I'm fortunate to be property manager of a church property that includes a 4-car garage, shop & barn!
About this Mopar:
'63 Dodge 330! barn auction find! Beautiful body, 82k original miles, Poly 318, 2 bbl. Push button tranny. I'm 4th owner... I drove her almost 100 mines home!
Got her a few months ago, have decided to take advantage of the near-perfect body & redo her as a daily driver. Was thinking about a mild custom, but after checking prices for PARTS ($800+ for headers?!?) I chose to restore instead. I was going to concentrate on interior 1st, but she decided to start leaking all over. Rear main. Front trans. started overheating, etc. So...
My grandson & I took the engine down to the block a couple days ago. That was FUN! He was funny when he realized that we only needed 4-5 different sized wrenches to get the engine apart. We also had the SWEET experience of no broken bolts or studs! Everything broke loose & came apart relatively easily, even the exhaust!. All seems to be in really good shape EXCEPT the CRUD! I't full of sludge. But, there's no cylinder ridges, all valves work, the pistons don't wobble.
So, this weekend, we're pulling the engine/tranny. We'll finish pulling engine apart, stripping the block, then take the pushrods out of the heads. We've found a machine shop that'll clean, reseat valves & install bronze valve seals on the heads then tank, mic & polish the block for us. We'll take the tranny to a friend mechanic for him to check & clean.
While all this is going on, will pull the seats & take to another friend to redo the seats. I'm not going to try to find original material, so have decided to do the seats in a heavy material that looks like stone washed denim in just a nice simple pattern I've not decided on yet.
We'll also clean & paint the engine doghouse, wheelwells, etc.
I am going to have a bit of fun with the wheels. Thought about finding 15" to raise it up a little, but gonna stay with the 14" steels, paint them matching the body & find some chrome rings, baby moons & some 2" whitewalls!
Well, that's PLENTY for now, but if any of you have any suggestions, I'd sure be glad to hear from you! ESPECIALLY if any of you out there
have one of these rare ol' ladies, too!
Got her a few months ago, have decided to take advantage of the near-perfect body & redo her as a daily driver. Was thinking about a mild custom, but after checking prices for PARTS ($800+ for headers?!?) I chose to restore instead. I was going to concentrate on interior 1st, but she decided to start leaking all over. Rear main. Front trans. started overheating, etc. So...
My grandson & I took the engine down to the block a couple days ago. That was FUN! He was funny when he realized that we only needed 4-5 different sized wrenches to get the engine apart. We also had the SWEET experience of no broken bolts or studs! Everything broke loose & came apart relatively easily, even the exhaust!. All seems to be in really good shape EXCEPT the CRUD! I't full of sludge. But, there's no cylinder ridges, all valves work, the pistons don't wobble.
So, this weekend, we're pulling the engine/tranny. We'll finish pulling engine apart, stripping the block, then take the pushrods out of the heads. We've found a machine shop that'll clean, reseat valves & install bronze valve seals on the heads then tank, mic & polish the block for us. We'll take the tranny to a friend mechanic for him to check & clean.
While all this is going on, will pull the seats & take to another friend to redo the seats. I'm not going to try to find original material, so have decided to do the seats in a heavy material that looks like stone washed denim in just a nice simple pattern I've not decided on yet.
We'll also clean & paint the engine doghouse, wheelwells, etc.
I am going to have a bit of fun with the wheels. Thought about finding 15" to raise it up a little, but gonna stay with the 14" steels, paint them matching the body & find some chrome rings, baby moons & some 2" whitewalls!
Well, that's PLENTY for now, but if any of you have any suggestions, I'd sure be glad to hear from you! ESPECIALLY if any of you out there
