Author Topic: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix  (Read 47594 times)

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Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #75 on: April 10, 2016, 12:19:05 PM »
I'm pretty sure trailer tow was offered in the 300F.

I haven't found any information about tow rated springs, however, I have found information on torsion bar options.  there were slant 6, v8, B/RB, wagon, and D500 torsion bars.  Dodge, Plymouth and chrysler/desoto had their own spring rates, plymouth aparently had the stiffest set labelled "furry" torsion bars.
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
  KE7GAL

Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #76 on: April 18, 2016, 08:49:50 AM »
Wish I had photos, but I don't, got some progress made.

Steering wheel off, finally.  After 3 months of near daily shots of PB Blaster the puller just slipped the stearing wheel right off.  Man that stuff is good.

Horn: Still not working, but now the ground/rotor issues are fixed and the horn button activates the relay, now I need to wire up a new relay.
Turn Signals: Fixed, and man do I feel dumb.  I thought for sure the switch was hammered, as it turned out it was a single loose screw allowing the fork to slip off the top of the switch.  So the entire issue was a screw loose behind the steering wheel.

Back up lights fixed
Heater blower motor fixed, The inline fuse holder on it had cracked.
Electronic iginition fixed itself, could have just been low battery voltage
Rear diff pinion seal was replaced, now she retains the gear lube back there.

Next up, drop the drive shaft and have it rebalanced.  The car picks up a vibration around 70mph and I suspect it's the drive shaft.

On top of this I put some serious millage on the car to start shaking crap loose, I'm driving this junk to bonne so, need to see how it behaves.  Drove from Portland down high way 26, up in the mountains around mt. hood till it connected up with highway 35.  Drove highway 35 into Hood River across the toll bridge into White Salmon Washington where I stopped in at Everybody's Brewing for lunch and sour ales and finished it up with a nice nice nice double IPA.  After hanging aorund for a couple of hours to sober up I continued on highway 14 into Washugal to refill the tank.  11 gallons up it's butt and drove her home into Portland.  Totally road weary, didn't even use an entire tank.  It may not have power but man that thing gets good fuel economy.  20mpg.  It'll almost be a shame to ruin that.
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
  KE7GAL

Offline Stainless1

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #77 on: April 18, 2016, 09:23:58 AM »

Turn Signals: Fixed, and man do I feel dumb.  I thought for sure the switch was hammered, as it turned out it was a single loose screw allowing the fork to slip off the top of the switch.  So the entire issue was a screw loose behind the steering wheel.


Lucky you... lots of issues, especially that loose screw thing, can be resolved if you remove the nut behind the wheel...  :evil:
 :cheers:
Stainless
Red Hat 228.039, 2001, 65ci, Bockscar Lakester #1000 with a little N2O

Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #78 on: April 18, 2016, 09:33:40 PM »

Turn Signals: Fixed, and man do I feel dumb.  I thought for sure the switch was hammered, as it turned out it was a single loose screw allowing the fork to slip off the top of the switch.  So the entire issue was a screw loose behind the steering wheel.


Lucky you... lots of issues, especially that loose screw thing, can be resolved if you remove the nut behind the wheel...  :evil:
 :cheers:


hahahaa... yeah, good luck with that!
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
  KE7GAL

Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #79 on: April 28, 2016, 12:14:46 AM »
Switch plate bolts to steering wheel retained by 4 bolts.

Contact plate, horn ring adapter, retained by 4 bolts and 4 plastic spacers to switch plate.

Horn ring retained to horn ring adapter by 4 bolts.

Folks... that's 20 parts for the horn on this car... and no assembly diagrams to work it all out, just a bandaid tin full of screws and parts, mixed in with other interior screws.  Never mind that the horn ring is in two pieces and that uses two more screws to retain the emblem.  Never mind the horn relay and the two horns... I spent probably 8 hours total getting the horns working.  I need a beer, but i'm just going to go to bed instead.

Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
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Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #80 on: May 19, 2016, 11:45:44 PM »
Progress!

All holes in floors welded shut.  Still some work to do in the trunk. (not rot, hack job performed by previous owner)

New U-Joints... The rear was especially bad, began making noise.  Not clunking, but squealing.  The U-joints were the 55 year old factory Detroit units!  Rebuilt the ball and trunion with an old but new in box TRW kit and the rear is sporting a new Moog 315G.  The failure of the rear U-joint was because one cup was packed with rust.  It must have sat for some time with that one U-joint pointed down in the weeds for just one single cup to fill with water and stay filled!

TUNES!  Hey it's a long drive out there.  Modern tunes were in order.  Made a face plate and installed a modern DIN unit.  Bluetooth and hands free in a 55 year old car is a bit odd but nice.  Rear packing shelf was already cut for a pair of 6x9 speakers so those factory locations were utalized and a 10" sub where the back seat use to be.  Now I can rock out with my ... you know...

