Bullseye!.........'71 Dodge Dart, right at home @ FBBO

[Propwash]

Mr prop, that is why you are the man we expect no less out of you,other than another supreme masterpiece,super duper job sir!

Hey thanks Johnny! Appreciate it!

Thanks for the excellent how to on the roof Prop and for sharing the joke about the sheet metal screws ... priceless

Thank you sir! Roof's really are not too bad to do. A lot of labor, but as far as fitting, pretty easy.

Funny.... When I used to watch the New Yankee Workshop old Norm would say you can never have enough clamps. That hold true here as well... Go pull a Paul and clear the shelf at Harbor Freight :happy11:

Paul.....They are not going to know what hit them. Got a $100 dollar X-mas Home Depot gift card from work and I plan on deploying "Shock & Awe" tactic's on their Vise Grip department.

really nice work! I am banging away at my wife,s 72 swinger as I write this. I think we are going to leave the vinyl off so I may have the trim you need if you want it. I read that your wife is considering blue well so is mine she wants a midnight blue metallic it has a b5 interior as it was baby blue when built. I had to cut the front off and do rails on hers it will need quarters as well. I have all the parts just short on time!

Wow.......you definitely have some work to keep you busy! Good to hear you're getting some time to peg away on the wife's '72. As far as the vinyl top trim, I'll buy it from you if you're ditching the top. Right now I'm voting no for vinyl, but the wife is voting yes. Don't know which way the scale's going to tip, but i'm guessing there may very well be vinyl being put on. You wouldn't happen to know what clips are needed for the vinyl do ya?

Will what do you plan on putting in the engine bay?

Engine is still in the works, but I have a 340, punched .040, zero decked, Eddy RPM ported 63CC closed chambered heads, port matched Eddy Air-Gap intake. Cam I haven't picked out yet, but thinking a solid flat tappet with a duration somewhere's in the 270-280 range and lift in the lower .500's. Comp ratio should be a tad over 10.5:1 with the -CC in the piston dish. Shooting for around 450 HP/TQ or so, backed up with a Mopar 833 4 speed.

Guy doing the machine work at the engine shop is a real good fella. Same goes for the cat doing the port work. Both of them are old school NHRA retired racer's. Also, both of them keep giving me flak that it's going to be pretty funny when the wife float's by me & the roadrunner in her little 3000lb Dart. They just like to get a rise out of me.....and that's why the roadrunner tattooed many linear feet of their parking lot with molten rubber as well! Pretty sure the black Plymouth wanted them to know who's the boss when it comes to the Mopar's in my garage.

 

[69 GTX]

Wrath of Skellator!!!! Funny how guys like to push buttons...........just tell em more weight = more traction!

 

[Propwash]

Wrath of Skellator!!!! Funny how guys like to push buttons...........just tell em more weight = more traction!

LOL! You bet!

 

[HYRDGOON]

Take that parking lot!!!

 

[Ron 73]

Woo hoo, That had to come from a Scooby do!!!! show lol

 

[Propwash]

Well wayyyyy overdue for an update on the dart. I've been pegging away here and there.

Newly replaced roof skin is stripped, and sealed. All welds cut down and leveled.



Also stripped a good chunk of the body. Drivers side has a couple dings and minor dents. Nothing a little skim coat won't cover right over. Passenger side is a different ball game.



This must be an A-Body issue. 3rd one i've had with this issue. Both driver's and passenger side strikers in the jam were cracked around them pretty bad



Fixed



Also dealing with some rot on the upper lip of the deck filler at the rear window opening. Not to big of deal to hit hard with a wire wheel to peel back the thin/weak metal and weld in, along with the old vinyl top trim holes. About 8 spots opened up on the lip.



Welded



Everything was rolling along pretty good until the passenger quarter. Forest Gump must have been of referring to old cars when talking about "Box of chocolates"....Never know what you're gonna get. Anyways, kinda like opening a crappy x-mas gift, the passenger quarter was a bit sulking moment. Stripping it, literally about 1/2 the quarter was covered in mud, and not thin mud. The car had some serious damage up by the door, mid panel and back by the side marker light. No idea why someone wouldn't just do the right thing and waste all that time leveling filler, but oh well.





