It’s the Summer of 1978 and I am enjoying life in Vermont. As mentioned in last week’s Fiat 124 Sport Spider COAL I traded the little convertible fearing its end was near. In return I became the owner of a 1967 Dodge Dart four door sedan. If you have been following this series, you realize that a Dodge Dart is a big change from the cars profiled to date. The Renault, the Subaru and the Fiat personified impracticality and automotive whim. The Dart was just the opposite. It was a full-on 100% school teacher car. Allow me to explain.
My mother was a small town Ohio school teacher and a fair representation of the sort circa 1960s. She plied the fine line of solidly middle class, educated, eminently respectable but never flashy. Her cars reflected this. In 1968 she purchased a Pontiac Catalina sedan.
The Catalina was a pretty car. It had all the design cues that made the Pontiacs of this era so distinctive, but it was still just a Catalina. If you were the sort of person with social aspirations you would have looked at the Catalina and dismissively thought, “Nice looking, but it’s not a Bonneville is it.” School teacher cars had that effect on people.
I was the third owner of the Dodge Dart. It had spent the first ten years of its life owned by a Vermont school teacher. He and I had met earlier as I had accompanied the second owner when she purchased the car. The Dart was plain vanilla – automatic transmission, four doors, and bench seats front and back. It had been well cared for by the original owner who used standard Vermont techniques to combat the corrosive effects of the winters. The rocker panels were in good shape because he had sprayed used motor oil inside them after oil changes. When some rust had developed behind the rear wheel wells on the tail end of the fenders he had cut away the rust and pop riveted in new metal in a New England workmanlike way that L. L. Bean himself would have admired.
I think it had drum brakes front and rear but honestly, who noticed. Its key shortcoming was that it was a big (for me) rear wheel drive car so winter driving would be challenging. Some informal canvassing of the locals turned me on to the fact that there existed a thing called studded sandpaper retreads. Studded – that would take care of any ice. Sandpaper – that meant a super soft compound that would grip snow covered roads. Retreads – that meant I could afford them on all four corners at sixteen dollars per.
Mechanically everything was ace. Dependability would not be an issue but staying awake might be as there was no radio. It had the base 170 cubic inch Slant-6 engine that made 115 hp. The engine was so dependable and bullet proof that legally one cannot write about it without using the adjective venerable.
If the Dart was going to break I was going to have to do it myself and that brings me to “The Incident”.
I had met my friend Michael – henceforth to be called the Other Michael – when I was still in school in Philadelphia. We were riding and racing bicycles together and discovered our mutual interest in cars. I was now a ski bum in Vermont and he was now a young professional in New Jersey but we stayed in close touch. He liked visiting Vermont as it gave him the chance to put the three Audi Foxes he owned over (a very few) years through their paces. The Other Michael was a bit of a spirited driver and that meant that it did not end well for two of his three Audis.
So the Other Michael invited me down to Jersey for the weekend. In the era of enforced fifty-five MPH speed limits it was an eight hour trip each way but that was nothing when balanced against the fun you might squeeze into two days. As was our habit we would spend some time working on cars and what could you do with the Dart besides a tune-up. Before leaving Vermont I stopped at the auto parts store to purchase new points. As the guy behind the counter handed me the small box containing the new points he said, “Don’t drop the screw into the distributor.” Now by this time I had adjusted and replaced points more than a few times. Having been a bike mechanic I had also worked with my share of small parts without incident, but there must be a small measure of Voodoo magic in Vermont as his admonition proved prophetic.
The following Sunday in New Jersey, I removed the old points, set the new points into place and dropped the screw into the distributor. Huh. No worries, we can pull the distributor and fish the screw out. We all know that the aptly named distributor distributes electrical current to each of the spark plugs at exactly the right time and that this timing is determined in large part and can be changed by the relative position of the distributor.