Competing in the 130mph club event is still up in the air, but at this point it's at the very least capable of the long haul from oregon to utah to spectate.  Work has become spotty, catching lots of MTO so the shop can make ends meet.  This cuts into the parts budget.  The largest problem this creates is in the area of safety equipment.  The car shipped with no seat belts at all and the 130mph club event requires at the very least a 3 point belt setup.  With a bench seat and no B-pillar mounting such becomes extremely difficult.  The only sollution I have found is to install a 4 point roll bar and race seats with a 5 point.  Honestly this is the best solution anyway as, a 3 point belt is going to do me no good at all in the sort of event that would make 3 point belts useful.  If the car goes over on the lid the roof is going to pancake, that's just what these cars did.  The A pillar has a dog leg in it and there is no B pillar, seat belts become a moot point.
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
  KE7GAL

Offline Seldom Seen Slim

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #81 on: May 20, 2016, 06:45:09 AM »
Ben said:  "... The car shipped with no seat belts at all ..."  Were seat belts optional back then, do you know?  My first car was a '59 Thunderbird that I bought second-hand.  It had factory seat belts when I first saw the car - but I didn't see the window sticker to see if they were factory.
Jon E. Wennerberg
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 Skandia, Michigan
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Offline Buickguy3

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #82 on: May 20, 2016, 10:10:31 PM »
  I believe it was 55 or 56 that Ford made seat belts an option. That may be the first ones.
    Doug  :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
I keep going faster and faster and I don't know why. All I have to do is live and die.
                   [America]

Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #83 on: May 21, 2016, 10:09:55 AM »
Ben said:  "... The car shipped with no seat belts at all ..."  Were seat belts optional back then, do you know?  My first car was a '59 Thunderbird that I bought second-hand.  It had factory seat belts when I first saw the car - but I didn't see the window sticker to see if they were factory.

Seat belts were an option, however, this car was ordered with NO optional equipment so there you go.  Even then it was a lap belt only.
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
  KE7GAL

Offline RansomT

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #84 on: May 21, 2016, 10:46:51 AM »
  I believe it was 55 or 56 that Ford made seat belts an option. That may be the first ones.
    Doug  :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

The '48 Tucker had seat belts standard.  :-D

Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #85 on: August 01, 2016, 09:11:07 PM »
Sooo, work has been spotty, things are slow in the old machine shop and this has lead to lots of days off.  Bills are still getting paid buuuut, really cuts into the budget on the car.

That said, progress has been made.  Seat belts are in, secondary firewall is in and she passed NHRA tech.  Now why would I take it to an NHRA event?  Well, I have to abuse the old girl somewhere, and streets are a bad place for this.  The results?  It's slow... REAL slow.  The best ET was 17.56 at 78mph.  2.622 sec to 60 ft with a good bit of wheel spin.  It didn't get out of second gear, and pulling 78mph through second is a good actually.  It was still pulling at the 1/4 mile.  The car probably actually has a good shot at pulling 130mph in the flying mile.

Ignition timing is perplexing thus far.  at 28 degrees total she goes 17.56, at 32 degrees it slows WAY down and only ran 17.87 and gives up 1.5mph.  This goes against everything I have read.  Seat of the pants feel seems like 25 degrees total gives best acceleration.  I need to get to the drag strip on a less busy night, where I can get more than 5 runs in and play with timing more.  Fuel is ARCO 87 octane.  I didn't HEAR any detonation and i'm not seeing any signs of it on the tops of the pistons (got myself a boroscope) or on the plugs.  In theory, as far as my understanding goes, the lower octane I can get away with the better as the burn time is shorter on lower octane fuels.  So my short stroke big bore engine will from my understanding want a quick burning fuel.  But then again, detonation would explain the fall off in performance.

Now some of you are going to ask what my shift point was.  The truth, I have no idea.  The tach doesn't like my home built CD ignition and begins to swing around like it's drunk.  I need to work out some sort of tach drive circuit, and the couple of things I have tried haven't worked at all.  This is a real kick in the jimmies.  I may abandon my pride filled but somewhat unfunctional home built CD system for an MSD setup... if I can get some hours at work.
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
  KE7GAL

Offline wobblywalrus

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #86 on: August 02, 2016, 12:37:48 AM »
There is a Union 76 station just east of I-5 at the Ellingson Road exit in north Wilsonville.  They sell an unleaded non-ethanol premium that is consistent quality and is the best pump gas for racing.  Far better than ARCO. 

Offline Polyhead

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #87 on: August 02, 2016, 11:22:23 AM »
I don't see the advantage of non ethanol fuel.  If anything the ethanol kicks up the anti knock index.  It'll also lower intake charge as the vaporization of ethanol will absorb more heat than gasoline.  If the car isn't detonating then the fuel is good enough.  Also the car seems to prefer Arco fuel.  I'm unsure why that is.  It's a cheap date sort of car I guess.  If you have since sound logic otherwise I'm listening.
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
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Offline Finallygotit

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #88 on: August 02, 2016, 11:38:55 AM »
Subscribing
Dan
Tucson, AZ

Offline SPARKY

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Re: 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix
« Reply #89 on: May 05, 2017, 01:11:39 AM »
Is this build still live???  I have some 57 354 Poly heads for the asking.
Miss LIBERTY,  changing T.K.I.  to noise, dust, rust, BLUE HATS & hopefully not scrap!!

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