Old cars and stashes of old car parts go together like Calvin and Hobbes or hot dogs and mustard: the one doesn’t function well without the other. So! Zero auxiliary backups for two old cars in daily service; how was one eager, perfectionist Slant-6 freak to keep them that way? Why, with a complete parts and service literature library, a passably decent collection of tools—not a set, because I couldn’t get myself to store them neatly, so individuals went missing all the time—and a large collection of parts.
I made frequent trips to wrecking yards; yarding was high-quality recreational fun. I dragged home lots of parts from CAP, but that surely wasn’t the only one. Just up the hill from CAP was Svigel’s New and Used Auto Parts, who didn’t employ non-Svigels (I asked). They had a big yard—eight acres, so they said—accessible by permission subject to revocation at any moment, full of ’40s-’70s cars, plus a warehouse full of pulled parts next door to another full of new old stock. Cars tended to stay in the Svigel yard for many, many years; there was a television repair van from the mid ’50s, with its hand-painted signwork faded but still visible. There was a ’75 Valiant 4-door built with a 225 Slant-6 and a 4-speed overdrive transmission. And there were a couple of early Valiants, the shell of a ’61 right next to a ’62 about the same colour(s) as this one:
Not long after dad bought the Lancer, I took a closer look at the ’62 Valiant at Svigel’s, and I went on a feeding frenzy: trim, lights, grilles (plural because there were really nice ’60 and ’61 grilles stashed in its trunk, plus the ’62 item on the car itself), and on and on. Aside from a few dashboard parts, none of this stuff would fit the Lancer, but shush; I was collecting !
Every nearly-never in my poking and prodding at old cars in wrecking yards—or driveways, for the matter of that—I would encounter a very old, very high-miles car with virtually all original working parts: distributor (cap and rotor and all), spark plug wires, heater hoses, starter and alternator, carburetor, fuel pump, and so on, crusty and caked with decades of dirt, but still working fine. This ’62 was such a one, last registered eleven years prior, and it had an aluminum 225 like the one in dad’s Lancer. I put a battery, cables, spool of wire, toolbox, a few quarts of oil, a gallon can of gasoline, and a wheelbarrow in the trunk of the Valiant; my dad in the passenger seat, and off we went. Battery in the tray, oil in the crankcase, wire to the coil, a glug of gasoline down the (original!) carburetor, a screwdriver across the terminals of the (original!) starter, and it didn’t take much cranking for the (original!) engine to start and run on all six.
There was a pressurised oil leak somewhere near the oil pump—probably the pressure sender, or maybe the filter gasket, or one of the pump gaskets—but I’d already heard what I needed to hear. I pulled the battery and threw tools back in the box. As we wheeled the barrow back up the hill, dad said he was impressed with how easy I’d made it look to wake up an engine left outside for over a decade. I arranged with the Svigels; they’d pull the engine for me. That engine eventually came to rest against the side of our house, covered by a tarp, and it stayed there through a few more Colorado winters. We haven’t heard the last of it yet, but that’s all for now—except to note that many years later, Old Man Svigel saw a nice sheet of plywood fall off a truck driving past. He dashed through the traffic gap, picked up the wood, and lifted it up perpendicular to the road. This turned it into a very efficient sail, which the wind pushed (with Mr. Svigel still attached) into the path of a big truck in the far lane of fast-moving Santa Fe Boulevard; so much for Old Man Svigel.
So yeah, that was me: hauling parts home from all over the place. Usually I went out seeking them, but sometimes they sought me instead. The Denver Post piece had my phone number in it, and aside from people interested in the club I got other calls, too. One of them came in from a lady who wondered what to do with her Dart which she said had been hit. I told her I’d come take a look at it. She wasn’t far away, and there in the car park behind her apartment house sat a blue 1970 Dodge Dart Custom. I have no images of a worn metallic blue ’70 4-door Dart; this nice green one will have to stand in.
