Streetdak's 73 Dart swinger project

[streetdak]

So I got some extra time today, so im gonna drink a beer and write out progress and the story behind my dart...... Now this is not a full resto, im more about driving the car, so I don't want it down for more than a month at at time if possible.

The car started out as a 1973 Dart Swinger, 318 - 904 with a/c, power disc brakes, and power steering. In the craigslist add that I found it in the guy stated he could get it running by pouring some gas in the carb.... I though right away...... Fuel Pump, no big deal. So me and a few buddies of mine went to go check out the car, asking price was $1500. After looking at the car, it turned out to be super solid and the interior was BEAUTIFUL excluding a couple rips on driver side of bench seat. Interior is all black with the basic wood trim on the dash and door panels.

The exterior now has a few issues but nothing too drastic. The car was originally a vinyl top car and I have a few rust issues to resolve from the bottom of the vinyl top and of course around the rear window, but all the quarters are in awesome shape and not even a worry.

After some negotiations I would end up getting the car for $1300, and here she is when I picked her up.

On the way home after picking her up we stopped at the parts store for a few odds - n - ends including a fuel pump and lugnuts for my weld draglights that I allready had. Once we got her home and in the garage I threw on the fuel pump right away to find out..... YUP! she runs with a new fuel pump, not well, but she ran!! So then we slapped the rims on the car followed by some rear fender trimming the next day. (I need to get pics of the trimming... But this is how she sat the next day

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[streetdak]

So now the car was running, not well, but running so it was time to get her running well. I immediatley though that the old 2 bbl on the car was just toast, and if you know me, 2bbl is not in my vocabulary and luckilly I was able to pick up an summit intake, basically brand new (mimics a performer RPM) at a swap meet for $75 the weekend after I got the car. Im a holley guy and my buddy happened to have an 3160 600 sitting so I bought it from and ordered a kit for $21 and rebuilt the carb. Once I slapped the intake and carb on the car ran AWESOME.... for about 15 mins...

After days and days of cleaning the fuel filter and still not knowing why It was getting clogged, there was only one thing left to do..... Drop the gas tank, and guess what I found....

Needless to say, i needed a gas tank, again luckily I had an 8 Gallon fuel cell sitting around from my old dakota project, plus a bunch of braded steel hose my buddy had donated from one of his old projects. In about 30 mins I had a working fuel system again, and the car purred!! There was still junk in the lines, but after about 5 or 6 times cleaning the filter the majority of the junk was out of the lines.

More to come....

 

[mopardude318]

Hey, nice project! I like doing little things to a car, step by step. It makes it more fun, rather than having the whole car apart for 7 years....(mine) BTW, that is the nastiest fuel tank I have ever seen!!

 

[mac daddy mopar]

that is the nastiest fuel tank I have ever seen!!
x2, nice score, and as stated doing things while driving it is better than haveing it apart for years, keep us posted:cheers:

 

[streetdak]

yeah the condition of the gas tank was absurd! No idea how that thing got that bad, everyone i show has never seen on in that kind of condition. It broke apart with small wacks from a hammer and completely split open like a soda can!

I had a 12 second camaro lt1 that was constantly either needing work or not legal. So i rarely got to drive the poor thing, plus I missed having a muscle car with character, so with this project me and my buddy decided it wouldn't ever be at least one weekend away from getting it back together. And plus this car is extremely easy to get a keep legal here in texas

 

[streetdak]

oops

 

[streetdak]

Next comes the electrical. Of course the fuel gage didn't work and neither did the engine gage light, but they were remedied by some aftermarket auto meter gages, but believe it or not damn near everything works on the car. The door switched for the dome lights, the turn signals, but the taillights were a different story. After playing with fuses for about 2 days, I busted out the test light to find out that the whole taillight assemblies were getting a constant 12 volt signal, creating a complete short. Basically the taillight sockets were corroded so much that it sent all the constant power thru the ground. So the local oreillys carries the sockets. I cut the old ones out with a die grinder and fabbed the new ones in. Issue resolved, the car now had working tail lights, turn signals and even reverse lights! I still need to get some pics of the work

The alternator come to find out before we got on the road, i went after that with a test light as well, come to find out it wasn't getting any constant 12 volt power. So after some research on the web, I ran a cable from the battery to the post on the alternator, and voila! Instant charging!