New arrival at the BBM-stash, and an exception to my #1 rule... '73 Dodge Dart

[BigBlockMopar]

Update on Project "Daily Dart".

The vinyltop is mounted and all. Quite a challenging job laying and glueing that large sheet of vinyl all by your self. But I'm happy how it turned out. It's not perfect, but good enough for a driver.
I'm also glad the rolled-on semigloss paintjob worked out pretty good without any streaks in the paint. I slapped on a set of dogdish-wheelcovers on the 14" wheels.

[JOES66FURY]

WIN!

[Scott Liggett]

It'll be the coolest car on the motorway cruising to work in the morning in the Netherlands.

[Huskinhano]

I see it's coming along very nicely!

[BigBlockMopar]

I had the car checked for it's 2-yearly checkup yesterday. Went through with flying colors.
Now it's time to make an appointment to get the car aligned properly.

The car has also seen a good number of rainshowers already, and it was a wise decision of me to Not install any carpet yet. There's water dripping from under the left side of the dash near the fusebox somewhere... joy !@!$
So I'll still need to crawl under the dash again to find out where the leak is coming from.
When it's leak-free I can go on and finish the interior a bit more.

[milner351]

Looks fabulous!

Tell us more about this rolled on paint job?

What kind of paint? Thinned how much with what? (mineral spirits, acetone...)

Foam roller?

[BigBlockMopar]

The paint is a housebrand of a local 'Home Depot' we have here called 'Formido'. Their paint-line is called 'Gold-Circle' and is made by Sigma Coatings. It's oil (terpentine)-based paint. Takes 2 hours to dry (touchdry) and 16 hours to harden before another layer can be put on.

The orange has been thinned a bit with terpentine and has 4 layers. It didn't cover very well in the areas where the white body filler has been used.
The black part has been rolled on straight from the can. I used 4" foam rollers with rounded edges on both sides.

I still have plans to cover it all with a layer of semi-gloss clear, but seeing how well this paint levels out when dry, I might be tempted to use a glossy clearpaint on the car. Yeah, I'm feeling lucky, today...

[BigBlockMopar]

Well I guess I wasn't that lucky afterall, 'cause I lost one of the dogdish hubcaps already today. The one on the right front wheel. Found out just now when I got home.
Now I did hear a short tin-can noise on the rightrear of the car while driving the car to work today, but I thought it was shifting in the trunk. Upon arriving at work I remember I checked the rightrear wheel and the hubcap was there. But I can't recall havin' checked or seen the right frontwheel today.
Feeling a bit bummed about it.

[SpiderGearsMan]

...a '73 Dart with a '71 frontclip.
Eventhough I'm breaking my #1 rule* here by bringing in this small block car, :o ;D I think it's still a fun little driver good enough for daily usage.
(but if the harrassment of me owning a smallblock now gets too much I'll probably be forced to drop a bigblock in it one day of course )

*life's too short to be fooling around with smallblocks...


It's got a 2-bbl 318, running on LPG/propane (=cheap here), auto, air, power discbrakes and power steering.
The K-member on the car has been powder coated once and all suspensionparts and bushings have been replaced.
My current daily Euro-heap probably won't pass it's yearly mandatory checkup, so this Dart will be a good subsitution for it.

The Dart has been sitting idle outside for the past 6 years so there are a number things to check/fix/recondition.
Plans are to get it technically sound and dependable for daily use by going over the brakes and tune and clean-up the engine and surrounding area. The engine bay is still riddled with smog-related crap, all probably prone to fail soon, so most of it will soon find it's way to the 'recycle-bin'

The roof has some rust-issues at the rear window so that's need to be tackled aswell one day. The car came with a new black vinyl top and a repair panel for the lower rearwindow part.

5-6 grand to ship ?

needs a viper v10

[1931s/x]

pretty cool. im on and off this site since there arent too many mopars. im an abody guy. BB A-BODIES are my thing.