The lady was a retired schoolteacher, she’d bought the car new, and she was sad that some bozo had run a red light and slammed into her Dart hard enough to take it off the road for good. She took a liking to me (perhaps I reminded her of some of her students?), and solace in the existence of a club for Dodge Dart enthusiasts, and wondered if anyone could use any parts off the car. I looked closer: it had one of those screwy bent engines with half its too many cylinders on the wrong side of the car, but with great effort I forgave that. This car had been specced way up, and was a parts bonanza! Trailer tow package (big radiator, 8¾” rear axle, bigger torsion bars), power disc brakes, factory air, etc. She gave me the car to take whatever parts I wanted from. I removed a bunch of parts over several visits, including one accompanied by Bob when he stopped in on one of his cross-country road trips in his 4-speed ’64 Valiant wagon; he was somewhere south of amused and north of worried about cops when I steered us into what must have seemed like a random apartment lot, pulled up to a random Dart, and started pulling random parts off it.
Compared to back when I started out with the ’64 Valiant, I was much better able to dismantle a car so as to gain knowledge and working, intact parts. Chrysler had upgraded the air conditioning system versus the ’65, I learned, for example. I don’t recall the logistical arrangements, but onehow or another—perhaps with help from CAP, because I know I didn’t pull them myself—I got the rear axle, the front disc brake system (with booster and brackets, etc), and the HD torsion bars.
I’d long wanted rid of the underspecified 9-inch drum brakes in the Valiant, so I set about refurbishing the discs off the teacher’s Dart. Those Kelsey-hayes 4-pot calipers—the same kind used on ’60s Mustangs—had something of a reputation for the seal boot getting holed, water getting in, and rust seizing the pistons. I used brute-force techniques to take the calipers apart: I weighted them down, put one foot on the weight, the other foot on an unauthorisedly-longhandled socket wrench, and broke loose the bolts that held the two halves together. Then I levered two screwdrivers in the grooves of one piston at a time and stood on the handles to prise the stuck pistons out the bores.
New pistons weren’t hard to get, and neither were seal-and-boot kits. I took the disassembled calipers to G&S Auto and Machine; they had a Federated parts store in front and a machine shop in the back, run by a couple of machinists whose skill and talent were all kinds of fun to watch. The kind who could measure, machine, precision-fit, and assemble components as easily as I might use a can opener; I guess my reaction to their work was comparable to my dad’s reaction to mine under the hood of that ’62 Valiant.
The guys at G&S spent quality time with those caliper halves in their blast cabinet, which shot not sand or glass beads but grindings from their brake lathe. Perfect! The iron frass removed all traces of rust and crud, without pitting the surface. Parts came out of that cabinet looking not just clean but newly-made, with none of the gritty, sandy texture seen on parts hit with less thoughtfully chosen media. I reassembled the brake calipers, bought new rotors and pads and hoses and a new master cylinder…now I had all the parts for a disc brake swap.
The summer of 1993 came not long later, and the Valiant went to Body Builders, an auto body-and-mechanical shop out in Commerce City run by two brothers into Mopars; Mark liked A-bodies and Carl liked B-bodies or vice versa. A pile of parts also went along with: that factory aircon system I’d bought out of Texas, the disc brake setup entire, the big (recored) radiator, and a lot of miscellany. The idea was for them to merge the parts pile with the car while I was in Illinois at a programme for high schoolers at Northwestern University’s journalism school, learning to do like this:
It was a rigourous programme, but there was a Barnes & Noble bookstore, which was air conditioned, a few blocks away from the dorm, which was not. That alone was reason to spend off hours at the book store, which also had a terrific selection of car books and magazines. I used to pore through Hemmings and copy down part numbers from ads, then use the payphone to dial the toll-free number for PartsVoice, a voicemail-like interface for a dealer inventory network useful for tracking down obsolete parts. Even from my summer activity thing, I was still collecting parts! I remember a new old stock carburetor was one of them.
