Category Archives: Auto Restoration

MOPAR’s 318 Part II

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
3 Comments

Before I start this next segment on the 318, I have to admit that organizing and presenting this work of art (oh..yeah..I’m laughing too!!!!) could have gone in a lot of directions.   The two that stuck out the most for me was by year (chronologically) or by brand.  Neither was a solid idea and at some point in the ’70s the only thing separating brands within most U.S. car manufacturers wasn’t much more than vinyl vs cloth seat covering.  So I decided to go with brands, Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth, knowing that there we would be some crossover information and it might look a bit disjointed.  There’s some good stuff, and a couple of things you might know about the 318.

Chrysler began using the 318 in 1967 and carried that power plant until the late 1990s.

From 1967 to 1971 the 318 carried a 230 hp rating w/ the standard 2 barrel carb, managed 340 ft lb of torque and sported 9.2:1 compression ratio.  (that is actually a lower compression ratio than the original Ford 250 straight six I took out of my Mustang).  In 1967 the 318 engine was used in the Belvedere, Satellite, Fury, Coronet, Polara and Charger and in 1968 they added as the base option in the Dart GTS and Barracuda.

1967 Polara 4 door.

 

From 1972 to 1979 the 318 was bounced around in the horsepower arena between 150 to 140.  That’s nearly 100 hps lost from the late 1960’s.  At lower end of the new scale were the California models with the extra smog control.   It was still a mainstay, being the base engine choice for the Duster,  Cordoba, Monaco, New Port and unexpectedly the Road Runner,  just to name a few. It was never sported anything bigger than a 2 barrel carb and the compression dropped to 8.5.

It didn’t get any prettier in the 80s either, although there a bit of a bump in the high-end of the hp range to 175 hp but the company more than made up for that dropping the lowest number 120.  Interestingly, they made the California models with 155 hp and a 4 barrel carb.  The compression stayed about the same, but  in ’83 – ’90 they made a HD version of the engine that had between 165 to 175 hp, depending on the year and sported a 4 barrel carb.  This configuration managed to lay down 240 – 250 ft lb of torque, not too bad in one of the lighter cars, like the Dart, but barely power enough for the big old St. Regis. The 318 was also added to some of the most memorable cars….come on..you doesn’t remember “vooo..la rau….oh..oh…” (Volare )and the LeBaron, and Aspen.  Even some larger cars like the St. Regis, New Yorker, Gran Fury (I can’t see any car begin called grand with only 120 hp, but that’s just me.) and the Imperial.

1976 Volare

 

Oh and speaking of the Imperial something interesting happened in 1982 and 1983.  That little something was EFI.  More on that in the next segment.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

’89 318 efi intake to ’79 carbed 318 – Mopar Forums

Hello, my brother and I are thinking of taking on a project and would like to know if the throttle body injection components from the 1989 318 in his truck will work on a 1979 318 engine. The reasoning behind this is due to our …

Wrenchin’ Tip Engine Swap 8/8/2010

By | | , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment

At some point I’ve promised myself I would cover the restoration stories that center around my 1970 Mustang.  There is a lot to tell, trust me!! I’ve learned a lot!!!  

Engine - Before (250)

 

Engine After - (302)

 

But for this Wrenchin’ Tip, I’d thought I’d share a few hints that I did pick up.  Just to be fair I didn’t  do a lot of the engine swap work myself (Average Guy w/ average tool and average skills) but I learned a lot of general helpful hints and some Mustang specific helpful hints!!!  

So here are a couple of tips:  

 1.  Planning and scheduling a restoration is important.  If you are doing an engine swap or pulling it out for an overhaul make this the first step in your restoration.  Yes, I’ve seen the TV shows where they put the engine after the car is back from the body shop.  But hey this is the real world, and in this world, money is tight and body work is expensive enough not to what to afford to re-do it.  In this world, my average guy world, wrenches slip, grease stains and sometimes swinging 400 lb engine at the end of a chain can be…well…a bit dicey.  

