BreakStuff Racing

Why would anyone want to restore a '76 Dodge Dart? Well, we didn't want to, either. This was originally intended to be a parts car. We saw it on Ebay listed for $550 dollars, with no bids. We emailed the seller and asked what he wanted for the car. He said if you come pick it up right now, I'll let you have it for $400. Well, a running slant six car for that price wasn't so bad, considering we couldn't even find a winter beater for that cheap.

So we hooked up the car hauler and brought her home. Turns out she was a little bit cleaner than we thought she would be, the floorpans were solid as a rock. The quarters had rust, but we'd seen worse. We just didn't have the heart to pull her apart and scrap her, and we had so many leftover A-body parts lying around from other parts cars and our Duster project that we figured we could build this Dart for dirt cheap. Time will tell.

People say Mopars are too expensive to build. We are aiming to build a nice driver for around $1,500, which includes the purchase price. We will do everything....nothing will be outsourced. Paint, body work, suspension, upholstery, etc. I'm not trying to make a 100 point show car, just a nice daily driver.

The car originally came from New Jersey. We bought it off a guy in Ohio. We don't know how many northern winters she had seen, but we did find a lot of red dirt packed up in the suspension area, so we figure she spent some time down south.

It will be hard to dress up this rear. That back bumper looks like the trousers on a plumber, Hangin' low! I have the bumper, extensions, and rear splash plan from a '73 Dart. Too bad Chrysler changed the rear clip so the bumpers won't bolt up. Learned that the hard way. The rear trunk wall will be replaced so we can install the rear bumper off a 1970 through '73 Dart.

The 225 slant six. She ain't no power house but is as dependable as the mailman. Rated at a whopping 105 net horsepower, they had more than enough power to get Grandma to the bingo hall.

Here is the interior when I drug the old girl home. Dash pad destroyed, door panels filthy, carpet and front seat were shredded. Basically what you would call a "wild cat interior."

Here is another shot of the seats. Our first attempt at car upholstery, and they came out great.

Since my wife loves to sew, I asked her to try to recover the front seat. She reluctantly said okay. The front seat came out great. The vinyl was a freebie from my dad so all I bought was thread and foam. $15. New carpet ran $115. Dash pad came from a parts car and repainted. Not too bad for $130, total, for the entire interior.

I couldn't live with the '75-76 grill, BUTT UGLY. I swapped out the grill, bumper and header panel "beak" with a '73 dart. We also replaced the rusty front fender. Yeah, the white walls and hub caps will get 86ed also.

Although this fender and door is rust free, there are a lot of parking lot dings. Looked like a couple of two year olds went to town on it with a hammer.

The hood is off one of the parts cars, the original hood had some cancer on the inner skeleton.

After I took the paint off I found Bondo, lots of it. What it needed was a skim coat but somebody got happy with the peanut butter and went a quarter inch thick.

This is all the filler it really needed. 99% of all cars have some kind of filler whether it's plastic or lead. Even from the factory! After this fender is blocked out, you will never see the filler. The skim coat is thin enough that a weak magnet will even stick.

This passenger side rear quarter is a mess. After some poking and prodding I finally decided I need to replace the whole thing. She looks pretty crispy, huh? The hubcaps will be hitting the dumpster also. A set of 15x7 black steelies with red ring dogdish hubcaps will replace them!

This is the driver side quarter. Not quite as bad as the other side but bad enough. I will just be putting a patch panel on the lower part of the quarter. We are also going to remove the marker lights and install the '70-71 style marker lights. They will be lower on the quarterpanel and sit more flush than the '72-76 style.

This is what the top looks like after the old vinyl top was peeled off. 1/4 inch thick factory body filler! Odd thing is this car came with a full vinyl top and the roof/quarter seam is all plastic filler. The Duster has a half vinyl top and the quarter/roof seam was lead.

New driver side quarter panel from Sherman parts. This was made to fit a 69 Dart (the very last 6" is different) but the pieces we need will fit correctly on our Dart. Remember, we're only replacing a small patch on the lower quarter on the driver's side.

In the middle of patching the lower trunk extension on the driver side. This trunk extension only had a couple small rust out spots. It was easier to just cut and reweld in new patches. Once the bead is hit with a grinder, you won't be able to tell.

Driver side patch panel in place, ready to be welded on. Using draw Clecos will pull the panels tight together if you flange the metal behind the patch panel. I like to weld this way because you are spot welding all the holes where the Clecos are...plus you are welding the edge of the patch panel to the car.

After....welded and primed. Needs just a little filler and some sanding and it is ready to go. After grinding the weld down it's best to spray the welds with a self-etch primer once everything cools down.

Close up of the driver side before new quarter panel is patched on.

Cut this out and found more rust underneath, had to patch and weld and rustproof before putting an outside quarter panel patch on.

After, needs a little filler and some sanding, and this part is done.

Inside view of the passenger side trunk extension. This is how it looked after we peeled away the old seam sealer and cleaned off some other crud. Quality factory assembly line craftsmanship here, probably done right before the guy's coffee break on a Monday.