Meanwhile, Mark and Carl were fighting a difficult battle. Air conditioning had been a late-availability option on the ’65 A-bodies in the States; probably not offered at all in Canada that year, and there were no provisions for its installation. No drill-here dimples, no knockout plugs, nothing. They had to improvise from scratch every step of the way, and there were an awful lot of steps. The firewall hole for the blower motor had to be enlarged. Components had to be mocked into place multiple times. There were endless little picky compatibility problems—the rod-type throttle linkage and its accelerator pedal or the A/C housing could be installed on the car, but not both; they had to source a cable-type setup from a V8 A-body (which required different floorpan holes) and kickdown linkage from a Slant-6 B-body. That linkage required a different carburetor. And so on. There were numerous phone calls with the shop, and then with mom and dad once they got the car back. The brake pedal was way too high and touchy (different mount points versus the ’70 Dart), the A/C shop couldn’t find the low-side service port to charge the system (hidden in plain sight on the compressor’s cylinder head), and so on. Mark and Carl vowed never again to try installing factory air on a car not originally equipped, and years later I came to wish I’d listened better to that vow.
At the end of the summer I got back to Denver. It was strange to get back in the Valiant, because it was a different car. The cable-type accelerator felt different, the brakes sure as hell felt different, the dashboard looked different with the A/C controls…it felt like the car had undergone surgery and would take awhile to heal. I wound up fixing the high-and-touchy brake pedal by deleting the booster altogether; much better. The A/C…well…it blew cold air, but not in great volume. I hadn’t tinted the windows or seen to the car’s poor insulation, so the underspecified system was trying in vain to cool a solar oven. All in all it wasn’t very effective and I should’ve gone about things differently. Mark and Carl surely agreed.
But progressively, a bit at a time in fits and starts, the car (was) healed up from its operation. Sometimes steps went in the wrong direction, though, on account of thoughtless laziness on my part. I spent most of a very hot, thirsty day at CAP pulling a 2.93 centre chunk out of an 8¾” rear axle in a ’65 Plymouth. I barrowed it out to the trunk of the Valiant…and left it there. Dad borrowed the car and wondered what all the commotion was from the trunk; that’s how a collection of weird outward dings appeared in the quarter panels. Oops…sorry, old friend.
That schoolteacher’s ’70 wasn’t the only old Dart that found its way to me, either. I had spotted a tired, rusty, smoky old soldier of a ’64 Dart wagon behind the Belcaro shopping centre. I found it belonged to Joann, a nice older lady who worked very competently in the Ace hardware store, by parking in my Valiant next to the wagon; when the store closed and she went for the Dart we swapped stories about our cars. The Dart had a 225, pushbutton automatic, and a Mopar Airtemp knee-knocker air conditioner which didn’t work; she said she wasn’t going to charge it up because of the environment. Along with the aircon came factory greentint glass. It also had an almost new power steering pump, only ten years old! It needed a valve adjustment, a radio antenna, and a choke thermostat. We talked about a deal whereby I would fix the antenna and the choke, and in return I’d get the air conditioning system, but she decided not to do that because if she ever sold it, she wanted it to be original. Over the next couple years, I saw the Dart a few times. It accumulated more rust, and dents, and it grew smokier, but it kept taking Joann to and from work.
And then, while I was finishing up one or the other year at the University of Oregon, my folks relayed a message from Joann: “Come get the Dart; I’m done with it!” She’d bought an ’85 Colt and was finished with the Dart after 31 years (her father bought it). As far as she was concerned, she said to me, “it’s your car.” She came and picked me up in the Colt and just as it began to pour down rain, we got to her house. There it was—I’d never seen it anywhere other than behind the Belcaro Ace. Or, as she said, there he was. He was “Hud,” as in the movie.
It was dark out. Joann held my flashlight as I opened the hood and took stock. Lookit there, it was another of those old-old cars with many original parts still in place! Original starter, carburetor, A/C compressor, distributor, and other stuff. It had an underhood insulation pad (ooh, de luxe!). The brake fluid was a bit low, so I topped it up. The oil was right up there at the Full mark.
I had brought along my Mopar manifold heat control valve solvent—now called “rust penetrant” because heat riser valves are a thing of the distant past, but still the same formula. I still don’t know what’s in this stuff. It’s nothing like Liquid Wrench or other penetrants; it smells chemically different and has worked magic for me with little mess or hassle. That valve wasn’t going to come unstuck, though, so I put it away and reached for the carb cleaner. Joann didn’t like that. With an indignant look on her face, she admonished me “Put that away, dangit! Just get in the car and turn the key! You have no faith!”
