Transforming A '72 Dodge Dart From Lawn Ornament To Pavement Pounder - Detroit Muscle S10, E7

you're watching Power Nation today on Detroit Muscle we hit a bullseye with a compact Mopar and rescue it from being a lawn ornament and turn it into a pavement pounder [Music] today we're rescuing a rare piece of Detroit Muscle we're heading out to find an elusive compact muscle car targeted at guys who couldn't swing spinning a lot of scratch but wanted premium mobile performance we set our sights on a 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger something cool and nostalgic about an old Mopar sitting in the weeds isn't there this one being Black's kind of cool yeah it's a factory color her exterior has seen better days but this swinger has the potential to be a heavy hitter when a car has been sitting out as long as this one has there's always some surprises when you go to pop the hood hey man look at that I have to say that looks way better under here than I thought I was not I was not expecting that this is the first thing I always like Jake there ain't none in it it'd be cool if we could just jump this dude off you know maybe pour a little gas in the carburetor and fire it up at least drive it onto the trailer I mean the winch would go faster would be the fun in that all right where's your sense of adventure I don't know if it's adventure or wisdom I was anticipating we were going to have a few more problems so we brought like a cap and rotor fuel filter some of that stuff just in case but I really do hope that's all it is that would be handy make for a light day for us you know the story on this thing at all I know he bought it roughly eight years ago the guy initially wanted 3 500 bucks for it and he was able to talk him down to 800. sound like this should be something we need to buy the parts are good I'm curious grab me a set of keys this is the moment cameraman can you hear me yeah same home so I'm on him dang it oh don't worry NADA we're gonna clean them cables hey you better not have brought a mess of bad luck with you everything else looks good though [Music] feel like I'm taking a long route with this one let's try it again dome light on negative headlights come on tell me if headlights come on nope I mean it's a battery cable 7 16 golly [Music] had put a little man on that one [Music] it's gonna give her a whirl yeah [Music] ugh gross yep that is a door nail found a piece of wire laying here on the ground well technically it's two pieces of wire I can get it apart and splice it back together you too can make yourself an ignition switch did you find something yeah good we'll use that for the backup if you want to take that big long one twist it around that positive side of the foil and I'm going to find a way to put some gasoline in this thing yeah I'm making me a makeshift fuel tank basically because I forgot to bring one so what I'm going to do is hook a hose in my fuel pump down there slide a piece of rubber hose into here snag a hose up there put a couple zip ties here and there this thing's gonna be worth at least the amount of gas that bottle is holding some may think that little blue thing in there is to keep the Cola in the bottle but in this situation it's going to keep the fuel from sloshing out of that bottle I should patent this right here look at that boys thank Dodge meant for it to be this way because conveniently right there no need for a zip tie well you want to drive it now you got to remember you're gonna have to drive it with the gas pedal and the shifter and there is an ignition switch to cut it off so trick here is to not park it in the bed of the truck keep it on the trailer and if worst coming to worse neutral then Park oh come on girl we just run out of gas how about winch all in favor ah all right awesome [Music] takes me back to my Wireline days [Music] comfy smells like the 70s in here [Music] it's gonna feel weird but I need you to keep it that way [Music] straighten up did you hit the brakes I hit the I hit the gear shifter that's just yeah told him we should have winched it [Applause] coming up we give it fuel give it fire and all the stopping power you desire well after getting our old Dodge in here in the shop and doing some investigating work we come to the conclusion we're going to need several pieces that's right we hauled up our buddies at RockAuto and ordered a boatload of parts that can help us get this old Mopar back on the road the first thing that we're going to address is the fuel system now out there in the field I tracked the top off of this thing and it was green on the inside so hopefully it'll clean up and a simple kit installed we'll do the trick we're also going to be addressing the fuel system in its entirety with a new fuel tank sending unit flushing out the lines and even swapping out that pump adding a new fuel pump is going to ensure that we're getting adequate gas flow to the engine when we fire that 360 and squeeze out all the pony chicken mustards no expert but I'd say it's been a minute since that bad boy has been changed especially in comparison to the new one I made a mess [Music] good news is that's not an obnoxious sound at all good shoulder workout though now getting that old fuel out does a couple of things one makes it lighter and easier to drop out and two it eliminates a safety hazard you never want to keep an old fuel tank just laying around your shop because as you know fuel plus fire can equal a bad day now to drop this tank is fairly straightforward basically you got two rubber hoses and a connector attached to the sending unit and then you got a zip loose two J bolts and she should come right out now we could go through all the work of refurbishing that old tank and sending unit but Rock Auto offers replacements