Full Build: Turning A 1974 Dodge Dart Into A Pro Street Mopar

today on muscle car rick puts on his go getting bridges and goes car shopping the guys are in need of a new project to keep them busy in between oldsmobile pieces and wait till you see what they came up with muscle car starts right now [Music] hey guys now we have been cranking out some cars around here like limelight she's down the road and looking for some car shows to terrorize dark horse well she's waiting in the wings for some future upgrades because we want to see how much power we can get out of that little small block but we're not ready to do that yet now alternate ego well she's getting finished up over at her friend's place milestone custom paint and body and it won't be that long before she's pulling wheels at the track i know old mobile what's a roller but it needs a ton of man hours this thing is going to take a long time to build especially considering the level we're going to carry it to so we're hoping you guys can be patient with us on it we're going to be coming back to it periodically to keep you guys up to speed but we still need another project so we decided to go with something a little closer to what you guys may be building at home and that means that we need to find ourselves another fresh project it's been a while since we've used the m word around here mopar now my personal favorite a 68 dodge charger i would love to build one but let's be honest they're not exactly cheap to build but we got an idea we want to build a mopar but we don't want to spend 20 grand on a hollowed out hull of a kudo or challenger however there are a boatload of mopars out there that share similar advantages of their higher dollar cousins but without the price tag rick to the internet if you go to the usual classifieds and auction sites these things are falling off the screen and the best part is you can often find a real peach for under five grand well i think i found one we're on a way to go check out a 1974 dodge dart sport and just like its cousin the plymouth duster they're basically mopar's entry-level cars that means they're small and lightweight so it'll be perfect for what we have playing the dodge dart was conceived following the 1950 economic recession as a low-priced compact vehicle that could compete head-to-head with a vw beetle ford falcon and amc rambler the dart was thrown to the public in 1960 but set on the 118 inch wheelbase it was a little large to be considered compact by 63 the wheelbase had shrunk to 111 inches along with a change in body styles in 66 the d dart was introduced with a 275 horsepower 273 v8 which gave the mustangs and corvairs a real run for their money 1967 marked the year they realized that as power increased so did their sales numbers the body style changed to a more angular design which could also accommodate seven power plant choices in 1970 the dart went under the knife again and when it emerged it had a redesigned grille tail lamps and reshaped rear deck you could also get the now famous 340 engine as part of the rally package this style remained through 76 the last year of production there were over 4 million darts sold between 1960 and 1976 so there's plenty of virgin darts still out there just waiting for a little love what's up man you billy hey yep hey how's it going good my hair to check out a 74 dart sitting right here cool hey welcome back guys we're on our way to go take a look at what could be our newest project what's up man you billy hey yep hey how's it going good you're here to check out a 74 dart yep sitting right here cool what can you tell me about it it's got a 30 over 360 in it dakota fast speed and the body looks pretty solid looks like a little modification for the uh yeah dakota transmission yep that's all right so we're probably gonna have to end up doing something with that anyway where's the car from originally georgia georgia yep right up next to florida 360 30 over hemi would be tight squeezing there huh yeah just means you need a bigger shoe horn yeah all the seam sealer across here is all intact i mean seriously this is a solid car you can see all the the edges on the trunk lid we're all solid all the way around here this whole channel in here you can feel it's all nice and solid yeah it didn't get into anything under here the frame rails under here are really clean there's no buckling or anything up in here i mean what i can tell this thing's never been hit yeah i mean the rockers are all clean i think i just found our next project now granted we're going to be swapping out pretty much all the drivetrain on this thing but it's good to drive them anyway just to kind of get a feel for how solid the car is we got any rattles if it feels like parts are going to fall off let you know if the suspension is tight if the brakes are working what's serviceable and what is it [Music] [Applause] reverse today it wouldn't take much for us to make a nice little daily driver out of this thing but we're not the way this car is set up right now with the shackles the rake the scoop this dart does not have an identity crisis it knows exactly the air that it's from and it's proud of [Music] now some guys think that the later darts started getting ugly but the way we look at it the price starts getting pretty besides you can always take that extra cash and swap out the pieces you don't like for stuff that you do but the most important thing is it's still a mopar when you're and run for some fresh muscle it's a couple of things you should be sure to bring now this is cpi guide book kind of gives you a rough idea if what you're picking up is actually worth what you're paying for it now according to this in 1974 dodge dart sport in fair to good condition is worth from between 3 800 to about 68.25 if it was a six cylinder from the factory like this car is there's a trim tag up under the hood that'll pretty much give you a run down on everything you need to know about that car and all the equipment that it originally came with and you can go online and look up the code numbers for pretty much anything that dodge put on these cars back in the day now that's important if you're planning on doing a numbers matching restoration like a 340 duster and you're paying good money for a car that's supposed to be numbers matching this car on the other hand we already know that it was a factory six-cylinder car and it's not matching but that's okay because for what we have planned it's no big deal oh man looks like you got a pretty solid car here 4500 you got yourself pretty solid car you got yourself a deal one condition you got to help me load it all right well guys looks like we got our next project we'll see you back at the shop [Applause] after the break gutting a dodge the guys get busy on the dart by pulling out some of the creature comforts and explaining just how far this project is going to go hey y'all welcome back our new project this 74 dodge dart sport is in its new home and we're ready to start picking at it but before you can head down the road you got to know where you want to wind up and this is our destination we're planning on building a big bad loud and nasty mopar that's going to draw its dna from the heyday of the pro street movement we're going to tub and four link the rear end make some room for a lot of rubber hang a couple wheelie bars out the back to protect that rear bumper and then stuff it full of a whole bunch of go fast face melting grandma scaring goodies this is going to be a serious beast and the cherry on top is gonna be a big ol hole cut about right here no old school firebreather pro street car is complete without a three foot blower sticking out of the hood something that says yep you don't want none this car is gonna be pretty simple it's gonna look good but it's not going to be some trailer queen frame off restored type of thing the paint will be simple but functional all business if you will and that's why we're going to name this one project business time we're still on the hunt to try to find us an old-school 426 hemi but those things are a little hard to put your hands on we may go with a few other options in the big block family or heck we may even throw in a late model hemi along with the motor we're going to upgrade the suspension k-member rear axle heck you name it as far as the interior goes well with the exception of the roll cage and the wheel tubs obviously we're gonna try to keep the interior as close to stock as possible i mean i'm not even dead set against keeping the original bench seat and recovering it or we may end up going with stock type buckets i mean honestly it's kind of up in the air but the important thing is that we don't want to lose that cool dodge vibe so we can go ahead and remove the parts that we know are going to be replacing you need to handle that i got it one of the fun things about pulling interiors out is that you can find all kinds of stuff loose change baseball cards the possibilities are endless our dodge here on the other hand it's been picked pretty clean about the coolest thing i found was 23 cents [Music] obviously this headline here has seen better days but you still want to be careful with it because as bad as it looks it can always be recovered you can clean that off put some new material on it and call it good even if you can't use this still be good for a pattern as long as you keep it in one piece we're way ahead of the game in regards to the floors now we know that we're going to have to modify the tunnel quite a bit so it doesn't have to be perfect the floorboards are in good enough shape to make a decent start and the back end is all right but we're going to cut it out anyway now look what i just found the factory broadcast sheet aka build sheet you see back in 1974 well dealers didn't exactly carry 900 cars in the lot like they do now he actually went in sat down with a salesperson and filled out an order for him now that form got sent up to detroit where it got attached to a car and as it went down the assembly line all the options that you checked off they got checked off on this and installed in the vehicle now most of these got thrown behind the back seat which is right where i found this one now if you've got a super rare highly optioned car then this can add a lot of value to it but the options on our car they're kind of a different sort of rare as in there's rarely any i mean cigarette lighter and air conditioning was it but this thing is perfect for what we're gonna do chop it up today on muscle car how to get a unibody dodge ready for massive street strip power with a tricked-out front suspension plus how to back half and hang four-length suspension to a dana-style rear and a custom spoiler from scratch [Music] hey guys how's it going i sure hope you have an appetite for suspension today because we have a vehicle over here and dire need of some attention now last time we got started on converting this thing into our pro street style mopar it's a 1974 dodge dart that we affectionately refer to as business time we picked this thing up for 4 500 bucks which isn't half bad considering a person could use it for a daily driver now since we're going to be replacing the 360 the front k-member well pretty much everything underneath this thing rather than try to piecemeal it apart we're just going to drop the bolts out and drop the whole thing out from underneath stop to undo that and then drop out the four bolts right there and there and the whole thing will drop right out the bottom the torsion bars can be a real pain to get out since replacements are available in the aftermarket we're going to go ahead and just torch these out we knew we needed to upgrade our k-member and front suspension because we're planning on throwing enough power at this old mopar to dang near send it to the moon so we gave riley motorsports a call and they had exactly what we needed in order to make room for the new k-member we've got to get rid of the factory bump stops drilling out these spot welds helps keep down the amount of torching i'll have to do that reduces the amount of torch damage you could end up with and have to go back and fix make sure you do fill any holes a coat of dupli-color edge primer and some semi-gloss black will protect it and make it look real nice and then we can plug in our new shiny k-member [Music] now we're also going to be using riley's tubular control arms now these things aren't just adapted from some other vehicle to work on this these are specifically designed and built for this kit we're using a dab of blue loctite on all the threads to keep everything in place now this grid is also going to allow us to back some of these out if we ever need to in the future riley also sent us the shocks now these are fully adjustable lab coats all wrapped up in qa1 [Music] coils [Music] okay that's bench mucked up now this kit will let us get rid of that old steering box and put a rack and pinion in its place and that'll also give us a lot better turning radius going to upgrade the brakes with a set that we got from wilwood don't forget when you put on your new front brakes that you gotta pack the bearings with grease otherwise you'll chew the spindle right off the front of your car these hubs and calipers are made out of aluminum which will save us about 20 pounds on each side over what the stock brakes would have been we would also hook this up with a set of their pads these have a very high coefficient of friction and at the end of the day that means more stopping power well that auto dramatically improved the drivability over that 1974 technology we still got a half a car to do though and we found us an expert that knows the ins and outs of rear suspension like nobody's business after the break the guys get a helping hand from a pro in the world of back halfing as project business time makes room for some huge rare rubber hey guys well we got the k-member all bolted up and the front suspension hung to keep all those parts from scraping down the drag strip we added a set of weld racing wheels and skinny little front runners from mickey thompson as far as the back end goes well i don't know of a skinny tire on the market that's going to be able to handle all the horsepower that we want to put down so that means it's time to man up and grab the big rubbers now these are 33 by 18 5 mickey thompson e.t streets and they're wrapped around weld racing forged aluminum wheels those wheels are super strong and super lightweight these sticky mickeys here they're going to do a heck of a drop getting all that horsepower to the ground and you see these little slits right here well the d.o.t considers that tread and that means that these are street legal those bad boys are never going to fit so we've got to make some room underneath we brought in someone who's a go-to guy when it comes to roll cages and back halves this is scott winney from s w race cars scott tell them what we got going on we're going to put this back half in your car when you guys called us up we custom built a frame to the width that you need