She had a point. I got in the car, stomped the gas five times, and turned the key. That original starter was tired and slow, and the battery wasn’t such a spring chicken either, but there were enough oats between the two of them to get the job done; the car started and stayed running. Wow, did the valves need adjusting; the engine sounded loud enough to be a diesel of some kind.
But it was running. She hopped into the passenger seat as I punched up reverse. Click-chuk, no problem there. Headlights, check. Turn signals, check. Heater/defog, check. Backup lights, nonexistant. Seat belts, covered by seat cover. Power steering, dead. But we were in reverse and the engine was running. So I killed the dome light and hit the gas. Backed out of the driveway and hit drive. Click-chuk, engage. It actually ran pretty well, all things considered. Joann warned me that one axle was bent due to a crunch in a snowstorm, but said it hadn’t affected tire wear.
She gave me the owner’s manual, title, and bill of sale with “NO CHARGE” written on it, and the original California black plate and I drove off into the night. As the Torqueflite smoothly shifted through the gears, this crazy grin spread across my face and I laughed and patted “Hud” on the padded (but cracked) dashboard. I went to the grocery and got two cans of Gunk, and then to the car wash and cleaned up the engine room.
The engine was tired, all right. It smoked when revved and the oil pressure light would stay on below about 1,200 RPM; above that speed the light flickered off and the steering became power-assisted. There was extensive wear and tear everywhere, and yet I found myself thinking of where to pick up a new check spring for the driver’s door. And a new right side interior sunvisor. And a right sideview mirror to match the left one. And ooh, I knew where there was a ’66 Valiant wagon in Oregon just waiting to donate its electric tailgate and straight doors. And it would need a set of headlight bezels; I wondered if that ’64 with the good bezels was still at Parkin’s yard in Cottage Grove.
I parked it alongside our house, which mother cheerfully allowed except when she used it as evidence of what a stupid, goodfernothing screwup I was, which she screamed except when she was cheerfully fine with the car there.
That wagon probably could have been yanked back from the brink with professional cubic money injection; short of that it was well used up. Nevertheless, it did run and drive, sorta. You’ve probably heard of the Doppler Effect, which is the tendency of sounds to seem higher-pitched as they’re approaching you and lower-pitched as they’re retreating. Related is the Dopeler Effect, which is the tendency of dumb ideas to seem smart when they approach you very fast. Teenagers are especially susceptible, and one day while I was at home alone it struck me as a fine idea to use the wagon to carry a bunch of stuff over to our storage locker.
There were some obstacles to this plan; the Dopeler Effect made short work of them. The expired licence plate tabs were umfixed with some white-out and a Sharpie, followed by a bit of spray glue and a handful of dirt thrown at the plate. Insurance, schminsurance—it was only ¾ of a mile; I’d be back long before either of my folks got home. I had not yet understood that “What could possibly go wrong?” is always an answer disguised as a question. No, I didn’t get in a crash or anything; I made it to Public Storage just fine, through the gate and down the hill and round the back of the third building, unloaded my junk from the wagon, and…couldn’t get the car started again. Flat battery. Had to hoof it up the hill to the office and beg to use their phone to call a neighbour’s house. The babysitter picked up; she was waiting for the kid to get home from school, and after he did, they could come help.
They did come, in the babysitter’s S-10. The Dart started just fine with jumper cables, and I drove it home without incident, but my mother had got home in the meantime, so the big spectacular crackup and fire happened after I walked in the front door. I was in very deep trouble, as mother correctly said if I’d got in a crash with an uninsured vehicle, it could’ve easily ruined us.
I don’t recall the penalties, but I lived to see another day, and my wings didn’t get clipped. Eventually my folks stopped humouring the rusty car parked beside the house. My auto-glass-guy friend DJ towed it up to his place, and he and I and a couple of his buddies stripped usable parts off it. I kept the underdash A/C box and all four doors’ worth of factory greentint glass, though I only ever got around to swapping the driver’s vent wing—the other seven pieces of glass stayed in the basement until I had to get rid of them.
That wasn’t the end of my automotive dumpster-diving, but the next stories along that line happened in Oregon, so I’ll tell those another time.
