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My newsed 1968 Dodge Coronet with a 440 engine & 4-speed transmission

daniel_depetro

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We went to Iola, WI for their annual swap meet (and car show) and found some pretty good deals. We missed out on (2) 392 HEMI blocks (one was short block) for $600.00 and an “RC 426” steel belhousing for $150.00! I found a ‘054’ radiator for my 1969 Super Bee, however after buying the car I thought it better that I didn’t spend another $800.00 on the radiator that needed to be recored yet.
The new addition is a 1968 Dodge Coronet coupe. It is the base model Coronet with few options, if any. It was definitely an "advertisement car" which was simple base model vehicle with no options and the lowest possible price to get people into the dealers’ showrooms. The car has manual 4-wheel drum brakes, manual steering, an original manual column shift, and was a small slant six car...
This car came from the New Mexico desert and is extremely clean/dry/solid and very straight so no body work (or much) is needed. Even the trunk pan is very nice. This is my first "21" coded post car.
It was an original slant six powered vehicle with a 3-speed manual column shift transmission (3 on the tree), but now has a 1968 440 high performance (375 horsepower & 480 lbs./ft. of torque) and the matching 1968 A-883 heavy duty 4-speed manual transmission. The engine has a Holley dual feed 4-bbl. carburetor on top of an Offenhauser aluminum 4-bbl. intake manifold. It also has headers and has been converted to electronic ignition via a brand new Mopar Performance kit (ECU, distributor, harness, ...). A few other small things I noticed immediately was the mint 1968 Super Bee power bulge hood on it, the glass is all in great shape, and it has 15" aluminum mag (slots) wheels which fit the car perfectly! Three of the four even have the correct center caps.
The car is complete and runs & drives as purchased. It fired right up and idled great. There was no smoke out the tail pipes and the engine sounds awesome.
The car was worth every penny of the $6,500.00 asking price, however it's a swap meet and I enjoy dealing. Still being early in the weekend and having a crowd around the car constantly I knew the seller wasn't going to come down much if at all. As expected he was not very negotiable on the price and for good reason I suppose. Another buyer showed up and offered him $6,100.00. That buyer called his wife for "approval" right there and went to go get the funds. At that point the decision was made to man up and pay the $6,100.00 as opposed to not getting the car.
It certainly isn't perfect and needs some love, however it is a rust free Dodge Coronet that’s powered by a correct year 440 H.P. engine and backed by an A-883 4-speed manual transmission that runs & drives with a clean/clear title that is still wearing its original sheetmetal (other than the hood). Also the body numbers all matched as did the fender tag which was present and accounted for.
We were getting ready to drive the car home and Hoover offered to tow it home on his trailer for free as long as we could load up and bring the leftovers from his swap meet vendor area home in our truck. It was a done deal.
$6,100.00 bought the car and got it home, so I think we did pretty well.
Now we'll have to see how it performs (and get it performing as well as we can).
It is getting plates & insurance first thing Monday!
 
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If i would have seen it i would have bought it....i was there thursday at 7 am..and left saturday morning....good buy...
 
We got down there on Thursday ~10:30am local time and made a full sweep through the swap area first.
This Coronet was sitting across from the car corral area not far from the swap meet entrance gate (coming from the car corral).
There was a vendor right against the fence with a massive semi trailer selling Mr Gasket/Edelbrock/Holley/Barry Grant products on the right. The car sat across from them in the next row over (2nd or 3rd row in from the fence).

It sat there all day Thursday so I didn't think anything of it really. I wasn't really interested in it. We left Thursday night (we stayed in Appleton, WI) and arrived back at the swap meet ~10am local time again. The (2) 392 HEMI blocks my father really wanted sold for only $600.00/pair so we went to check out the RC 426 belhousing for $150.00 and it too was gone now. This same belhousing was there last year as well. Not sure why I just didn't grab it the last 10 times I walked by it.
The only other thing I wanted were the 1969 HEMI/A12 440 Six Pack '054' radiator, but the seller wanted $800.00 and it needed to be recored. It was very, very nice with absolutely no other flaws though.
Then I saw the Coronet again and we did the walk around heard it run, yada, yada.
That's when the other buyer came, made an offer & left to go get the money (at least that's where the other potential buyer said he was going) so I decided I'd rather the car than the radiator.
 
