Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

[dulcich]

Re: Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

Nice Dart. Have you ever considered adding A/C being that you are in Arizona? It amazing how back when you first upgraded it you could find parts like those at any wrecker's. What are your plans for it now?
-dulcich

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

That car just needs some interior work and it's golden.

[fahrenschnell]

Re: Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

That car is BADASS.......Very Nice.

Seth

[DanStokes]

Re: Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

No pics for me - and I'd love to see it. I love me some MOPARs of any vintage.

Dan

[BigBlockMopar]

Re: Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

Sweet car.
The dealerplate is a nice touch.

[squirrel]

Janet got her Dart in 1980, when she was in college. I met her about 6 months later. It was a nice car, original paint, no dents, beautiful Y1 Top Banana yellow. The seats and dash had been recovered in really ugly brown vinyl. The Tucson sun really tears up the upholstery. The 225 ran OK, but was using oil. The car had around 125k miles on it. The trans was the non-synchro low 3 on the tree, of course it would hang up every now and then, but she knew how to get it unstuck when that happened. She also knew not to drive fast on flooded streets, because the distributor got wet easily. I overhauled the engine (for her father), and she drove the car with the slant six for about 5 years.

In 1985 we bought a 360 at the junkyard, also a small block K member, 8-3/4" rear, 727, etc. We put the engine in and she drove it for a year or two, then it started knocking...we learned a neat lesson about buying "rebuilt" parts from PAW, sometimes they don't check the connecting rods for being straight, one of them was bent. We did another quick overhaul with a different rod, and she drove it for a few more years. Our son Steve came home from the hospital in the Dart in 1988.

By the early 90s the paint was pretty bad, it had a few dings in it, and the interior was rough again. I had some buddies in town who did paint and upholstery work, and I had found a 340 block at the junkyard I used to work at, and had collected a few core LA engines. I had a friend re paint the car, another friend redid the seats and carpet, and I build a "340" which has a 340 block, intake, and exhaust manifolds, but a 318 crank and rods, and early 360 heads. We put in the later low compression pistons and a real mild cam. She drove it regularly to work like this from about 1992 to 1998, when she bought a new Chevy truck. From then on the Dart just got occasional use, and we had it de-registered and uninsured a few times for a year or two. It sat outside a lot of the time, but did move inside when we finally built the second garage 5 years ago (it holds 6 cars, the old one only holds 4). She hasn't driven the dart for almost two years. Since she got her Prowler in 2004, she's been driving late models most of the time. Ugh.

Steve found a job, he's going to be moving to Phoenix. We decided to give him the 70 Camaro (actually we decided that when we bought it 6 years ago), and also the 87 Suburban. So, he'll get to pay for insurance for them, and we get to put some other cars on our insurance instead. We've had 7 insured and a few more cars just sitting around for the past few years, including the Dart.

I fired it up today after swapping in a working battery and adding some fresh gas. It still runs good and sounds like it always has. The driver seat back is getting really bad, so I guess interior work is first on the list. The paint is still ok, although it has a few dings in it, and some rust in the quarter where we accidentally left a gallon of milk in the car when taking the groceries out years ago. I found a dealership plate at an antique store in Bisbee, from the dealership that the car was bought from originally. The car has 328,995 miles on it right now.