So I'm not one to half-*** things. I will be calling Jeff at 521 this week for the 4 speed hump, and it looks like i'll be ordering a new quarter skin as well. Already started drilling out the spotwelds for the quarter, just need to re-hang the door so I can use it for alignment for the skin.


Couple things I need to find.......A heater box! Thing came out in pieces. Really surprised how flimzy/cheap the heater box is compared to a B-Body. Oh well, economy car back in the day. Need a 3 spoke steering wheel insert as well. Other than that, I have quite a few parts sitting on the shelf.

 

[kiwigtx]

Nice progress so far Prop. Sorry to see so much mud in that quarter, but sadly some guys just take the easy road to fixing things. You're a better man than me taking on a quarter replacement...can't wait to see how that goes. :headbang:

 

[Propwash]

Hey thanks Kiwi! Honestly I'd rather deal with rust than mud. At least rust is honest, it doesn't lie about it's ugliness...lol

I'll be sure to post the swap out on the quarter skin. Thanks again!

 

[chargin']

Great progress,you have a very clean Dart. I never seen a A body that the metal around the door striker wasn't cracked. I had to fix mine too.

 

[MoparMitch]

Nice to see an update on that car Will. I'm gettin Antsy myself. I've got my drivetrain all ready to go back in. Just waitin for warmer weather to push it outside and paint the engine bay.

 

[a68postcar]

door striker is a common problem on a body cars. when the seals around the doors wears out, the door bottoms out on the striker. the hinge pins wear out and the door drops on the latch end causing alignment issues. that and, people seem to want to slam these doors all the time. like they want the door to fly across to the other striker. the dart is looking good though. rock on.

 

[HawkRod]

Nice work. LOL, the pictures with ___ problem, and then "fixed" crack me up. You make it seem so easy! Heck, I seem to spend days on some of my small areas of the car. Great skill there Will!

Looking forward to more watching and learning. Even though the bodywork phase on my car is behind me, it is still cool to watch and learn techniques. Thanks for posting and teaching us apprentices!

Hawk

 

[CoronetDarter]

Nice work. LOL, the pictures with ___ problem, and then "fixed" crack me up. You make it seem so easy! Heck, I seem to spend days on some of my small areas of the car. Great skill there Will!

Looking forward to more watching and learning. Even though the bodywork phase on my car is behind me, it is still cool to watch and learn techniques. Thanks for posting and teaching us apprentices!

Hawk

^^ X2. The welding and finishing skills of Prop and others on this site are amazing.

 

[747mopar]

I hear ya on the mud, I don't know what's worse buying a car that's not as abvertised or a house but it seems like people like to scab both of them together and pass them on. Progress is looking great, you'll have that wife smiling in know time.

 

[Propwash]

Great progress,you have a very clean Dart. I never seen a A body that the metal around the door striker wasn't cracked. I had to fix mine too.

Thanks Chargin'! Yeah she's real clean. I'm not regretting buying a car from Cali at all. I was missing getting to play around with metal work, but looks like the Dodge blessed me with some spark work at least.

Nice to see an update on that car Will. I'm gettin Antsy myself. I've got my drivetrain all ready to go back in. Just waitin for warmer weather to push it outside and paint the engine bay.

Thanks Mitch! I can imagine you are. If you have a thread on your GTS over at FABO, i'll have to get over there and check it out.

door striker is a common problem on a body cars. when the seals around the doors wears out, the door bottoms out on the striker. the hinge pins wear out and the door drops on the latch end causing alignment issues. that and, people seem to want to slam these doors all the time. like they want the door to fly across to the other striker. the dart is looking good though. rock on.

Appreciate it. Thanks for the failure breakdown. Makes perfect sense. I've been guilty a couple times of that myself.

Nice work. LOL, the pictures with ___ problem, and then "fixed" crack me up. You make it seem so easy! Heck, I seem to spend days on some of my small areas of the car. Great skill there Will!

Looking forward to more watching and learning. Even though the bodywork phase on my car is behind me, it is still cool to watch and learn techniques. Thanks for posting and teaching us apprentices!