for your car four link tubes all the hardware for the four link and there's a couple other goodies we included that make it easier to build the car now we're going to be going with a four link set up now another option that guys go with is a ladder bar which is a great way to go later on in the show we're going to be explaining the difference between those two types of suspensions but for now our priority is getting all that shoved up inside of that [Music] we're going to find the center of this wheel it's a 16 inch wheel now we're going to level up from the center of the rear wheel and then we're going to put a center line here that'll be our center line all right cut it up i'll be back tomorrow let me know how you make out [Music] [Applause] a lot of times when people are building a car like ours they resort to a 9 inch setup for the rear end the fact of the matter is we want to keep ours as much dodge as possible and there are a few options out there that can withstand that type of abuse so we gave moser engineering a call and they sent us this one of their m60 built to order rear end packages this is a 35 spline dana 60 style unit and the axles and housings have been cut down to a custom length to meet our needs it has beefy quarter inch wall axle tubes along with this aluminum diff cover for added strength now we already know that we want to keep the interior in this thing as stock as possible so that means that we're going to keep the stock floor pan from here forward that way the original seat carpet everything will just go right back in from here back on the other hand well that stuff is all getting gone i'm going to cut it right up over the top that way we have a nice platform here to attach our tin work onto when we do all the tubs now this can be one of the scary parts of this kind of a build if it makes you uncomfortable to do this for the first time with a rare or expensive car hey there's nothing at all wrong with finding something cheap to race shoot you could even buy a rusted out piece of junk from your local salvage yard there it is and cut that thing up into oblivion while rick's been cutting up our dodge i've been busy mocking up our mojo rear to our s w back half kit we decided to go with the four link setup because of the adjustability but snw also offers a ladder bar setup which is commonly used scott let's talk about the differences of the two while they're both performance oriented a ladder bar and a four link are two different ways of leveraging the rear tire onto the ground a ladder bar has very limited adjustability usually for the pinion angle if at all a four link on the other hand has a multitude of different ways to adjust power leverage and launch behavior depending on your car's tires and center of gravity [Music] we're ready to set our pinion angle and our bracket placement on the housing you could do this under the car but it's a lot easier to get to everything out in the open we're going to bring the pinion up to match the angle of our brackets bring her up some more need to measure our housing width what do you got 39 39 25 and a half is outside the outside on the brackets with a difference of 13 and a half inches divided by two gives us six and three quarters so we need six and three quarter inches from the outside of our bracket to our housing flange it'll come my way about 5 8 of an inch then we need to check our [Music] bracket if you remember back the very first mark that scott made i'm doing the other side of it this right here is going to be the axle center line we're going to line back up on the quarter measure back half the diameter of your and tube gives you the center we measured our rocker width now we're going to trim the main cross member so it fits right in we're going to take four inches off of each side and we'll be ready to go well i got all the guts chopped out of her dodge here and we got a hole just about big enough to drive a smart car through but now the fun part starts and that's putting all the new guts back in it all starts out with a six by six by eighth inch steel plates now these things get mounted in between the back half kit and the original body they help distribute the load makes the whole thing a lot stronger now before we took anything apart we marked the axle center line on the piece of tape on the quarter panel well scott transferred that to the floor down here then measured forward to where the leading edge of the back half kit is going to be now you got to remember that that front cross member is two inches wide so you take that two inches cut it down to one inch off of this mark and right about there is going to be the center of our six inch plate i'm also tacking in a rear cross member that scott cut out for us and then we can measure from there to our axle center mark we're going to measure from our axle center line mark back our 42 inches that we just measured in the car and mark our frame rail so we can trim the back off and it'll plug right in while we sit in our frame rails we need to level them out there you go that's more like it and use a plumb bob to set them in position horizontally some eighth inch wall rectangular tubing will make for some great frame connectors i just got to make a little room for him to poke through the floor but at the end of the day it'll add a lot of strength to the car [Music] that's what one of our back half kits look like in a 74 dart now i haven't flattened these tires but there is no amount of push and shoving that's going to get this tire through that wheel well so that means we're going to have to get rid of some more of that dodge sheet metal [Music] once we get the motor in it it'll mash the front down just about where it needs to be setting out back we use a set of scott's mock-up shocks so it's sitting right at ride height well we're starting to get a pretty good idea the amount of attitude this thing is going to have when it hits the street now we still got to do wheel tubs and a bunch of interior tin and a full roll cage will definitely help stiffen up the spine in this old girl but one stitch at a time she'll get there today on muscle car it's the right way to build a full race-ready 10-point roll cage for our dodge complete with swing out bars plus we'll head to america's ultimate mopar boneyard for original parts for our compact dart [Music] hey y'all last time we upgraded our front suspension and with the help of scott winnie from snw race cars laid in an entire back half kit into our 74 dodge dart project business time this car is going to be a blown white knuckle street strip a body with big power and massive rubber in the process we cut a lot of sheet metal and bracing out of our dodge so to keep it from folding up like origami going down the track we've got to get a full on cage put in this thing the s w sent us every tube that we need to keep us up to spec the cage that we're going to put in the dart is one of our 10-point kits it's made out of 134 wall inch and 5 8 tubing not only does it make the car safer but it stiffens the car up ties everything together before we can start installing our cage we've got to build a brace that connects from the subframe connector back over to the rocker panel all right we're looking at about a 12 and a half there but we've got to cut the floor out also we need to go ahead and mark that and get it out of the way [Music] i'll use a matco die grinder with a cut off wheel to clear out the sheet metal then i'll run it off the rocker with an air chisel [Music] once the surface is prepped we can move on we've got our tubing cut for our brace but before we can do that we've got to weld on a plate just like we did back here the reason you want to weld on the plate is it actually broadens the joint it gives you a little more reinforcement because if you weld it just right around here it could rip off on this thinner sheet mode now first thing we got to put in there is the main hoop why because everything gets attached to it because right there is where that bar is going to come in contact first now it's time to attach the main hoop to the structure of the car now to do this we're going to use these outriggers over here that we added now the wall thickness of these is adequate to attach the roll bar directly to that means we don't have to add the plates but if you're mounting it to say the floor then you do have to add the plates that way your thickness is up enough to meet specs it never hurts to double check your measurements to see that you're still square before you tack your tubes in now with rick properly installed in the car we've got to do a measurement between this back bar and the back of his head because you want it to be within six inches of your helmet come on let's hear her comment now about my big head well that's regardless i know it's coming now right there we're right at seven but if you was to add in the thickness of a helmet plus his ego we're well within six now we need to determine the height of our rear seat bar you want it four inches below your shoulder nobody move and nobody gets hurt a rubber mallet does a great job of massaging the tubes into place and then it gets tacked in we're ready to put on our rear braces but we got a little bit of sheet metal still in the way here but that's all right it's nothing to saw ain't going to fix [Music] problem solved now these braces are going to run from the rear frame rails all the way up to the main hoop and with our angles marked we can chop on these as well after the break the dodge gets a totally tubular treatment business time gets built up inside like a fortress and are you looking for some dodger plymouth parts you may want to talk to these guys hey guys we're about knee deep into roll bar territory here with our dodge dart i'm getting all the tubes cut and fit that's going to attach onto our main hoop now these rear bars i'm going to tack them in the rear but not the front i'll explain why in a second we got our halo cut and notched and ready to weld onto our main tube now this thing serves a couple purposes it attaches the front bars to the main hoop and it helps to protect the roof from caving in just in case you try to make it down the track on your lid now i'm not going to tack these bars to the main hook quite yet because i still need to come in here with the halo now i need this in place though so i can get the halo in the right position now once it's tacked i got to lean this forward to weld the back side of it so these are actually going to act as my placeholders for when i put this whole thing back up in place then i can weld that we can now move on to the front bars which will complete the main part of the cage around the driver's compartment we want to keep the bars nice and tight tucked into the dash keep them out of the way that means we're going to put the bottom of it about right here and since we'll be marrying it to the floor pan we have to lay down one of these thick plates that come with the kit so that our footing will be thick enough to pass inspection with the top of the tube you want to make sure to place the bar parallel with the a-pillar that way when sitting in the car it's not really obstructing any of your view you want to keep it out of your line of sight also it's okay to place the tube on the outside of the radius of your bend that way it gains you a little room around your steering wheel this front glass is ate up and was going to go away anyhow so now's a good time to chuck it [Music] one good way to make your notches for your tubes is to use a grinder it lets you have a lot of freedom when it comes to the shape of your notches well it looks like that fits pretty good now we got to put our plate in trim off just a little for it mark where we want the plate to go and burn it into place first i'm going to burn away some of the old seam sealer so i don't have to fight with it while i'm trying to weld with the top of the plate burned in i'll heat and bend the rest of it to match the contours of the floor and as different points make contact i can weld them to the floor then continue shaping the plate [Music] i can set my tubes into place and pop it in and check to make sure my door and windows work like they're supposed to once i know that i'll burn it in real nice sweet well we just about got the cage buttoned up in this thing all we like is a few more tubes shoot when we're done this thing's going to be tougher than woodpecker lips that's pretty tough stick around and see what you can do about having to contort around door bars to get into your race car then ride along with the guys and see what 60 acres of mopars look like hey guys now we're ready to keep moving forward on installing the roll cage into our dodge we've got the main hoop seat bars rear bars halo and the a-pillar bars all tacked into place and now we need to install the floor bars now these are required if the floor has been heavily modified or eliminated i think this car falls into that category now this will help tie the back end into the front end plus this thing ever tries to crawl over a guardrail like a spider monkey give us a little bit extra protection like we did with the other bars we'll cut it down to size then use a grinder to notch it and give it a nice fit well you got the side bars ready to go in they're all trimmed and fit and cut ready to get tacked in now i already know that this bar is going to set into the right place because when we had a seat in here this bar right here came just about here across my back and by regulation the sidebar needs to be between your shoulder and your elbow so i already know that this is going to be in the right spot now there's still a couple bars that need to be put in place but we're not going to put them in quite yet we've got the dash bar that either needs to go down underneath here in which case it may be interfering with our feet and our legs trying to get to the pedals it could go across here but that means that the glove box door and the gauges are going to be blocked forever more or we could move it up a little bit higher keep it tired of the dash but then it could be interfering with the steering wheel so we still got a little bit of stuff to work out but i think i want to get the gauges installed get the new dash in get the rest of that stuff in place and then we'll deal with that bar but there is one last thing that we can do to our roll cage and that's install a swing out kit now side bars for safety well they need to be there but installing a kit like this makes it a whole lot easier to get in and out now it does look a little bit confusing like this but once it's installed it'll all make sense the first step in installing a swing outside bar is cutting up the bar that you just welded in place these brackets need to sit right over the top of wherever it is that you cut through that too because half of it's going to be welded and the other half is going to be where the actual locator pin goes in so this cut needs to be far enough back that you're going to be able to get in and out of the car without