The Lawn Dart

[Jeff]

Hopefully we will hear it run this week!

[Deceus]

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Got the motor running finally. Took most of Sunday but the last major roadblock for getting this thing together is finally done. Crazy to think I was originally hoping to have it in sometime in February. Just to recap:

Water pump leaked, dissembled pulley kit to tighten one bolt
water neck wouldn't seal
second water neck had a crack
oil filter mounting plate leaked
power steering line broke
cam timing was way off
dissembled pulley kit, water pump and timing cover
ripped front seal and oil pan gasket
dissembled oil pan and put in a new gasket
reassembled the motor
replaced ballast resistor due to a crack
replaced starter due to a possible short

What a trip, pretty convinced i'll likely just order a crate motor if I ever choose to go with something new in the distant future but I don't regret building this one for the experience. Time to get everything on the car I can and find some time to install the engine. Still not sure how I'm going to go about doing it. It would be lovely to get that driveline dolley but not sure it's worth the $$$ for a one time thing.

[Senor_Taylor]

It's amazing to see this thing running! Great job, and big shout out to Jeff for helping. This is exactly the point of MM.

[Jeff]

I'm glad we got it running. Even though he isn't on here my buddy Jason was more than a help in all this also.

[Deceus]

I'm glad we got it running. Even though he isn't on here my buddy Jason was more than a help in all this also.

Yeah I made sure to send him a text after thinking about all the stuff he's helped me with on that list.

Took a break from any kinda of work yesterday. Will probably try to finish up work early today and get a to-do list together for the week. The only thing keeping this thing off the road at the moment is me.

[Deceus]

Another rough weekend for the project. Started Friday morning with a fight with the girlfriend which put me in a bad mood for the start. Went to Costco to pickup a decent shelf to get the garage under control and free up some floor space. Unfortunately for my sanity and overall health, this shelf was easily the worse experience I have ever had putting something together and I've built of a lot cheap Chinese shit. So that took a couple hours and by the time I was done it was time to pick up the motor from Jeff's garage. Of course it had to be raining the whole time so that made things fun. I've decided I'm dropping it in at my place so I'm not taking up too much of his time. Pulled the trigger on the K-member stand this morning.





Saturday didn't go much better. Started tearing into my steering wheel. The plan was to get rid of column shift junk on it and get my Grant wheel on it. Cut the bracket for the shift linkage on the bottom of column first and then pulled the wheel. Started putting together the Grant install kit and then I realize the nut for the steering wheel wasn't going back on. Didn't realize the tip of the puller was hollow so I destroyed some threads on the shaft when I pulled the wheel off. After that I just spend the rest of the day trying to find an aftermarket solution that wasn't going to cost $1200. Eventually settled on a Borgeson universal economy column. The cheap Summit option has a history of locking up when the tilt mechanism eventually fails, no thanks. So now I gotta figure out how I'm mounting this thing up and coupling it to the steering box. Neither seem too challenging.





Sunday I spent a lot of time giving the Challenger some love since I got quoted $150 just to clean the carpets and seats. Picked up some Meguiar's products and went to town on the seats and steering wheel which had 5 years of dirt and gunk built up on it. 2/10 would not recommend waiting so long to do a decent cleaning on the interior. Let the seats dry for a few hours and realized the driver's seat looked like shit. I think I used too much cleaner on that side and didn't get all of it out so I'm gonna hit it with a water bottle and give it a good rinse. The rest of it looked a lot better. These seats are probably going to be a major selling point of the car so I gotta try and make em look as good as I can. Only thing I did with the Dart was take pictures of all the shit I've been meaning to sell. Wanted to post the items but Facebook was fucking up so I decided enough was enough for one weekend and decided on a shower and early bedtime. Feels like I did a ton of work without really getting much done.

The good news is the K-member stand is on it's way. The motor should be going in this weekend or next.

[Deceus]

Here's the current plan for the new steering column. Just going full race car with it and worrying about turn signals later.



Can't use my direct fit coupler anymore that I dropped like $150 since it was made for the stock column so I'm going to have to engineer my own solution out of Ujoints and a DD shaft like so:



Mounting is going to be a bit of an issue since this one is much skinnier. I have the firewall portion planned out. I can just fill in the old hole and mount a swiveling solution to the stock firewall mount. Hopefully I can find a fabrication shop to do this without charging me a shit ton of money



Only thing that's left to plan for is the upper mounts. No idea how I'm going to tackle this. I've seen some column drop mounts but I'm not sure where that will mount in my setup. The stock setup basically had a cradle that bolted to the bottom of the column and was held onto the dash by 2 small studs. Just going to get the thing in there for now and figure it out from there.

[Jeff]

Why don't you just give me $50 for my un-fucked up truck column and keep it stock. This kind of shit is how you never get a car done. Ask me how I know...

[Jake]

HesRightYouKnow.jpg

[ViPER1313]

Or just chase the threads.... that should be close to free

[Jeff]

Or just chase the threads.... that should be close to free

I have a thread file I would let him use for $25...that's half price! :lol:

[Deceus]

Why don't you just give me $50 for my un-fucked up truck column and keep it stock. This kind of shit is how you never get a car done. Ask me how I know...