Think of a clock. You have a date you are meeting at three o’clock. It’s a first date and you want to make a good impression. If your clock is properly set and you use it to determine when to leave for your rendezvous all is well. If the clock is just a little slow you will still make the date but she might be just a little annoyed. If the clock is three hours slow you will miss your date and the she may never speak to you again. Distributors work the same way.
The Other Michael and I were not completely untested. We knew that we would have to accurately note the position of the distributor’s rotating cam and the angle of the distributor itself. We carefully pulled out the distributor, retrieved the fallen screw and seemingly re-installed the distributor exactly as we had found it. After attaching the distributor cap and plug wires (in the correct firing order) we attempt to start the Dart. Nothing. We try a subtle rotation of the distributor. Again, no joy. I have an eight-hour drive home that evening. As in a bad sitcom, things quickly escalate out of control. Our subtle rotations become less so. We once again remove the distributor so that we can mentally map its features and characteristics in three dimensions. We realize we will need reason and rigor to solve the problem. We will need to apply the Double Idiot-Proof Method (DIPM).
The hallmark of DIPM is that before doing anything that might make a situation worse Idiot A must convince Idiot B that the proposed fix will in fact make the situation better. Both idiots must agree. Idiots A and B agreed several times that afternoon and into the evening, but DIPM failed us on that fateful day. I resigned myself to another day in New Jersey and a visit to a real mechanic.
On Monday morning we towed the Dart to a local gas station and explained the situation to the mechanic who we recognized as sardonic but wise. He looked and sounded exactly like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.
He pulled the distributor out and seemingly without any study reinserted it. The car instantly started. In his Humphrey Bogart voice, he said to me, “No reflection on you, kid.”
I had the Dart for a year and the rest of its time was uneventful. It started reliably every day. Nothing broke or wore out. I did not become the envy of my friends because after all, the Dart was a school teacher car.
Called the VE model Valiant out here 225 motor and subtle changes to trim but you’d recognize one instantly, pulling distributors out and planting them back in right is easy enough if you just get the engine to TDC on no1 first and mark the dizzy it cant really go wrong then and you have a reference point to work from, several cars Ive had have been easier to change ignition points with the distributor out 1622 BMC four as an example.
Oh, for the love of…Punctuate!
“dizzy”. Cool slang word I’ve never heard. A cousin to “tranny”, which used to be an automotive term, too.
So? Why does every one of these articles have to have an Australian/New Zealand version or take on it? Does anyone really care? Doing a whole article on a european or asian car, from an Australian perspective, on a US website doesn’t make much sense to me either.
I don’t see “a whole article” with an Australian perspective here. We do cover Australian cars, and are proud of it. But this is about an American Dart.
And we have readers from all over the globe, including quite a few from Australia and NZ, and some of them are active commenters and Contributors. Do you have some problem with that? If you’re looking for a strictly US perspective, you might be at the wrong site.
Indeed… When I first tuned into this site, sure, I was most interested in American cars and such, but thanks to this site and it’s fine writers, I’ve learned a lot about all kinds of cars from all kinds of places, and for that, I thank you guys!
The internet is pretty much a ‘world-wide’ sort of communication mechanism isn’t it? 🙂
If you are feeling prejudiced about ‘us downunders’ participating as keen motorsport enthusiasts, participants and supporters (ie: ‘gearheads’ as nations) that is kind of bigotted of you.
Unless you want to exclude Canadians, Mexicans, Asian, and European subscribers as well?
At least then we won’t feel we are being ‘picked-on’ – LOL !
Seriously though, Australasia has always had interesting takes on a wide range of American vehicles since the 1920’s, often ‘hybridising’ them due to the need to have a percentage of ‘local content’ to satisfy the import restrictions imposed by our governments
We gave you the seriously quick ‘Hemi’ six Charger did we not, and also the means to drastically improve on the Cleveland V8 (ie: also US Ford guys loved us for supplying the unique high compression closed chamber heads for the tall deck 351)
We do have our uses and the freedom of expression too, right? 🙂
I find the Australian versions of U.S. cars endlessly fascinating and the comments from our gear head brothers on that side of the planet equally so. Lighten up or get lost, Rolche.
