Mopar Mania Pt. 2

Welcome to Horsepower TV. Where today we're on a Mopar mission.

We left Chuck back at the shop where a few weeks ago

we put together a 360 crate motor for an a body project.

Well, now finally we got something to drop that motor into. Hope. You like lime green.

This is a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda, one of the best looking a bodies ever built in my opinion.

Now, they're getting pretty expensive these days, but we got a deal on this one because the previous owner modified it to go drag racing. Of course, our goal is a much more drivable street machine

and to meet that goal, we need some new parts and some hard to find used parts.

That's why we're heading to the Mecca of Mopar

muscle

muscle machines have never been in more demand for show cars, race cars, even daily drivers.

And if it's restored Plymouth Dodge or even Chrysler from 1962 to 74

chances are a piece of it came from here.

An unbelievable bo yard of up to 3000 retired

mos whose parts live on in project cars around the world.

It belongs to Ted Stevens who runs his restoration parks business in

this unassuming headquarters outside of Rogersville, Alabama

Steven's performance.

Well, this is the main office where the phone calls come into. Uh most of the sales take place up here, walk in sales or uh

uh mail order sales. We do uh used parts and reproduction new parts as well and we do a lot of technical support for different things. So somebody calls in with a problem they can't fix or don't know what they actually need. We usually walk them through it

back in storage. There's an almost unending maze of original used parts harvested from the junkyard or gold mine. Depending on your mobile

point of view.

Here, a customer from Georgia gets a console for his 67 charger by grafting pieces of a pair of used ones.

Another from Massachusetts gets a grill and basil for his 67 dart project.

Ted stays on the road a lot these days. Anywhere, there's a Mopar

show with a swap meet,

it's getting more and more difficult. We have to travel a lot more than we used to. We go uh all the way to California uh for buying shows and parts and what have you?

The junkyard inventory changes constantly here of Arab retired Plymouth's R for parting out in their new junkyard home.

Here's what we got. Rex got a 70 road runner hood,

we got a 70 dart lower steering column, Bezzel.

We got a set of 73 E body mirrors up there and see what you can find.

His name is Rex Howard. And the Boneyard is his beat.

Working through a wish list of rare used parts every day is a scavenger hunt for this junkyard bounty hunter.

Yeah, this is

it

every day.

Save

the

open.

Yeah, we'll find 1

may have gone the other side, but we'll find one

that here

we

come,

we found this once.

Ain't that a nice set of Rs?

Hm.

Ok.

This one's a new arrival. It just came in a few weeks ago from uh Arkansas.

It uh still fairly complete.

I said they hadn't got it dismantled down to the point where you can't tell what kind of car it is yet

they won't take them long. Some guys won't use reproduction parts. They want original stuff and there's a lot of stuff that they don't make because of

the tooling costs are too high or

there's uh not enough demand for it.

Come on,

drop my range.

Chances are there's a customer thousands of miles away anxiously awaiting one of these rusted but revered old parts.

The baby boomers are what fuels this. I said there's enough of them out there that these cars were new when they were kids and like they'll dink with these things until they get too old to do it.

So we still got a few, a few years left. I think so too.

Trim them under

Australian column.

I

wanna save me my own dog.

They want to be one of them down here. We want to have no trouble finding it.

Hi. All right. Here we go.

Uh, we're doing good.

Mhm.

Did I?

The Mopar guys? Usually it's, it's Mopar or nothing. They, they don't have

a, a challenger and a Camaro and a Mustang. They've got a challenger and a ka

and a road runner.

I quickly discovered on my tour that Ted the Mopar guru gets interrupted by the front office every few minutes.

29.

Can you believe it? He's got his whole inventory and prices stored in his cranial computer.

And

what you got up here,

we got a bodies on the right and we got c bodies on the left

and we got more bee bodies up on top of the hill.

This is a 70 sport Fury GT. It was a factory 440 car.

Kind of unusual. I didn't build very many of them. It's got these neat louvers on top of the fenders.

These are pretty cool looking

little built in turn signal there.

Hidden headlights. What a car

who

fella,

I'm sorry.

Well, it looks like in his haste to make the customer happy. Rex lost part of his load of daily goodies.

