To those of you with dial-up connections – I apologize for all the pics!!
I’ve just finished up with an engine & suspension rebuild, and general freshening up of the engine compartment of my ’67 Barracuda. I bought this car in October 2004, in a little suburb North of Houston, Texas. I’m the third owner. The first was a woman who owned it for nearly 33 years, and took very good care of it. In fact, early in its life, the car actually spent some time in California, at one of several schools she attended while studying to become a doctor. I purchased it from a family who had bought it as a father/son project sometime in 2000. Its original color was white. The father, a paint & body man for 37 years, took the body down to bare metal, block-sanded it, and applied Sikkens urethane paint in V2 “Hemi Orange”. I know this wasn’t an official factory color in 1967, but I think it looks great on this car. Here’s how it appeared in the on-line ad where I first saw it in September, 2004:
Their plan was to drop a small block into it. So, other than the body work, nothing much was done to it mechanically, and it apparently was driven only a few hundred miles in the four years they owned it. Along the way, the son entered college, got busy with school work and other things, and eventually decided to sell the car to help pay for his education. The selling price was little more than the father’s shop would have charged for the paint job alone. After buying it, I spent a few days with a local mechanic to try to make it as roadworthy as I could, before setting out on the 1500 mile drive back home to Southern California.
Amazingly, I made it home without a problem, averaging around 18 mpg. But while the outside of the car looked great, the engine (with approx. 85k miles on it) has never run very well. I initially was leaning toward putting a 340 in the car, but eventually decided to keep the slant 6. A compression test showed significant loss in several cylinders, and nothing I did (general tune-up, Pertronix kit, carburetor rebuild, etc.) really helped. It wasn’t much fun to drive that way, so I decided to go ahead with a complete rebuild and finally got started on the project last Spring. After briefly toying with the idea of turbocharging it, I settled on an upgrade to a 2-bbl carb instead, and found a Super Six 2-bbl package (carb, intake & exhaust manifolds, kickdown linkage from a ’78-’80 Aspen/Volare) for sale locally. There were a few other items that also needed attention. The transmission shifted great, but was leaking fluid like crazy. The front suspension was also pretty worn out, so I figured I’d take care of everything at the same time. My main goals were to make it run & drive well, and to look as good under the hood as it did on the outside.
First, I made some dollies to support the front end while the engine and suspension were out:
I also wasn’t wild about the idea of bolting chains directly to the head, so I fabricated a lifting tool from a piece of angle iron. I bolted this to the two bosses provided on the cylinder head:
I pulled the engine/trans on May 24th:
During June & July, I was sidetracked by other things, but resumed work on the car in early August. I dropped the K-member, which was covered with 40-plus years of accumulated grime:
I glass-bead blasted all the pieces, painted them with Eastwood Chassis Black, and re-assembled everything:
After a lengthy search, I finally got a recommendation on a local engine builder (Jacob, at
Orange County Performance, in Mission Viejo, CA). On September 24th, I hauled the engine off to his shop:
Fortunately, he shared his shop with an old-hand transmission builder. Everything in the trans checked out fine internally, so only the seals were replaced to fix all the leaks. Engine teardown & inspection showed that the cylinders needed to be bored (.030). The inspection and machining was done by
Valley Engine & Machine, in Fountain Valley. These pics are after cleanup & machining, and a valve job:
While the engine was being re-assembled, I focused on cleaning up the engine compartment. When the previous owner painted the car, he left the engine in place, and did a fair job, all things considered. But there was quite a bit of overspray on the wiring, brake lines, etc.
And when I pulled the engine, lots of places still showed the original white paint. I cleaned everything up as best as I could, and bought some V2 enamel from
Totally Auto, which turned out to be an amazingly close match. In fact, it’s nearly indistinguishable, as these before and after shots will show:
The “proper” color for a 1967 slant 6 is red. But I wanted something with a bit more pop against the orange, so I chose Chrysler corporate blue. I brought the engine & trans back home on October 27th:
On November 9th, I mated the engine & trans, and installed them on the K-member:
I also bead-blasted and painted my intake and exhaust manifolds:
Unfortunately, the brake lines weren’t masked off during the original re-paint, and had significant overspray on them. My intention was to remove the paint, and re-use the lines. This was easier said than done. In my misguided attempt to remove the paint (to which a hardener had been added), I inadvertently stripped off all the plating (hint: don’t use Easy-Off oven cleaner for this
). So, I ordered new front brake lines from
FineLines. With a bit of tweaking, they fit fairly well and looked great:
When it came time to re-install the engine, several members here advised putting it in from below. The hardest part was fabricating the lifting bracket, which took me about 8 hours (a drill press would have saved lots of time).
The actual install was very easy, and was done on November 22nd:
To firm up the traditional Mopar mushy ride, I switched to 383 torsion bars (.890 diam):
and added KYB shocks, front and rear:
Finally, after all the months of planning & hard work, initial start-up was on Thursday evening, January 15th. And that’s pretty much where it stands now. I’m still working on sorting out a few things, to be expected after a project like this. I’m looking for an air cleaner assembly to fit the 2-bbl, and still fiddling with the kickdown linkage. But the car seems to be running very well, and the suspension is just where I wanted it: firm without being too harsh. It’s a blast to finally drive it again after being down for nearly a year.
Before:
After:
Special thanks to:
Jeff (OzHemi)
- for selling me some of his private stash of Eastwood Chassis Black on very short notice.
Dave (dgc333) - for advice on the torsion bar upgrade.
Jim Lusk - for sending me a new strut rod to replace a bent one I had.
Lastly, sincere thanks to everyone on Moparts for help and advice along the way. This site is truly invaluable.
Good luck with your projects everybody. Btw, I’m hoping to have the car at Spring Fling this April, so stop by and say ‘hi’.
Roger