Wow, move the story to Ohio and make it a year earlier, and I could almost write the exact same thing. Was finishing up college and bought my friend’s 68 Plymouth Valiant, B5 Blue, 225 slant 6, Torqueflight…..
Was also worried about the winter snow so bought a pair of used snow tires for $25 and it ran thru the white stuff like a champ…..
Did a tune-up and dropped the screw right down the distro…..
Of all the cars I’ve owned since, I have the most respect for that Valiant – never failed to start and go……..
When my 2 year old Audi Fox “blew” it’s clutch and parts proved to be back ordered indefinitely, I “accidentally” found a 69 Valiant Signet 2 door sitting behind a small town Chrysler-Plymouth dealership. Bottle green with a white interior (bucket-ish seats in front), slant 6 with automatic transmission, and rolling on 13 inch tires/wheels.
The biggest problem I remember encountering with that car was hard starting and stalling after a 2100 mile roundtrip home over the Christmas holidays. Turned out to be a badly clogged air cleaner.
One of my dearest friends (“Ham”) had a 1967 Dodge Dart 270 he bought new to replace a 1956 Dodge (Value leader of the Forward Look…) an ordinary 4 door with a 6, He had other cars from various Chryslers and Mercurys during his ownership of that Dart, but he kept that old girl untill he died. That’s a tribute to the basic goodness of that generation’s design. And see how it’s basic styling connected the ’49 Plymouth to a current Chrysler 300? Good Stuff!
A tale familiar to anyone who ever worked on Slant Sixes in their callow youth. Your tale of woe illustrates two adages that have proven true over the years:
1) If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
2) NEVER work on your car eight hours away from home unless you have no choice in the matter. LOL!
Incidentally, I’m quite familiar with those “sandpaper recaps”. The secret of their great grip came not only from a softer compound, but from actual sand or crushed walnut shells that were embedded in the tread when the cap was manufactured. As the tire wore, these particles were deposited on the road surface. The material provided a little extra traction and the many voids left in the tread acted as sipes which also helped out a bit and their aggressive tread pattern really dug into the snow but were godawful noisy on dry pavement.
Add a couple of hundred pounds of weight in the trunk and you were ready for (almost) anything. I preferred bags of sand because they did double duty. The weight kept the rear end glued down and in the event that you did get stuck, you could spread some under the drive wheels. That is, if it hadn’t frozen solid in the bag. Ah, the “good” old days!
Throughout the seventies, I ran a succession of old MoPaRs that included a ’64 Plymouth Savoy, a ’66 Belvedere, a ’65 Dodge Dart and a ’67 Barracuda.
During my one Vermont winter with an RWD car (a very rusty 1980 Toyota Corolla) I filled empty two-liter soda bottles with water, leaving space for expansion as they froze in the trunk. Didn’t keep me out of the ditch one time I came over a hill (*maybe* a little too fast for conditions…) and had to slow down for a tow truck pulling someone else out of the ditch.
I got a freebie pull-out for that, and the car was undamaged. In retrospect, I’m lucky none of the rock-hard frozen soda bottles got enough momentum at the right angle to shoot out of a rust hole!
I had a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass from sophomore year of college up to a few years after graduation. 307 V8 and positrac – I would put two 40 lb sandbags in the trunk every winter. It still was hard not to fishtail from a dead stop in poor weather. I tried to keep the gas tank full for traction.
Right. It might have injured a raccoon standing by the side of the road. 😉
As I recall, after much searching, we found the missing screw on the ground under the car. It had found its way through without stopping to fall into the distributor after all. With that heinous thought already planted, we “knew” it had to be in the distributor. We had been warned. Obviously removing the distributor had been totally unnecessary. (38 years having gone by, who knows whose recollection is accurate?)
The Other Michael
D’Oh!!