I

think it'll make it.

You ready.

If we don't lose it again, we'll be ready, won't we?

You can walk through here and look at these cars

and you can think

of exactly what this car looked like when it was near sitting on a dealer showroom with a window sticker still on the glass.

You ever do that all the time?

I said I got it bad.

Well, all the parts from these retired Mopar

are used. Not a single one, leave the lot without

ta's stamp of approval.

For example, the first road runner who had rex retrieved didn't pass the test so he had to go back for a more appropriate replacement.

Yeah, he will be tickled over that.

Well, now you can see why we came here for the next phase of our a body project. In fact, we'll turn the Mopar

guru loose on our ka

here when we come back

later on horsepower T VA revealing way to tell if your distributor is out of phase and how to fix it on this week's quick tech.

Welcome back to the next phase of our Mopar a body project.

Well, as I told you earlier, our goal is to turn this 67 Ka

into a more street a

pavement pounder and what looks like Ted's already discovered our first and biggest problem under the hood.

Well, we got a hopped up 440

a light a body car with nine inch drum brakes all the way around.

More or less 10 pounds of crap in a five pound bag. Yeah. Well, put,

so we need a smaller engine, I guess, Chuck and I were on the right track to build that 360 crate motor a few weeks ago.

It'll go great in here. Should handle a lot better too. Right. Absolutely. Unless they get the weight distribution where it needs to be, get some of the weight off the front end

and, uh, be a whole lot easier to work on as well. Oh, yeah. And to drive you, you gotta try driving this thing. I'll be

ok if you got what we need to make the swap.

Oh, yeah, we need to change the K member out. Put a small block K member in there.

We'll get these fender wheel headers and stuff off of it. Uh, get some under chassis headers to go and make a big difference in it.

Ok? You're the Mopar

man.

We can do it.

Well, the key here is balance. We're gonna do something about the brakes and suspension. Probably need to go to a four wheel disc system on it. Uh, do a front, rear suspension rebuild,

polyurethane bushings, front, rear sway bars, stuff like that.

And you're ending up the bill, but

I like the rear end on the scooter. That rear end's got to go which is way too wide. Uh, probably have a road runner or something. Uh, put an, a body rear end up under there. It'll get the, uh, wheels pulled back in what they're supposed to be when you get the, the

back of the car back down it'll look good then Joe. We gotta make a comment about the interior here.

This, uh, the lure Headliner is either gonna have to have an Elvis mural put on it or it's gonna have to go one or the other Elvis mural. Well, I think it should go perhaps, probably so we'll probably do something with the dash. Uh, got some problems there and, uh, the console too. You can help us with that, huh? Oh, yeah. Ok.

We're moving that 440 big block for our K member swap is a big job, but not that overwhelming.

Of course, those god awful fender, well, headers have to go

along with the radiator.

Then while we're at it, we can remove the rest of the exhaust.

We

need this.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Finally, it's time to loosen the old mounts and get ready to jerk that 440 big one.

Oh,

man, we're about there.

Oh, yeah. It don't take long.

The family.

I,

all right there. It is.

It's clear, you know, anybody needs a

used 440

you know, to be able to find a home for it. Really?

Oh, yeah.

Hey, Ted

for those that aren't too familiar with how a Mopar engine mounts. Let's talk K member for a minute. Well, the K member is the, uh, engine cradle or support the engine, uh, sits on top of it

in these brackets here. This bolts to the bottom of the car, all the front end suspension components, tie in torsion bar support the way

really important structural part. This thing here has been totally screwed up by some craftsman.

As you can see, they've cut a big hunk out of the uh K member there for oil pan clearance with the big block was in here. Uh

This is a mess. It's got to go, got to go. You got one to replace it with. Oh, yeah.

Ok. That sounds like a pretty big job. Uh

Getting kind of late. We say we knock off till tomorrow. Sounds good to me.

It wasn't quite like a junkyard on an early Alabama morning and well, this one's filled with Mopar remnants.

Of course, we came here to find some old but essential parts for our newest Barracuda project. Mainly a K member.

Last night, we pulled a 440 big block out of our A body.

We determined which K member was needed. And well, right now, Rex is busy snatching up the replacement.

I

what?

