I found a 61 Valient 4 door that runs with no power steering and brakes. Drum brakes and generator. I am thinking of picking it up and making a project with my teenage son and daughter as a mild custom. The question is what are the up grades that I can use off a late 60s or early 70s dart or Valient? Can I convert to power disc brakes and steering with out major mods? Can a later alternator bolt on the old slant 6. I think it would be a fun project for them. Thanks
First upgrade (assuming everything works and car is safe and driveable like it is) would be to upgrade to replace the generator with an alternator, then I'd be looking for some way to put disc brakes on the front. Chrysler is good about parts interchange over a wide range of years. The Plymouth Barracuda was built on the Valiant platform (same car from cowl forward), and discs were available on the Barracuda, so you might be able to track down something where you could swap out spindles and all and not have to use an aftermarket kit. The slant six in it is probably a 170 or at best a 190, later years the slant 6 went to 225 and there were some performance parts made for it. It might not be the hottest engine ever made but it's among the toughest. They're really hard to kill.
So ugly it is cool I would like to upgrade the single pot master cylinder and the brakes. A alternator would be better also.
Dart165 submitted this to the Friday Art Show! The dude's a genius WITH vision! Litta work for a couple kids, but to could be a blast!
You can get power disc for the front,but the original parts are getting harder to find and the after market ones are not cheap.
I drove around in one (Mom's old castoff) for a couple of years. They are a fun car and like someone posted they are tough to kill. I wouldn't go to great lengths to upgrade engine/drivetrain............just make it safe and enjoy. Frank
Disc brakes, yes. Locate a '72-'76 Mopar A-body in a yard that has discs on the fron. Get all the pieces, ESPECIALLY the upper control arms. The upper arms are the critical parts, as they have a larger ball joint then the 9" brakes used. If it were me, I'd get the lower arms, too, as you can weld in some stiffening plates to strengthen them up before installing them. It'll also get you a dual-pot master cylinder. The only real downside to this upgrade is that it will give you a 5-on-4.5" lug pattern, and the rear will still be a 5-on-4" pattern. You could correct that by getting the rear end from the same donor car, though. Mopar A-bodies do have a good interchangability to them. I can't say for sure if power brakes will work, as the early A's were called "narrow bodies" for a reason. You "might" run into an interference problem with the booster. I think you can swap out the generator for an alternator, but you might have to swap out the regulator with it. I strongly urge you to go over the electrical wiring closely. They are known for having problems with corrosion and burned connectors at the firewall bulkhead connector, and upgrading to an alternator is going to tax the sytem that much more. To go along with that, all the current runs through a couple wires up to the amp guage in the dash, and there's more than one guy that has had to do a fast battery disconnect to keep his Exner car from burning down. You will HAVE to get yourself over to slantsix.org and establish yourself. There's a decent following for the early A's, and you'll be more than welcomed, and the on-board experts will be able to advise you much better that I can. Engine choices would have been a 170 or 225, as the 198 was made only from '70-'74. A quick visual determination is to check out the bypass hose between the water pump and bottom side of the thermo housing in the head. If it's about an inch long, it's a 170. If it's closer to 2.5" long, it's a 225. Good luck.....Roger
I had a 60 valiant ... I put a 283 SBC in it with a 3 speed ... had 6 dueces on an edelbrock ram log ... car weighed 2600 lbs all up ... put a 55 chevr rear in it drum to drum ... was fast for its day ... I think it had an alternator on it from the factory .... easy engine swap except you have to put a 3" sleeve into the oil pan for the center link to go through ... I bought Hurst conversion mounts for this installation from S&K Speed back in 1965 when I did this swap ... Joe
While you are pulling stuff from a later A body, get the entire electronic ignition set up, simple bolt on upgrade. Check e bay for a 2 bbl intake manifold, stock HP for a 225 is 145, the two bbl kicks it up to 155 or so. Clifford makes a 4bbl intake but its kind of over kill unless you are going to do some other hop ups. Those early 60's small mopars were prone to weak and broken rear spring leafs so look at them for problems, front suspension is torsion bar so adjusting ride height is easy. You might want to scrape a little paint off the engine block. Chrysler was screwing around with aluminum blocks back them putting them in random cars (they didn't even tell the dealers they were doing it) they did several thousnad a year as a blind test. Dodge made there own version but had a 2dr hard top Gt version
Is this your project or theirs? What do they want to do with the car? I wonder if they would enjoy the build more if some of the decisions were made by them instead of a bunch of strangers on the HAMB...
It would me doing most of the work for them. I idea was to upgrade the car to make it stop better and more reliable, hence the better brakes and alternator. They are more interested in the end results. Now they do have lots of ideas for the cosmetics.
I had a 62 two door I paid $50 for it, ran and everything, I don't know why I sold it it was my first car. Anyway I always thought a hemi and prostreet would be awsome.
Don't.....I've got an iron one out in the garage you can have for shipping. It's just the bare intake, though. You'd have to seperate your intake/exhaust to match your exhaust to it. ************************************************** Might not be a bad idea. "Officially", the aluminum slant wasn't until '62, but ya never know. Roger
Later (post 70) charging system along with later (post 73) ignition for the /6. Later (73-up) disc brakes and master. This will be the big pattern, so swap to the same vintage rear axle and get rid of the tapered axles. After that, kids will want sound. Try to go for something that is not a hack job (life lesson there), and as we all know, wheels, tires and stance will make a huge difference. After that, just keeping up with repairs and making it look better.
Here is a link to what my buddy is building(dodge29), far off in left field but good ideas. http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=98330
Just found this on "our favorite auction site" Looks somewhat promising.... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370233350426&viewitem=
X2 on everything Roger said. Boxing the bottom of any of the lower control arms is recommended. I don't know about LCA interchange; I'd see f I could grab the lowers from a later model w/ a swaybar, so that I got the brackets. BTW MAD electrical has a trick for curing that pesky bulkhead problem... http://www.madelectrical.com/electricaltech/amp-gauges2.shtml -Bill
I just a came across a 61 Valiant myself. Had a friend tell me about this post and that it had some good info to it. I was planning on a disc brake upgrade, and also rear end swap too. Might do something with a 225 as well for a little more power. My car was given to me by the original owners daughter. She showed me the original window sticker in the glove box. Cars has 28K original miles, I promised her I'd make good use of it. Interested in any advice. I'm a lifelong Mopar fan, but the inline six and this car is new to me.
************************************************** Shoot, Bryon...That motor's barely broken in! You take decent care of it, (regular oil changes, tune-ups, and valve adjustments), it'll go 200K for you. BTW....You need to try to stick a magnet to the block, (not the head). The aluminum block was first made in '61, there was a limited number of them in '62, and by '63, they were no longer being made. Roger
If you're going to swap a 2bbl intake onto the engine you already have, you might want to get one with an exhaust manifold already bolted to it as they mount on top of each other and it can be really hard to get the gaskets to seal if they aren't both lined up just right. Sometimes when they are separated, they don't ever line up straight again without machining. You might want to consider swapping the entire engine out for a 225 as they're still pretty cheap, but the engine you have should run forever if properly maintained.
Check out the info from this thread, regarding the brake kit http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=482193
I wanted to hop up a inline 6, and would prefer to do it to a 225 and save the 170 that came in it. I'll check for the aluminum block, let me see if I can scratch through the surface rust on the outside of the motor....
I had a question on the rearend upgrade. Will any A body rearend from 72-76 be the correct width? Will I have to change spring pads or anything?
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