I hate it when that happens! 😉
At least it was a little screw into a distributor maybe. Now try dropping the distributor hold down bolt down the distributor hole with the new engine all buttoned up. One laughs but I did that in 1974 with my Cougar. You should have seen my two helpers clear out of the garage before the storm hit. The storm in the form of a Louisville slugger which I used on the top of the intake manifold.
I know what good would that do except let out your anger. But! During one of the hits I could hear a clink as the bolt then dropped into the empty oil pan. This past a windage tray no less. At that point I said good enough and proceeded eventually firing up the engine. Of course the distributor was off and with the cam I was lucky I wasn’t standing near the carb when the flames exited two feet high.
The bolt was never a problem and in 2010, when I decided to remove the pan for other reasons, the bolt was sitting right next to the drain hole.
HA! With luck like that you should rush right out and buy a Powerball ticket.
“No reflection on you, kid.”
Solid props to the mechanic for not being a jerk about it.
A college friend had an old Diplomat with slant 6 (ex city police car) and the engine/transmission was the most reliable thing about it. I think if he had kept it any longer than he did he would have ended up rebuilding the car around the engine.
A drive-it-to-the-junkyard car. Still runs, body’s so rusted that you could operate it by the Fred Flintstone method if it didn’t.
Years ago, I dealt with Laclede Cab and St Louis County Cab, working insurance claims. It was not unheard of for them to get 500k miles out of Diplomats, and the mechanics were crying about the Crown Vics falling apart by 250k. They were pretty good about regular oil changes, but just about everything else was just run until it broke, including transmissions…their maintenance program did NOT include transmission fluid or filter changes…when it breaks put a different one in it…not a new one, a different one.
Ah, The Embarrassing Mechanical Blunder. It’s a traditional rite of passage, and impossible to avoid. When I was young and stupid I did something remarkably similar with my ’66 Catalina. (Yes, a Catalina!) A for-the-heck-of-it tune-up that ended up requiring professional assistance. I had a new set of tools and a copy of Auto Repair for Dummies. I was therefore invincible. An aptly-named book.
Mine wasn’t even so mechanical. The first time I tried to change my own oil, on my ’82 Malibu, I had purchased a set of ramps instead of jackstands. I lined the ramps up, inched the car forward, and then had to give it a little gas to get over the lip at the top of the ramp. Gave it too much gas and drove off the front side of the ramps, trapping them underneath the frame rails. I had to use the scissors jack in the trunk to raise each corner enough to drag the ramp out sideways.
My housemates all got a good laugh out of that one.
Great article and stories .
Sounds like how I began my road to being a mechanic , fooling with old junkers on the farm when I was a pre teen .
Agreed , these are simply stellar Automobiles .
A Friend was given his late Aunt’s low mileage near pristine 1970 Dart four door with 225 slant six , he got bored and sold it off , I couldn’t fathom this as he’s a MoPar nut and has a Family….
California rust free car too .
-Nate
A move I would bet he probably regretted from time to time.
Not as much as you’d think ~
His Grandfather was a ChryCo Mechanic and his Father still is a ChryCo fan , my buddy has owned a string of interesting and cool old MoPars , one I remember fondly was an old man’s ’65 Plymouth Fury two door hard top with a V-8 and three on the tree , funny hat on the parcel shelf , you know the deal .
I got it running when he towed it home from wherever it had sat for a decade then he drove it a short while , refused to let me tune it properly , I knew it had quite a bit of hidden horsepower , he didn’t care and sold it off in short order .
Another time I finally talked him into buying a Dodge shortie panel truck with a slant six as his work truck , one time he hosted a MoPar Club drive and easily outran all the Road Runners and Hemi Barracudas going up the ACH and he sold that one too , told me he had to have a V-8 .
Interesting man to say the least .
-Nate
That “Bluesmobile” would have been another keeper for me for sure. Sounds like your buddy had his addiction to MoPaRs in the blood..
Another great story, Michael!