Yeah.

P

there she is.

Ok. Member for the Barracuda.

Is it good in

before we get our hands on it? The freshly fetched card gets stripped primer and a brand new coat of black paint.

Meanwhile, Ted started removing that butcher K member still in the car. And as you're about to see, it's not quite as tough a job as you might imagine.

After unloading the torsion bar, you remove the nuts from the lower control arm shaft

ben, removed the strut

ride nuts,

remove the three bolts from the steering blocks,

release the pitman arm

and finally remove the four boats that hold the K member to the frame.

Then the K members should slide forward and out

just in time for our replacement.

Here it is great job. Looks like a new part, doesn't it

just check out the difference in it?

And this packed up piece we just removed.

Plus this one will accept the correct engine mounts for our 67 C

A

installation. Of course, is just reverse of what you saw. Although a little persuasion with the Mopar mallet may be in order,

then you just use the tie rod bolts to draw it into place.

There we go. Mission accomplished.

Our Barracuda lost a lot of weight. We found the K member we had to have and now we can go ahead and drop in that 360 small block. Thanks to Ted this game. Oh, we're glad to help.

Hey, listen, I know you're gonna help us with that rear axle assembly. Is there anything else on the shopping list we need to know about?

Well, we got some uh trim parts we need to address here and some interior stuff. I think we got enough to keep old rex busy for a while. Absolutely. Hey, listen, before I go,

this Mopar craze. Is it here to stay or what?

Oh, yeah, we've been in the business since 1970. 6. And the hobby is grown.

Uh, it's alive and well, and our job to keep it that way.

Horsepower T V's Quick Tech is brought to you by

Wyotech.

Let's say you just updated your muscle cars, motor with a new electronic distributor. Now you've lined up the rotor, you followed all the directions,

you fire it up,

but not only does it sound rough, you can't even set the timing.

The mark just won't stay still like it ought to.

Well, Gary, that ain't supposed to happen even with a Chevy engine. Now, what could be the problem?

Well, one thing we haven't checked and we should check is the rotor phasing. And what that means is we need to check to see the rotors pointing where it's supposed to inside the distributor cap, even with a new distributor out of the box installed correctly lined up correctly, that could still be a problem. It can't happen. There is an adjustment for that and, uh, we're gonna show you how to see what's going on inside the distributor cap when it's running. All right, let's get on with the surgery.

Sounds great.

After removing the distributor cap, I'm gonna use a die grinder to cut a hole in the top of it

next to an easy to see terminal.

That is one heck of a hole. And I know what some people have to be saying right now

that man just destroyed a perfectly good distributor cap. Well, we put that hole in there for a good reason so we can see what's going on inside the distributor

and it's an old cap and they're cheap enough anyways. So it might be a good idea to have one around your shop for the next installation. Absolutely. You never know when you might need it. Ok. Well, let's see why you made that hole.

After reinstalling the distributor cap, I clip the timing light to the terminal nearest the hole.

Then I use the timing light to observe the rotor location.

Notice how the rotor is pointing to the left of the terminal. It should be pointing directly to the terminal.

Well, that was fascinating, a pretty graphic way to see the phasing problem in there. Now, the solution gary,

well, we need to

make the rotor point more towards the terminal. So we're gonna take the rotor off here and we're going to

rotate

the pickup coil a little bit to the right. Ok. Go ahead. Ok.

I'm gonna move a little bit. I'm gonna re tighten that down

and this may take two or three tries. It might take a couple

to get it right where we want it.

Maybe we'll get lucky.

You never know. All right.

After reinstalling the rotor and distributor cap,

we can set the timing at the factory setting

there. That's it.

Next, we can look back inside the hole in the distributor

and we can see that the rotor is pointing straight at the terminal now.

And so is the spark.

Well, Gary, I'm sure it looks better inside here and sure sounds better out here that it does. Now. We just need to pull this cap off and get one on there without the hole in it. And his 502 is ready to roll without a doubt. Well, that's a very cool tip and very good timing because

ours is just about up.

Don't you ever get any board motors in here? I don't know if it'll read that low

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Hey, speaking of Mustangs next week, Chuck returns and we'll try to put more power to my newest project, Pony. See you then.