Thank you another great about Darts and Valiants. We had a 65 Dart, two 66s Darts, adn a 75 Dart growing up. MIss those cars and the slant 6. Keep the stories coming. :)!
Here’s a story about a guy who tried doctoring license plate tabs and got caught. I suspect he was older than you were at that time.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/driver-who-tried-to-fake-car-tabs-gets-228-ticket/
The highlight of my week’s time on the web: another terrific chapter.
My deep dive into 404s was more of a puddle compared to yours with A Bodies. It was shorter lived (about 5 years), and as befitting my personality, a bit more practical and less obsessive. But then I was married, and then one kid, and then another at the end, as well as a job, so I had to juggle my priorities. And the fact that we were living in an apartment in Santa Monica, with only one off-street parking spot.
Similar to you, I rescued several junked and abandoned 404s and got them running again. But in my typical money-grubbing way (a growing family to feed) I sold or even “leased” them to co-workers who needed a cheap car. The understanding was they’d sell them back to me if they were ready to move on. I sold one a couple of times.
But of course they came to me when something went wrong, which remarkably hardly ever did.
Thanks again for sharing your obsession here. I’m loving every bit.
I’m new to this site and still trying to understand the admiration for older US in-line 6 cylinder engines.
The number of in-line 6 cylinder to V8 swaps that I have done would shock most folks on here.
Our north central B.C., Canada high school auto shop in the early 1990’s must have had a dozen plus in-line 6 cylinder engines sitting outside in the snow and rain at any time.
My Dad would take my 6 cylinder engines to the dump from our yard.
I’m older now but still haven’t warmed up to these engines. So low on power, reverse flow head, single barrel carb, don’t rev.
I remember 1 buddy had a 70-72 Chevy pickup with the 292 in-line 6.
He had just bought the truck with a fresh reman 292 in it. Early 1990’s.
We milled the head, hand ported the intake and exhaust ports, aftermarket intake manifold, headers, small Holley 4 barrel carb.
It was still a dog, still sounded terrible. A good used 350 SBC with all the standard bolt-ons went in a month later.
My ’68 Chev C10, that I bought when I was 14, lasted about a week before the 6 cylinder engine was out.
Ironically, I do own and admire one in-line 6 cylinder engine. The 2004 Cummins diesel in our Dodge.
It too was a dog until it got twin turbos and all the supporting mods.
It nicely tows our 5th wheel all summer in the B.C. rockies.
I’m older now but still performance focused. 3 of the 4 of our vehicles are fully modified and manual transmissions.
Still have an 1989 5.0L Mustang that I bought brand new in high school.
It’s fully modified, way too many drag strip runs and road courses.
Even my wife’s 2006 6 speed manual TSX, I’m very much a K20/K24 Honda fan, is fully modified.
It’s a great car but not so great in stock form.
I love older muscle cars but could never own an older musclecar and leave it stock. Just slowly cruising a poor handling, poor steering, poor braking car is not my style.
Just my thoughts and opinion.. Not trying to tick anyone off.
I am enjoying this site, still trying to understand the differing opinions on these older interesting cars.
Maybe one day I will slow down!
I’m new to this site and still trying to understand the admiration for older US in-line 6 cylinder engines.
Welcome. And it may take a while 🙂
Realistically, there tend to be V8 folks and inline six folks and of course some who can appreciate both for what they are. Obviously those looking for maximum power are going to generally be best served with a V8. But the six has a lot of charms, at least to some of us. It may be hard to explain. But just try to accept it even if you can’t fully understand or appreciate it.
One secret is to appreciate the engine for what it is and what it does well, and not to give it the stink-eye for what it isn’t or doesn’t do well. The classic American inline six is ultra smooth, simple as dirt and extremely long-lived.
I think there are two kinds of car hobbyists – those (like you may be) who know what they want and consider a car as the raw material to get there. If you like performance, then you find the parts that will make the car perform and make the changes, whatever they may be.
The other kind (who is me) is to take the car as you find it and learn to love it as it is, warts and all. You can get the car to be all that it can be, but then you enjoy the nature of the obsolete machine, whether it’s a Ford Model A, a Fluid Drive Mopar or a slant six Dart. I think there’s room for all of us.