When I was in my 20’s, I used to drive from Columbus OH to my family home in SE Ohio (about 140 miles each way) to do automotive work because that’s where the garage was. It was just a basic concrete block structure with a tiny pot-bellied stove and electricity supplied by an extension cord from the house. Humble though it was, it had a concrete floor and it was dry when it rained. Another benefit was that a good friend worked at the Parts Plus which was about 4 or 5 doors up the street. There was also a NAPA and another independent parts store within easy walking distance up town.
This arrangement served me well for maintaining a number of individual beaters such as two Pontiac Grandvilles, a 6-cylinder Chevy Biscayne and a Datsun B210 hatchback. Later on, I had both a daily driver ’84 Chevette 2 door and a ’67 Camaro 6-cylinder Powerglide as my “baby.” The Camaro was later replaced by a ’72 Monte Carlo 350 2-bbl / 350 THM.
This arrangement made tackling bigger projects much less stressful, since I then didn’t need to worry about lack of wheels if a project went south.
Good times!
When I came to the USA in ’86 there were still a few Darts around. I liked their looks, in particular the inverted rear window. I never had a chance of sitting in one.
Back in Germany a friend had his Jaguar S-type’s engine rebuilt. We were putting the all the bits in to get it ready for the first start up. It went “oy-oy-oy-puff!—-oy-oy-oy-puff!” a few times and frustrated the hell out of my friend. We checked timing of course and everything was right at the button. I suggested we check the firing order. He said no it’s correct. He never took the wires off the dizzy. A few days later he had it running. I asked what he did. He followed each wire and placed it on the correct plug. He never admitted that I was right, though.
The dizzy is driven off the oil pump shaft. On reassembly the shop had the oil pump shaft turned by 180 degrees.
Dad had a used 68 4 door in the early 70s, he sold it to buy a then new Allegro!
i went to “dodge world” on rt 22 in jersey right after college and asked what they had on the lot for $500 that would do 60 mph. they sold me a dart that became known by my friends as the terminator because i took out a checker cab that cut me off and someone gave me a bumper sticker from the movie. a sledge hammer to the bumper of the dart and everything was a-o-k. it almost terminated me after my shade tree brake job failed but otherwise “venerable.” parked on west side of manhattan every night for a year by the railroad yard where the junkies went to hide that later became some trump complex. sold it for $50 to “car cash.” still ran fine.
My very first tune up on my 1968 Plymouth Valiant Signet (225 Slant Six) resulted in a problem when the aftermarket distributor cap did not QUITE seat all the way down. When I cranked the engine the rotor jammed and stripped the plastic distributor gear. So I had a non-running car, AND had lost the reference to where the rotor was supposed to point when properly installed. With the help of a car repair book at the local library, on my way on foot to the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer for a new gear with roll pin, and a Mopar cap (the dealer’s parts guy knew of the problem with the aftermarket cap, he said it happened frequently), I learned about Top Dead Center and Cylinder Number One, and got it back together. Sure enough, the Mopar cap fit easily and perfectly.
That was my first Chrysler product. Coming after a 1967 Camaro, it didn’t have the looks and sex appeal but it made up for that by being a better CAR. It rode and handled better than the Camaro and was more comfortable. Part of the comfort was because this Signet had the upgrade seats, power steering and brakes, air conditioning, a “sound package” and “light package.” From the right vantage, the squarish body even looked classy, in the Mercedes-like manner that Ford would imitate when it plopped a new, square body on its old, 1960 Falcon platform. That wasn’t really so different from what Chrysler had done in 1967 with the Valiant. Ever since, even though other cars have shared the garage and do now, I have continually owned at least one Chrysler product. Not, it should be noted, a DaimlerChrysler, nor an FCA.
Thanks Michael for your wonderful and amusing story. The DIPM cracked me up. At least Bogart was the hero in this tale instead of the villan. Only in recent years has the general publics perception of the professional service and repair industry begun to improve over that portrayed by too many Hollywood screenwriters. And yes it’s an intrinsic part of youth when ambition outpaces experience and we learn at the school of hard knocks. When I was 17 I replaced all the ignition parts (breaker points type) on mom’s ford and it refused to start. I checked and double checked everything. The one reoccurring thought I had was it ran fine before I worked on it. So where’s the problem. Turns out I had the firing order correct but opposite of distributor rotation but it took all day for me to figure out.