for both so we're just going to make it easy on ourselves and swap them out now it wouldn't make much sense to put a new fuel tank in and try and reuse that old Cinder especially considering how long that car's been sitting and what your fuel sender does basically you got a little indicator here and it'll tell you how much fuel you have left in the tank and it also draws fuel up from the tank into the new pump that we just installed first up is a little rubber gasket that has to go in between the sending unit and the tank and this is kind of a difficult part is feeding this thing through all the canyons and crevices sometimes you get lucky like that just need a ball peen hammer and a chisel to knock it in [Music] we can go with a car sitting this long to just assume that the brakes are in working order would just be careless so we're going to have to address all this stuff also with this thing torn down is a perfect opportunity for you to check the wheel bearings and the spindle now you have two places that the bearing rides on this little stuff and what can happen is you can accumulate excessive wear here on the bottom side so you need to wipe this off and kind of do a little fingernail test what you want to see is if there's any kind of snag that your fingernail hits as you go around where the bearing runs this one has an Ever So slight amount but luckily it looks like we caught it in time this can be caused from a bad bearing or the bearing preload being inaccurately set when we took this one off there was Zero tightness to that nut so I was curious where we were going to be at right now we're just going to throw in a new set of bearings and a new seal that should take care of this just fine the next hurdle we're going to be tackling on our driveway rescue is the brake system and these old drums have definitely seen better days for starters our Hardware is all rusted out looks like the shoes are pretty much shot and we got a leak on our wheel cylinder so we'll get all this old junk taken off and we'll swap it out for that hardware and brake shoe kit we got from the guys at Rock Auto a lot of modern mechanics probably haven't seen anything like this a lot of these levers and springs can be intimidating but keep your eyes on what goes where take a few picks and you'll be good and once you got your wheel cylinder off you're good to take your backing plate and sandblasted and paint whatever color your heart desires at first glance when you look at our brake shoes they're almost identical but if you put them side by side you can see this one has a lot more surface area and there's a reason for that whenever you go to slam on the brakes you have more force and momentum going forward so you need that extra surface area that's why this one is your primary and faces towards the front of the vehicle and this one is your secondary or faces towards the rear our Rock Auto drum brakes have more than enough stopping power for this mini Mopar just remember once you get this all put together you got to bleed the brakes before you pressurize the system much better now for me personally I like to keep my adjustment all the way in and then I'll set my Hub on and spin it and adjust it out until I only get one revolution that's usually industry standard for most drum brakes look back swinger that started it all now there's no denying that we still got a lot more work to do on our 072 Dart but if you were to take one of these cars and accompany it with some performance well you have yourself a home run a car that embodied the 60s in both name and spirit was the 69 Dart Swinger the Dodge boys tempted cash strap buyers with this mini muscle car that turned out 6000 RPM for under three grand for that price tag you could get anything from a straight six up to a 383 Magnum but the real muscle came in their iconic 340 package 2 800 bucks got you all the standard muscle car goodies like heavy duty suspension firm ride shocks and dual Chrome tipped exhaust and you also got a four-speed her shifter pulling a set of 323 gears giving you full control when you swung into action power bulges on the hood let you know that this dodge was rocking a potent 340 small block V8 it pushed over 275 horses at 5000 RPM now that was less than the 383 but it made up for it by being 90 pounds lighter making this small car perfectly balanced bumblebee Stripes tagged it as a junior member of Dodge's Elite Scat Pack which included the Super V and the charger it could run with the big boys knocking out the quarter mile time in the mid-14s and went zero to 60 in six seconds the swinger 340 only came as a two-door coupe and had slick options like this black vinyl top roof and exclusive bright red paint the body style was the same as the 68 Dart with minor changes to the grill and tail lights on the inside the car was all business bench seats came standard leaving plenty of room to haul you and all your friends by today's standards it's nowhere near a compact it's only one inch shorter than a Dodge Magnum darts also came in a GTS package that was virtually identical to the swinger except it had a 440 option more bling and a higher price tag its main rival was the Chevy Nova SS which would run you about 300 more for the same amount of performance of all the muscle cars that year this one was by far the best bang for your buck the dart ran you about ten dollars per horsepower and with its smaller size it flew under the insurance company's muscle car radar saving you even more green the car was a hit in its first gear with over 16 000 sold and Dodge continued swinging well into the 70s the 69 swinger 340 is still a good bargain today for anyone looking to own and drive a classic piece of Detroit Muscle it's time for a little rock and roll well we've pressure