Hawk

Hey no problem! I'm no self-proclaimed pro myself, and really spend most of the time as an "apprentice". I'd admit it takes a bit of skill to weld and work over metal, but it isn't from me being some star pupil at the talent show. It's just I've done it over..and over..and over. Believe me, I've messed up plenty in the past, and still today!!! LOL. 12 years old with an old Lincoln stick welder, fixing 50 year old equipment on the farm will get a guy rolling into welding real quick..lol I do appreciate the kind words, thank you. I'm always willing to share, and look forward to learning from others as well

^^ X2. The welding and finishing skills of Prop and others on this site are amazing.

Thanks! The more you do it, the easier it becomes. I've seen plenty of guys on here that bought a car to restore, decided to pic up a welder and try it out, and are putting out some amazing quality of work. With the seasoned welders around here, I've seen some pretty off the wall phenomenal work!

I hear ya on the mud, I don't know what's worse buying a car that's not as abvertised or a house but it seems like people like to scab both of them together and pass them on. Progress is looking great, you'll have that wife smiling in know time.

You Bet! At least there's folks like yourself and a lot of others here that put them back together right. I guess all a guy can do is try to inform himself the best he can and then just roll with the punches. I must be getting older, because now days it isn't a matter of finding the cobble jobs and getting all bent out of shape. It's more of a few shakes of the head, a face palm or just straight out laughing with finding other folks "grand ideas". Sometimes it really is entertaining.....almost like MacGyver tuned down about 100 I.Q.

 

[Propwash]

Bad news fella's..............

Spoke with Jeff @521 Restorations and AMD today. AMD is completely out out of Dodge Dart Quarter skins, and pretty much for all years of dart. When I spoke with AMD, they specified the skins come off the same stamping as the full quarters. Right now they have a great number of full quarters, and are not going to stamp any quarter skins until they need to catch up inventory on full quarters as well.

So........what that boils down to is instead of $235 for a quarter skin, it would be paying $490 for a full. I really do not need a full, so paying the extra $255 is a gut shot. I tossed around going the Goodmark route, but have scary visions of the last set of Goodmark panels I dealt with...No way! Sounds like I'm just going to bite the bullet, being AMD said it possibly might not even be this year before they start stamping skins. Ah Well....I gotta get a skin on so I can move on to epoxy priming the body.

 

[tallhair]

So I'm not one to half-*** things. I will be calling Jeff at 521 this week for the 4 speed hump, and it looks like i'll be ordering a new quarter skin as well.

Bad news fella's..............

Spoke with Jeff @521 Restorations and AMD today. AMD is completely out out of Dodge Dart Quarter skins, and pretty much for all years of dart. When I spoke with AMD, they specified the skins come off the same stamping as the full quarters. Right now they have a great number of full quarters, and are not going to stamp any quarter skins until they need to catch up inventory on full quarters as well.

So........what that boils down to is instead of $235 for a quarter skin, it would be paying $490 for a full. I really do not need a full, so paying the extra $255 is a gut shot. I tossed around going the Goodmark route, but have scary visions of the last set of Goodmark panels I dealt with...No way! Sounds like I'm just going to bite the bullet, being AMD said it possibly might not even be this year before they start stamping skins. Ah Well....I gotta get a skin on so I can move on to epoxy priming the body.

Thanks for the update Prop and I must have forgot what transmission you were going with but I was happy to see it's a 4 speed. I do remember now that a while back you were on the look out for a 4 speed or OD for it. Sorry to hear about the extra expense of the full quarter too brother. As always great photo's and a great build

 

[chargin']

Seeing you have to buy the full quarter anyway,I would think it would be easier/better to hang the full quarter?

 

[HawkRod]

Seeing you have to buy the full quarter anyway,I would think it would be easier/better to hang the full quarter?

That's what I would think as well. Then you end up with all factory weld points and nothing grafted together. If you gotta buy the whole quarter (which I a bummer) then you may as well do the whole thing...

 

[tallhair]

Seeing you have to buy the full quarter anyway,I would think it would be easier/better to hang the full quarter?

I'm assuming he's going to .. but what do I know. Prop knows though and will un-doubt-ably do the wisest thing.