Hey Paul , Does that photo of the distributor in this post look familiar to you ?
Gee yes; it does look rather familiar. I wonder why? 🙂
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/my-66-f-100-gets-a-wash-a-10-dyno-tune-up-and-a-set-of-225-used-tires/
Just as it’s hard to find a good story about some cars, it’s difficult to find a bad story about a sixties’ slant-six A-body. If only Chrysler’s body integrity had been better, I would imagine just about all of them would still be on the road today.
Indeed, my high school English teacher drove a new 1967 Dodge Dart. However, it was a loaded hardtop coupe (IIRC a GT) with a V8 (273, I think), white with black vinyl top. Her husband was a lawyer so that upped the car shopping budget. Very sharp looking car with curved side glass and the new wide C pillar on the coupe. The Dart was very popular in the Midwest when i was growing up, got to ride in and drive several. However, as in the case of most Detroit products of the time, they rusted away like crazy unless cared for in the manner of the subject car. Good memories.
One of my first jobs was working maintenance at a corporate park….This was back about 1985 or so….Some employees would take business trips and would leave thier cars parked at work and would rent a car or carpool with someone else on the business trips.
The parking lot was being resealed with blacktop sealer, so cars needed to be moved around to other sections of the lot as the lot was resealed a section per day. The car owners on business trips left their carkeys with a supervisor at work so their cars could be moved around as needed during the tarring project.
One older woman…a widow…
that worked there had a 68 or 69 Dart black 4 door sedan with a slant 6 and a three speed manual on the column…..The car was 16 or 17 years old at the time and was well worn….had over 100,000 miles on it at the time…
The transmission linkage had gotten so sloppy that first and third gears, when selected rather than being in a 3 o’clock position relative to the steering wheel were in a 4 or 5 o’clock position so that whenever you put it in 1st gear, the shift lever would bang into your leg……It swung down way beyond the normal limit of travel….Reverse and 2nd gears were equally sloppy…with the shift lever needing to be brought up to nearly a vertical 1200 or 1230 position before engaging the gear…….I only drove the car for a few minutes….moving it from a front parking space to a far rear parking lot space but the memory has stuck with me all these years.
Great story, but one thing is really bugging me: You said it seemed like the mechanic just pulled the distributor and reseated it. What was the actual cause of the no-start problem?
Probably not seated properly so not engaging the drive.
It certainly sounds like they just got it out of time and the mechanic just knew what he was doing having done it countless times before.
In my early days of working on cars at the first shop I worked at I still remember the first time I saw the old guy that also worked there do a tune up on a points equipped slant 6. Looked over shortly after he had lifted the hood and he had the distributor in his hand. I was like “why in the world would you do that, getting it back in the right spot is going to be a pain” based on my limited experience at the time. He said it is much easier than doing it in the car on the slant 6. He took it to the old time Sun distributor machine. Bolted in the new points and condensor dialed in the dwell, popped it back in and it fired right up on the first crank.
He said it was common place to do it that way. So good chance that the mechanic on duty that day had stabbed many a slant 6 distributor or at least many distributors.
Once you’ve done it several dozen times it is easy to stab a distributor, have it fire on the first try and the timing within a degree or two.
Absolutely. That’s how I did it the SECOND time I did a tune up on one of my Slanters. The culprit for us rank amateurs was the spiral bevel drive gear. If one didn’t notice that the distributor shaft rotated slight as the unit was removed, one had little or no hope of re-installing it properly.
My method also. Which I came up with the first time I had to remove the distributor after dropping the screw into it. Setting points was so much easier when not standing on your head under the hood with your glasses sliding off. 🙂
Ignition woes – I sure can identify with that!