2. Before preparing the engine for removal, you know, disconnecting all the electrical, fuel, A/C,  vacuum system, etc., take the hood off and store it someplace safe.  You’ll have a ton of room and you won’t bounce  that shiny, newly painted engine against it.  

3.   Test fit the headers before you install the engine, especially if you aren’t putting stock headers back on.  You need to check the clearances around them and ensure you can get to key components , such as starters, after the engine is completely installed.  Nothing is more insane that having to pull an engine or headers just to replace your starter. Here is a pic of my Mustang’s engine with all the attachments.  

Clearance checking pre-fit!!!

 

More engine swap tips coming up.  

Thanks for reading.  

Tim

Auto Factoids for the weeks of 7/25/2010 and 8/1/2010

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment

7/26/1945 Kaiser-Frazer Corp organized – it also include what was left of Graham-Paige car manufacturer. Frazer Nash was a British car making company.  In 1953 it became just Kaiser Motors. 

1946 Kaiser Nast Sedan

 

1953 Kaiser Darrin Convertible

 

7/29/1916 Nash Motor Company as founded by Charles Nash when he purchased a company called Jeffery Company which made a car called the Rambler.  I bet you can guess what came eventually  American Motors and their Rambler. 

Oh..in 1909 Buick purchased Cadillac on the 29th day.  

8/3/1900 The Firestone rubber company was founded by Harvey Firestone.  It was based in Akron, Ohio and had only 12 employees. Six years later Mr. Henry Ford contracted with Firestone to supply tires for the Model T. 

8/7/1937 the Cord company stopped production car, but of course when one to build planes etc. 

 Thanks for reading 

Tim

The MOPAR’s 318 Part I

By | | , , , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

Before we start, I’d like the readers to know that these segments will not be an all-encompassing reference effort.  But I will have details that might not be well-known and some long forgotten.  Hopefully, it will be fun to read and informative.  The first few segments will be engines I’m familiar with.  I’ve owed a lot of cars and at least one of the Big 3 (Chevy, Ford, Chrysler) and all with different engines (and one with two).  First engine I am going to tackle is the 318.  I owned a Dodge Dart in the mid to last of 1970’s and it did have the 318 manual transmissions and at this very moment I can’t recall the other specs, but I’ll find them in this research. It that a great engine and simple to work on.

I’ve heard it mentioned that the 318 was Chryslers’ 350 (referring to GM’s 350, that’s been in existence for… just about forever…no it hasn’t but that’s another segment).  Of course the 318 didn’t have near the run that the 350 has, but it’s got some pretty interesting history of its own.

Let’s start with when the first 318 was used in a MOPAR car and what followed that up.  We’ll also look at some specs and some configurations it came in, you know carbs, cams and the like.

In the 1958 Plymouth the 230 c.i.d Powerflow Six was used as the standard engine, same as the previous year.  Chrysler did have V8s that were a possible option in 1957 and 1958, namely 301 and 277 cid.  However, it’s believed that the 318 was to replace the 277 c.i.d and the 301 V8s as the car maker moved toward try to capture a larger market.  The 318 had 9.25 to 1 compression ratio with 225 horses, it became the standard V8 used in the Plaza, Savoy, and Belvedere.  Perhaps the most powerful configuration you could get at the time was called the 318 Dual Fury (Sport Fury) V8 aka the Super-Pack rated at 290 horsepower; the dual was for the two  4 barrel carbs. The rest of the configuration included solid lifters, high performance cam, dual point distributor and dual exhausts.

The drive specs for the 1958 (which was a great looking car)

’58 Fury

 

shows that the standard block of for the Fury was the 318.  You could add the sport fury to it and go from 225 horses to displacing 350 cid and producing 305 hp, with 2 Carter, 4bbl carbs.  The nickname for the engine was the “Golden Commando” and it was paired up with TorqueFlite auto trans.