catching your back on it but down low enough that it's not going to catch on your quarter panel either now anytime you want to make a nice straight cut on a tube like this a nice little trick is to use a hose clamp because the hose clamp is going to center itself on that tube that way you know you've got a straight cut i'll start the cut using a big grinder with a cutting wheel on it but i'm going to switch to a smaller one to finish it since the tube may move and i don't want that big grinder to bind up and plant a couple hundred cutting wheel shards in my face now you can kind of see where the bolt is going to go through there and actually form the hinge which is going to let that bar come out but that means that i need to go drill a hole and install my sleeve and with the hole drilled for the sleeve i can burn it all in and notch out the end of the tube to give it room to swivel in the hinge [Music] then we can pop in the latch at the top mark this end and install the sleeve we've got it in there nice and smooth and it opens and shuts with no problem and that's going to make getting in and out of this thing a heck of a lot easier that's about as far along as we can go with the roll cage for now until we get the drivetrain in which as i mentioned earlier we don't have yet but i can give you a hint as to what we're going to be putting in that engine compartment it starts with an h and ends with emmy coming up it's the big mopar graveyard in the sky well actually it's in alabama [Music] [Applause] hey guys now you may have noticed we're on a little bit of a field trip today and that's because we're on the hunt for some odds and ends for a little dart project that we like to call business time one of the things we're looking for is a pair of bucket seats because we want to keep our car all dodged instead of doing it the easy way and just throwing in a pair of race seats now 74 darts like ours well they had some seriously huge bumpers and we're looking to reduce the amount of real estate that she takes up on the front end and her butt end and one way of doing that is to swap those bumpers out for 73 an earlier style and since we're on the hunt for a few original mopar pieces we knew exactly who to call these guys steven's performance in anderson alabama is known as the world's largest vintage mopar salvage operation they've been recycling old school dodges in plymouth since 1976. if anybody can hook us up with these pieces we know they got us covered and the guy who holds the pink slips to some of the coolest cars on the planet is this guy right here mr ted stevens how you doing man good rick nice to meet you hey now when they say that you have the largest vintage mopar dismantling yard on earth how many acres you guys taking up uh right now we're at 58. uh started at five and then it's grown steadily since then pretty good sized chunk of dirt how many cars you have on there somewhere between two and three thousand darts demons dusters challengers chargers cudas furies you name it from 1962 to 1974 we've got mopar made it you got it we have it well let's sneak out to the yard and see what we can find for our old dart what do you think let's go after you sir [Music] oh man ted is that what i think it is uh yep that's a real daytona killed by a cement truck in gadsden alabama in 1971. we bought it from a guy that was using it for a yard ornament so we're basically doing the same thing hits the heart in the right front drove the spindle up to the rocker panel wrinkled the roof and everything all up you know it wasn't repairable yeah this happened but so it's been sitting like this since 1970 1971. if you think that the same inventory has been sitting around here since the 70s getting picked apart think again they're constantly on the hunt for fresh cars this the one this is it i think this set here will work good they're out of a 72 model they got the right tracks and everything on us it should work out well since we're building kind of a custom car here we'd like to be so year specific no no i'll get this one get that one tom yeah they really don't look that bad all they need is a set of covers on it they look good this one works they just need a car to put around it [Laughter] now one thing that really sets stevens apart from your average wrecking yard is these guys don't just chop cars up to get what they need they're more like surgeons they very carefully dismantle these things and save every little bit and piece because you never know what the next guy is going to need thank you much sir holy cow put this thing on a diet even the guys that work here only have eyes for mopars and ole rex here rest of them junk well he loves these things high dollar merchandise [Music] we found the bumpers and seats we wanted but there's no way that we could leave without looking at some of the old cars and talking to ted about some of his unique pieces here on top of the hill we got a 70 46 pack challenger plum crazy purple this is a 72 challenger rally these cars had a unique stripe package that started in a scoop that was mounted on the fender here ran back on the fender onto the door i'll show you what it looked like on the door right down here and this is where it comes back onto the door here runs down the store heading toward the quarter panel there's a story in how every single one of these cars ended up here and man we wish we had time for all of them but we did manage to burn the whole day on the ones that we could i think these parts are going to throw some life back into our old dodge and it's a good thing there's people around like mr ted that's keeping these dodges on the road i want to say thank you tommy come back any time i'm glad to help you with your mopar needs well it's about time to get this stuff back to the shop and keep rolling on a dart project if you guys have any questions about anything that you saw on the show today hop on over to powerblocktv.com and check it all out but for this week we're out of time so until next time we're out of here today on muscle car our a body dodge gets hemified with a late model monster that was born in horsepower tv's dinosaur and celebrity builder steve mink is here to jump in and lend a hand to wedge that blown bad boy into our pro-street project well we've been plugging away at project business time and we've come to a big fork in the road this old girl is ready for a power plant and we knew we had to do something special for this old mopar we hollered at the boys down in horsepower and we put our noggins together the solution wasn't just to think outside of the box we set the box on fire and ran it over with a truck telling the tail of this engine requires a good bit of imagination not to mention a boatload of ingenuity arrington performance is the go-to guys when it comes to late model chrysler power they took a modern 6-1 and board and stroked it to a true 426 cubic inches then they did something that nobody has ever done before they plugged in a wyan 871 huffer on top of it along with twin holley carbs keeping it at a reserved six pounds of boost it's knocking on the door of 700 ponies that should keep it nice and streetable but it's still plenty mean enough to demand some serious respect in your neighborhood when it comes time to center down the track a pulley swap and some carb rejecting will give us a sizable power boost but for now the numbers to remember late model 426 871 wine blower you ain't going to see very many of these things running around but i'm going to need a hand cramming this giant motor off into our car so i brought in a hum dinger you guys may remember steve mink he's helped out a few times on the search and restore show he gets the pleasure helping me cram this franken motor off into our dodge and it's a good thing i've been around you hollywood types before it'll help me get past some of the sparkle and really get down to doing a good job putting this thing in sparkle oh steve's been around the block a couple of times he learned the ins and outs from a couple of guys he worked with at a younger age fred and denny at lloyd brothers automotive and chris dixon of wounded knee motors in toledo ohio he cut his teeth doing basic stuff and grunt work worked in the custom scene for a time and eventually found himself working with hollywood productions and show cars incorporated he was a part of the team that brought the batmobile to life for tim burton's 1989 batman movie starring michael keaton and jack nicholson after a few years of touring the festivals with the batmobile and making personal appearances as robocop seriously as robocop he had to quit shaking hands and go back to pulling wrenches in 2000 he followed a cowgirl named tayna and pitched his teepee in tulsa where he opened his own shop called conestoga motors which he still runs today thanks tom thanks well i tell you what mr robocop toss that thing on and see how it fits and let's see if your bionic arms can help me put in that hemi well if you set out to be different tom i'd say you got the job done but still need to get all that power from the front of the car to the back of the car and i think this will do the job nicely for you tci has taken a 4l80e transmission and made it adaptable to gm mopar or ford engines and has engineered it from a four-speed into an overdrive 6b the beauty of this unit is that you can throw over 800 horsepower at it even with its six forward gears the kit comes with the cooler fluid and their ez tcu unit which we're going to program later on as for torque converter tci built us this custom unit specific for our setup we decided to go with something with a 2800 stall range to keep it fun at the track and still streetable now for all you guys that are sitting at home and are a little bit confused about this stall setup stuff sit back let me explain it to you you see torque converters are built with one thing in mind transferring rotational power from the engine to an automatic transmission they do this by using the engine to turn an impeller with a series of vanes attached to it when the engine reaches stall speed the fluid is thrown to the outside of the torque converter body by centrifugal force and redirected by the veins in the impeller the fluid begins to spin a turbine which is blind into the transmission's input shaft the stall of the converter simply refers to the engine speed required before the turbine begins to turn the input shaft this is commonly adjusted by making the converter body smaller and or changing the pitch of the veins on the impeller and turbine to go with those goodies tci loaded us up with one of their performance shifters which helps you hit the right gear in a hurry and looks spiffy too you can run it in automatic or with these two buttons you can run it through the gears manually what do you say we start taking the blower off this thing so we get it up on the hoist can you do more work than me sometimes early in the week how much does a new hemi weigh stick around to find out and learn about trimming your tunnel to accommodate a big-bodied slush box welcome back folks we're going to get this blown hemi ready to live in our pro street dart and that involves pulling the huffer off the top so we can get a hold of it with the chain before we mate this motor up to the transmission we decided we wanted to check something out an original 426 hemi tipped the scales around 840 to 845 pounds i don't care who you are that's a lot of weight to having to find into one of these cars well i got these scales here so let's just see how much this late model hemi weighs what are you guessing mate this thing's got a lot of aluminum on it it's still a hemi i'm going to say 575 you know that'd be pretty good if it was considering that other one was you know 800 plus and plus this one's gonna have that blower on top of it i think it'd be close to 800 or something so now you're changing yourself no no it's 575 to 575. 509 pounds without the blower sure what do you guess this thing's gonna weigh so far your record's not that great i know maybe i should just leave it alone and do my job 635 still a lot lighter than that old big block a little bit more time then i'll start cranking it okay take her straight down a couple inches tom okay good good good go ahead go down a little bit okay yeah we're good hey hold it hold it hold it hold it this car had late model transmission in it when it came here so it's already been modified a little bit we're going to get rid of that piece and start making room for that big 4l80 transmission a body saw is always a good choice for trendy tunnel clearancing because it cuts quickly and there are no sparks flying or being blasted into our nice shiny parts we'll hold up the tail shaft with a jack and get to work on our motor mounts normally this riley motorsports k-member would come with the motor mounts already attached but we didn't know what kind of motor we were going to be running so we asked them to send the mounts unattached now with the transmission in place we're ready to build us a cross member looks like we're going to need a mount a piece of tubing some plate to tie back into these subframe connectors that we put in place look like it'd be too hard at all the mount that we're using is a lakewood polyurethane transmission mount this is a gm style piece since it's going to be bolting up to a 4l80 transmission case we're sitting at about 28. the crossmember will be made out of 5 8 120 wall tubing it's got to be able to stand up to a lot of abuse so there's no reason not to make sure that it's going to be sturdy these holes in the mounting plate will allow us to make a new detachable so you don't have to pull the motor to get the transmission out of the car one little trick to make your life easier we've clamped a couple of plates to the frame rails to hold up our pieces while we tack everything together we're also adding some gussets to give the urethane mount a little more stability now that we have the end plates the transmission mount and the guts is tacked in place we're gonna go ahead drop it down finish weld it on the bench and then set it back up in there one more time as a test fit to hold everything in place i'll drill and tap the frame rails to make a place for the mounting plate bolts which will allow us to remove the entire unit does it look like that hemi's missing something how about that big fatty boo betty 871 blower coming up this big power adder goes back home well our hem is sitting pretty back in project business time we're ready to put the cherry back on top of this motor and bolt it down as we found out earlier this cherry weighs better than 120 pounds and when it's on top of that engine it's probably gonna be a little bit top-heavy but we got plans to build something to keep it nice and stable yeah that is heavy watch your fingernails that thing looks awesome man yeah this car is going to be one bad animal tell you what the stance has got and that blower that could eat a small kid [Music] do you realize how big the hole is going to be in the hood we're going to want to try and