Here are a couple more as purchased photos that I didn't get posted in time in the original post.

I noticed the car has an Accell super coil (big, yellow, & ugly as sin), Mallory 'Super Wire' ignition wires, Moroso crome 14 x 3-inch drop base air cleaner, and Moroso chrome valve covers (that are shaped like factory Mopar big block covers?).
The car is insured and plated and on it's maiden voyage it shook like a bastard (driveline & tires/front end), was hard to get the transmission into gears, the clutch slipped so bad it was barely getting any power to the wheels, and the radiator leaked.
My father was able to solder the radiator up nice and it holds full pressure without leaks, although that small radiator isn't going to be enough to cool that big block anyways.
Other then that it'll be one thing at a time slowly buy surely from here on.


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I'm curious to see what it looks like too! It sounds like a hell of a great deal!
 
The first order of business was to fix the clutch. It barely had enough holding power to make it up the trailer ramps or to keep the car at speed on the highway.

Here is what greeted us.
Hayes flywheel. Grooved up beyond use, similar to a brake rotor with extensive metal on metal contact.

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The clutch wasn't any better. The wear on the center springs made me think the above Hayes flywheel was already beyond it's ability to be cut/reused.

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A standard OEM replacement Perfection clutch set from Advance Auto Parts.

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We had another factory 11" flywheel lying around so it went down to Carquest and was turned ($38.00) and ready for installation.







We also swapped out the early trunion type A-883 4-speed transmission that was in the car upon purchase for an 1970 slip yoke style A-883 4-speed manual transmission.

"old"

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"new"

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We were also able to get the small 7-1/4" original rear end swapped out for a factory b-body 8-3/4" rear that was already equip'd with a sure-grip differential, 3.55:1 gears, and 11 x 3" finned drum brakes.

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The stock Hurst 'Competition' 4-speed shifter for a Hurst 'Competition Plus' 4-speed shifter and dad set-up all the shift rods so the car is driveable again. After a quick fluids check it was time to take it's second "drive".
The clutch is great so far, however there is still a vibration in the engine (hopefully it's just the fan/water pump and not the bottom end), the engine doesn't seem very powerful, and the temperature quickly climbed up towards being hot as well.

The cooling system will be the first item that get attention. I'll have to check it out a little more in depth too see what's the issue. I knew the small slant six radiator/old water pump/old thermostat weren't going to cut it before we purchased the car, however I was kinda of hoping it would run cool enough to drive it as is for a bit. That is not the case so I hope there isn't any sediment in the engines cooling passages causing restrictions/poor cooling abilities. The radiator/water pump/thermostat are all items that I normally change out anyways on these old cars.

