimed. That is experimentation. If you want tried and true, you get a car that looks a lot like many other cars out there. To get something unique, you have to delve into the unknown. Chalk it up to a lesson learned, make it right, and move on. Oh, and please share your story with us so we can try what worked for you.

 

[like_A_pike]

The combo from 2013 until these two slips was:
1971 340
650 Holley DP out of the box
480 lift cam w/ [email protected]
Dynamic 9.5 TQ in a 904
M/T radials 265-15
3.55 8.75 sure grip
hand ported 587 j heads
B&M super cooler
Star mini starter
4 barrel cast iron intake
windage tray
3600# with me in it
Centerline knockoff wheels (much lighter than my Cragers)
always had sub frame connectors and headers that I can't ID
View attachment 1715683677

Forks Washington in the top photo 7/2011 that's Pine Valley below

That is the most inclusive list of that “Florida combo” I think the slicks I bought actually made contact with the quarter on a run or two so I traded them for something a little smaller. The notes suggest that I went to the track with my street tires in 2018. It didn’t go well.

 

[like_A_pike]

Our son was born in April. Other than some complaining about the horn not working well at the inspection station that summer, the next post isn't until I put another set of slicks on the old wheels in January of 2019. I have put about 35,000 miles on orange car since 2011 at this point.

 

[like_A_pike]

• Begin experimenting with accelerator pump nozzles and jets
• Had to get a seatbelt with a date on it and open lug nuts (tech from Evadale)
• Made some adjustments to the accelerator pedal and Lokar kickdown
• Welded pipe onto my turnouts to exit exhaust beyond the body
• Tried a different voltage regulator

 

[like_A_pike]

We busted my father in law out of memory care and found a small set of earphones and the whole family went to the track in March

 

[like_A_pike]

Sending unit ground strap on stainless

Gas tank install

July & August that year I got around to replacing the gas tank, sender, and lines. These are links to the two threads I started on the subject. I remember getting some cheap wallyworld gas really early in the morning one day to avoid lines and a bunch of gas poured out all over the place when my new filler tube gasket broke. If it were any other time of day ,half the population of Lufkin would have seen it but there weren't a soul there at the time! It's been great since though.

 

[like_A_pike]

We lost our 2nd child when she was born in October. I nearly lost my wife that night too. The next 6 mos were pretty bleak as we climbed back out of a pretty dark place. Then all of us were thrown into the Covid isolation thing. I may have had 100 posts on here from 2011-2020. That all changed after that spring. I was never a social media person but being in here, with like minded people, seemed to help me recharge maybe. I certainly was on the computer a lot more working from home.

I think we both credit our sweet little boy with keeping the wheels on the bus though.

 

[mpgmike]

I can relate to losing a child -- 22 years ago. I can also relate to how a son that is alive can keep the heart beating. My condolences.

 

[Dave 74 Dart]

My condolences. I can not imagine what you and your wife went through.
I'm glad you have your son to share life's great moments with. Looks like he enjoys going for a ride in the " orange car"!!!

 

[like_A_pike]

As long as I had orange car, it had a mild vibration at higher speeds. Changing the stance did not help so I spent a fair amount of time trying to understand my pinion angle. Without the proper tools, I spent about as much time attempting to get good angle measurements. The first thing I did however, was drop the car off at a drive shaft shop in Houston. They balanced it and installed new universal joints yoke and aft. I remember not being very happy on the drive back up north as it seemed to vibrate even more. I learned a couple things from members here and through experimentation; That flipping the driveshaft 180° and reinstalling it has an effect, as does centering the bearing caps and tightening the retainers to spec!
I was reasonably sure however that I also had a +2° variance in the pinion angle so I installed some shims. i think the car felt more responsive to the throttle but I still had a little roving rumble at about 70-80mph. Oddly, I tried an old counter balance to the tail of the transmission and that ironed the last of the vibrations out of the car. I'll try to find a photo of it, I remember a post on here around that time....

 

[Stephen Mulkey]

Everything I own is a parts car.

Me too

 

[like_A_pike]

The counter balance configuration I settled on. They come in a bunch of shapes and some don't really match the inside of your tunnel so be careful to get a good fit.

 

[like_A_pike]

1968 barracuda formula S fender emblem locations.

A post started a year earlier by another member that I kinda hijacked. We both needed the locations of the mounting holes for '68 quarter panel emblems. We started getting some responses by autumn though. That was pretty cool. I just went through and thanked everyone that responded back then.

I acquired a couple emblems and attempted to install them early in 2020. They came out ok.

You can see that an antenna showed up too in post 113 so a year earlier, I missed that one!!! it and one emblem were Ebay and one emblem from a member on Abodies.

 

[like_A_pike]

so back in post 108 i hinted at having a little trouble with vapor lock when it got really hot in the summer. Fact is I don't think I ever got a good handle on what was going on.
When I put the new gas tank and lines in I wrapped the gas line with a sock like thing made out of the same stuff you wrap headers with. I've seen many posts that got me thinking that may actually hold heat close to the line and make the issue worse. The first time the car would not start was at daycare after work prolly circa 2019. I read a non-mopar thread somewhere about a guy putting a cold pack on his coil and as it happened I had one in my lunch box. "Signs and wonders" it started soon after. But in the years after that when I tried the same trick it didn't work. I've always kept a spare ballast resistor and used it with mixed results. However, I think everything points back to the gas had time to cool down while I was foolin' around with other stuff!

One problem that hit me one last time in 2020 was crap in the carburetor. This last time I was already doing 5 over the 75 speed limit and goosed it. When I slowed down it ran ok again. Obviously the difference between clogging the needle in the secondary vs the primary bowl and it let me get home to clean it.

 

[like_A_pike]

I have always had crumby 60' times. I've come to the conclusion that if I am getting good traction and I can't really hold the tires still foot braking with the rpm's over 2500, that the suspension needs some attention. After ironing out everything that was completely wrong up front (like the bent strut) I have to change some stuff under there. My first addition was a set of Competition Engineering adjustable shocks in the back. In 2020 the shocks that came with the car were starting to get soft on the passenger side and I had a tire bang the quarter a couple times back there. My goal had always been to get into the 12's with the "Florida combo" that still had the original 3.31 stroke. My next move was to get a set of slant 6 torsion bars. I never got that far...

I don't see any evidence that I made it to Pine Valley that spring.

On a 50 minute run to the seedling nursery east of Livingston In May, my water pump failed and the motor got really hot. When I tried to shut it down it sorta diesel'd until I could figure out how to stop it from firing. Other than a lot of damaged gaskets, I don't think there was anything appreciably wrong with it, but I decided to pull the engine and try something different. I schlepped it down to Ted's engine and machine service in Conroe to check the block and heads for damage, then a long block and cam swap.

 

[RustyRatRod]

Yeah, that's an orange **** alright! Looks good!

 

[like_A_pike]

Installation Question V2.0

post #92 I mentioned that I didn't get all the way through my steering shaft as per the instructions for installing the Borgeson steering box to the original shaft. A member mentioned sharpening drill bits and I had some success with that. However, I found some hard drill press bits that warned that they would break if used in a hand drill. Well I stood in that empty engine compartment and fought with those until I got through. I put a tiny hardened bolt through the coupler and shaft you can see in the image on the right side.