Daddy's Girl

My Dad & I put in a really good day's work on the Dart this last Sunday. Here is an email he sent out with the details!

Mechanical Progress

It was with some trepidation that I went over to my daughter Amber's
this afternoon to resume wrenching on her 1963 Dodge Dart 270 station wagon.

This was in no small part due to the fact that last Sunday we had failed
to align & install the intake and exhaust manifolds with attached
carburetor to the resurfaced cylinder head that we re-installed on her
225 cubic inch slant six engine block.

Our success, today, was largely due to the research Amber had done
online and email advice that she had secured from her friend and MOPAR
expert, Jeff Chong, in Los Angeles. She printed out the resulting
diagrams, text and photos and we had another go at it. The trick was in
not trying to align all the threaded studs in the head with the holes in
the manifolds at the same time. We left out the outboard fasteners on
the exhaust manifold and saved them for last. The nuts and washers on
the top of the manifolds were easy to get started and finger tighten.
Those underneath the manifolds were a real challenge. Fortunately,
Amber bought a couple of magnetic pickup tools the last time we were at
Harbor Freight and they proved to be just the tools to get the washers
on the threaded studs and start the nuts. After we got everything
finger tight, we tackled the outboard washers and bolts on the exhaust
manifold. We drove wedges between the exhaust and intake ports and made
the holes line up. We finger tightened the last two bolts and brought
out the torque wrench to achieve the ten foot pounds specification on
all 14 fasteners.

I am impressed with our success. So is Amber. We fought the good fight
and won this battle. There is still a good bit of work to be done but
we had been at it for a solid three hours, the sun had slid down the sky
and it was getting cool, so we got cleaned up and went out for Mexican
food, Amber's treat.

We'll try to do the radiator and the alternator next weekend, I
suppose. Hopefully, the weather will be as good to us shade tree
mechanics then as it was, today.

Hope you all had a nice weekend, too.

Cheers,
Chuck

I love my dad SO MUCH! He is so wonderful helping me with this. He doesn't seem to mind that his daughter is crazy for loving this old car. Well, he did own a '60 Valiant and a '69 Dart back in the day. I guess crazy runs in the family!