keep the torque and the top heavy nature of this motor from possibly breaking our motor mounts and giving us even bigger problems one solution to this is to give it a couple more anchor points with engine plates there's a few different ways to install an engine plate some builders prefer using a mid plate which boasts in between the motor and transmission while others like to tie off the front of the block and connect it to a structural component here under the hood heck i've even seen guys use chain and cable and a tie down just to get it to work we're going to opt for front motor plates to limit the movement of the engine which we're going to make from scratch in order to do that a good place to start will be with the template [Music] yeah my lines are about as straight as a question mark but a straight edge will help me look a whole lot better [Music] here's a cool trick take the round end of a ball peen hammer and hit the perimeter of the hole to show you where the bolts are going to go what we're going to do is mount the motor plate to the front of the head using existing hardware holes once we've done that we'll take the other end of the motor plate and connect it to the stock front subframe to mount it to the chassis the plate itself is going to be born for some quarter inch aluminum plate you can use steel but aluminum is way lighter obviously plus it looks real spiffy with the rest of our aluminum top end once i pick it back up off the floor i'll use the belt sander to knock off the stalag tights because when you're in that engine bay pull it on a wrench and sling your arm across one of those burrs be ready to grab a box of bandages i've taken a mounting tab and bolted it to the end of our motor plate then we're going to take a standard sway bar bushing assembly and use it as an insulator to cut down to some of the engine's vibration we've decided to put a couple holes in our piece purely for aesthetic purposes we're going to try and carry this seam through the car on things such as the front bumper and into our interior panels something else to consider when you have a powerful engine up front if you don't take the steps to keep it from bouncing around you're going to end up with a car that's hard to handle it's going to be hard to dial in your suspension when you have a third of ton of metal up in front of the car bouncing back and forth no normal hood's going to work with a big blower car but we've got just the thing to make room for it we've got a lot done today on our pro street 74 dart project business time whole steve mink jumped in to help he didn't do a whole lot but hey we like to have them old canadians around but we did pull the blower off dropped the motor into the car built the crossmember put the blower back on and built a set of plates to help keep the engine right where it needs to be now we're going to get started with putting the hood back on our old dodge you guys may remember steven's performance down in alabama we took a ride down there and picked up a couple bucket seats and some bumpers for our old dives and our first hood that we had on it was kind of jacked up they helped us out with this one so now we get to start with a clean slate needless to say this one's going to require its own set of modifications because of the supercharger sticking out of the engine bay we're hoping to keep this one hinged because removing them would make it a lift off and hard to handle without a helping hand basically what we're going to do is we're going to measure the opening into the engine bay with the hood removed after we take those measurements both front to rear and side to side now that i know the measurements from the furthest point forward on the blower which obviously is the pulleys in the belt i'll make a measurement from there to the edge of our hood opening i'll do the same thing on all four sides and what that'll do is that'll give me a forward most point a rear most point and the same on the left and right sides that'll give us a good starting point for the opening hole that we start to cut in the hood for the blower without making it too big or without making it mis-shaped we have two objects one being the linkage the other being the fuel pressure regulator that are also going to take a little bit of trimming around the hole so i'm going to make a basic cut to clear both of those items so we don't have to send tommy after another hood i did the old measure twice and hopefully cut only once we'll see how it comes out [Music] i'm going to take a couple of these and put them on top of the carburetors to keep any of those metal shavings from falling inside of our motor since all this trimming is going to be making a bunch of them quite like that sound yeah we're way off yeah we got to make that a little bigger actually for our first cut that's not bad we just got to make a few cuts here and go out slowly to get our gap for our belt because of the angle and we should be good to go [Music] okay we're in good shape with the hood if it's nice and tight around the blower without any big gnarly gaps around it it's important to take a process like this slow and pay attention to what you're doing because a bad hack job can ruin the look of a car and not to mention once you cut it it's kind of hard to uncut it in the near future we're going to put some hood pins on it both for safety and to get us closer to that old school pro-street look we're looking for and speaking of looks we've got one more thing we want to show you guys before we go just as a little bit of a tease for what's coming up if you've got any questions about anything you saw on the show today go over to powerblocktv.com on muscle car our pro street throwback gets some love as project business time receives tubs in the back hood reinforcement in the front and exhaust underneath not to mention a bumper swap and mods that bring the look of this old dodge up to par [Applause] [Music] hey y'all thanks for joining us today our pro street dart project business time is going to get up close and personal with the business end of a mig welder we've got these 33 by 1850 mickey thompson et streets wrapped around a set of 15-inch weld racing forged aluminum wheels of course the only way this setup is going to fit in this a-body was with some heavy modifications with some help from scott winning of s w race cars we knocked out the floor of our old dart and plugged in one of snw's back half kits of course it's time to put the floors back in which also includes our big old tubs that go around our street slicks snw offers a sheet metal kit which we're going to use to put on the bottom of the car to help sew it back up they're bead rolled for strength so that they won't wobble or sound like rolling thunder if we should happen to drive over a set of railroad tracks the radius of our tires will be the starting point for the height of our tubs we've got the rear at right height and we're building in a couple of inches extra in space for suspension travel tom will mark where we're cutting off the bottom of the inner panel and then working his way around the edge he'll make marks every two inches which i would duplicate on the top panel number six is 21 and three quarter okay the purpose of those marks is to tell us how far the quarter panel is from the frame rail so that we can cut the top of the tub to fit right up against it next we can take the inner panel and lop off the excess on the bottom of it so that is flush with the frame rail now to join the side panel and the top panel together s w uses a pittsburgh style joint now whenever they roll this joint into it it's always a little bit tight so it's good practice to take a screwdriver or pry tool and open it up just a bit okay now i've got to try to wrap this flat panel around the crescent panel but before i do that i want to flex this one or put a little curve into it makes it easier to do and you got to be careful when you're doing what tom's doing because you don't want to kink the original joint that's along the edge in order to fit the crusher panel to the flat panel take this piece slide it into the joint these pittsburgh joints are common in the land of heating and airwork but neither of us are hvac pros so it's good to have two people to wrestle this thing around and get it lined up looks pretty good our grinder will give the edge of the top panel a seat along the corner which is where it will get tacked in place all right we've got our tub where it needs to be so we can go ahead and fit the rear panel it's going to attach to the inner quarter and the frame rail that's all it is to it just a little bit of measuring and a whole lot of fitting now you guys seen us make these kind of things all the time it's just a 90 degree break with a shrink to form whatever we're working on i've measured from the bottom of the curve to where we want the back of our next panel to be which was 16 and a half inches and we're going to make us a mark right here on the leading edge of the curve of the panel and measure out 16 and a half inches make sure you don't measure from the edge in because it will mess up your result [Music] now i can cut our panel down to width and on this piece i'm going to make life a little easier by attaching it to the factory floor instead of the quarter panel no need to reinvent the wheel when this piece will suit our needs just fine i'll also use our metal brake to put an angle at the top of the panel so that it lays down flush there's still some metal left to cut on the floor and there's several ways to do it we can bust out the torches or even a cutting wheel but trust me one of the best purchases you'll ever make is a good quality plasma cutter this miller spectrum 625 extreme plasma cutter weighs in at just 21 pounds but it cranks out 40 amps which means it's rated up to 5 8 thick material it can plug in either 120 or 240 volts making it portable powerful and versatile [Music] i've punched some holes in our new panel so that we can do some plug welds and i also cut a couple notches so that it can clearance the beads that are rolled on our new tubs that way when we're all said and done we can turn out a lot nicer piece while tommy was doing that i cleaned up the area where i made my cuts and extended the rear cross member out to the rear quarter panel that's pretty much the procedure to burn in these floor panels and now we get to repeat it a bunch of times and that can take a long long long long time well that takes care of the lion's share of the tin work on this floor we're going to finish up where we've cut here as well as the transmission tunnel and as you've seen we have a boatload of button welds we have to grind so if i get the cameraman to leave us alone for a little while is your hood flaccid and floppy well we've got the mod to stiffen that right up for you and later miner mods for header fitment and a sexy bumper treatment oh yeah you guys may remember when we shoved that engine into our dart we had to cut a hole in our new hood to make room for that big old 871 blower and now it's time to clean this thing up a little bit when we cut that big hole in it it left a few gnarly spots that don't really look all that great not to mention if we don't fix them can cause us some issues later down the road for one thing the inner structure hanging down there for all the world to see doesn't look all that great and when the car gets up to speed this part of the hood can be flexing flipping and flopping and all kind of crazy like so we're going to tidy it up a bit just to make it look nice and then we're going to reinforce it to make it a little stronger the purpose of the tape is give me something to reference as a nice straight edge and make sure to cut away any excess that could get in the way of my grinder to get around the corners i can draw a line around the outside of a socket this works really well and you can change the size of the socket based on what you're working with an electric grinder with a flap wheel is a great way to line up your edge against the tape ensuring that you've got a nice straight hole [Music] in the tighter is we're going to use this carbide bit to make shorter work of it the paddle wheel is just too large to get into the small crosses and we should be able to do this pretty easily now that makes got our hole dialed in exactly where it needs to be we can finish it off with a few pieces of metal the idea that we have is to take a few strips of metal and cap off the inside of the hole of the hood not only will this improve the appearance but it also gives the hood some strength that it needs by connecting the upper and lower panel back together [Music] i'll use an air grinder to give us a good welding surface all right all we're going to do is lay this up there tack weld it as we go it's okay if the strip that you have is wider than what you're trying to cap off all you have to do then is come back and grind off the excess right before you do the welding sometimes i use a straight edge to push the panel where it needs to be that way it helps keep the metal nice and straight [Music] to get to the back side i'll take the hood off the stand and tack in the bottom of the strips all right with our pieces tacked in on the top side and the bottom we can trim off the excess with a body saw now you don't have to do this you could just grind it all off but this will save you some cleanup time i'll bust that electric grinder back out and use it to flatten down the strips against the hood now all we have to do is a little bit more welding finish it up with some grinding that's all it is to it after the break our a body's exhaust gets an exit strategy worthy of its pro street heritage plus the dart gets a new chin what is it moving to la hey guys welcome back we're getting ready to put the exhaust system in our dart and obviously this is one of those applications where we can't use any run-of-the-mill system especially with this k-member and that motor so we knew we were going to need a set of custom headers for this application cook's headers that's what the k is performance recommended since nascar race teams use these headers we had no problems giving them a call these are a set of long tube headers designed specifically for our engine with the o2 sensor bung already welded in and if you look here you can see that our flanges have just been tacked in place instead of finish welded so we can adjust them if necessary a lot of parts manufacturers will take the time to do this for you if you just ask and it can save a lot of time during the mockup process the headers also came with hardware gaskets and the o2 sensor extensions which can be real handy the best part about these headers even with all these mixed and matched parts the only thing that doesn't quite fit is the motor mounts i'll mark a small section where we'll notch the mount and then we'll get to work [Music] a die grinder with a cutting wheel is a good way to make a couple of cuts along the width of the mount and we can use the body saw to make the curve part of the cut [Music] [Music] a