Oh, by the way 1958 Ply Fury was the star of the Stephen King book entitled “Christine” and later the  movie.

There is a lot of talk, even today about the Hemi, “Yo..dat got ah Hemi?”  It was a great design. But we won’t talk about the Hemi in this article, but we will mention the polyspheric cylinder head.  What is a ployspheric cylinder head?  That was a question asked by one of my frequent readers and this was my reply.

Poly is short for Polyspherical head. Some say it was a forerunner to the Hemi (Hemispherical head). Basically it was based on a theory that you could get more combustion or volume by angling the intake and exhaust valves then if you had them parallel. From Hemmings  Motor News book of Chrysler Performance Cars…”The ploy’s exhaust valve is located parallel to, but offset from, the cylinder axis.”

This increased the efficiency.  The hemi was constructed and designed to increase the efficiency with a more angled system. The shape that the valves make are semi-circular with the Poly being a little flatter than the Hemi.  I did the below image in Paint.

Poly-Hemi

 

This image is from Hot Rod and Hemis.com and shows the Hemi, Poly and the regular A series engine chambers.

www.hotrodandhemis.com Compare Hemi, Poly, Series A

 

Plymouth was not the top of the brand at Chrysler so back in 1956 it didn’t get a Hemi.  It did get was called the A series engine which came in 4 different displacement (277, 301, 303 and the 318).

To be continued.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

plymouth fury

Auto Factoids for the Week of 7/23/2010

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
3 Comments

7/20/1984 E.L. Cord was in Missouri.  If you think he’s only responsible for the Cord 

1937 Cord

 

 Think again!!!!  How about a company that included Stinson Aircraft, Checker Cab and American Airways (now American Airlines)? But let’s just stay with the cars.  How about the Auburn and Duesenberg?  His history is a good read. 

7/23/1894 first auto race.  It was organized by the Parisian magazine “Le Petit Journal” between the Paris to Rouen.  And the winner was………… Count Jules-Albert de Dion it took  6 hours and 48 minutes at an average speed of 19 km/h (which was approximately 11.806052652509345 p/h). I don’t know what he drove but 2nd places was taken by George Lamaitre and he drove a Peugeot: 

Peugeot 3 hp

7/24/1929 – 2, 000,000 Model A Ford built – A huge milestone. 

1929 Model A

Question from Reader Dodge/Plymouth 318 Poly

By | | , , , , ,
2 Comments

Steve asked. 

As long as you are on the subject what the heck is the difference between a regular 318 and a poly 318? 

Poly is short for Polyspherical head. Some say it was a forerunner to the Hemi (Hemispherical head). Basically it was based on a theory that you could get more combustion or volume by angling the intake and exhaust valves then if you had them parallel. From Hemmings  Motor News book of Chrysler Performance Cars…”The ploy’s exhaust valve is located parallel to, but offset from, the cylinder axis.”  

This increased the efficiency.  The hemi was constructed to increase the efficiency with a more angled system. The shape that the valves make are semi-circular with the Poly being a little flatter than the Hemi.  I did the below image in Paint. 

Poly and Hemi

 

Thanks for the question Steve!!!  More to come on the 318. 

Thanks for reading. 

Tim

Intro Engine History Segment

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
3 Comments

If you’ve been reading my “stuff” on this blog or Facebook or Racing in America http://www.racinginamerica.com/ (Henry Ford foundation) you might wonder…what’s wrong with this guy? Does he write for a living?  Well if I did I’d be starving and driving a 1993 Honda Accord with only one plastic hub cap (that’s really my son’s car…he’s a starving artist – I have a plug for him on my blog – RJS Graphic design – he’s pretty good and he won’t strave..Mom won’t have any of that!!) instead of a shiny red 84 Corvette and restored 70 Mustang.  I do it for fun, I haven’t made a single dollar from any of my writing.  I don’t even have sponsors or advertisers for the places I leave my droppings.  Actually this costs me money!!!!