washed our Dart and I have to say it turned out a lot better than we were thinking yeah she's no beauty queen but at least it's not as crusty as it was we went ahead and removed the wheels all the way around because you could basically see the air inside of the tires one funny thing about Wheels is if they're clean or they're nice well they can really Elevate the rest of the car and there's a component like that on the inside that does the same thing at first glance of our interior we've got some work to do and overall it's not in too bad a shape front seat's got a couple tears here back seats actually in really good shape but this carpet straight up nasty trust me it smells as bad as it looks but for now we're going to get this old rug tour out of here and swap it with a new one that we got from the guys of Rock Auto [Applause] watch this [Music] I think I need some hand sanitizer it's not a rat and as has a rat Hotel [Music] as expected we had a little bit of service rust here on our floor pans we're going to spray on some Rust preventative to help slow things down I may even put in some sound deadening just for good measure [Music] let's do it we also made sure to do a couple brands of cleaning on the seats with an extractor to dig out all that nastiness after we sandblasted painted and installed a fresh set of center caps we topped off our Wheels with some new rubber to complete the ensemble using a simple trick I learned from a detailer buddy of mine I scrubbed off years of contaminants from this old swingers paint job with a clay bar and a few sprays of some ceramic coating [Music] well guys I think it's safe to say we've done right by this old Mopar by addressing several issues inside and out and underneath the hood and it's finally time to stretch it out on the highway for its first test drive you know what I think I have the perfect co-pilot in mind who's been dying to see this thing in action all right for the more I want you to picture for a minute a 50 year old car and it's been sitting in the weeds it's been neglected it's out in the elements every day and it has a carpet and interior that looks just like that it takes like a big pile of Parts like that we got over there to even get it back on the road I I'm kind of scared to be honest with you but that's there's only one way to to go from here and it's going to be better I have a good feeling okay well remember that picture because I think what's behind this door just might surprise you ready for this let's see haha so this is our 72 Dodge Dart Swinger what do you think this is the type of transformation that guys like us look forward to oh absolutely it has made quite a transformation from what it was just two weeks ago it's not your car show car you know it's not super shiny but the potential is there for sure this is definitely a DIY car guy project it is that's I know everything underneath is in shape I think we should take a look at the engine just to see what that looks like yeah that's Bob the hood you got to see this what do you think of that I I miss cars like this they're they're so easy to work on you can literally sit on the fender and turn wrenches there's so much room it's just a cool feeling that this car has another second chance at life it's got a great Foundation that what I love about these types of vehicles is that you need those three things fuel air spark if you have all three of those things you can figure out how to get these cars running now I know you saw that nasty carpet out front there I want you to take a peek and tell me what you see this is such an amazing transformation it's so easy to change the look of the interior of the vehicle I don't need the Hazmat suit anymore either yeah this is going to be a joy to drive if you have a socket set and if you have a screwdriver these carpets go right in that's great I think me and Tommy busted it out in a couple hours and that was two hours very well spent yeah it totally changes the look of the vehicle and the smell oh yeah for sure what do you say we take a first bit oh I'm itching all right let's go and I gotta say probably out of all the driveway rescues we've done this has been my favorite so far this feels like a vehicle that just kind of fell into place the owner needed help we were able to give it to him and relatively simple fixes yep these these cars when they were built they were they were built and you guys are wrong You've Been So Awesome every time we've done a driveway rescue it's no questions asked this is what we need to get this car back on the road and you guys just sent in we appreciate it the owner appreciates it and it's just always fun doing these driveway rescues that's we're thrilled because these are real cars these are real guys this is what it's about right here when you finally get it to stretch out on the highway yeah and it's just smooth gliding and just get to chill for a minute it's it's definitely the best part of the job right this is good therapy just a joy to drive I don't know we've got a beautiful day look at these trees yeah just a little bit of a windy road it's hard to beat it I can I can make a living doing this we call it perks of the job nothing looks like this anymore no it probably will never again no no it's a bygone era and it's just being able to get things like this up and running again there's no reason why you couldn't drive this car every day yeah cars from this era this is what they're meant to do I wouldn't know no one ever lets me drive [Music]

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 123,891

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, driveway rescue, dodge dart, dodge, muscle car, detroit muscle, '72 Dodge Dart

Id: OikVxNtKJ4I

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023