piece of tube cut lengthwise makes a nice plug for our hole i'll just use an acetylene torch to heat it and beat it into shape a few quick passes with a grinder and after it cools a coat of gloss black duplicolor and she's ready to go home and we've got about a quarter of an inch of breathing room for our mouth and that looks real nice we're going to be moving a lot of air out the backside of our mopar so those headers makes poking in there it's going to get married to a set of these magnaflow stainless mufflers now these things are a performance muffler so it won't be choking down our engine and at the same time it'll give us that sweet sound that we're looking for [Music] to hang our mufflers under our car we opted for a three inch magnaflow hot rod stainless steel pipe kit it's got a variety of building blocks that we can use to customize our system like mandrel bent js views elves straights and a whole mess of hangers and flanges it looks like we've got plenty of room for the coil over and around the rear looks pretty good so we're in good shape we took one of the brackets to come in the kit and cut it down so we can make us a removable hanger bracket with our big street slick stuffed and dual magnaflow's hung this blown hemi is getting closer to some pro street action [Music] stick around to learn all about bumper swap surgery for a snazzy new look hey welcome back we're fixing to get started whittling away at something that's been bothering me from day one that we picked this whole thing up the front bumper is twisted just a bit so instead of trying to fight this darn thing to get it back straight we're just going to pop on another one you may remember that when we headed down to stephen's performance and picked up a new set of seats we also snatched up a set of bumpers for this old girl the front bumper came off of another 74 dart like ours while we're making the swap we're gonna do some cosmetic modifications and keeping with the theme of the car we'll keep the bumper in the same basic shape but we're adding these relief holes along with hitting it with a base it's the same color as the body the overall idea is to give it an industrial look which fits right in with our spartan approach to this build what we want to do is dimple our holes like this piece right here it looks pretty snazzy don't it problem that we have is we can't really put our bumper in the press because it's got a big curve in it and then we wind up messing up our new bumper worse than our old one so what we're going to do is drill some holes and dimple them on some eighth inch plate which is dang close to the same gauge as our bumper then we'll just replace a piece of our bumper with our new modified section so this is the piece we're going to use right here so let's dimple this dude up [Music] i'm going to find the center of my strip and draw a line right down the middle i want my holes to be three inches apart from center to center so i'll mark those holes out use a center punch to knock in a seat for a drill bit make some pilot holes and use a step drill to whittle them out to an inch wide now using the dimple dies is pretty straightforward you just separate them put it in between them put the top one on squish it pack it up push the top one once again help to make it a little more flat then move on to the next one this dimple die is a part of a set that we got from spc performance they range from three quarter all the way up to six dad blaine inches first thing i'm going to do is draw me a line to establish a common point to measure for the reason i did that that helps me keep this thing straight that way i can measure from here to there to make sure it's running parallel i'm going to trim a bit off the end so that the piece fits the contour of the bumper then we'll make sure she's nice and straight and we can mark the part of the bumper that gets the gold bye-bye [Music] when you're slicing and dicing on a bumper like this a grinder with a cut-off wheel eliminates having to deal with any slack and makes welding in your replacement piece quite a bit simpler [Music] remember even though this is pretty thick steel you can't just pull the trigger and run a two foot bead you'll warp this thing into oblivion well a little in each fight then move around to keep from overheating the metal there you go we repeated the process on the passenger side and we'll prep it for some body work and we'll paint it when we do the rest of the car and we'll have us a one-of-a-kind bumper if you've got any questions about anything you saw on the show today go over to powerblocktv.com hey guys good to see you we're slowly chugging along on our 74 dart project business time you've seen us cage it back half it tub it and dump in a late model blown hemi that with a few other smart projects we've done are slowly turning this thing into quite a menace with great power comes great responsibility there's nothing worse than an overpowered car that's not properly equipped keeping that in mind today we're going to talk about a few things you can do to hopefully keep your joyride from becoming the worst day of your life on that subject it's about time to start running fuel up to that dude now that engine wasn't built for just power it was built for reliability and convenience it's also been designed to run off pump gas which makes life a whole lot easier for someone who's trying to make a car like that streetable the backbone of our fuel system is going to be this an all aluminum fuel cell that we ordered from summit racing with all the modifications that we made to the rear half of the car a fuel cell is a necessity that we won't be able to do without a stock style tank simply won't fit in the car anymore obviously fuel is something you need to take a few precautions with our tank has a few built-in safety features in it kind of like a rollover vent with a check ball in it now the fitting has kind of got a taper in it kind of like a funnel well this tennis ball is going to simulate the little check ball now while that thing's riding around the ball's just kind of hanging out in there but whenever the tanker car gets flipped upside down the ball falls into the taper plugging the hole keeping any fluid from escaping it's pretty simple yet efficient we've opted for these mounting straps to keep our container well contained it's important to mount the saw from all directions to keep it from becoming a fuel-filled projectile in case of an accident this is the sending unit for our fuel gauge it's important to make sure that their own resistance between this unit and our fuel gauge is the same to get an accurate reading there are a few popular items on the market this one happens to be between 0 and 90 ohms this is how it works when the fuel level is low there is a low level of resistance in the unit when you put fuel to tank this arm moves a potentiometer in the unit which changes the level of resistance on the sender this also moves the gauge so a mismatch on one of these is precisely why your buddy carl's nova reads half a gauge when it actually is full or my wife's 66 vw yep for real [Music] uh oh okay now that we've got the tank up in here it seems we're going to have a little bit of a dilemma nothing major what we've done is we've opted for a little bit bigger tank because it's going to be a street driven car but we have the sump hanging down in the back we don't want it hanging this low under the chassis because we do not want it to become a catch-all for whatever might be on the road we're therefore going to cut the trunk floor and pull it up into the floor probably a few inches to get into a safety margin [Music] i don't want to cut the panel from the bottom if i don't have to because i don't feel like getting showered with a bunch of metal shards i'll punch out the hole where each of my corners are going to be and then from the top side i'll redraw my lines a body saw makes quick work of the metal and after a couple of minutes we'll have a hole for ourselves well if the old measure twice cut once philosophy works we should be in the ballpark that's not too bad what we'll do now is we'll get underneath the car and redo the straps so different depth because of what we've done underneath and uh strap it in hopefully it'll stay now normally these straps would be plenty good enough if you were mounting the fuel tank straight into the trunk floor but with our since we're recessing it half through the floor we're going to have to build some extra supports to make sure our tank doesn't go anywhere a few measurements will give me the dimension of the plate i'm going to make and a piece of leftover eighth inch stock steel is perfect to draw it up on [Music] ian and those rock crawler guys dimple dye their skid plates all the time for strength and i'm starting to think that they may be onto something i'm going to burn on a couple of wings that step the height of our plate down just a notch and function as mounting support [Music] a couple of l brackets burned into the frame rails are what we use as a foundation for the whole setup and this is where everything will bolt together lastly so we don't have to chase the nuts with a wrench i'll weld a couple of nuts to the top side of the plate well we've got our mounting plate made for our fuel cell which is also going to do a lot to protect the bottom of it now we got to do is get some plumbing to the back of this thing up to the front and get that hemi burning fire with our cell in place and it braced up all nice and tight we're ready to start doing some plumbing for our fuel system now we're running a little more power than just your standard run of the mill so we got to make sure that our fuel pump and old system can keep up with it a good place to start is with something like that now this ain't a little baby rocket pack it's a fuel pump we called up our buddies down at summit racing and they helped us out with this holley dominator fuel pump now if you're needing to move a whole lot of fuel this is the answer this thing will support up to 1800 horse what makes this design unique is it's two pumps in one so just for normal application just riding around town you're running off one side of the pump but if you're running a nitrous setup or a boosted application like we are you can activate the second side of this pump to have all the fuel you'll ever need whenever you want it the beauty behind not running both pumps all the time is it cuts down on the unnecessary circulation of fuel which causes heat and causes you to lose power what we've run into is with our skinny frame rails and our fat tires we've kind of limited our options on where to hang the fuel pump we've decided to hang it up here on the front of the tank where it'll be out of the way from any debris from the road be protected by the rear axle and away from the heat of the exhaust hopefully it'll work good i don't think it'll be a problem what i've done is make a couple of flat brackets to mount to the fuel pump and these brackets will mount to the straps on the fuel cell we'll use a set of studs to hold the pump in place we'll just take the pump plug it in and keep it there with a few lock nuts to keep our fuel pressure under control we're going to use this holley billet fuel pressure regulator we've mounted an earl's gauge to the face of it so we can get a real-time look at the fuel pressure while the carburetors are running and also to set them most carburetors run between five and seven pounds of pressure just as a note if you guys were going to run fuel injection instead of carburation most of those systems will run between 25 and 45 pounds what we're doing is using a regulator as a distribution block this setup is easy to manage it keeps the regulator as close as possible to the carbs and you control the fuel pressure before it gets to them we'll mount the regulator on the top inner fender on the passenger side this angle gives us great visibility for the pressure gauge and it keeps the fuel lines up high in the engine compartment away from the engine and the exhaust heat our entire system is going to be plumbed with these black anodized aluminum earl's fittings as for lines we'll go with some earl's pro light ultra hose remember to use the proper wrenches for the fittings so you don't mess them all up since these big stout hoses don't twist very easily i'll mark where i want the fittings to be clocked and make sure to maintain the proper indexing [Music] one last thing i want to mention guys the real reason for having a return style fuel system vapor lock vapor lock is what happens when the heat in the motor actually turns the fuel in the line into vapor it boils it this will actually stop the flow of fuel and kill the engine guys there was a time when vapor lock really was a major issue cars would die in intersections cause major traffic jams and i can't tell you how many wise tales i've heard where guys would take their mom's wooden clothes pins clamp them on the fuel lines wrap their fuel lines in tin foil and even wrap them in a coil to try and cool them down did any of those things ever really work who knows when we first met our 74 dodge dart sport we knew that this car liked to raise kane so to speak she was a running driving head turner with big graphics and she made big noise the body was in decent shape and it had an aggressive look but our plans are going to take all those things and push them to the absolute limit so we trailered it home and then we gutted it with a clean slate we went to work upgrading the front k-member and suspension we cut out the floor and plugged in a back half kit along with a burly rear end then we got after it with a roll cage and we tubbed everything from the front seat to the back to make room for some gigantic street slicks all in preparation for a new school 426 hemi you're looking at 690 horsepower and 655 foot-pounds of torque we're getting closer and closer we're getting our pro street dart project business time out of the shop and out onto the road we're sneaking up on that final 10 percent of the job which can require 90 of our patients including everybody's favorite wiring but we've got to get a few ducks in a row before we can do all that with all that tin work that we've done inside the car it looks pretty racy but we do plan to drive this thing out on the street so to make sure we don't have any leaks if we get called out in the rain we've got to lay down a little bit of seams in order to prep the floor for the work we're going to be doing to it we want to make sure all of the surfaces nooks and crannies have had any loose material and debris removed from them we're going to trade sides with the wire brush and the stripping disc [Music] basically what we're trying to do is get rid of the big chunks in loose crust so that we have a good binding surface and be sure to catch any stragglers with a vacuum with a nice clean slate to work on top of we're going to spray on some dupli-color self-etching primer now this stuff improves adhesion and at the same time gives us a good corrosion