Starting to cut the passenger side quarter off and seeing what is underneath.

New lower trunk extension welded in place. We were only able to replace the lower trunk extension, because as far as we know there are no complete trunk extensions made for '76 Darts. *Update: Okay, we found that complete trunk extensions are available, but it's a little late now.

Passenger side new quarter panel. This one is somewhat year correct, and good thing because we need to replace much more sheetmetal on the passenger side. One thing to remember to do is to shore up the body with jackstands. Unibody cars flex easily and if you weld on a car that is sitting crooked due to a flat tire something will have to give when you finally air up that tire.

This is how Superman looks at old Mopars with his X-ray vision...I could have slapped some bondo-glass in these quarters and stayed way in my budget but every couple years I probably would be repairing again. So it's just better to do it right the first time. This is not the time to have your wife or girlfriend model for a photoshoot on the back of your car. The tops of the quarters were very weak.

New quarter cut and welded into place. I tack welded between the two upper body lines. I was going to split the quarter about 3" below the center line but there really isn't much support there and the panel would have warped a lot more. One more thing I'd like to add; try to remove the quarter as much intact as possible. It may help with alignment with the new quarter.

The repop quarters are already cut cut for the '70-71 side marker light. I decided to keep that look so I will cut the drivers side to match, and fill in the factory '72-76 style marker light.

1974-76 Darts had this style of rear end. I was never to fond of it so when a chance to buy a '70 dart parts car for dirt cheap came up I jumped on it. This swap is quite easy but very time consuming.

I drilled out all 10,000 spot welds, well, maybe not that many, it just felt like it. The shocks hold the '70 LBS bumper in place. Using a piece of .080 stainless steel I made a blade to slice between the panels. You would be suprised how tough that 28 year old seam sealer is.

The new tail light panel is spot welded in place. Just remember when filling the holes with the welder make sure you mark the holes for the quarter extensions. That dawned on me when I tried to install the driverside one. Yeah, it didn't fit very well. I cut that weld back out and it's all good now.

I swapped rear ends to run large bolt pattern rim. It's safer than running wheel adapters. The factory 7 1/4 rear end is an okay unit but will grenade from an engine putting out some horsepower. Won't be any problem while running the slant 6.

I planned on swapping the front brakes for a while. The drum brakes worked fine but I was back to the small bolt pattern rims. Besides, the front end needed a rebuild anyway.

The front end had a funny sounding clunk noise in it. The passenger side upper control arm bushings were missing the rubber. I replaced the bushings on both upper and lower control arms with a set of rubber TRW replacements. A new set of ball joints were installed also. One thing to remember on Mopar upper ball joints, they screw in and are NOT press in! A press will quickly destroy your upper control arm in a hurry.

The disc brake swap was nothing more than changing out the spindles, master cylinder, and the proportioning valve. This stuff all came my green '73 4 door Dart parts car. It wasn't a neccesity to do this swap but it didn't cost me anything, due to the fact that the parts had all been newly installed on the parts car. I did however have to replace all the rusty brake lines. The disc and drum brake A-bodies from 1973-76 use the same upper and lower control arms.

Found a set of 4 red line dog dish hubcaps (they were a good score) and installed a new hoodscoop. The fenders are off so we can clean up underneath.

New front swaybar in place. This swaybar came from a 1970 Dart parts car. Hey, it was there and a freebie so why not install it? It's kind of hard to see so click on the picture to enlarge.

This is what happens when you consume too much alchol, and then spy some red paint and masking tape.

Body being straightened out. Don't get too attached to that awesome flame job, it ain't gonna stay.

Another view of the '70 rear end.

The driverside quarter and door are finally straight and just require being block sanded. This is the side we added the lower quarter patch panels, just forward and behind the wheel well. Also spliced in a '70/'71 style rear marker light to match the passenger side.

Because I used 70/71 dart rear marker light they won't match the fronts. I decided to just shave them. I scribed out a patch panel and tacked welded it in.

Using small tack welds the warpage is minimal and can usually be dollied out. After you grind the weld down use a skim coat of body filler. After I used a body file on the filler there were just traces of the pink body filler left on the fender.

The body is now straight and just needs to be block sanded prior to paint. the replacement quarter panel is now complete and the front side marker is shaved. I forgot to dry the car off before snapping the next couple of pictures.

Most of the chrome fell off the rear bumper so I blasted the rest of it off and will paint it body color. I'll take off the one bumper block off that is still clinging on.

The painting process...this is PPG Omni brand primer.

We decided to paint on a black bumblebee stripe. Here is the before picture.

The next step was to paint a black strip over the primer in the general area where the stripe is to be taped and masked off.

Next we masked off the black stripe using 3M 1/4" tape. Then covered the black center with newspaper. After the car is painted white, we peel the tape and newspaper off and should have a cool stripe. Let's hope it works!

And here is how it looks! It came out really nice. We are going to clearcoat over the stripe and it will be completely sealed.

