Hey I do Paint and body work for a living. I got turned onto this wax a few years ago for fresh Paint. Stuff works great. I keep a gallon On hand. Did a black 55 ford crown vic that after I scuffed and buffed it applied it on the finish. Takes swirl marks out and comes off with ease.

https://www.amazon.com/Presta-32OZ-COMPL-Fast-PST-134132/dp/B00AZAESRG

Been busy working on my house all summer so the Dart has just been sitting. I just started working on it again so I thought I'd post a small update. I finally got the wiper motor back. I didn't think the factory yellow/gold zinc would look right in the engine compartment with the other custom stuff I'm doing so I had the barrel plated in black zinc. Black sealer was used on the wiring as well instead of the factory red/orange sealant. I like the look.


After that was installed I got all the linkage under the dash hooked up. Then I installed the front brake lines and distribution block. The master cylinder is in place for test fitment. I wasn't sure if the factory lines were going to work on the newer master but they will. It's a 15/16" bore unit from Dr Diff. The heater box was next. I remember fighting my Challenger box but this once slipped right in without a fuss.








Saturday night the dash went in. It's been 9 years since the dash was in the car. Next project is the engine compartment wiring harness...then work on getting the glass in the doors.

Nice work!

I totally agree with your color choices on the wiper motor. It provides nice visual continuity with the blower motor and master cylinder.

Agreed & that dash looks great!

The mirrors, door handles and locks are in. Dad came over and gave me a hand putting the vent window/side windows in the doors last week. I was not looking forward to that but it actually went pretty quickly/easily. This past spring I sent the vent window pivots off for re-chroming. I got an estimate back from the platers that it was going to cost $700. That wasn't going to happen so I started looking for some really nice factory replacements. A few people online said they had some but pictures that were sent were hard to tell their true condition. I've been burned in the past when 1 person says a part is nice...then I receive said part and it's anything but nice. In the end I sanded down the chrome on my original pivots and had them powder coated semi-gloss black. I think they will look OK since the vent window rubber seal is black. I see a lot of A-bodies with badly pitted chrome pivots at shows. This will at least look better then that.


Saturday morning I installed the inner fender splash shields. I had to take the 2 studs/nuts loose at the bottom of the fenders to get them slid into place. I also found that they were easier to install without the upper rubber seal in place. Once everything was adjusted and bolted in place, I re-installed the upper rubber seal.


Then I started masking the car in preparation for spraying the undercoating. This was my first attempt at spraying undercoating and it was interesting to say the least. I should have masked off the UCA/upper shock mount area but I didn't. I thought I'd be able to direct the spray around the area. Needless to say, I got some overspray around that area but it is what it is I guess. The undercoating gun didn't come with a cup so I bought a bottle of 3M body schutz and used that as a base. Then I poured RestoRick's undercoating into that bottle and sprayed it over the top. 1 bottle of the 3M body schutz did a medium coat on 3 wheel wells. I used around 35 psi for the 3m product. That was way too high of a pressure for the RestoRick undercoating. My first pass with that stuff just flew out of the gun and layed out completely smooth. After lowering the psi to 20-25, it started spraying out like undercoating should look. The rear wheel wells look good. The back of the front wheel wells look good. I'm a little thin on the front sections behind the headlight and down the fender in-front of the tire. I might go back and spray another coat in those areas.

Looks good.

I installed the leaf springs and rear axle assembly at the beginning of November. Storing it in the basement wasn't one of my best ideas. With a 2-wheeled dolly and my wife's help, we managed to get it up the stairs. I was actually able to get a 15" wheel to clear the 11.7" Dr Diff brakes with about 1/2" worth of washers on the outside of the rotors. That will work nicely to be able to push the car around the garage. Otherwise it would be stuck on jack stands. Still need to figure something out for front rollers.




Then a few weeks ago I had some buddies over and we got the engine/trans installed. Before the engine went it though we swapped out the 3500 stall converter for something a little more street friendly and primed the engine.




Once the engine was in I measured my pinion angle. It looked like the pinion was WAY too high. I was afraid the spring pads had been welded on wrong. We jacked up the back of the car(under the rear end) until an angle gauge on the trans output shaft read 0*. Then I put the angle gauge on the rear end yoke. Surprisingly it also read 0*. A small 2* shim is all I'll need to get the pinion angle to -2*. Once that was done I measured for my driveshaft length. I previously cleaned up a C-body shaft that I was going to have cut down to size. After calling a local driveline company for a quote, and realizing how much that has gone up in price, I started looking at other options. I ended up finding a place that made me a brand new shaft(balanced with new joints) for only $60 more than cutting an old shaft down.