So…yes..I do this for fun and the very informal approach I take…..eeeerrrrkkkkk…..ok folks…I don’t have an approach..real writers do.  The way I like to do this is to just sit down and type…there’s no drafts, unless I save it to finish later, there is no real planning,(hell my poor readers are lucky if I remember to run spell check!!!) other than a Post-It-Note or an email sent to myself when I get an idea.  Nope, I just sit down and type.  If it is on a project I’m working, I sometimes take a break and with the fresh smell of GoJo still on my hands I just start typing and up loading pics.  99.999% of my blogs are done in one sitting.  Type and post. (Sometimes I re-read them…mostly to laugh at my super great witt…HEY!!!!!  DID YOU JUST ROLL YOUR EYES????!!!!  That’s rude!!!)

So I have a list of ideas and one of them was to start a regular piece on engines (I mentioned this a while back.) But man, there’s a lot of stuff out there and great publishing works like the Hemmings nation and Hot Rod magazine do this all time.  Am I going to add some thing never before discussed? Nope.  Am I going to present it in way that nobody ever has?  Well the way I write, yeah probably, no one write like this I don’t think.

My idea was to talk about an engine and include when it was first introduced and what it was used in and for how long, that kind of info.  I’m a big fan of history, history of anything, buildings, streets, towns, cars, really anything that as a little history, I’m interested in hearing about.

So my issue was I just hadn’t sat down and picked one yet to write about.  I was going to do the Ford 302, the engine my Mustang has, or the Crossfire in the Corvette and I will.  But the other day I got my September issue of Classic Car #72 from the Hemmings nation and on the cover was “12 Dynamic Dodge Darts Fun Cars that you must own”.   That triggered a memory of the Dodge Dart I owned when I was in college, I think owned it about 5 months..just long enough to remove all the rust and patch the holes and get it into primer before selling it.

As I read the articles in this issue, I remembered the 318 that my Dart had in and as I read further I decided to kick my series off with Mopar’s 318. 

So over the next few posts I have some interesting details on  configurations and various cars it was used in and some specs.  I’ll try to remember to list the references so you can look up additional info.

Thanks for Reading

Tim

Wrenchin’ Tip 7/18/2010 – Fluid Removal

By | | , , , , , , , , , ,
4 Comments

I recently did some work on my power steering system found this tool to be handy. 

 There is a lot of fluid in the power steering reservoir.  As soon as you release the hoses, it’s going to poor all over the front of your engine and then on the ground.  An oil change tub will help keep it off the garage floor, no staining and no tracking it around. However, it will still run down the  engine.  

So, I used a turkey baster.  EEEERRRKKK…(yeah it’s in caps!!!)  Do not put it back in the kitchen when you’re done….NO…NO..NO….In fact if you are smart, ask first!!!  I did and I was surprised to hear  “Sure, but you’ll have to purchase a replacement.” For a minute I thought….well that’ll come out of my car budget….and I thought…I wonder if I can clean it up…and…ummm…(kidding of course).  It worked great and I just have to purchase one…but not until Thanksgiving!!!!  $10 bucks says..I’ll forget and have to run out on Thanksgiving and stand in line for 1.25 hours, if I can find one at all.  

 BTW – I recommend “Pampered Chef” brand for power steering fluid removal!!!! 

Pampered Chef Turkey Baster

84 Corvette – Power Steering Work

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment
Two guesses as to my next project on my C4……cricket…cricket…cricket…Give up?   Fine, its replacing the power steering reservoir and connected hoses.

Just for fun?  Nope, who’d want that mess of a job, just for fun?  No…no it is not an upgrade but a serious leak. 

Hey kids its story time!!!!  Let me tell you about the big shiny Vette that ate all of the average guy’s car budget.  Grab you binkies…it’s horrifing.  