I had to laugh at your explanation of the ignition timing being out because you put the distributor in wrong. Been there, done that! I had a similar experience with my first car, a Cortina. Fortunately I had a helpful and patient father-in-law at the other end of the phone.
A few years later the vacuum advance unit came loose from the distributor> The holding screw’s thread was worn, so it didn’t stay tightly in place but rattled around over bumps. Randomly-variable ignition timing is not recommended!
An old friend from Brooklyn, NY had a `68 or `69 Dart hardtop coupe. Fairly base model with a slant 6, auto vinyl top and air.Green with black vinyl top and interior. Us car guys used to call it “Pete`s Squeak box”-a play on the Who`s “Squeezebox”.We even used to sing “Peters got a squeak box,a `68 Dart. Any guesses why? Of course, we never sang it in his presence.
A friend at school got a flat tire on one of these, and he decided to pull the wheel and tire and have the hole patched. As I had the massive star wrench, and the little wrench he had “would not work, as the lugs were on too tight”, I was called in. Only after twisting a stud completely off of the flange, did we learn that these cars came with “reverse threaded” lugs on one side, like the old Jeeps. The theory being that the reverse lugs would tighten, not loosen, as the wheels rolled down the road. Live and learn!
Originally, the reverse thread studs were only on the (left hand) driver’s side. The “L” stamped on the end were much easier to read once the stud was snapped off, LOL!
The real fun came on used cars if the front brake drums had been swapped from one side to the other and the left hand threaded studs were on the wrong side. Don’t ask me how I discovered that. 😉
The two things that really qualify someone as an old-school Mopar enthusiast are knowing about left-hand thread wheel studs and the ballast resistor.
Sometimes, ‘Extra Care in Engineering’ went a little too far…
I don’t remember the comedian but I caught him on tv years ago talking about his first trip to florida and seeing nothing but little old grandpas with their pants pulled up to their chests, wearing panama hats and driving around in dodge dart sedans cause they were the car that never died and were indestructible. he then mentioned he had read somewhere that if there was a nuclear holocaust the only thing that would survive were cockroaches.
he then talked about a nightmare he had where he survived a nuclear war only to see a never ending line of cockroaches in panama hats and pants up to their chests driving by in their dodge darts.
the mental image still makes me laugh everytime I see an old dart sedan like this!
The local small chain of tire stores in the county where I went to College sold “Moonies” snow retreads with ground walnut shells in the tread. They were really cheap.
Edit: it appears that there are still retreaders putting walnut shells and sand in their tires. http://treadwright.com/pages/kedge-grip
That website was fascinating…remolded snow tires being made in Texas?!?
I was surprised to see a company truck with studded Firestone Winterforce tires on it yesterday…haven’t seen studded tires in decades. It is a large cemetery, so I suppose the studded tires come in handy during the winter.
I had a neighbor with a late-60s Dart GT, dark green, white bucket seat interior, and white vinyl top, if memory serves. Around 1976 he traded it for a Volare wagon…bet he regretted that.
Honestly, in my mind’s eye, I see a late 60s, very early 70s 2 door Dart, steel wheels with dog dish hubcaps, slant six/torqueflite, houndstooth cloth bench seat interior with nothing else but A/C as the perfect daily driver. Now I just need to decide on a period-appropriate color combination….maybe a really light greenish-silver with black and white interior. Chances are, I’ll never have a car like this, but a guy can dream.
Many moons ago, there was a shop up in my neck of the woods that would cook a new tread band onto a customer-supplied tire casing, if the casing was in good enough condition. It was a really small operation located in the back room of a gas station. I think they charged about US$20 per tire. It was there that I first learned about the benefits of walnut shells.
Enterprising cheapskate that I was, I brought in a pair of Michelin summer tires that I had been running on my ’64 Savoy and a few days later I left with a two of the first radial recap studded snow tires in the region. MAN, were they ever sticky!
And Humphrey the mechanic said ‘ Of all the garages in all the towns in all the world, he brings his car into mine’……
And after Humphrey fixes the distributor, he closes the hood, gives the car a pat and tells the car…”Here’s looking at you kid”….
