Thanks! That's a righteous looking coupe in your avatar, too. I still need to sand my filler on the back side of the hood but it's back on the car and it's solid so that's good. Other than that I need to mount the bumpers, put the door panels back on, get my carb issue straights, put the heater box back in and I guess that's pretty much it. Maybe put in some tunes, too. Not bad for four months and about $1800 including the price of the car. I'm going to drive the wheels off this dog.
Im going back and doing some fine tuning and fixing some of the little things; it's getting better each trip down the road. I had a couple of small water leaks and re-bled the brakes. I think my brake pushrod is a bit short; I'll whip up another one this weekend. The cable for the hood release was sticking bad so i just cut a slot by the hood latch and welded a short rod on it so I can open it from the outside. The air cleaner and accelerator pedal came from an S-10 at the boneyard. I think my front shocks are too long; they're bottoming out. I'll order some new ones today. I'm also fabbing up a mount to put a late 80's Ranger blower motor in the stock heater blower housing so I can have a 12v blower; and I put on an old spotlight I had on the shelf. Getting a little closer each day.
I have been watching your other build and missed this one! I am caught up with ya now! Looks like a fun ride- Merry Christmas!
You can mill the head a bit to raise the compression. As it is, it is pretty low. 0.060"-0.070" seems to work for many. You can make a dramatic improvement in handling, in addition to relocating the shocks (which I see you already did) by ditching the flimsy front anti sway bar in favor of a larger one. I have had really good luck with retrofitting a 1" one from a Jeep Cherokee, on several of these. Super cheap, and pretty easy. I can post pictures, if you like.
Yeah, id like to see that Jeep swaybar installed; thanks! Hey, Swimeasy, good to hear from you! The other build is still going but I think my bodyman is petering out on me. He plays in a band in addition to working full time and hasnt been able to do much on it lately. No biggie; he got it pretty far so I may get back on the bodywork myself as soon as this one is on the road.
As far as I know, the frames from 1949-1950 are the same. For reference, the overall with of the frame, at the very front is 31-3/4". This particular bar is from a 6-cylinder Grand Cherokee, and is 1" in diameter. As you may notice, it is mounted upside-down from the Jeep application, for a better fit.. The "drop" in the bar is facing upwards. As you can see int the pictures, the anti-sway bar mounts have to go as far forward on the frame as you can. This does mean that the forward hole is pretty close to the edge of the metal. This is fine. Just put a good, Grade-8 washer on top. The car in the pictures has been set up this fashion for years, and is a daily-driver. You can use the stock Jeep ones, or Poly ones. Mount the bar on the frame first, and them put the end links on. That will show you where the control arm mounts need to go. Do this with the wheels on the ground. The mounts on control arm, on this car, were made from 2" square tubing (1/8" wall), split in-half, and welded to the bottom, of the control arm. The hole needs to be the size of the shoulder on the bushings. The anti-sway bar end links have a sleeve length of 1", and are Energy Suspension part number 9-8122R(Red), or 9-8122G(Black) respectively. You can junkyard source the end-links too, if you are patient. I mounted the control arm mounts to the end-links, and then pushed them up against the cleaned-up control arms. Where they landed is where they got welded on (after making sure they were in the same place on both sides).
That looks great; I'm sold. I was just looking at the original sway bar a few days ago and thinking it was so small it even wasn't worth putting back on. Thanks for the pictures! What year Jeep Cherokee am I looking for?
While working on the hood, did you weld up the seam down the middle? They're bad about leaking and letting water get all over the engine, filling up the depressions around the spark plugs. It looks like you've smoothed the front of the hood already, with your metal skills, it would be easy enough to weld it all up, smooth it out, and be done with it!!! Great progress by the way. Love the Holley, should be a great runner...
1984-2001, Does not matter. They ALL have the same front suspension. The V8 Grand ones have a bigger bar, if I remember correctly, like 1-1/8". That might be overkill. The 1" bar will be fine. On the car in the pictures, the original bar had actually snapped.
OK, Im calling it done. I think all the mechanical bugs are about worked out; it's running and driving really nice. I got the bumpers on plus I ditched the rear gravel pan, tucked the bumper up close, and patched the holes where the old tail lights went. I made some cheap door panels and a rear seat cover and got the interior put back together. The heater is in and I added blinkers. I probably will add an AM radio before baseball season so I can cruise and listen to the Cardinals. Thanks all for watching and your comments; it's time to put on some miles.
Will do! First I need to clean the garage; it got demolished over the last few months during the build thrash.
LOOKS GREAT!!! Wish I could find the finds that you are able to find and knew people who have vehicles that they want to find good homes for. Still tracking your other build and cant wait to see that completed. Oh, forgot to wish you and your family a Merry X-Mas and Happy New Year so Merry X-Mas and Happy New Year a few weeks late.
Same to you, buddy. I hope your holidays were great. It seems like there's a lot of old cars around here; you can always find something. I guess its tougher in Hawaii? You'd think with the year round warm weather there'd be some oldies that held up pretty good, but I guess everything had to be imported.
Not sure what I'm going to do with it but I picked up this 360 really cheap off of Craiglist yesterday. Im hopeless.
v8 power is great! course I'm biased. build it up with a baby blower on it that will move that pig with authority!
I think I saw that one at billetproof in antioc a few years ago when we were in cali picking up the bread truck.. thats the plan for mine
Cool, im thinking of a two door conversion somewhere down the line on this one. I think the roadsters are really cool but not very practical in Missouri. Too much time during the year that the weather would keep you from driving it.
2 door conversion sounds like a good plan, this would be the perfect car to do it to and donors are everywhere for it. I'd save the 360 for something else though, would be a shame to pull out the flat six after all that work.
you're talking about making this 4 door dodge a 2 door? I'd say don't do it. Despite what people may tell you about these car's being everyone...theyre not. they were scrapped long ago and there really are not many around and it's quite difficult to find parts for (ex: doors, bumpers, hood, fenders, etc). Our's is a plymouth but its the same body style. You can find the parts at the BIG junkyards throughout the country but goodluck trying to get any major parts shipped to you. Our's is the only one around that we've ever seen in our area and we are fortunate to have had a complete car. These 4 doors look best as 4 doors. I think the 2 doors just dont look right, too short. and the roof doesnt look right into the trunk. personally i think these cars look great lowered and such. if you want to chop it check out a thread on here done by a guy in the 50's in San Francisco. I believe it was a '49.
Yeah, who knows? It'll be a while before I do anything to it; I've got another car in progress and I dont want to disable this one right now. I like having one running to just jump in and drive when the mood hits. I'll probably change my mind 50 times before I actually start spinning wrenches, anyway.