barrier not to mention it goes on as easy as pie it takes about three cans of farmer to do the whole interior along with about 15 minutes of your time that's a good investment it can buy years for this old floor the seam sealer we're going to use is loctite 5510 a paintable sealer and adhesive i'm going to push it down into the seams with my finger so that we can ensure a good barrier against any moisture and before this car even drives we're going to do the same thing from the bottom side as for sound deadening lizard skin is going to make this car a little more tolerable to ride in it's easy to apply with a purpose-made gun you just mix and shoot it also cut down on some of the vibration coming from that big old hemi in addition to providing an extra barrier for moisture [Music] to top it all off it's environmentally friendly [Music] alrighty folks it's time for one of those chores that can make your hair stand up on in that's if you do it wrong but today we're going to wire this thing like there's no tomorrow and rule number one when you're rewiring an old car like this once you get the original harness out of the car do not throw it away there are many plugs on here that are oe equipment specific and when you get down to the end of the wiring having these on hand will save you a lot of hassle a perfect example of that is with the wiper motor we was having a few issues back before we took the car apart so we went ahead and ordered just the reman unit from rockauto.com and it comes with the factory pigtail already wired on it and reconnecting the wires with the factory harness from the other side makes wiring get a snap all right now that we've got our fuse box mounted we have three basic harnesses inside the main system this one here will run through the back and go up to the tail lights the backup lights fuel pump etc this harness will leave right here on the floor which will go throughout the dashboard to each of the gauges as we need them and this is our main harness that will go through the factory hole out into the engine compartment itself and supplies with everything we need out front of a firewall [Music] i'm going to put these rubber grommets in the holes that i drilled in the plastic box just so that it doesn't eat the insulation off the cable more or less a safety thing than anything else because we're going to use the chassis for a ground we just have to run a short cable from the battery to the frame in the rear now whenever you're splicing together wires you want to make sure that you don't do it halfway if you do cram some connections there's a right and wrong way look very closely and you'll see the seam on the terminal the correct way to crimp it is to put the male end of the crimping tool on the opposite side of the seam that ensures the best connection doing it the opposite way leaves the wires uncaptured and creates a loose connection now that's the most simple way for connecting wires but there is a better way soldering them now i'm not a real big fan of laying around upside down inside of a car with a cord all wrapped around me and a high poker on the end of it i really like this thing it's a butane powered cordless soldering tool from power probe it does all the work that a regular soldering implement will do but it's also portable as all get out when soldering there's a few things to consider like the solder itself you want to make sure that you use a rosin coarse holder not an acid core solder acid cores for soldering copper pipe not doing electrical work now there are different alloys out there that make up the rest of the solder like 60 40 which is the most common 60 10 40 lead the first thing you want to do is tint up your soldering iron tip turn it on let it get good and hot and if it's new burn off the protective coating until it changes colors thoroughly coat the tip with solder and yes it will probably drip make sure you cover the whole tip with it and you're in business then immediately wipe off the tip on a wet sponge to remove the flux residue once it's tinned you can get to soldering simply hold the tip up against the connection to heat up the wire once she's good and hot put the tip of the solder against the wires and it melts between them remove the heat and you've got a nice solid splice well that's about all it is to it and i've got to do it at least 900 more times so i better get after it well we've just about got the wiring buttoned up on our old dodge project business time and we're ready to start throwing some interior in it so far we've tried to keep the car having this industrial feel to it and we want to continue that here on the inside so we call the best guy we know for decorative metal work jamie jordan from handmade seat company thanks tommy it's a pleasure to be here our plans are to make an overlay that mounts to the bottom of this panel that we got from classic industries but for a rear panel we're going to have to make a custom unit because we put those giant tubs in the back side of that mopar well as you know i use a bead roller to emboss images on aluminum panels and i have a new set of custom bead roll dies that i've designed to get more detail in the images that lets me create several new types of effects and add layers to my work now these pieces are destined for art studios and high-end galleries but those are some techniques that can be employed to create striking images on any type of metal panel including automotive all right fella i guess i'm gonna let you do your thing all right well looks like we're going to make a nice long piece that kind of flows with the lines of the door panel something about four inches thick and we'll put a nice long bead roll all the way through the middle of it and we'll uh we'll use these plastic dies to help make it give a nice stamped look so the actual metal will flow along real nicely with the fabrics all right we're going to start by measuring out the length of our door panel it looks like it's about 39 and a quarter and then we're going to measure the width which probably looks like it's about four inches i use the shear to cut two identical panels which i'll file down on the edges because the shear leaves that hard sharp edge it'll cut you what we're going to do is a four inch panel we're going to run a two inch bead roll so what we need to do is measure one inch off the edge all the way down the length of the panel that way we have a nice consistent bead roll so what we need to do is we need to measure it out find the center draw line straight through so we can start laying out the rivets from end to end now what we're going to do is take our center fine roller it has marks in the center of the ruler a half inch off the edge that's one inch spacing all the way down the next step after the holes are laid out is to go over each hole with the center punch to make sure that when you drill the holes you drill them in the correct spot now that all the holes are drilled we're going to go over each hole with the d-bird bit to make sure the rough edges are taken off of both sides i place the bottom panel underneath this panel put the duckbill clecos on now and what it'll do is line up the panel all the way down that way we can start laying out the holes through the top panel the reason we sandwich two panels together is to give the panel its strength it gives the rivet something to bite into more than just the one thickness of metal and then we can start b-rolling one of those things you don't want to overdo it first now what we did is run three b-roll lines through there getting more pressure as we go that way it gives it a nice smooth bead and you don't have any irregularities in your beads if you do mess up a little and then we can rivet our panels together man you really dolled up that stock looking panel think you could be a little more elaborate on the back panel yeah challenge accepted while jamie's fabbing up a rear door panel i went ahead and installed the front one along with some new hardware like this pull knob that we got from rockauto.com because our old one was pretty jacked up we also got a new window crank as well a little tip for you whenever installing the window crank is to either roll the window all the way up or all the way down that way you can match the position of the window crank to the height of the glass from side to side [Music] looks like the challenge was met if you guys have any questions about some of jamie's artwork or you want some of his dyes jamie tell them where they find it at handmadeseeco.com our 74 pro street dart project business time is in the middle of a makeover our buddy jason anderson with anderson customs out of claremore oklahoma lent us a hand with smoothing out the gnarly spots on the body after some initial mud work it got primed and blocked out several times i got to get in on the action as well working the bumper and smoothing out the body alongside jason [Music] we try to always blow off the car while it's still in the prep station so that the dust gets captured by our booth instead of our lungs a piece of clean paper towel will help unseed any dust that's stuck on there and gets our surface nice and clean with it blown off we're ready to start wiping old business time down our project for today is to get it dressed up in its new suit and we're sticking pretty close to the rendering that our buddy brian at studio pck did for us the bright green the hood graphics the whole nine yards all that body work that jason and i did got us where we needed to be regarding the straightness of the panels but there's still a little bit of prep work that's left to do but you guys know what that means it's time to break out the tape and you guys may be like me spend your whole life wrenching on these cars and loving every minute of it but many many moons ago i tried my hand at bodywork and decided it wasn't my thing you know you do have talent though we haven't quite found it but i'm sure you've got some i'm working on i'm going to apply myself keep getting keep after okay regardless there are plenty of other things i can be doing like prepping this motor which has already been sprayed it's wearing the color that project business time is going to have for the rest of its life the ppg color called willow green and that is one bright green now not all tape is created equal now whenever it comes to painting a car i'd like to use a quality material now you've probably seen this blue stuff before and it's pretty good if you're painting your house but it's not really designed for automotive paint the masking tape that you want to use for this type of work has a coating on the top side to keep the paint and solvents from penetrating it and causing the adhesive to turn loose when that happens the next thing you know your masking job is falling off into the floor or whenever you spray up against it the paint blows underneath now you may have seen people use the old sunday funnies to mask off a car well does that work kind of the problem with newspaper is well it kind of soaks paint up like a sponge you can get blow through or heck i've even seen the ink get transferred onto the new fancy pants paint job what causes that is the solvent inside of the automotive paint what you need to be using is something like this real masking paper won't transfer any paint or ink for that matter and it doesn't break down under all the solvent now this stuff really isn't all that expensive we picked this roll up for about 28 bucks from auto body color and supply so seriously guys this stuff is well worth the investment first day now when you mask normally what people think of is what you're trying to keep the paint off of we're going to use it in another form we're actually going to tape off the window holes and the openings of the doors what that's going to do is keep all this debris and extra old jump from the inside of the car from blowing back out on top of our fresh paint and for all you guys who heard me say earlier that paint and body required my thing now you know [Music] did you know that the kind of reducer you use to paint your car can depend on where you live coming up find out whether the weather is right for this type or that you know when it comes to mopars it always seems that you can't go wrong with orange but i'm afraid we can't leave the dart and primer it just wouldn't be right so tommy's over there getting ready to do that voodoo that he do i think that came off right and get the spray guns going first on top of that rust defender primer we're going to spray on a coat of white epoxy sealer the sealer comes in a few different types they got acrylic urethane and there are a few others epoxy sealer is a great all-around type that allows you to put a variety of top coats over it then you also have a larger window of time to cover it up with sealers if you let the window expire you have to come back and scuff it before you spray paint and sometimes you even have to reapply it as for the color he's using white that's going to increase the vibrance of the willow green which is going to be sprayed over top of it while our sealer's on that means it's time for the dart to undergo its big transformation i've mixed the green with some 885 reducer and i'd like to get into the particulars of that here in a few seconds but first let's paint the car [Music] i'll start with a jam so i can close the doors and spray down the side of the car without doing it in pieces you'll notice that on the edges of the spray pattern the color actually looks yellow where the paint is thinner i'm overlapping about 50 that's a pretty standard amount to make sure that i get good coverage [Music] well okay with the green sprayed on our dodge let's talk a little bit about the reducer that i use this is ppg's dt885 it's designed to be a medium to slow drying reducer and there's a reason that i chose it 885 works best in the 75 to 90 degree temperature range and just so happens the inside of our booth temp is right in the middle of that now the 870 is designed for 65 to 80 degrees because it dissipates faster now if you try to use this in a booth where the temperature is very much warmer than that you'll end up with the paint drying faster than you can spray it and that can really mess up your finish if you've ever dealt with dry spray yeah it's no fun for higher temps something like this 895 might be more appropriate it dissipates more slowly and won't cause the dry spray if you use it in a climate that's over 90 degrees you might be wondering what would happen if you use a slow reducer in a low temperature what that causes is the paint to take a really long time to dry thus causing a lot of material to get in the paint because it's still soft or some runs or sags you may be thinking how big can the difference really be if i pour these three capfuls of reducer onto some masking paper and we watch them dissipate off you can really see that there's a good size step between each one with all that said i'm gonna take my 885 mix up some clear make that old dodge all shiny hey guys we're back we put the hood on