Good one?
FYI, I’ve found that a best-practice when replacing points in a Slant Six is ALWAYS to remove that distributor. That way you can set the gap with ease, oil the bushings, clean out the gunk and NOT drop those stupid little screws with each point change. This is especially true on the ’60-’66 A-bodies, as the passenger-side wheel well intrudes right at the distributor’s location, so the amount of room to get at the distributor for service is just about nill. (and always turn the engine so that the rotor points straight up BEFORE you remove it!)
These days, I’d go electronic somehow, as the points available are not up to par, (Eichlin points factory, I miss you!). I like the original MOPAR electronic versions as they take less modifications to the car, but the merits of the different systems available is a whole different discussion.
Yeah, unless you’re planning on a concours-level restoration on something like an ultra-rare Hemi car, swapping in an electronic ignition is the way to go. It’s just one less thing to have to contend with when the car refuses to start. Seems like the electronic ignition was one of the last, truly great Chrysler innovations.
In fact, maybe there should be an ‘Greatest Hits’ for automotive technical/engineering advances. Chrysler would surely be the leader in that department.
HA! I can relate to the “glasses” thing too, jp. To make the job completely idiot proof (a necessary precaution in my case back then), the first couple of times I did it this way, I put a chalk mark on the distributor body and the block where they came together and another one higher up at the spot that the rotor was pointing to BEFORE I removed the unit.
Voila! I was a instant expert! 😉
My hunch is that the UK equivalent of the gold Dodge Dart at the top of the piece is a Hillman Hunter.
My dad had one, in that shade of gold (known as Aztec Gold in the UK) in 1971 and, yes, he was a school teacher. I seem to recall some ignition issue s there too
Nice post!
I drove a 66 Dart GT, 273, 4 speed, 8 3/4 posi back then. With the studded radial snows on it, it went through most snow and ice, but with the chains, it was like driving a halftrack. It went everywhere. One time, I went up my 1/4 mile long driveway pushing snow with the front bumper, clearing it so my wifes Bronco II 4wd could get up the drive.
Oh man, this brought back memories of a tune up I did on a neighbor’s slant six Dart that I did about 40 years ago. Decided to replace the phenolic gear … not sure why … then split the new one when driving in the roll pin. No problems with timing though. BTW, I just read that FiatChrysler is dropping the FWD Dart for good.
Darts and Valiants, the most rugged econo-boxes ever built. I don’t remember if I ever even rode in that car but I remember you driving it back to Ohio a couple of winters. I also remember the plates – first IONNO and the next year you reversed it to read ONNOI. Did you save either of those for posterity?
My several Darts and Valiants were certainly good to me and I miss them all.
My mom purchased a 1975 Dart – basic car like this with automatic and a radio.
It was a horrible product. She bought it new. She hated it the longer she owned it – selling it about 2 and a half years later for a 1973 Ford Station wagon with 75,000 miles on it (former contractor car). That car looked and drove like new and never gave her a lick of problems. She eventually sold because it drank gas.
The Dart had all of the trappings of having been wrecked – ripples in the right front fender, right front subframe had a weld that was jagged and not smooth like the left side. The car leaned to that side too. Engine had paper tags on it that had engine paint overspray (odd to have tags placed on an engine before it was painted!).
It was truly miserable to ride in – front seat back leaned back too far – no adjustments could be made – it was rough riding and noisy.
I can say that the Dart was one of the worst products we’e ever had in our family – we have had four Ford falcons from 62 through 68 that were vastly superior to this new dodge.
It sounds like it was wrecked. Just because a car is “new” doesn’t mean it can never have been wrecked. A friend of mine bought a “new” BMW 3 series a while ago. When showing it off, I noticed that the orientation of the metal flakes in the paint didn’t match and the window tints didn’t match. BMW has much higher quality control than that. The answer, the car was wrecked and repaired to be sold to a sucker.