Because then I have to deal with all the column shift stuff. I'd probably lose a weekend trying to convert one to over a floor shift column. That's a lot of cutting, bondo and sanding to make it look remotely decent. And that's assuming it's the exact length but with my tack record I'd bet my life savings I'll have to cut it down to make the "direct fit" stuff work.

With this I'll just have to bolt the wheel to the column, get someone to weld a plate over my firewall mount and cut the right length of 3/4" DD shaft to connect 2 Ujoints.Think the grand total was about $300-400 for everything.

[Deceus]

Or just chase the threads.... that should be close to free

The nut sits on the end where the threads got destroyed. A thread file could probably make it so that I could get the nut on but one side would have like 1 thread on the nut. Can't say I'm a fan of that.

[Deceus]

Did somethings this weekend:











Talk about a close call:



Great birthday/memorial day weekend. Even got a call from my landlord telling me I can move in 2 weeks early if I just mow the lawn. Will be nice to finish this thing in a proper 2 car garage.



Mocked up the steering column and it seems it'll just need a coupler. It's the perfect length and there's a very clear shot all the way to the steering box. My only regret is not getting a shorter column to run a collapsible DD shaft to prevent the possibly of being impaled but I suppose that's just even more motivation for a roll bar and harness.

[ScottyB]

yass. looks great man, way to hang in with the tough breaks and keep pushing to get it together.

what am i looking at? is that a brake line almost touching the oil pan? if so are you going to re-bend or re-route it? that engine heat might want to try cooking your brake fluid.

[Deceus]

yass. looks great man, way to hang in with the tough breaks and keep pushing to get it together.

what am i looking at? is that a brake line almost touching the oil pan? if so are you going to re-bend or re-route it? that engine heat might want to try cooking your brake fluid.

Valve cover and it's definitely touching. Will probably have to remake it or just go with a small braided section there. It's just going from the master cylinder to the firewall for the handbrake. It's a shame too because I liked the way that one came out.

[JustinG]

cant you just cut a portion of the straight piece off and reflare the end?

[Deceus]

cant you just cut a portion of the straight piece off and reflare the end?

Yeah and then adjust the bend to match the new length but I gave Jeff my flaring tool. It would probably be too short to work with the die that tool uses anyways even if I wanted to drive to use it. Much easier to just order a length of -3AN line and a 90 degree fitting. I haven't even had time to look at the car since memorial day, don't want to waste a day fucking with brake lines again.

[Deceus]

Didn't get as much done as I was hoping. Wanted to have the car rolling tonight but ran into a lot of issues. Couldn't seem to find hardware for the transmission mount i bought so I figured I'd wing it. It's appeared to be 7/16" coarse bolt, I know Home Depot and Lowes carries fuck all in 7/16" for some reason but I tried anyways. Home Depot actually had a drawer full for 7/16" fine thread hex bolts so I grabbed 2 hoping my eyes were deceiving me, they weren't. So the engine has to stay on the dolley until I order those.

Figured I'd get the steering, spindles and radiator on to salvage the day. Spindles went on without much issue. Got the pitman arm put on after wrestling with it for a bit. As soon as I got it on, I realized it was blocking my only chance at getting my starter through my headers so it came back off and I went up stairs to grab the replacement starter Powermaster sent me (good peeps). Didn't think it was gonna fit for a bit and I was contemplating just setting the whole thing on fire rather than pulling the header off but I managed to play car part tetris well enough to get it where it needed to go. Didn't bother trying to torque it down because I wasn't sure my heart could handle it. I'll leave that job to ruin some other weekend. Some open-ended ratcheting wrenches may make short work of it but there's no what to get a regular ratcheting wrench or socket on either the bolt or stud. Have to tighten 1/6 of a turn at a time



I kinda knew it was coming but was secretly hoping it wasn't ... the Champion electric fan that was sold with my radiator doesn't have a chance at fitting with fan shroud they sold me. Just to recap: 1) They didn't have my fan shroud listed separately (it was only available with a kit) so I had to email them to add it 2) they sent me the wrong fan shroud anyways. It was drilled for 2 10" fans instead of 1 16" 3) When the right shroud did show up, I had to re-drill it to get it to mount to their radiator because the holes didn't line. I paid them $120 for make 1 big hole, 4 small holes and 2 bends in a sheet of aluminum and they messed it up on pretty much all fronts. 4) I had to spend like 30 minutes digging to find what size fastener it took to work with their radiator. I eventually just looked up one of their chevy radiators and it was listed as M6 fasteners and then I had to go buy them because providing them would be asking too much... build a racecar I said, it'll be fun I said.

Got the steering box hooked up and decided to just spend the rest of the day peeling plastidip off the Challenger rims. Managed to sucker Matt into helping out and took out 3 of them before calling it quits. Trying to get that ready to post for sale at some point. It definitely needs a good buff, polish and wax still. Figured I'd spend the evening posting the leftover parts for sale instead of fighting with anything further.



Probably could have gotten the front rotors on but I left the diagram for the hub at the house and it gave me time to contemplate if I really want to do this knowing damn well I'm going to be buying a better brake kit to replace it. In theory I could buy drop spindles and a Wilwood kit to sell what I have to recoup a decent chunk of that expense. It's essentially a complete disc brake conversion kit for these cars minus the upper control arms. Really popular swap too, just not so sure the lime green calipers will be all desirable lol.

[*insertusernamehere*]

PROGRESS!