the dodge and gapped it back up it's already been sprayed black on the bottom now we've got to mask it off underneath and get it prepped for graphics well now that we're down to the last 10 percent of finishing up the paintwork as well as everything else went we got to make sure we're really careful the next phase of our plan is going to invoke some of those original muscle era paint jobs that you would see on a mopar we're carrying that tradition of big visual graphics under our dart as well with some big old hemi letters there's many different ways to go about making our lettering and since the graphic on both sides of the hood is going to be identical we also want them to be symmetrical and one way to make that happen is to make a stencil you can do an image search to try and find the type of lettering to float your boat we could also look at word processing programs and pick out a font that we like something that might look like this you can take that image to your local print shop and get it blown up to any size you need we've chosen to do ours in vinyl because it's easy to maintain uniformity when we put it on the hood the 50 bucks that we spent on this will easily save us a couple of hours worth of sanding and masking time we're going to flatten these out on the table and use some of our tv lights to heat up the vinyl and make it take that shape it also works just as well to lay em out in the warm sun for a bit i'll finish masking while it warms up take your time on this invest some tape see what you like and see what you don't like got a little tip for you whenever you're doing a two-tone or something like that tape your jam seams off what that does if you just took a piece of paper and mask over that the over spray is still going to get back on top of your new surface but if you tape off that jam it can't come out of it now we can lay out the hemi graphic with the vinyl stickers being careful to make sure it's nice and straight [Music] a quick scuff job on the surfaces that will get painted and we can break out the black i'm spraying on a standard pure black no blues purples or any other toners to be found some flex and flat clear diluted down by about 10 with regular glossy clear will give us just the right amount of flatness then we can reveal our masterpiece to the world [Music] this is the part of the paint job where you want to go slowly and carefully getting too excited here is a good way to set yourself back a few days looks like all that patience has paid off the combination of those bigs and littles that stance and i really think we're onto something here today on muscle car we're taking care of loose ends on project business time our 700 horsepower blown pro street dodge make sure it'll stop make sure it'll stay cool make sure it's safe and then make it come to life [Music] the clock is ticking on our pro street dodge dart project business time and over the last several months it's made quite a transformation and it all started with an idea working off our rendering that steered the whole project our mopar came to us and we got right to work pulling out the interior on when a new k-member and front suspension out went to factory floor and in went a back half kit with a serious rear end with the installation of the roll cage and some huge street slicks she's starting to look like something special especially when we wedged a giant 700 horsepower blowing franken hemi into it courtesy of the guys from horsepower we planted some big old tubs in the rear of it plugged in the exhaust modified the bumper lined out the fuel system got the floor burned back in and ready for action wired it up and had jamie jordan build us some custom interior panel after some quality time with some sandpaper we finally got it painted and then some over-the-top graphics on the hood completed the mopar look that you know she needed so what we've got left is a few things to button up but first we want to make sure this thing's going to stop when we need it to so we're going to bust out this motive power bleeder we'll make sure our master cylinder is filled with wheel wood brake fluid that was provided with our brake system then the bleeder cap goes on the fluid reservoir motive has adapters to fit most models so don't worry if you've got an aftermarket unit then with a good seal and the bleeder loaded with good fluid you pressurize the unit with this pump handle up to 10 pounds no need for the shop air this is where the bleeder pays for itself by being easy to use you can bleed your brakes anywhere without someone else having to run the pedal for you the bleed tube goes on the valve at each wheel the pressure in the bleeder pushes the fluid through once the fluid is clear and there are no bubbles you're in business now that we know she'll stop we need to make sure she'll stay cool so we went to summit racing for this aluminum radiator and twin fan combo kit these two 10 inch fans will move over 2200 cubic feet of air per minute the radiator is designed with street strip applications in mind which is perfect for us and not only does that aluminum cool really well this whole setup only weighs 16 pounds we're going to throw in some extra insurance with some radiator conditioner now this purple life by royal purple is going to help us out in a few different ways when it comes to our cooling system first of all it inhibits corrosion which is important when you're dealing with a mixture of metals and water in addition to that it helps our system keep a lower temperature by reducing the surface tension of the water inside while i'm in fluid mode i want to go ahead and make sure all of them are topped off the ones that i like to start with are the most difficult to get to or the less obvious a perfect example of that is a rear diff this mosur unit is completely fresh the only miles it's ever seen is being pushed around the shop all it takes is a pinky finger to tell you it's got enough lube if your finger comes out with gear hole on it you're pretty good to go we need to make sure that if anything goes wrong our gauges let us know we've got way too much money tied up in our motor to take any chances so we're going to take our power probe 3 which we're going to hook up to the battery in the trunk of the car and check these out the power probe 3 has a 20 foot lead cord on it which means we can take it anywhere around the car we need to to put it to use i made a custom pod that holds the gauges which we got from summit racing in this mode we can use it to power the gauges making sure the electronic ones are in working order well it looks like everything's pretty good to go and let's get them put in the car i kept these last two gauges out so that we have the clearance needed to get the pot into place once the gauges are in we can then plug the steering column in as well [Music] here you go brother thank you i'm sure i crawled in without it but i was afraid i might hurt somebody including me well they say when you get you know older you my age i know turn to the right just a hair mate am i getting in the neighborhood tom like you mean change the angle yeah go what's there for our steering column we went with an audit unit that we also got from summit racing and we're replacing a dash pad with this new one we got from classic industries this is one of those seldom address details that does a whole lot for the look of your car coming up modifying stock seats to work with a safety harness windshield installation and trim re-beautification then we fire up that blown hemi and make some serious noise we're gonna pick up with some interior work you guys asked for by stepping over to our pro street 74 dodge dart so far she's been gutted got new suspension on the front been back half and tubbed received a six point cage we got new bumpers and seats dropped in the late model blown hemi and worked on getting her ready for the road and that includes making her nice and comfy luckily classic industries has us covered literally these seat covers are designed to fit a set of buckets out of a 72 duster demon and that's what we've got over here now if you luck up your seat foam is in good enough shape all it is is slipping on a set of seat covers and you're ready to head down the road but our driver's side has spent a lot more time shelving the old christmas ham if you know what i mean so the seat foam is all worn out and squashed and needs to be replaced it just takes a couple of screws and bolts to get your seat back and bottom separated [Music] just make sure you don't lose any hardware while you're at it [Music] now with our seat frame all stripped down we're going to knock off this old rusty scale and put on a coat of protectant reason being is that it'll stop any further corrosion and number two it'll improve the looks of this old nasty thing a simple way to do this at home is with a wire brush give the rough spots a good once over making sure to knock off the scale that's developed on the surface of the metal we're going to speed it all up by taking a trip over to the blasted all cabinet another advantage to bead blasting beside speed is so that you can really power through the gnarly stuff and get down to bare metal with our piece all prepped we're gonna hit it with a coat of loctite extend rust treatment what this stuff does is destroy rust then seals and protects the metal anywhere it reacts with rust it will turn purple and then once it dries it forms a primer coating and if you're working with body panels it also jives with plastic filler and fiberglass once that's dry we can gussy it up with a coat of dupli-color enamel and then she's ready for some foam we ran down to the local upholstery shop and picked up the foam that we're going to use we went with the medium density stuff but it comes in several different variations now if you wanted you could change this stuff up and give the seat a total different feel [Music] we're going to use an electric kitchen knife to rough in the foam now this thing will work a lot better than using a utility knife i'll draw some lines that will tell me where the creases need to be on my new foam [Music] then start sculpting it with an air grinder michelangelo step aside you don't need a really aggressive disc to do this heck it's foam after all i'll grab my electric knife again and use it to fillet out the bottom of the piece where the foam sits onto the frame then i'll clip off the rings that hold the wires in the old foam and cut out the ones that are molded into it [Music] the original seed had some webbing made into it so since we're using something a little different i'm going to use some of this burlap to reinforce those rods a little loctite spray adhesive will hold the burlap in place and i'll grab the new covers and poke the rods through the little channels where they hold the cover onto the foam now originally these rods were wrapped with an adhesive paper so we went ahead and wrapped them with some masking tape the reason they done that is that whenever you clamp a hog ring around it it actually gives it something to bite to other than just sliding around on the rod now we've got to hog ring these things together you push the rod down onto the groove that we cut into the foam then fold the edge up so that you can get that rod close to the one that you installed into the cover a hog ring and a pair of hog ring pliers will make them best friends forever oh recovering one of these things takes a whole bunch of pulling and tugging and grunting so make sure when you run across one of these guys that do this every day show them some respect because it sure ain't easy whenever you pull in seat covers tight you want to try to pull it as flat as possible because some wrinkles will come out you can massage out but if they're left over it's just going to have a wrinkle in them well there you go we repeated the process for the top piece now all we got to do is steam the vinyl to help relax it so the wrinkles will go away and then we're good to go business time is ready for us to start getting interior pieces together we've already done the steering column dash pad and the gauges where we still need to do the seats the safety harness and the carpeting in order to call this part of the project wrapped up these bucket seats we got from our friends at stevens performance in alabama have been re-foamed and recovered by our buddy tommy and they're pretty much ready to go into the dodge after i get it wrestled into place i can mark the mounting holes this car came with a bench seat and these are buckets out of a 72 duster or demon that's okay though this obviously is not a strict restoration and these seats are still more part to the bone [Music] uh whoops we may have a small issue here with our harness the problem we've run into is our stock mopar seats are just a little too wide where we need our harnesses to lay on our shoulders and we do not want them to slide off of our shoulders during any kind of incident so we're going to have to address the issue and get them back up where they need to be yeah man that definitely looks like an issue i know and if it could be my butt that's sitting here i don't want it to be an issue looks like we're going to have to cut a hole right about here to deal with our seats well the top of it's too wide to safely position the belt onto our shoulders our cure for that is we're going to cut us a hole so that we can run the belt through it easy fix [Music] you may notice that the drill is actually running backwards i do that to keep the foam from getting all wrapped up around the bit because all we're using the bit for is to mark where we need to make our cut [Music] the reason i put my hand over those hog rings when i cut them is to keep them from bouncing around and hitting me in the face kind of controlling it all it's going to do is hit your hand and fall right back in there [Music] if you look right here you can see the marks that the drill bit made that indicates exactly where we need to make our slice so it's time to get the cutting [Music] i'm going to prep the steel for welding because i want to insert a little gusset plate and burn it in to reinforce the seat just a little bit these holes will be my road map for the cut that i'm going to make and this mark is going to be the highway my trusty old body saw is what i'm going to use to whittle out the bulk of the metal we want to unload [Music] a die grinder with a matco carbide bit on the end is how i'm going to clean up the cut then i'll weld the two plates together for extra reinforcement around the hole this is also going to help me create a rolled edge which will keep the belt from suffering premature wear a trip around the hole with a grinder is the first step to smoothing out the edges [Music] then i'll bust out some files to finish it up well there you go it wasn't all that hard we got us a couple of holes in our seat frame to keep the belts exactly where they need to be to keep us nice and safe next thing we have to do ship out our covers and have some trim or sleeves sewn in where the holes are