I have owned this car for 34 years this coming June 28th, and it has been down for the last 18 years now. I gave up on it 8 years ago due to frustration over vendors/service providers that either screwed thing up or didn't provide good service. Now that I have time on my hands I decided it was time to bring the old girl out of the dungeon and get back to it. Of course most things are as I left them and some things have gotten worse. I am still taking two steps forward and one step back, but by God I am gonna finish it this time! Hope that I can get through all the pitfalls this time and finally get it back out on the street where it belongs!

A few more pics so that you all shame me into finishing it...

8 years of dust...

One of the last pictures I took before putting it away in the spring of 2004.

What a beautiful car. I would not be able to stop working on it if it was mine. Looks like all the hard stuff is done. Just think about being able to drive it again. Hope to see you finish it soon.

These notions seem to be going around Jim. Good luck

Can I have it when you are done with it?

Great car, keep us updated and post lots of pics.More and more people are starting to appreciate the big block a bodies.
Ray

It was my daily driver from 1978 to 1986, except for about a year in 1979 when I hit a telephone pole, but that is another story! I "restored" it after that using Sherman and Associates terrible patch panel quarters and late model inner fenders, then put a 69 Road Runner engine in it after I cracked the original block. I painted the engine Chrysler Blue and put an Offy dual quad under hood manifold with new Carter 500's! I have very few pictures of when I got it, I was the third owner but the second owner got in for money owed to him when a friend went into the service, I paid $740 for it! He was a Ford guy and had a Mustang with a 427 Cammer in it, up to that point I had never seen one of those engines! He didn't want no damn Dodge cluttering up his driveway. When I bought the car it had a GT SPORT stripe on one side and a DART SWINGER stripe on the other. I asked him if it had been wrecked and he said his friend told him it came that way new! The build date is 3-29-69 which is a Friday. I always figured that the car was started on a Friday and finished on a Monday and the guy installing the stripes had a wild weekend and just put whatever stripe was laying around on the other side! Anyway, I had a huge dilemma when I put the stripe on but decided to fix the factory error. I have some real bad pics of both sides, and after I put some parts cars fenders and doors on it after it was wrecked.

Me and the wife at the 1983 Street Machine Nats in Springfield, Illinois... Had to remove the 14X7 Cragars in the rear after I replaced the quarters with cheater panels and the "baseball bat" roll of the wheel wells was gone...

I LOVE YOUR DART! My friend John had a Q-5 69 Dart Custom I helped him restore when I was in middle school. That car was COOL! My dad had a 68 GTS 383 Back in 78-81. It was pretty beat but he planned to restore it, until the 383 spun a bearing and that was the end of that. Sold the car to his friend for 75 BUCKS!

That's good to hear Jim, let me know if you need any help.

This is the last time I saw it.





For perspective



Ryan

Thanks guys, I will need to take some recent pics after the 8" of snow we got last night melts... Here is a pic in 1982 before the first "resto".

Udder side...

A couple of pics on the rotisserie. The floors, trunk, roof, firewall, decklid, and three frame rails are the originals. one front frame rail and the quarters are from DVAP, bought around 1990. Every piece of the front end is NOS including the fenders, hood, inner fenders, and all 4 pieces of the core support. I learned quickly that NOS parts are far from correct though!

Factory front torque boxes!

Rear torque boxes...

New (to me) quarters...

Difference between Race Hemi Orange and Street Hemi Orange, my engine is on the right...

Front suspension...

Front sheetmetal...

You noticed the wife's 76 Colt! That garage was so small that it was the only car we owned that would fit in it! Besides, we had just got married so I was still trying to impress her. Now 30 years later I am out in the garage working on my Dart and she is pissed off at me in the house, funny how more things change the more they stay the same...

Ain't that the Dart that took out the floor of the Wells Cargo? There is a part of me that wishes you don't find employment at Billydeer. Because if you do, there will be no time to finish this project.

Yep, it went through the floor of my trailer, still pissed about that, and I will never buy a Wells Cargo trailer again! I will have plenty of time to finish it at the rate they are interviewing people.

Thats one sweet Dart. Love the color. Ron

well jim found your hiding spot. its about time your getting it together. after putting all that work in on the body i always cringed seeing you use it as a storage shelf. nice to see pictures of the old shop. man alot of work went through there. but it still was never enough. i'll be watching and don't forget who to bring it to after your finished chipping it all up

Yep, your ol' WW1 will look good too soon...

What is the WW1 car????

WW1 refers to the Spinnaker white paint, and since Glen (who owns the white GTS) and I are old buddies that are also war historians we like the reference to the first war to end all wars...

WW 1? Jimbo, ain't that when you started restoring yours? When S. Spielberg brought out that movie WARHORSE, I thought it was about building a DART in FOX LAKE IL.? Call me before you head west.

Sorry 'bout that Dave, it is a 383 auto GTS white with green bucket interior w/green console and green top, black butt stripe.