If you’ve been reading my posts, you may recall (“come..you ‘member!!!” {I stole that from the comedian George something}…..What you don’t hang on every word I type?…You don’t re-read my post to memorize all my car woes and tips and humor???..that’s what I figure…yet I keep on typing….its good therapy for me!!!) that my vette over heated, not once, but twice!!!   Freak catastrophic radiator hose split and then the fan frying it’s self.   

After I got it back from the shop, where I had them check the electric work I did when installing the new fan, I noticed a leak under the car in the driveway.  I hate leaks under my cars, almost as much as the Ms. hates the side affects they have on our driveway (I’m not crazy about them either).  The leak was not too big and when I cleaned it up, I chalked it up to left over coolant from the over heading, it had the right consistency. Then I washed the car.  Nice shiny beautiful red…money swilling Corvette!!!! 

Drove the car to work and home again and came back out a bit later to put the garbage cans on the curb….errrkkk…hey…Tim..no one, not one single person, cares why you came back outside, and just as many care where you put the trash cans… and I’m going out on a limb here…but I’m betting the total is the same for whether you drove it to work…to the store…or Japan…got it bro???!!!  These are valuable minutes of our lives being spent here reading this!!   Ok..I got it. The pool was bigger than before and it no longer could be mistaken for coolant.  It was without a doubt, transmission fluid, or power steering fluid.  Whether it is GM or Ford, either of their recommend power steering fluid looks and feels similar to the transmission fluid. 

Dreading the worse news, I decided to first check what I hoped was the problem, power steering fluid, I’d hate that less then tranmission issues.  Luckily…(isn’t that the way it is with older cars..your happiness is measured by the size of what’s broken, or needs replacing)…it appeared that it was just the top of the hoses on the reservoir, near the hose clamps…perfectly understandable….it’s an old car..and simple to replace (remember that later on in this post). 

Here are the hoses: 

Hoses leaking near the clamps.

 

I’m thinking…oh..”SLAM DUNK” easy fix.  Perhaps, but come on….really….does it really ever turnout that easy…yes it does…but not this time!!! 

After further inspection, I noticed something else..oh…you’ll love it!!  I’d tell you but you know a pic is worth 250 cuss words (most of those aren’t real words but I do have some unique arrangements of the classic 4 letter ones and a few bigger).  Ready???  NO!! For the pic… make up your own cuss phrases!!! 

Sigh!!!

 

Well that does make it a clean sweep…everything above the pump up needs to be replaced!!!  Ok, still not horrible, so I’m much happier knowing it’s not the transmission!!!!  Just order the parts and we are home free. 

And that’s the end of the story…expect for the part where the hoses aren’t available any more and OMG, you betcha, they aren’t straight hoses.  Here…take a look!!! 

From the reservoir, down to the pulleys, nothing but bends!!!

 

Better look at the hose going straight down the Front of the engine block

 

They are molded to hold shape, there is no room for anything but the exact bends or they will rub against the pulleys and last..oh..maybe a week!!  

And finally… 

And a little wider view.

 

The reservoir and one hose that is supposed to fit are on their way…be here tomorrow. The other hose is not available…no not out of stock and on back order…not made any longer.  

But I have an idea….I’ll give that to you tomorrow. 

Thanks for reading 

Tim

Auto Factoids for the week of 7/11/2010

By | | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment

We got a first and a last on the same day – 60 years apart.

7/12/1922 – Frist Checker automobile  built

1922 Checker Cab

 

7/12/1982 – Last Checker automobile built

1982 Checker Cab

 

7/14/1955 – First Karman Ghia – I really like these cars.  I might own one some day, but maybe a Covair instead!!!

1955 Karmann Ghia - didn't change much from '55 - '74

7/16/1935…first parking meter in place in Oklahoma City, 30 minute later was the first parking ticket.

First Parking Meter

Thanks for reading

Tim