Stroking a small block will dramatically increase torque all the way through the revs and you will still get decent mpg. It wont be big block power, but it will move that Dart with authority. Also, shoving shoving an RB in there will kill its handling. Besides, you will have to some cuttting and hacking to get one in there. Thats a big can of worms on a car you dont want to spend big money on.

i have to argue this one, not that i really want to see big block a bodies at every show i go to, but its pretty much a bolt in deal and can be done without cutting a single thing. my latest bb swap got 19 mpg on the highway to and from the pt kickoff, just 2 weeks after getting it fired up for the first time. i spent a few hours 1 day to tune the holley that i put on after throwing the towel in on a thermoquad, just days before we left. its still not running how i want, the distributor still needs some more work, and the alignment was really far out. i think it has 1 or 2 mpg left in it, and it handles really good with just a few upgrades. my original plan had aluminum heads and a glass flat hood, to help with the wieght, that can be left for a future upgrade.
but what would i expect from the resident instigator...

[Beagle]

This whole sbm / bbm argument had me thinking a while back. I'm too lazy to see if I already responded, but here's what I was thinking about it. I know... I'm bench racing, but what about this?

A 318 stroker kit to 391 is not terribly expensive... and on LPG, you could raise compression and still keep a pretty mild cam. High cylinder pressure and a long crank arm are gonna make some torque. Darts are light. Lotsa torque and a light car. Maybe it doesn't need a BBM for what it's supposed to do (DD).


Digging the progress!

[milner351]

The paint is a housebrand of a local 'Home Depot' we have here called 'Formido'. Their paint-line is called 'Gold-Circle' and is made by Sigma Coatings. It's oil (terpentine)-based paint. Takes 2 hours to dry (touchdry) and 16 hours to harden before another layer can be put on.

The orange has been thinned a bit with terpentine and has 4 layers. It didn't cover very well in the areas where the white body filler has been used.
The black part has been rolled on straight from the can. I used 4" foam rollers with rounded edges on both sides.

I still have plans to cover it all with a layer of semi-gloss clear, but seeing how well this paint levels out when dry, I might be tempted to use a glossy clearpaint on the car. Yeah, I'm feeling lucky, today...

Oil base paint for metal thinned with terpentine and 4" rounded foam rollers - and lots of drying time..... that sounds like a plan that may just work on the ranger if I ever have time to get back to it - although the temptation to spray it just for the learning experience of it is still high. The way things are going though - I won't have time to work on it until my son is old enough to help me! I live vicariously through you guys that get so much done in such a short time on your projects!

[BigBlockMopar]

I've got a semi-pro spray-gun myself aswell, but the amount of work needed to prepare the area (garage) and get the right stuff (primer/color/clear/mask) before you can actually start spraying is way too much work compared to a rol-job where you just mask the car and start rolling. No overspray or paintdust in the garage at all.

I've somewhat aligned the car myself recently with help of an app on my iPhone and a home-made tool which holds the phone steady while measuring. I've set the camber and Toe-in alright, but skipped the caster-settings. With the phone it's not possible to set camber and caster at the same time like on a real alignment-rig. And adjusting a Dart is cumbersome at best because the cam-bolts are tucked away behind the wheels.




I think I also fixed the leak behind the dashboard. I has rained a couple of times already but I found no water in the car anymore.
So I've bought a piece of normal black carpet today for a couple of bucks which I'll try to install over the weekend.


Today I started with painting the tan rear seat black. Two coats of the vinyl-paint and I can almost call it done. I'll do one more coat tomorrow for good measure.

[BigBlockMopar]

Took the Dart to an alignment shop this week.
Was still surprised to see how much the specs where off eventhough the car drove fairly well, except on heavily crowned roads.


Top row is Camber, 2nd row is Caster, followed by Toe-in settings;

[BigBlockMopar]

This was on a meeting 'bout 2 months ago, two '73 Darts next to each other, only one of them had a face-lift to look a bit younger...