Well she keeps fighting me the whole way, so nothing else has changed! I put the wiring harness for the headlights in and there are no wire tabs to bend to keep the wires up. I guess they do not weld them on the NOS pieces and I cannot find any new ones anywhere, so I need to get some off an old core support crossbar and bond them on and try to match the paint. Moving right along I find that the NOS fender on the driver's side has the headlight bucket mounting bracket clocked wrong and welded. I wonder what else I am going to find, but I WILL keep taking one step forward and two back until it kills me!

We all feel your pain bro. Keep looking at what a cool car you have and how far it's come and take one step at a time... Good luck we're routing for ya

With all the epoxies out there I bet you could take panel adhesive and glue them in place.

Hang in there Jim! We wanna see this car finished

Put the front bumper on today, I forgot how much fun it is to install a rechromed bumper with powder coated brackets. It took over 4 hours to make it line-up perfectly. I will put the grill and headlight bezels in tomorrow, wish me luck! Hopefully I can find the rest of the brake parts so I can assemble and bleed themm then on to the steering column and trans linkage, then finish-up underneath by the rearend, lots of little things to do there.

I just saw you relisted your Dart in the for sale section and I was wondering if you have made any new progress on this Dart. Or have you been busy working?

JIM, get her done in time to bring to Carlisle this year!!!!!!!!!!

Well on December 19th 10,000 steps backwards happened. Unfortuneatly I will have to start over now....

OMG What happened? That has always been my biggest fear..

Oh Im seriously going to be nauseous. I pray you had it insured.

I'm up-ing my collector car insureance again... stat

What the ??....my jaw is still on the floor.
I cant believe it....Im speechless.
No words can bring her back. Im feeling for you.
HR 20

That leaves a sick feeling knowing how close you were to being finished , I hope the New year brings you better luck !!!

THere is a thread in the general section. Basically I was charging the battery in my wife's 78 Trans Am and while I was outside working on my mailbox I smelled smoke and was too late to put out the fire that started where the battery charger was plugged in. Just got done with one fire inspector and another is coming on Monday. I hope the car can be salvaged and I can start over, after almost 35 years of the car owning me I can't just let it go...

So sorry to see this happen. Hopefully you had it insured.

Best of luck Rhino, I hope she comes out better than ever for you!
Matt

OMG ! ! July of this past year I had a close call myself, fire chief estimated another 15 minutes and all the chems on the garage side of the wall would have sent it up like a roman candle . . .

You can see my AAR through the hole n the wall.

Between your story and mine, it appears 15 minutes is the difference between our stories.

Best of luck to you, and so sorry to hear of the misfortune.

my worst fear summed up right here - Sorry about the loss.

I got the shop vac out the other day and cleaned all the glass and debris off of the floors and trunk floor, they still look good! I still have to pull what's left of the windshield out and will probably take the dash out soon. I had an NOS dash wiring harness installed, probably will never find another one of those. My heater box came out of an 11,000 mile car too, it was the nicest one I had ever seen. My mint IP and AM radio is totally melted too, and the dash pad it of course toast, but didn't melt like I thought it would. Believe it or not I am looking forward to removing the drivetrain, I am thinking of cleaning up the engine/trans/k-frame, check to see what the bushings look like and maybe replace them, then put it in another body for now just to make sure everything is still good. No water got in the engine and not much heat damage either, so hopefully everything is still good.

Rhino I'm so sorry to see those pics and hear what happened.I've just pulled the 383 out of my 70 RR and just prior to that I went out and bought a couple of fire extinguishers for the garage just in case...I hope and pray everything works out for you...

Dave

Well it has been 2 years since the garage burnt and nothing has been done yet. Sometime this year after 3-68 Darts get done then I will start on the 69 again...

So this coming Saturday, July 28th is the 40th year of me buying the GTS, I will start tearing it down. Who knows, maybe I can drive it again before I die...

Best of luck with it.


Tim

Go for it Jim!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I took the radiator out of the car and taking it to the Nats for Glen-Ray to fix it. I am planning on rewiring the car and firing up the engine since it never got fired before fried. I may just make it driveable like that Barracuda from a few years back that made the rounds. I really want to hear it for the first time since 1995...

Do that rhino, I just recently got a original 69, 340, 4spd dart going that had been sitting since 76. I restored the interior and all the drivetrain, body is roughish in the og f8. To say I have had the time of my life driving it is an understatement. Daily driven for 2.5 months, going to hot August nights in it this thurs. I will make the outside nice in time. Get it going so you can drive it. So fun......

You got dealt a really crappy hand with this considering the fire and everything else...
All that's left to do is just get busy doing it...

Today is the 50th birthday of my Dart and I have made a deal with a bodyman to take on the car next month! After my swap meet next weekend the teardown begins, it may live once again soon! Here is the latest picture, and hopefully how it will look again...

Best of Luck to you...You can do it!

That is such a cool car !!!! Maybe you eluded to it, but what is the deal with the driver's side rear? A fire? The passenger side look ok..

Garage fire.

Yes, the garage burned, destroyed the 78 Pontiac Trans Am next to it, severely burned the Dart. The last picture is what it looked like before the fire, and will look like that again one day...