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

[BKBridges]

BBM
Nice Dart! I too like bigblocks, but the 318 is very flexible with good torque and can be quite fun and economical as a daily driver. Just a quick head update with larger intake valves and a bit of porting along with a decent cam and headers and things liven up a lot without loss of bottom end.
Was the water leak the air box gasket to the cowl intake? My 65 Barracuda started leaking there recently. The gaskets were hard as rocks and cracked.
BKB

[BigBlockMopar]

Uptill today I've still been fighting the annoying leakage under the dash.

Earlier I made a hole in the cowl-area where I found some damp substance of composting leafs and muck.
I spooned all of it out and cleaned the area. After that I sprayed zincspray and later some regular black paint into the area, hoping this would creep into the holes and crevices where normally the water would find it's way.






But after a some serious leaktesting...





... I found there was still water dripping in.

Now I removed the chrome window-trim and used a flexible rubber-kit to seal the windowgasket watertight against the windowframe. I'm pretty sure water will not be able to pass that barrier. I also greased up the wiper arm pivots so no water could enter there.

But still, after some more damn testing...





.... I found water on the floor, still originating from the firewall under the dash!

So today I sprayed liquid white wax, used for inside chassis rails, between the glass and window gasket as I noticed the inside bottom of the windshield was wet.
So now it's fingers crossed hoping this thing can keep the rain out for a change so I can finally install some carpet and finish the car some more.

[BigBlockMopar]

BKB,
The heaterbox-'inlet'/gasket was not the issue here. If only it was so easy :o) Also the inlet is on the pass.side of the car in this model.

I haven't found much 'torque' in the 318 yet but I've managed the liven up the motor quite a bit already with some tuning a new ignition parts. It's still nothing to get scared off, but I also have the feeling now that with some more compression and better breathing this engine might still be usefull enough to keep around for awhile.

I've also just installed a dual 2-1/4" exhaust in favor of the rusted single 2" tube under there. That seemed to help a bit aswell.

I'm still tempted to look for a 360 and drop that into the car, as spending money on a 8.6:1cr 318 feels kinda 'wastefull' to me still :o)

[DanStokes]

My '98 Dakota has the 5.2 (318) Magnum engine. While not a rocket ship it does pretty well and I pull the car trailer all over the eastern US with it. Great little truck and engine combination. I'm guessing a bit more CR and a set of Magnum heads might be a big help.

Dan

[BigBlockMopar]

I recently was able to hook up an oilpressure and watertemp gauge and I was surprised to see this motor is in better shape then I thought.
At startup it only puts out a puff of smoke, probably valveseal related, and the pistons are a bit noisy when cold, but other then that it's proved to be a dependable mill in the few months I've used it for a dailydriver.
Watertemp is fairly steady aswell as it stays solidly between 180-190F.

It also puts out a steady 60psi of oilpressure while driving and at idle it still maintains no less then 37-40psi when hot and idling in drive at about 600rpm. There's a fresh batch of 10w40 oil in the motor.

I get the feeling the motor is really trying to prove itself to me it's 'worth it' to keep around

[BKBridges]

Dan and BBM
The Magnum heads are really the way! RHS makes a great out of the box set, and a good shop like IMM can get them to really flow. An edelbrock 7577 manifold is a good choice for that combo, and will still bolt up to a 360 (same heads) for later displacement improvement plans. Once the windshield starts leaking, Ive never been very sucessful getting it to stop shy of removing it and re-seating it. In my case its pinch weld rust that keeps the leak going. Your weather is a lot wetter than mine, so Ill follow your technique if it works for you!
BKB
San Diego CA USA

[DanStokes]

the pistons are a bit noisy when cold,

My Volare always made a racket when cold and it turned out to be a sticky lifter (sounded a lot like piston slap). I don't know how common that was on 318s. I could pull the valve cover, start the engine, and whack the offending rocker on the pushrod end with a lead hammer (happen to have one). It would quiet down for a while then eventually the noise would come back. The guy I sold it to had a shop put in a lifter and problem solved. I was always nervous to replace the lifter as the new lifter wouldn't be lapped to the old cam but it worked in this case.

Just a thought.
Dan

[BigBlockMopar]

It's definitly piston-noise and only lasts a couple of minutes while driving. I had a lifternoise the other day during my commute to work but it dissapeared again on the way back home.
I've put old solid lifters on an old, but different hydraulic cam once and drove this for 3 years without any problems. But to get rid of that feeling I was riding on borrowed time, I did replace the cam and lifters with a roller version.

My weatherproofing techniques have shown to be insufficient uptill now as there was still again, a small amount of water on the driverside floorboard in the car after it had rained the night before. I'm starting to run out of options of what to tackle other possible leak-areas. I'm now planning on the tackling the leakage from the inside/under dash by scraping away some old hardened kit between welded seems and applying some new kit. Although I still feel incoming water will be trapped behind the new kit and might cause damage there.

[BigBlockMopar]

Finally I was able to locate the leakage on the Dart; It's the windowgasket. Although it's still soft and flexible, the lower lip has been seperated from the rest of the gasket in 2 or 3 places, causing water to get under and behind the glass and slowly dripping in.
I was able to stop the leaking with a fresh layer of window sealkit for now, but a new windowgasket is in order.

[BigBlockMopar]

Today I'm feeling like a Mike Tyson sparringpartner... I'm a total wreck.