Welcome here!
Why didn’t I want the highest-horsepower, biggest engine with the most possible cylinders? Well: one fine, sunny Spring day an old bull and a young bull were standing on a bluff above a meadow full of grazing cattle. The young bull snorted and pawed at the ground and said “Let’s run down this here hill and screw a couple o’ them thar heifers!”
The old bull finished his mouthful of grass and said “Let’s walk down and screw all of them.”
Some people prefer endurance runs to sprint races, and some people have no interest in my-car’s-faster/louder/quicker/has more numbers-than-yours competition of any kind. There’s nothing such as the objectively best ice cream flavour, nor objectively the best kind of car. My own laser-spot preference for the Slant-6 traces back to my earliest days.
That said, I did own a blisteringly quick and fast car for several years. It’s turn in this COAL series will come!
(The horsepower race of the 1960s and ’70s looked and sounded very different in Australia; it was primarily fought with inline-6 engines. The Slant-6 and to a greater extent its Chrysler successor down there the “Hemi-6”, and the direct competition from Ford and GM-Holden, were developed to extremely high performance levels—objectively, not just “for a six”. You might find it interestingly mindbending to look into the Chargers, Toranas, and Monaros (etc) they ran and raced down there.)
Count me as another that doesn’t have a lot of love for 6cyls in general and straight 6’s specifically.
I have had a few straight 6s though and 2 out of the 3 stayed that way.
62 Econoline, which of course didn’t have a V-8 option and sticking one in there was well beyond my budget and abilities at the time. It was purchased with a dead engine but the replacement was just a 200 out of a Fairmont, what I could find cheap.
The next was a 75 Nova with the 250. That of course would have been easy to drop a SBC into but the reason I bought that car was to fix it and sell it. It had a bad trans and some guy that was yanking the 6cyl out of his Nova gladly took $50 for his old one. It went in and I drove it for ~6 months before selling it for a profit.
The last straight 6 was the 258 in my 73 Scout Cab Top. When my brother split the uncommon 2wd 3sp in half it got pushed aside for a few years until I found a rolled V8 4×4. Of course the mounts are completely different and the 6cyl ones do crack the frame so in that case I put my body on the rolled truck’s frame. Plus it would have been way quicker even if the mounts would have allowed the V8 to bolt in.
For bent 6’s I’ve also only had 3. The 2.9 Ranger, Vulcan Taurus and Split Port 3.8 Windstar.
When we bought our Mountaineer there was absolutely no consideration of the V6 model. Partially due to the timing chain on the rear of the block scared me, which it turns out was a problem, but also due to the fact that I really liked the 4.6’s I had in Panthers.
On the other hand I’ve had lots of 4cyls, including our current daily drivers, though they are paired with a Hybrid system. but there are also V8’s in the fleet for work and fun.
JRB,
Wait until you try to understand their love of bad old paint, small diesels and carrying dirt and mulch. 😀
Thanks guys.
I had regrets that my comments were not appropriate but the responses were thoughtful and interesting.
Excellent article Daniel Stern. While I have excellent hot rodding skills, my writing skills, not so much.
So I won’t share my thoughts on drum brakes, carburetors, flathead valve trains, flimsy chassis’s, recirculating ball and gear steering systems and antiquated suspensions neither!
On a technical note, I called the in-line 6 cylinder head that has intake and exhaust ports on the same side reverse flow. They are not actually reverse flow.
Non-crossflow perhaps?
Not sure if there is a correct technical term for that kind of head.
Edit: So a completely different perspective to leaving an old car/musclecar original or to making it go fast is https://www.detroitspeed.com/projects.
Well said and WELCOME ! .
There’s a butt for every seat…..
-Nate
Ooops ~
I neglected to mention the most excellent Daniel stories….
I see others can edit, but I never see any edit button .
-Nate
I forgot to mention, one of the many sturdy reasons I deliberately bought, drove, and kept cars with the Slant-6 rather than the V8 was I loved to tinker and improve and work on them. The V8 A-bodies were a pain in the nuts to work on in many ways where the Slant-6 cars weren’t.