With the new 11" clutch installed and close to being broken in it's clearly getting the power to the rear tires now.
Unfotunetely it only feels like it has half the power it should.
The out of tune / way too small 650 cfm carb is certainly choking it off as is the 1-7/8" headers back exhaust, but still. A dirty air cleaner that you can't see any light through isn't helping either. Those are all killing performance, but can't be causing it to be this bad of a dog.
Played with the timing a bit; advance, advance, advance, retard, retard.... Advance, advance, advance, retard, retard.... getting better but still not much there. Took the heavy advance spring out of the distributor to get more timing in earlier. Better yet, but minimally.
Pulled the plugs...hmmm...first one was clean, but a small gap. then the second one was wet. Yep, it was only running on 7 cylinders. Still something has to be extremely off here to be down to 1/2 the power it should be putting out. The gaps were between .010"-.015"!!
A frantic search around the shop dicovered two boxes of brand new NGK V-Groove spark plugs, SWEET!
Too bad there was only 7 spark plugs in the boxes. A quick trip to NAPA (Advance Auto Parts didn't have this one in stock #3332) netted us the 8th.
With the electronic ignition & Accell coil I gapped the plugs at .040" and decided to see if it idled any different. Nope.
I idled it over to the Grade A fuel station that's out in front of the shop and dumped in $10.00 worth of 87 octane.
Once I knew I wasn't going to run out of fuel it was time for a test run. The traffic signal in front of Beef-A-Roo was red so I pulled out onto the highway, got nice and straight and slowly rolled into the throttle and the back end quickly stepped out. I slowly shifted into 2nd gear and once again slowly applied the go pedal and the car was again in a drift melting both 265/60R-15 rear tires. I didn't want to get crazy so I pushed the clutch in and let the car straighten back out and slow back down so I could turn off of and return to the shop. Wow! New spark plugs = lots of horsepower!! Well ok, so they just returned the power the old ones were robbing, but it was an amazing improvement.
At least it'll be more fun to drive (actually has some power) now. Once the air filter, plug wires, exhaust, and carb get changed/tuned it should be quite the performer.
 
I've decided to use up some parts that are just lying around so I called Advance Auto Parts and had them send me down a new Felpro 1-piece intake manifold & valley pan gasket.

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Now I could install the new Edelbrock Performer RPM aluminum dual plane intake manifold I have had sitting in my garage for far too long without being used.
This should wake that car up quite a bit (once the exhaust gets done).

The Holley 650 cfm vacuum secondary carburetor that was on the car when we bought it was small, old, and just plain ugly looking. Being that my new Holley 770 cfm Street Avenger with vacuum secondaries just came off the 1972 Dodge Dart in favor of a 750cfm double pumper I decided to put it on this Coronet. Not the best solution, but it's a step in the right direction.
When I was putting it on the Dart a couple weeks back I took the carb apart and installed 75 jets on the primary side and 79 jets on the secondary side.

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I needed a few more small items to get the carburetor/intake manifold installed.
A quick trip to Advance Auto Parts netted these parts.


Mr. Gasket carburetor base (carburetor to intake manifold) gasket.

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Mr. Gasket carburetor studs.

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Mr. Gasket throttle return spring (correct dual spring set-up).

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Only about 15 minutes and the Offenhauser aluminum intake manifold and Holley 650 cfm vacuum secondary carburetor was removed from the car.
I forgot how extremely basic this job is on a big block Mopar. No coolant to make a mess, no distributor through the intake manifold! All I had to do was disconnect the fuel hose, disconnect the vacuum advance hose from the carburetor, and remove the eight bolts holding the intake manifold on and Wa-lah! I also found that I could remove all four bolts from the passenger side of the intake manifold with my fingers. Two of the four were not even finger tight!
With intake manifold removed the only thing left to do is remove the six small bolts holding the front and rear of the valley pan/intake manifold gasket in place the the engine is open. Then simply clean up the gasket surfaces and reinstall everything (reverse procedure).

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The valley pan/intake manifold gasket in place with the intake manifold finger tight.

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The carburetor mocked up so I could fabricate the throttle cable bracket before the intake manifold gets torqued down permanently.

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Test fitting the air cleaner/hood clearence with the new higher intake manifold and the old 14 x 3" air filter element.

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The final test fit with a new 14 x 4" Purolator air filter element from Advance Auto Parts.

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It should be a noticeable power gain (between the intake manifold, larger carburetor, and new/larger air filter element), even with with the 1-7/8" - 2" press bent exhaust I doubt it'll feel much different as-is.
It's idles better but It'll have to wait for another day to be test driven.
Here it is with everything properly torqued down and the engine running for the first time (with this combo). It sounds great as always and is much smoother now.

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