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This was the first car I ever owned. It came with the Leaning Tower of Power and a A904 automatic. Originally it was a white car, but it had been resprayed a color I'd best call lemon juice fog, and it had a bit of body damage. So naturally the first thing I did was fix the interior and exterior as best a teenager can and had it professionally repainted. I don't have any "before" photos, but here it is stock with new paint.
I put a two barrel carb on it and thought it was fast... then brought it to the dragstrip and it ran a 19.7 in the quarter. I was young and hadn't driven anything really fast to compare it to. I wanted to get serious, so I was pondering a V8 swap. Then I got an email from a guy selling a carbed turbo setup for a slant six. You can see the turbo and exhaust manifold at this link, but he'd added an Offenhauser intake and four barrel Holley. I spent $430 on his parts and probably another $600 or so in other parts like an electric fuel pump, rebuild kit for the Holley, etc., and got it on the Dart. Here's a shot of its carbureted turbo setup.
Trouble was, the Holley had been worked over by someone with a machine shop and no clue about how to set up a Holley. Among other things, it had mechanical secondaries on a single pumper. I never could get it to run right. I thought about getting a better carb, but then decided to go EFI with a Megasquirt V2.2 (at the time, the latest). So I bought a Clifford intake manifold, a Crown Vic throttle body, a set of Supra Turbo injectors, and a lot of odd parts here and there to go EFI. Got it running, and better than it ran on the carb, but realized that a Mitsubishi TE04 turbo is way too small for a slant six - with my new free flowing intake, it would spool at 1,500 RPM and be out of breath at 3,000. It also picked up some disc brakes, a large bolt pattern conversion, and some American Racing billet rims - here's a few pictures of how the outside looks.
I needed some big changes - an intercooler, a circle track radiator, and such - and ended up getting in over my head and having it towed to a fabrication shop. When it was there, we decided to ditch the itsy bitsy Mitsubishi turbo and get a serious turbo, in this case a Garrett GT40. Here's a shot of the new turbo next to the old one. The manifold had also fallen apart by then.
Unfortunately the guy who was working on the car quit, and it's gotten a bit tied up. But they've promised that it will be either done by the end of February, or I'm going to pay them for what they have done and take it to where I work (which is close enough to just push the car without breaking a sweat) and finish it there after hours myself. Here's a shot of the engine as things are now, more or less:
Once I get that running, I've got an 8 3/4" Sure Grip rear axle to swap in there so I don't grenade the large bolt pattern 7 1/4" in there now. Not sure what I'll do about the transmission.
My blog has a build diary, but I'll post updates here too.
I put a two barrel carb on it and thought it was fast... then brought it to the dragstrip and it ran a 19.7 in the quarter. I was young and hadn't driven anything really fast to compare it to. I wanted to get serious, so I was pondering a V8 swap. Then I got an email from a guy selling a carbed turbo setup for a slant six. You can see the turbo and exhaust manifold at this link, but he'd added an Offenhauser intake and four barrel Holley. I spent $430 on his parts and probably another $600 or so in other parts like an electric fuel pump, rebuild kit for the Holley, etc., and got it on the Dart. Here's a shot of its carbureted turbo setup.
Trouble was, the Holley had been worked over by someone with a machine shop and no clue about how to set up a Holley. Among other things, it had mechanical secondaries on a single pumper. I never could get it to run right. I thought about getting a better carb, but then decided to go EFI with a Megasquirt V2.2 (at the time, the latest). So I bought a Clifford intake manifold, a Crown Vic throttle body, a set of Supra Turbo injectors, and a lot of odd parts here and there to go EFI. Got it running, and better than it ran on the carb, but realized that a Mitsubishi TE04 turbo is way too small for a slant six - with my new free flowing intake, it would spool at 1,500 RPM and be out of breath at 3,000. It also picked up some disc brakes, a large bolt pattern conversion, and some American Racing billet rims - here's a few pictures of how the outside looks.
I needed some big changes - an intercooler, a circle track radiator, and such - and ended up getting in over my head and having it towed to a fabrication shop. When it was there, we decided to ditch the itsy bitsy Mitsubishi turbo and get a serious turbo, in this case a Garrett GT40. Here's a shot of the new turbo next to the old one. The manifold had also fallen apart by then.
Unfortunately the guy who was working on the car quit, and it's gotten a bit tied up. But they've promised that it will be either done by the end of February, or I'm going to pay them for what they have done and take it to where I work (which is close enough to just push the car without breaking a sweat) and finish it there after hours myself. Here's a shot of the engine as things are now, more or less:
Once I get that running, I've got an 8 3/4" Sure Grip rear axle to swap in there so I don't grenade the large bolt pattern 7 1/4" in there now. Not sure what I'll do about the transmission.
My blog has a build diary, but I'll post updates here too.
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