I doubt if you’d get much flak for a dim opinion of things like drum brakes, carburetors, vague steering, and suchlike. But suppose we take (say) a 1963 Dodge Dart. We yank the Slant-6 and put in a big fuel-injected V8 and everything that goes with it (ECU, modern charging system, etc). We put in a modern transmission of one kind or another; if it’s automatic the pushbuttons have gotta go, and if it’s manual it’s sure to have more than three speeds, so either way we’ll have to put a shifter on the floor. We decide leaf springs in back and torsion bars in front are poopy, so we put coils at all four corners, big fat tires, and rack-and-pinion steering. We want to keep track of it all, so we put in a custom digital dashboard and a big
stereoinfotainment system. Power windows and locks, power door poppers.Okeh, now we have a car that doesn’t have drum brakes, a carburetor, recirculating-ball steering, or any of that stuff we don’t want to like, but we don’t have a ’63 Dart. It looks kinda mostly like one from a distance, and that’s what the title says, but other than that, not. Me, I have no interest in such a car, no matter what its capabilities might be, but someone does, or it wouldn’t’ve got built!
At the other end are purists who bang on about what a shame it is that someone ruined a car by putting shock absorber grommets without the correct factory part number on a well-kept ’63 Dart.
There’s a lot of real estate between those two extremes, too.
When I was spending
a lotan unhealthy amount of time on the web boards rackin’ up giant post counts by serving as a particularly reliable answerman, from time to time someone would post something along the lines of “so-and-so told me I should dump the Slant-6 and put in a V8” (or whatever) and my answer was always the same: Until the car belongs to them, yours is the only vote that counts.Yours was the first usage I’d seen or heard of “reverse-flow” to describe a cylinder head (it’s also a type of muffler), but I understood you immediately and it looks like that’s a real term.
Loving your stories Daniel. Particularly, thanks for sharing the video. Nice job!
Another great Dart Saturday. I am going to miss these when they are over. Maybe you should buy a few more now so that you will have something to write about in another several weeks? 🙂
I never reached the heights/depths of DartLove that you did, but spent five years coming to know such a car in a way I had never known any car before – mainly because I had never kept the others long enough. I would still like to experience a 1st or 2nd gen A body after my deep dive into the 3rd gen.
I will confess that during my early 20s I would have probably chosen something else to dive into extremely deeply, but my 71 Scamp was what I had and what I learned to love.
Don’t fret, JPC; we’re nowhere near the end. Every time I try to count up how many more to go, I wind up with a bigger number!
Just for perspective, the difference of opinion between some CCers and me is a lot bigger than 6 vs. V8.
I’ve had 3 Saab V4’s, a Fiat 128, 3 Peugeot 504’s, an Audi 4000 quattro, a Saturn L200, a Honda Accord, and (currently) a Honda Civic. So, obviously not a Detroit-iron guy. Even the Saturn, although built in the US, was based on the Opel Vectra B. The first two cars in my fantasy garage would be a Lancia Fulvia and an NSU Ro80.
Having said that, there’s enjoyment to be had in reading about almost any car. Even if I don’t much care for a car, the back story on why it turned out the way it did can be interesting. As you may have guessed, these COAL series are as much about the writers’ lives as they are about the cars, which is interesting.
By the same token, I love classic ‘50s and ‘60s rhythm and blues. I find myself thinking, “How can anyone not be moved by this?” But I realize that it’s a case of “to each his own.”
https://youtu.be/nfU8g0AR8rg
D’you dig doo-wop? This track puts me back on a particular summer evening in Denver around 1993, sitting in dad’s green Lancer outside the Denver Botanic Garden with the windows rolled down and watching the sunset as this played on the radio, rolled by whatever DJ did KRZN’s Doo-Wop Sunday Night:
That too!
https://youtu.be/KVqCaGqi6hY
https://youtu.be/g_LG34UCdcY
R. L. Plaut related that when his 2nd marriage broke up, one of his wife’s issues with him was that on Sundays he listened to Don K. Reed’s Doo Wop Shop:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1995-eagle-vision-tsi-all-the-fun-and-build-quality-of-a-1957-chrysler-without-the-benefit-of-torqueflite/
She probably wouldn’t have cared for me as a husband either.
