Janet's 70 Dart Swinger

[squirrel]

She's been driving the car a bit. The turn signals drive me crazy when I drive it, so I guess I need to fix them. Both the cancelling tabs are broken off, and one of the "hold it in ON position" tabs is broken off, so you have to hold the lever to make it signal to the right. I got one of the cheezy MM repair parts, took the wheel off and removed the old one, then noticed, they're different. So, I got the box of switches out of the shed...my friend used to call my sheds "the magic kingdom" because of all the strange stuff I have collected over the years.



One is new, it has the cornering light thing that I'll have to cut off. It was in the original mopar box, with some writing on it including a price of $11.60 so it must be old!

[squirrel]

Turn signals are working good. I also swapped the front bumper...Janet bumped into a truck in trafficmany many years ago and bent in the center, so it was touching the grille (the grille is broken in a few places too). I got a used one off a Demon I parted out many (single many) years ago, but it had guards on it originally, as well as the slots for the jack. When I cleaned up the yard this summer, I dug the bumper out of the bumper pile, and decided I should try it on the car some time. I removed the guards and brackets, and cleaned it up with some polish, it's not too bad. So I put it on the car. Looks better, that bent bumper had been bugging me for decades.

Tonight Steve (our oldest son who came home from the hospital in the Dart) who is visiting got to drive the Dart, he said he never drove it anywhere before. Of course something had to go wrong...after a couple miles, the speedo started going wonky, jumping all over the place. One more thing to fix.

[squirrel]

I took Janet out for a Sonic burger, drove her car, had a couple guys say what a nice car I have. Huh.

Turned 330,000 miles on the way home.

[TheSilverBuick]

Just getting back to working on all the old stuff.

[squirrel]

The speedo has gotten a bit wonky lately, so I figured the first place to start fixing would be the speedo cable. I was gonna lube it...so I reached behind the dash and popped the clip off, and the end almost came off in my hand, I guess it had been busted for a while. Mopars have a plastic end with a springy latch thing that clips onto the speedo, and this one is over 40 yrs old and broke. So I ordered a new cable from the local parts store, came in yesterday, the stupid thing has the wrong end on it where it fits the trans. Everyone knows the transmission end of a speedo cable (except fords) has a 7/8" threaded fitting, right? the clowns who made the cable put a 5/8" end on it, which is what you find at the speedo end of older speedo cables. Did a little googling, I'm not the only one to be in this situation. So I'll return it as defective, and see if I can find a properly made part. And yes it says "made in usa" right on the box.

[squirrel]

I got a new speedo cable from a resto place, it works but the speedo still acted up, so we kind of quit driving the car for a few months. I finally got around to trying to fix it. Found an NOS speedo on ebay, two bills....came in the mail with the needle all bent up, wasn't packed quite carefully enough. Seller suggested I just bend the needle back and paint it, which I did, it looks ok. Installing it now...and I'm painting the other needles too. Dang this 40 year old plastic crap is a pain to work on. I'll see what happens, maybe it'll all work, maybe it won't. In the mean time, I'll get several skinned knuckles working on it.

Film at eleven.

[Beagle]

bummer on the packing, that's disappointing. I'm sure you have it looking factory, but it sucks that you had to.

My experience with 40 year old plastic / electronics has not been profitable. I can share this much, which you probably already know. Some forty year old plastics and contact cleaners like CRC iirc don't really get along. Melty. boo.

[squirrel]

Well, I got it all back together, and went for a little drive...it makes noise when I get up around 45-50, and the needle jumps up in speed a bit. I guess it's not happy, either bad grease or something got bent when it was damaged in shipping. It's all staked and riveted together, it doesn't unscrew like the old ones.

[RustyRodder]

Nice Dart!!!


theres one of these sittin behind a garage 3 houses down from me- 69 Cutlass rotting in the garage too

[squirrel]

I wiggled the cable, and drove it some more, and it seems to have calmed down. So the speedo is fixed, and I can move on to the next things, like the seats, exhaust, rear gearing, etc.