Winter was approaching, and back in the fall of 1996 my transportation stable consisted of a Honda Nighthawk motorcycle and a Triumph Spitfire. I had attempted to winterize the soft top of the Spitfire once before and had horrible results with window fogging and water intrusion. No, the Spitfire was not a winter car. I had a nice one-piece rain suit for the motorcycle as well, but, come on man. So I needed a winter car, but I was a young minimum-wage earner who was living on my own, pretty much hand-to-mouth. A co worker of mine had been given this cool '66 Dart GT to use as a parts car to fix the broken front suspension on his '71 Dart. He was rather unmotivated to do anything with the two cars, so one day I hit him up about the '66. I offered him $200 for it and he didn't hesitate to accept. The problem with the '66 was that it had a broken crankshaft. Other than that it was a reasonable, complete and sound automobile (I thought).
I towed the car to my brothers house where it occupied an otherwise abandoned and forgotten horse stable-turned-single-car garage. There I yanked the engine and set about rebuilding it with a replacement crankshaft. This was my first engine job and I didn't have a manual, or any real idea how to pull and work on an engine, but somehow I managed.
Mostly original paint and a nice original black vinyl interior that was in exceptionally good condition. I recall having to restitch the sun visors though.
I probably spent a month cleaning parts, painting and replacing broken stuff with mostly junk yard finds. I worked occasional grave yard shifts at a Union 76 service/gas station in Auburn, Ca, where I had ample time to use equipment and tinker on my stuff all night.
The car had a slant 6, 225 cubic inch engine and it ran very smooth when I was finished. It was just gutless. It had a one-barrel carb. I ended up driving that car for about three years while I was going to school in the bay area and after. I regularly drove from the San Francisco area back to the Foothills on weekends to visit family and friends. I drove the car to Nevada, to Oregon, and everywhere in between. I really liked that car. It was comfortable and super reliable. Over the years I had upgraded the exhaust, repaired the brakes, replaced the heater core (twice), and generally tried to fix up some of her worn pieces where I could.
I sold her down the road after a few years in order to buy a very used BMW. What a shame. The torsion bar suspension and overall good build quality made it a real nice driver. Here's the evolution of the car while I owned it.
With the engine out, I tried my hand at cleaning and spraying the engine bay. Restoring her from the inside-out.
Here you can clearly see the fracture on the #6 rod journal- strange, never seen this before, never seen this since. Also note that the torque converter is still attached to the engine. As I said above, I really didn't know what I was doing, and yes, it made a heck of a mess, spilling ATF uncontrollably everywhere!
GT interior is sport-luxury. Note the factory bucket seats and floor shifter with center console. Also check out that padded dash- not a crack on it! I added the tach on top and the gauge trio underneath to keep that beast of a 225 in check...Also, I love horn rings.
Then one day a storm came through and a tree fell on her in the parking lot of my apartment in the middle of the night. You can see the addition of primer on the 1/4 panel as I had started to straighten the tattered body.
Yup, right across the roof. Suprisingly, it only slightly dented the leading edge of the roof and some stainless trim. Once the tree was cut off, this tough old Mopar was back on the scene! The windshield was still in-tact.
Sadly, the tree also claimed my motorcycle. The landlord's insurance paid off a few bucks for the damages and I fixed it all up myself.
I decided to not repair the stainless trim, opting instead to shave the body and let the lines do all the talking. I scored this great set of slot mags, of which I am a huge fan. The torsion bar suspension front end lends itself to easy attitude adjustments. All that's missing is an extra two cylinders!
Fifty shades of grey...right?? No? Alright, well I must have been buying whatever the cheapest rattle can primer was at the time with little regard for color matching. I don't know what I was thinking, but I drove it like this for a while anyway.
And then one of my brothers borrowed the car for a time and returned it to me in one solid coat of satin grey primer. Wow what a difference. I added the faux RT stripe across the back one day in the deserted upper parking lot at my school dorm building in Hayward, Ca. That's $2.09 worth of hardware store spray paint!
Who doesn't love the look of a stanced two-door hardtop with all windows rolled down? I shouldda never let this car go. Why?!?! Let that be a lesson: Never sell your cool cars. Sell your crap, just not the cool ones.
