Now featuring bonus Dartiness

Not sure where the time has gone since my last post way back in 2010 and i can't be bothered to think about it in order to write it here, afterall if it was that important I'd have blogged it at the time right??? Anyhoo there's a new member of the family that was acquired through the online tat bazaar that is ebay. It was in town and I bid and won it without even going to see it. Thankfully when I did roll up to view it and handover my deposit it was in better shape than I thought. It's a '67 Dodge Dart GT convertible and here it is in it's new home. It needs a bit of work as it's stood for about 3 years. It came with a new convertible roof that need fitting as the current one is shot, which explains all the leaves inside.

It's got a 225 slant 6, shame it's not the V8 but if it had been it would have cost me twice as much. They built this engine in various guises for nearly 40 years so there's plenty of parts available.

I couldn't drive it home because there were no brakes. The seller had fitted a new master cylinder but couldn't get the brakes to bleed as it was leaking. With Mrs P's help we found out there was a leak coming from the front left steel brake line. Obviously the brake nut was seized solid so a pair of newly acquired vise grips and bingo, the nut came lose and cracked the pipe in the process. The trick to getting the driver's side wheel off is to know that the clever engineer's at Dodge used a left hand thread on the wheel nuts. First car I've ever owned with that and again if it wasn't for the mighty internet I'd have been tightening when I should have been loosening!

Spent the rest of the day stripping the front drums (yes you read it correctly no disc brakes here!) to find that the wheel cylinders were shot (no surprise). Ordered the new parts online but now need to beg, borrow or steal a pipe flaring tool and pipe bender so that I can make up some new steel brake lines.

The list of things to fix is growing a plan of attack is forming. Neither front headlamps nor tail lights work so it's likely to be the switch. Also the windscreen wiper switch is seized so need to get that operational, but instead of doing any of those things I cracked out the metal polish and made the chrome bits all shiny/

It does start but won't idle very well but that's probably bad gas where it's been sitting so long. Indicators and brake lights work.

Plan is to get the brake sorted asap and get it basically road worthy then drive it for Fall, then over the winter I can get going on the rust and the floor pan in particular.