Dan, nice story! Thanks for sharing it. I’m a bit older than you and love the doo wop music. I spent a good deal of time in Detroit back as a young guy and it was all I played.
Even now I have a USB stick full of it and play it when I’m driving my old Mustang convertible.
Anticipating/Waiting for the next installment!! 🙂
Ah yes old cars and parts to keep them running or updating them I wrecked several cars for parts when I had my 59 3A Minx but used very few of them just the pieces I wanted to fit and when I moved thinned the pile down to what fitted in the car
That car lunched an engine and was sold on and another oldie has taken its place unfortunately it came with most of the parts in this country that will fit it and since there are so few of this model left I may never get rid of the stuff I dont want, I have MK4 Superminx specific fuel tank sold one, back doors lower tailgates 2 upper tailgates 2 bundles of outer stainless 3 gearboxes 2 engines numerous lights generators fuel pumps a lot of it is NOS and the car itself is fine runs and drives really well little rust few dents mostly original paint interior is intact and in good condition all the original tool kit is there so the parts are most un needed.
Im leaving in a few minutes to go for a drive in my old wagon I know it will start first turn of the key its almost a pity to own a reliable classic with so many parts included.
I like the 1964 Dart front clip on that wagon, it gives the car a very pleasing aspect to it. I am , or was, used to seeing the Aussie versions.
I had a 225 Valiant in which the oil light would light up on idle, the car had a reconditioned engine, (god knows when) . The companies who did that would just change the most worn out bits and leave the rest, You could tell a reco engine , they were usually painted a horrible green color.
So I brought an oil pump from a wreckers, making sure it was an original , painted red item, bolted it in, along with a Kmart oil gauge and all was good with the oil pressure.
The plastic oil line on the gauge didnt work out so well, but that is a longish story for another day maybe.
Another great installment. The wagon is fantastic looking. A shame it was so far gone but when everything is worn it just is not economical.
THANK YOU for the terrific music links ! .
I prefer The Blues but good music is simply that =8-) .
-Nate
Blues also!
https://youtu.be/q3W1kkG0S5c
https://youtu.be/7ayAczgxhFo
https://youtu.be/A_70mdkHMB4
Amazing, you attained a strong enough magnetic field that cool old cars were attracted to you on their own. Cool old cars never found me on their own, which in hindsight may have been a good thing.
I was also a parts hoarder, but being an AMC guy in my young years there just weren’t that many potential victims available for parting out. Again, probably a good thing…
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but kinda, yeah. Except wait a sec…I’m not a hunnerd per cent fer sher that’s what it was, because at the height (depth?) of things I had five aluminum Slant-6s…and if I’d been more proactive I could’ve easily had another four, all from within a 50ish-mile radius. Which is weird, because they only made about 50,000 of them between late ’61 and early ’63, three decades before I was geeking around with them.
Maybe there is a thing such as an aluminum-magnet, and I was it. I’ll add that to the list of my spectacularly useless secret superpowers.
I drove a white 4-door 1962 Plymouth Valiant V200 (225 with 3-speed manual) all through my service years in El Paso, Texas, from ’62 until ’65, and kept the car until 1968. I accumulated about 120,000 miles on it, and the car was remarkably reliable and quite fast. Many trips were taken from El Paso out to Los Angeles for “weekend-pass” trips, a 1600-mile round trip, requiring high-speed driving through the desert at speeds approaching 100 mph for miles on end. There was never a single mechanical failure on the car except for a clutch throw-out bearing that had to be replaced. The accelerator rod passed through the firewall in a nylon bearing, and I once oiled the shaft, causing the nylon to expand, creating some “stiction” on the action of the accelerator! I didn’t know better at the time, but that is about all that ever happened to it. I installed Dunlop “Road Speed” (RS-5) tires on the car and Gabriel “Silver E” shock absorbers, and the car handled quite well.
This Valiant will always be remembered as one of the best cars I’ve ever owned, and it stands out as an example of excellent Chrysler engineering!