CherryBomb
Well-Known Member
Hi all! As many of you know I am pretty new here, and new to classic Mopars in general. Fair warning, this is on the long side as I am laying out months of work all at once. Skip through and look at the pics if you don’t feel like reading all this nonsense.
My last car was a '59 Chevy Bel Air barn find, which I had tons of fun with for a few years. I sold that about six months ago and went on the hunt for my next classic. I had been eyeballing a Charger, Challenger or Cuda, but to be frank, all of those were out of my budget. While searching for Chargers, I did come across the car you see me with today. My father gave me an appreciation for the first gens and the price was within my range!
I reached out to the seller who was up in South Carolina, and struck a deal via phone. Within a couple of weeks I was on my way up with a trailer. Predictably, it was drizzling and the car was on a relatively rural piece of property so it was pretty muddy. We arrived, chatted with the seller for a bit and looked at a few of his other Mopars, before loading up. I also struck a deal for a 440 and a 4 speed, so we tossed those in the bed of the truck, then loaded up the car on the trailer after giving it the best look over we could.
After a night in a crappy motel and a breakfast at waffle house, we had a pretty steady run the whole way back to the Tampa Bay area with a total round trip time of about 30 hours. Being new to Mopars, I started poking around the car and building a preliminary parts list. The good news was that 99% of the unobtanium pieces of the car were present, and the seller had even installed new seat covers and carpets. As you can see from the second pic, the car has been repainted. Sad, as the original color scheme was white with burgundy interior and I would have honestly preferred that! I will say though, I normally dislike red cars and this one really carries it nicely.
Step one ended up being the fuel system, as I wanted to get this thing running reliably. The seller noted that it had a new tank and new fuel lines, but it was currently running off of a jug in the engine bay. I figured I should check everything out and see what was needed to get it all liked up. While he was telling the truth about the new tank and lines... that was literally it. The filler neck assembly was all in terrible shape, riddled with rust and incorrect rubber components. Then when I reached up to check on the fuel sending unit, there was simply a hole. Yep, new tank fully installed, with no sending unit at all. So I dropped the tank and cleaned it out, replaced the filler neck and vent tube top to bottom, installed a sending unit and connected up the lines. I also replaced the fuel pump making the fuel system 100% new from front to back.
I coaxed the car to life again running on the tank this time. It smoked HORRIBLY and even when I got it to idle relatively ok, it broke up really badly coming up off of idle. I figured it would most likely either be the carb or the ignition, so why not take care of both. I got the basics on order. Plugs, leads, cap, rotor, points, condenser and a rebuild kit for the Stromberg. I built a Tri-Power setup for the ’59, so I knew my way around a 2bbl relatively well. The rebuild and cleaning went smoothly. After that, installed all the ignition bits and got to work setting the base timing.
Except it refused to register on the timing light. I wondered if it was the leads, but confirmed it was not that. Maybe a weak coil? Unlikely, but I replaced it with a nice new one and deleted the ballast resistor per the instructions. Same thing still. I figured it had to be something with the remainder of the distributor as that was the only part that was untouched. Turns out the mechanical advance was toast and the rotor was all over the place which would explain the issue with the timing light. One new distributor later, and boom, she idled happy. I made a temporary exhaust to keep my neighbors happy and let me run the car long enough to properly set base timing and dial the carb in.
The thing STILL smoked like crazy, so I pulled the valve covers. Gave them a quick clean and paint job while they were off. The drivers side head was FULL of oil and made a huge mess when I pulled the cover. The return passages were 100% blocked, worst I have ever seen! After poking around in them, I found a chunk of a valve stem oil seal. All starting to make sense now. At the same time, I decided to run a compression test. Got great numbers on most, but cylinder 4 was a bit low and 2 was notably down. During all of this, I bumped a rocker arm and it moved… A LOT. After poking around I found three of them which had a huge gap. So much for “Just needs a tune up and it’ll be a great driver.” I pulled the intake manifold and predictably…
So this put me in a tough spot. I originally swore I would not spend more than a couple of hundred bucks on this little 318 to get it going so I could drive the car, then I would focus on getting the parts for the body/interior and engine swap. Don’t forget, this whole time I have had a 440 on an engine stand and even scored a dual quad setup for it! Either I was faced with pulling this motor and trans out and basically selling it as a core, or I could commit more money and keep trying to get it going.
I guess I am a sucker for lost causes and I have a soft spot for this little thing, as I pressed on. I pulled the heads and did a quick check of the valves. Confirmed leaks on 2 and 4 which would explain the lower compression. I dropped them in at a local machine shop along with new valve seals and they are currently being worked on. They should come back 100% solid, clean and ready for paint. That should fix the compression issues on 2 and 4, as well as the exhaust valve issues on 3, 5 and 6, PLUS stop the thing smoking like Cheech and Chong were driving. At this point, gloves are off and I have decided to make this little thing real nice. The cylinder bores and pistons look really clean so there is no reason this wont be a lovely little engine when it is all back together, so why not make it look nice?