for the belts and then we can assemble all this stuff and be one step closer to riding in that big dodge still ahead our buddy dante shows that installing a new windshield into an old mopar requires a special touch and a leap forward and muffler technology that can help you keep your sanity hey we're back since you guys have been gone our glass guy mike dantes popped in to wedge in a new windshield for the dart come on honey where's your daddy oh look at that look at that after he gives our new glass a once-over and some cleaner he'll slip it into place and get to work seating it inside our new seal that's squeaky clean buddy just get these bottom corners going [Music] the glass has to sit down inside of a channel on the gasket in order to prevent any movement or leaks and sometimes the combination of an old car and a brand new gasket and glass can make for an interesting installation there we go around the corner around the corner all right but we always go to mike to take care of the glass in our cars because we know we're in good hands there she goes this they call them rat tails the purpose of this round rat tail is to lock this rubber gasket around the glass to keep the elements out and we have extra rat tail anybody hungry [Music] there you go buddy that thing's all in there she was a beast well that's the reason why we call you but it looks good from where we're standing i think we're ready for some trim i guess i need to go grab that [Music] the factory trim that came on our old dodge wasn't in the greatest shape and sometimes whenever you're working on an oddball car like our 74 dart you run out of options of getting after market parts so what you have to resort to is getting good original pieces so we put in a call to our good friends down in alabama stephen's performance and they hooked us up with a really nice set of original pieces only thing it's lacking is a little bit of luster we'll spend a little quality time with the buffing wheel some compound brighten these dudes right up [Music] the process is pretty simple you need some compound and a buffing wheel and you're in business what i'm going to use is some of this white rouge which is ideal for chrome nickel iron and stainless which is what our trim is made of a pair of gloves isn't just a good idea it's a must if this wheel decides to grab a hold of that trim and snatch it out of your bare hands you're going to be in need of a bandage regardless it'll do a heck of a job shining up your goods now a lot of times whenever you're refinishing original equipment like we are with stainless you're going to run into some burger up spikes good thing about this type of stuff it is repairable all you have to do is take some sandpaper and pretty much just sand the blemish away after you get it all out just follow it up with some finer stuff to knock those scratches down then off to the buffing wheel you go see look no more scratches looks pretty nice [Music] still ahead the blown hemi in project business time makes some noise well ladies and gentlemen we're at a little bit of an impasse right now we've gotten a lot of little things done on the car that needed to be addressed but we are unable to get the interior finished till we get our seats back from the upholsterer with that though we've gotten a lot of odds and ends done that the car needed our old dodge isn't quite ready to hit the road yet but we are getting close and we're ready to hit the key now every now and then there is a little bit of troubleshooting that goes along with that so let's see where we're at well we've checked double checked and triple checked all of our fluids and we're confident we haven't left anything unaddressed but there's one more thing we need before we fire this motor up for the first time and it's one of these babies right here you can't be too careful uh [Music] okay alrighty she starts and runs that means we get to spend some more quality time with her making sure that she can safely go down the road that means double checking every nut and bolt on this thing mr mink what do you think that sound for the first time never gets old that's so true today on muscle car it's business time our big bad dodge dart gets its day in the sun where we run it around town on the highway and down the track [Music] well after some backache some skin knuckles and a whole lot of wrench time today's the day that project business time gets to see some sunshine and it's come a long ways from whenever it rolled out of detroit by the time we ran across this car she was looking pretty honored we got it back to the shop and started with the suspension both front and rear including cutting the floor out for a back half kit once we got it fit to size we burned it in with the footprint widened in the back and skinned up front a roll cage was built into it as well we were able to plug in our blown 700 horsepower pump gas hemi we planted some big old tubs in the rear of it plugged in the exhaust modified the bumper lined out the fuel system got the floor burned back in and ready for action wired it up and had jamie jordan build us some custom interior panels after some quality time with some sandpaper we finally got it painted and then some over-the-top graphics on the hood or the cherry on the top of this mean mopar if you remember something else that happened last time was that the seats were too wide to accommodate the harness that we wanted to install in the car if left as they were the harness would have fallen right off of our shoulders the solution was for tommy to take the seats back apart and cut a pathway for the harness to go right through them once they were reassembled we sent the seats out to the posterior shop to get the vinyl re-zone then it was just a matter of sending the belts through the hole and hooking them all up the tci 6-speed transmission that we opted for well it's been in the car for a pretty good little while and we chose it for a couple of reasons one was a big old overdrive and two the simplicity of hooking that thing up the easy tcu that came in the kit allows you to get on the road without any software laptop or tuning experience all you have to do is hook it up power it up and then answer the questions it asks you and if you're looking for a purpose-specific setting the unit is also fully programmable based on load speed and rpm here's a cool trick we used when we were sealing the deal on which transmission to use in the dodge we knew we wanted to use the car at highway speed but wanted to stay away from the high rpms at that speed what you can do is jump on the computer and head over to our website at powerblocktv.com all you need are your tire diameter rear end gear ratio and transmission drive ratios plug all those numbers in and find out how hard your engine will be turning when you roll down the highway from the get-go we wanted to make sure our old dodge was as much street friendly as it is track friendly so for rear tires we went with a set of mickey thompson et street which are d.o.t approved now some guys when they get to the track can run into an issue that's kind of unique to drag racing when you run into the combination of a big powerful engine some sticky tires and a track that bites well next thing you know this rim is slipping inside the tire when the car launches a tried and true way to make sure your wheel and tires stay in place is to make a mark across both of them at the track and if you found that they've moved more than one inch between runs it may be a problem you have to address there are several ways to prevent this problem and a couple of them are street legal and a couple of them aren't so it's probably a pretty good idea for you to check out your local laws to see what's what now if you watch that other show extreme 4x4 with ian you've probably seen him bolt on a couple sets of these this is a bead lock and it will definitely keep the rim from slipping inside the tire what these do is literally sandwich the tire bead up against the rim holding them in place and transferring all that energy from the wheels to the ground now it requires a wheel that's designed to work with these so keep that in mind if you're making plans for your car another option is rim screws this is a rim screw kit that we got from mr gasket and just so you know this is for competition applications not street cars this is how it works you drill a hole through the rim and then once you mount the tire you run the screws through it which will keep the tire in place i'm going to show you how to make all this work with this tire and that rim we want 12 screws evenly placed on the wheel to ensure a good bite and according to my calculations that means we want our screws to be right at four and a quarter inches apart from each other i just made a piece of cardboard that's the right length and marked it all the way around now whenever you go to drill the hole you want to make sure to make it in the center of the wheel lip in between this edge and that edge [Music] when you're about to put holes in a high dollar piece of metal like this wheel one of these madco mechanical punches will make your life a whole lot easier it provides a good seat for my drill bit so you can make these holes without worrying about slipping and sliding all around i'll use some royal purple ultra performance grease to lubricate the screws while i use them to cut the thread like that big death grip you got on it say ain't even got a cheater pipe on this quarter inch ratchet you want to do this before you mount the tire so you can grind off any hunks of sharp metal that might mess up the tire speed next step is you want to knock that little burr off that the screw created [Music] i'm going to repeat the process on the other side and then take these two out get them mounted up with the tire mounted and the tube a little bit over inflated i can run my screws in and then deflate it to operating [Music] pressure eighteen and a half inch mickey thompson's around weld racing forged aluminum wheels an 871 wiring blower a modified and refurbished bumper and grill four point harnesses from summit racing custom hemi graphics on the hood along with refurbished tail lights and rear deck lift an identity column connected to a riley motorsports front suspension setup underneath an arrington racing 426 hemi built by horsepower tv that pushes right around 700 ponies a willow green ppg painting scheme an s w back half kit along with piles of other odds and ends and a whole mountain of man-hours we've been waiting a long time for this and how hard is it to see over top of that blower as long as i don't have to look too far to the right when i'm making a left-hand turn it's not bad we're over here riding around in this cool little neighborhood it's slushing around you know what we're doing right now steve tell me we're planting seeds if you will there's some little kid on his bicycle that's watching us drive by gold i want one of those i remember i was that kid one time they're like i'll tell you what though for the first time out i'm looking at all the gauges and stuff this thing is actually not performing too bad considering we've got like four miles on it yeah yeah we're staying right at 190 195 we got 60 60 pounds oil pressure it's not bad maiden voyage out on the way back to the shop you can annoy a few people but there's no need to get silly we need to recheck every nut bolt and fluid on here then we can hit the highway you wouldn't believe how well this thing drives on the highway if we told you of course it has a responsive throttle this thing goes straight as an arrow and it's comfortable while it doesn't we'll hit our closed course to blow out the cobwebs on the way to the dragster and this is just quarter throttle holy moly well project business time's alive and well so we're going to make a couple of tests and tune runs today at our local drag strip us43 in lawrenceburg tennessee if you remember back when we started this project one of the points we wanted to get across was to show people that there's things outside of the norm if you want to build a good old piece of american muscle but don't be fooled we're not the first ones to push one of these eight body mopars to the performance side of the spectrum all that credit has to be tossed back to the mopar engineers themselves exhibit a is the 74 340 duster we were able to get our hands on courtesy of steven's performance in anderson alabama you guys remember ted stevens he's the big wig down there as well as being an encyclopedia of massive mopar knowledge he helped us out on this build with seats bumpers the hood as well as some small parts we need to get it done ted was also the first person to ever score a full 1 000 points on the concourse build with a 68 charger rt at the muscle car and corvette nationals well ted some guys say that the a-body cars just don't quite have what some of the other models have what do you think about that well they don't get the limelight like all the hemis and the 446-packs and the rag top cudas and all that stuff but they're they're eating their own right well they built about 170 000 of these cars in 1970 and that's 1970 alone so these cars make great raw material for making street rides restorations you know whatever you're in the mood for and they're affordable right now compared to some of the other stuff that's out there we got a good example right here this is a 1970 344 speed duster i bought from the original owner came from placentia california original paint original drive train tires original everything you wouldn't believe it it's the greatest car in the world this car is on its way to the floyd garrett museum in gatlinburg tennessee but before we run the dart down the track ted's going to give this duster one last who rock she pulls a 10 flat not bad for a retirement party 7.99 on the first trump and she went straight the tires are a little hard so i'll deflate them and give it a run again [Music] [Music] no i guess the guy that was uh calmly waiting gets to go second [Music] she launched hard enough to knock off our pov camera and mink almost caught my better run well time we got what we wanted all in one day we got street and strip we drove it down here drove it to lunch after lunch we drove it over here to the track made a few passes yeah i know we really wasn't even pushing it that hard and got some 670s out of it so heck a little more fine-tuning i think we can get mid to high fives on her but it's been a heck of a day what do you think should we call one and go home that sounds good if you'll drop me off by the house i'll do that good deal if you've got any questions about anything you saw on the show today go over to powerblocktv.com

Channel: Gunpowder & Gasoline

Views: 912,279

Rating: 4.7855787 out of 5

Keywords: powernation, powerblock, howto, automotive diy, dodge, pro street, mopar, full build, dodge dart, do it yourself, full build powernation, dart, car rebuild, pro street car, drag

Id: rWrVUHjLBb4

Length: 130min 4sec (7804 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021