Yesterday I just spent 14 hours straight in the garage swapping rear axles on my Dart.
The car came with a wimpy and well worn 7-1/4" rear axle, with the small 4" boltcircle. The front discbrakes (converted) have the better 4.5" boltcircle.
The rearend also recently started making noises, so it became obvious the time had come to install the 8-3/4" I had narrowed and prepared for the car.

So on saturday morning I started working on the car, by removing the leafsprings, brakelines and driveshaft.
Since this is my daily driver I wanted to get the job done in a day. If the swap would fail for any reason, I would like to able to install the original 7-1/4" axle back under there again and try again later.
But you know there's suddenly a point of no-return when something snaps off, or I my case, the axle U-bolt-nuts where rusted pretty good to the U-bolts. I decided to cut the U-bolts with the angle grinder. This was my point-of-no-return moment... as I didn't have U-bolts for this small axle-housing.

So it was forward-thinking for this moment on...

I also decided, while everythings was apart, to replace to soft and worn rubber leafspring bushings for poly-urethane versions. This is where the fun started to begin.

I thought I had a good set of poly-bushings on the shelf, but they turned out to be too small for the front spring-eye. I felt SOL.
Started looking around in my garage for 'objects of usable material' which I could turn into bushings, but coudn't find anything useful.
I contacted a friend with a local partsstore if he had anything in poly-material lying around. He had a set of bushings for a Chevy Nova with the right diameter at least, which he dropped off shortly after, because my garage entry was blocked by my Dart up on jackstands.

Still I had to modify these bushings because they where too wide and, I found later on the inner bolt-hole was too small aswell. So glad I have a lathe at my disposal.
Spent way too much time on getting stuff cleaned and the bushings to fit, so it wasn't until early in the evening I was able to install the front eyes of leafsprings on the car again. After that I could drop the new rear end into them.
With the rear end in place, the rear springhangers could be pulled up to the car, and were mounted aswell. The right rear gave me troubles and didn't want to line up correctly. Probably because the rearaxle's springperches weren't quite correctly placed. With some pushing and pulling I was able to mount the rear hanger properly. Here aswell I spent a good amount of time on the springhanger.
After this fight I was able to install the shocks and rerouted the brakelines for the new axle.

Now came the time (22.00h already) of what I was looking up to all day; having to shorten the driveshaft about 2" because of the larger rear axle in there now.
I measured twice under the car for the distance to cut, but little did I know, I also had to cut 3 times into the driveshaft...
After marking the driveshaft, I cut nicely it with a pipe-wrench.
Only to find out there's another dampening tube inside! With this piece of extra tube in the way, there was no way I could install the yoke again into the driveshaft itself.
So I cut the driveshaft again a little higher up, so I could cut the inner tube short, and reweld to outer piece on the driveshaft again.
After again spending a lot of time getting the yoke seperated from the excess driveshaft tube, I was finally able to install in into the driveshaft again. 3 tackwelds and I could measure the driveshaft under the car for fitment. It was spot on.
Finished welding the driveshaft all around, but I was too lazy to take the U-joint off the yoke end, so all the grease dripped out. This U-joint was already pretty much worn, I was tired and wanted to go home hours ago, so I didn't care.

Installed the driveshaft under the car, quickly bled the brakes, slapped some wheels on and headed home at 00.30h for a good shower.

[Beagle]

Victory! The celebration is in driving it back home. Excellent.

I didn't follow the u-joint deal at the end, though. It did get a new u-joint and you don't have to pull anything back down, right?

[Blazerteam]

The joy of driving an old car daily...i bet you have alot of old parts lying around for this kind of adventures?..When you really need a nut or a bolt,its great to have a old one..just to could drive next day.

[BigBlockMopar]

no the old U-joint is still in the car. I will replace it on a later date (read: Probably when it becomes clear it wants to leave the drivetrain )

Yes, having plenty of old junk lying around is mandatory to get a job done!
Taking apart junkcars once in a while helps with that aswell. :o)
It's also very handy that I had access to the landlord's old tool-stash in the adjoining building my garage is in. Luckily he had a well sized pipe-cutter to cut the driveshaft with, a bigass wrench to straighten the springhanger with and have a 22mm drill-bit so I could drill out the bushings more easily with on my lathe.

Still on the list to do for the car is swapping the current 904-transmission for an A518 overdrive unit.
For this I will again need to shorten the driveshaft, but I think I'll have it done by a driveline-shop this time, so they can install a new U-joint and balance it at the same time.

Speaking of balancing, because I welded 2 fullcircles on the driveshaft, I would have expected quite some vibration during driving, but I could take the car upto 70mph with no serious issues today. There is some very slight amount of vibration noticable in the car, but it's not like anything is about to break.

I rebled the brakes today to get some more air out.

[Scott Liggett]

The seemingly simple swap jobs always turn into a fight. By the time your done, you're so wasted from the fight, you can't even enjoy the win in the fight. You just want to go to bed.

When I did the rear swap, suspension rebuild, engine rebuild on the Caprice, the U joint fell apart and ....well.... the rear u joint is now missing a single needle bearing. It makes a clunk noise now and again when changing gears. I'll change it if I ever go racing with it.

[BigBlockMopar]

Once the enthusiasm has been exhausted completely and you've been stumped down and motoring on in limp-mode after a job like this, just about everything else starts to fight you aswell. A simple extension cord used for your drill or extra lighting will just about snag on everything when you pull it along. Sockets drop and roll to the center of the car or right behind a tire. Not to mention the always present facial-itch, turning up the moment your hands are becoming black with dirt and grease.

But if there's one reassuring thing, it's that only the unexpected things go wrong.