MORE TO COME IN THE NEXT POST!
My last car was a '59 Chevy Bel Air barn find, which I had tons of fun with for a few years. I sold that about six months ago and went on the hunt for my next classic. I had been eyeballing a Charger, Challenger or Cuda, but to be frank, all of those were out of my budget. While searching for Chargers, I did come across the car you see me with today. My father gave me an appreciation for the first gens and the price was within my range!
I reached out to the seller who was up in South Carolina, and struck a deal via phone. Within a couple of weeks I was on my way up with a trailer. Predictably, it was drizzling and the car was on a relatively rural piece of property so it was pretty muddy. We arrived, chatted with the seller for a bit and looked at a few of his other Mopars, before loading up. I also struck a deal for a 440 and a 4 speed, so we tossed those in the bed of the truck, then loaded up the car on the trailer after giving it the best look over we could.
After a night in a crappy motel and a breakfast at waffle house, we had a pretty steady run the whole way back to the Tampa Bay area with a total round trip time of about 30 hours. Being new to Mopars, I started poking around the car and building a preliminary parts list. The good news was that 99% of the unobtanium pieces of the car were present, and the seller had even installed new seat covers and carpets. As you can see from the second pic, the car has been repainted. Sad, as the original color scheme was white with burgundy interior and I would have honestly preferred that! I will say though, I normally dislike red cars and this one really carries it nicely.
Step one ended up being the fuel system, as I wanted to get this thing running reliably. The seller noted that it had a new tank and new fuel lines, but it was currently running off of a jug in the engine bay. I figured I should check everything out and see what was needed to get it all liked up. While he was telling the truth about the new tank and lines... that was literally it. The filler neck assembly was all in terrible shape, riddled with rust and incorrect rubber components. Then when I reached up to check on the fuel sending unit, there was simply a hole. Yep, new tank fully installed, with no sending unit at all. So I dropped the tank and cleaned it out, replaced the filler neck and vent tube top to bottom, installed a sending unit and connected up the lines. I also replaced the fuel pump making the fuel system 100% new from front to back.
I coaxed the car to life again running on the tank this time. It smoked HORRIBLY and even when I got it to idle relatively ok, it broke up really badly coming up off of idle. I figured it would most likely either be the carb or the ignition, so why not take care of both. I got the basics on order. Plugs, leads, cap, rotor, points, condenser and a rebuild kit for the Stromberg. I built a Tri-Power setup for the ’59, so I knew my way around a 2bbl relatively well. The rebuild and cleaning went smoothly. After that, installed all the ignition bits and got to work setting the base timing.
Except it refused to register on the timing light. I wondered if it was the leads, but confirmed it was not that. Maybe a weak coil? Unlikely, but I replaced it with a nice new one and deleted the ballast resistor per the instructions. Same thing still. I figured it had to be something with the remainder of the distributor as that was the only part that was untouched. Turns out the mechanical advance was toast and the rotor was all over the place which would explain the issue with the timing light. One new distributor later, and boom, she idled happy. I made a temporary exhaust to keep my neighbors happy and let me run the car long enough to properly set base timing and dial the carb in.
The thing STILL smoked like crazy, so I pulled the valve covers. Gave them a quick clean and paint job while they were off. The drivers side head was FULL of oil and made a huge mess when I pulled the cover. The return passages were 100% blocked, worst I have ever seen! After poking around in them, I found a chunk of a valve stem oil seal. All starting to make sense now. At the same time, I decided to run a compression test. Got great numbers on most, but cylinder 4 was a bit low and 2 was notably down. During all of this, I bumped a rocker arm and it moved… A LOT. After poking around I found three of them which had a huge gap. So much for “Just needs a tune up and it’ll be a great driver.” I pulled the intake manifold and predictably…
So this put me in a tough spot. I originally swore I would not spend more than a couple of hundred bucks on this little 318 to get it going so I could drive the car, then I would focus on getting the parts for the body/interior and engine swap. Don’t forget, this whole time I have had a 440 on an engine stand and even scored a dual quad setup for it! Either I was faced with pulling this motor and trans out and basically selling it as a core, or I could commit more money and keep trying to get it going.
I guess I am a sucker for lost causes and I have a soft spot for this little thing, as I pressed on. I pulled the heads and did a quick check of the valves. Confirmed leaks on 2 and 4 which would explain the lower compression. I dropped them in at a local machine shop along with new valve seals and they are currently being worked on. They should come back 100% solid, clean and ready for paint. That should fix the compression issues on 2 and 4, as well as the exhaust valve issues on 3, 5 and 6, PLUS stop the thing smoking like Cheech and Chong were driving. At this point, gloves are off and I have decided to make this little thing real nice. The cylinder bores and pistons look really clean so there is no reason this wont be a lovely little engine when it is all back together, so why not make it look nice?
MORE TO COME IN THE NEXT POST!