I'm not sure why I keep having issues with E-brake cables but I do. IIRC to get my Challenger E-brake hooked up it took a combination of stock, Finelines and Inline Tube parts. The Dart rear cables are from Dr Diff. Looking back at pictures before disassembly, the rear cables seem to be in the correct spot. The front cable however is way too long. I fabbed up a spacer in order to get it working. I'm not really interested in buying a new cable unless it's the only option.

Then this past week I got the center console and steering column installed. I started with the console carpet by gluing it in place. That didn't work out the best so I ended up peeling it back off. I read that some people have had better luck using Velcro so I gave that a try. It actually worked a lot easier then the glue for me and you can't even tell.

I was worried at first that I wasn't going to be able to get the console in with the added tach and aftermarket shifter. Every time it had been test fit previously, the dash wasn't installed so I could just set it down in place. Now that the dash is in it wasn't so easy. In order to get it in I had to remove the ash tray from the dash, remove the lockout lever from the shifter, have the shift handle in a certain position and finally, shove the tach under the dash sideways with the tail end way in the air. Then rotate it into place. It's very tight but it fits. Luckily the steering column basically just fell into place.






I had to shove a battery in it just to see if the dash lighting all worked. It did NOT. There was an issue with the map light and the shift indicator light. After probing some connections with a test light and trying incandescent bulbs in place of the LEDs I found the issue. The factory Mopar wiring has the + wire on the side of the bulb(the bulb body) and the - wire on the bottom "pin" of the bulb. This works fine for an incandescent but not for an LED. The map light was an easy fix. I just pulled the wires out of the "T" connector and swapped them. Now the + is going to the bottom "pin" on the bulb and the - is on the side body of the bulb. The shift indicator bulb wasn't as easy. The bulb socket doesn't have terminal ends that can be removed. The easiest solution was to cut the 2 wires under the console and splice them back together reversed.

Good looking car.
years ago I had B5 with white 1969 Dart GT conv.

simple 318 car . But I liked it. A LOT.

Midwest rust took its toll on it though.
I ended up parting it out and sent the shell to the crusher

Nice work burdar!

Your description of lugging that axle up the stairs made my back hurt!

Built a 2-stall garage addition off the back of my existing garage. With a safe place to store and work on the cars, progress on the Dart can resume.

Wow! That looks great Darren! How does the stock radio mount in there? I am having a couple of problems getting that and the ash tray in. Shoot me a pm! Ted

Been working on installing some trim pieces before I finish up the engine compartment and install the exhaust. I got the front hood trim on. It fits pretty good. I'm pretty sure I bought it from Van's Auto. I did have to grind the side wall of a cheap 1/4" socket to make it thinner in order to tighten up the nuts. There isn't much room between the nut and the inner hood lip and a standard socket was too thick. I also installed the hood louvers. I ended up going with reproduction louvers and wasn't able to test fit them before paint. I had to open up all the holes in the hood due to paint buildup and had to file a couple holes a little larger to align the louver pins so they would go through the hood. I also got the antenna mounted on the fender and the cable routed over to the radio. I'm searching for a stubby antenna that looks good instead of using the long stock one. With the antenna mounted and cable routed, I was able to install the kick panels.


Next I installed the trunk weather stripping. I put adhesive on both the body and the seal and let it tack up before installing it. I went a couple feet at a time to make it easier to handle. I didn't want to put adhesive down the entire length of the seal all at once because I knew that would turn into a huge mess. It turned out pretty good...with no glue pushing out the sides. I also installed the rear side marker lights. The gaskets that come with the lights aren't very good. I swapped those out for new gaskets from DMT. They fit much better and will do a better job of sealing.

Over the weekend I worked on installing the stainless trim pieces around the back of the interior opening.(below the convertible roof) After fixing some trim clips that didn't want to install easily, the trim went on fairly smoothly. I also installed the door window fuzzies. I tried snapping them into place with the glass rolled down but there was just no room to safely do it. I ended up taking the three bolts out of the regulators so I could lower the glass all the way down inside the door. Then I had enough room to work. Once those were on, I installed the stainless on top of the doors.




Then last night I installed the butyl and seals around the convertible opening and loosely installed the tack strips.(just to get them out of the way) I took lots of pictures of the convertible opening and all the seals that were there when I took the car apart. There were some seams where the factory put butyl sealer. It looks like it was to insure that no water would leak from the rain gutter into the interior/trunk. The factory put three layers of sealant on those seams. The first layer was the butyl, second layer was a piece of tape accross the seam...ontop of the butyl and finally the foam seals ontop of that. I'm not sure if the tape is really needed or not. If it is I'm not sure what kind of tape to use. I didn't put any weather strip adhesive on the very ends of the foam seals so they can be pulled back and tape installed once I figure out what to use there. Sometime this weekend I hope to get the convertible frame up from the basement and install that too. My wife wants her basement back. I'm slowly working on it.