Here is a view of the entire car. It is painted Spinnaker White using PPG Omni basecoat/clearcoat.

View of the stripe with clearcoat.

We painted the '70 style bumper white because the chrome was wasted. We're doing this car on a strict budget, remember?

With the bumper in place.

Front view, basecoat only.

These are the steelies, painted body color. They will be fitted with a set of red line dog dish hubcaps. The tires will be replaced by a set of 225/50VR15's

Looking better and better as she goes back together!

2 cars completed in 2 years!

The receipts are in. Now there are a couple ways to look at it. Did I blow the $1,500 budget? Well, yes in a nutshell only because I upgraded a couple things and made a couple mistakes. Could have I done it for $1,500? Yes! The grand total in receipts was $2972.64 and that includes every nut, bolt, and washer I bought for the car. It also includes 2 parts cars I purchased to build this car. Now the left-over parts from those parts cars I sold for $583.54 which drops me down the $2389.10. Still over budget by $889.10. If I wouldn't have bought the hood scoop for $185, stuck with my drum brakes $139.95, stayed with my 14" road wheels with the good tires on them $426.85 and not got stupid with my pressure washer and sliced through the radiator $148.40 I would have stayed within budget at $1488.90. This proves only one point, budgets suck. If you can upgrade a couple things it is best to do it and not be a cheapskate.

Michigan International Speedway show 2005...approaching balancer!

The little 225 go a work out climbing this thing.

This is a hell of a lot harder than it looks

We got to drive the Dart on the track at Michigan International Speedway!

What a blast!

This is what NASCAR should be like... a Dart, a '66 Satellite, a '32 ford , and a Mustang go at it on the high banks

And lookie here...people voted on the best 125 cars out of a field of almost 1,300 vehicles....and the Dart won one! Not bad for an vehicle that was almost a parts car, huh? This was the very first show we ever entered for judging, too.

There was a test and tune at Milan Dragway, we decided to let the Dart take a run down the track. The little Dart sure has come a long way in just a few months!

April 2006.

Restored a 73 Dart spool style motor mount K-frame. As typical with Chrysler many of the factory welds were cracked. All factory paint was stripped off, welds redone, and resprayed satin black.

The 225 got swapped out for a plant with a few more cubic inches. Besides I got tired not being able to keep up with the crowd. The engine , trans, and all the linkages were bolted together and stuff in from the bottom side.

A Chrysler A-body 8 3/4 with 3.23 gears and a sure grip are next to go on

Rear end was cleaned up and painted semi gloss black. I didn't plan on doing any paint marks but during the clean up I found some and decided to put them back on.

Dr.Diff large bolt pattern axles

ESPO heavy duty leaf springs were installed with new shackles and front eye bushings

The conversion was a success

We decided to swap a better looking front end on. So now we are accumulating the parts we need. Two sets of Dart fenders, 1 pair are off a 70 and the other pair are off a 74.

the 70 fenders are wasted, the dog legs are rotted out and the hole was patched using speed tape, bondo, and glazing putty.

The upper mounting flanges are reinforced with aluminum slats, not good!

The 74 fenders were bolted on and aligned with the doors then cut in half

The 70 fenders were good from the center forward so they got cut in half also.

Then tacked together

welds ground flush.

The reason for doing all this is that I want a 70 front clip

We bolted the parts on for a test fit.

Snow sucks, I want to get this front end painted.

We took it all back off and are now prepping the parts for paint. First step is to strip all the old paint and bondo off them.

Acid prepped and washed to prevent any rust from coming back.

First coat of primer, still lots of work to do here.

In the meantime we swapped out the red line dog dish hubcaps with some Rallye rims we had laying around. The old dog dishes and steelies will eventually go on the Challenger.

First we painted and cleared the bumpers and front valance.

Clear coat on bumpers, valance

Front clip on and positioned, ready to block and paint.

Base coat

Blacked out hood, clear coat applied.

Luckily we saved a '70 grille from a parts car. This is the before picture.

And after.

We couldn't resist and threw on the grille for this photo.

Wet sanded and buffed, front spoiler installed.

Mopars at Milan Dragway 2008. The Dart went 3 rounds in the trophy class, only losing on a very close breakout (margin of loss .0001). Considering it is set up completely for the street, on real street tires, it did very well.

In our pit area

E-bay score, complete 360 with trans. $99 and it runs

1988 cast with smogger heads. We'll give it freshening up.

Rebuilt with a bone stock rotating assembly. Only upgrade was moly rings and a .441 lift single pattern cam. Factory compression is rated or shall I say over rated to 8.4 to 1. In reality its 7.9 to 1.

Swapped out the high compression 360 in favor of one that like to drink 87 octane gas.

Done and running complete with a thermoquad carb. I'll soon be swapping back to a square bore Holley just to keep everything standard between all the cars

A recap of what this car looked like just a few short years ago. The day we brought it home...

And in the year 2009 here she is. Next up for the old girl is a 4-speed swap, stay tuned...

Swinging baby....YEAH!