doullama

Finally got around to putting the pertronix module and its associated coil in the car. It was very straightforward and didn’t take long, the adapter plates were a perfect fit and it came with all the bits & bobs required. All I can say is wow - what a difference. I didn’t think it would make much difference at all vs a near new set of points but it really has. The car starts immediately vs a couple of turns prior, is much punchier - picks up revs in gear significantly quicker. The exhaust even sounds better. I am thoroughly convinced of the benefits of electronic ignition. I will keep an eye out for when the kits go on sale through summit as I would like to carry a spare module in the boot.

Ha yes it it always a bit nerve wracking with an ancient car - especially one which is a bit of an unknown being new to me. I am stoked to know it’s a good sound car. I will take my marina in sometime this summer, nothing like a Leyland product to induce wof apprehension

Cheers @RUNAMUCK, off to eBay I go. I did consider putting in sniper Efi on the existing manifold (they have a direct Carter 2 barrel replacement flowing 400ish cfm) but I really cannot be arsed with certification for such a minor mod.

So the following day from this post I thought I would double check my alignment, with the help of a beautiful but unwilling assistant I determined the car had 5mm of toe out, which it must have had for years. I popped the inner tie rods as they looked like they had never before seen the hands of man aside from my greasing & scrubbing the previous day. Wound them out a couple of turns each side and replaced the ancient, dessicated if still intact grease boots, now have 3mm of toe in which certainly makes the car less wandery. Took it in for its wof, flew through with the only comments being a slight leak of ps fluid from the steering box and the rearmost uj being a slightly incorrect modern replacement, it has no rotational slop but can be moved side to side as the clampy things (technical term) on the driveshaft bottom out before getting a firm grip on the uj, easily sorted with a small packer of some sort. Reminds me I need to get a real trolley jack & stands, my supercheap specials quail at the sight of such an enormous car. Took the car for a post wof cruise through Taupo/reporoa/rotorua and back to Putaruru, very enjoyable.

They're a tough engine to find aftermarket anything for, the only thing that interchanges from the 1967 on LA318 is the distributor. 2 barrel carter (200cfm!) was the povo spec so a factory 4 barrel manifold shouldn't be too hard to track down. There were twin 4 barrel manifolds too in the 50s but made of unobtanium. Nah not yet, I have a pertronix & coil on the shelf but I gave the dissy a birthday while waiting for it to arrive, running great so haven't felt the need to put them in yet.

Dodge goes in for its first wof in my ownership friday, thought i'd get the new outer tie rods on. In the past i'd always done these with a jack and a hammer to separate the joint. This time I was armed with an aliexpress balljoint separator, the wind up sort - amazing, should have got one years ago. I spent a bit of time measuring and remeasuring to try and avoid the need for an alignment and I reckon i've got it pretty bang on, certainly good enough for a car which will be lucky to see 1000km a year. While I was at it I greased and cleaned up all the joints in the front end, couple of zerks were broken or blocked so luckily I had a box of aliexpress imperial zerks handy. I think I am going to start hunting for a 4 barrel manifold now, upgrading from a carb that looks like it should be on a lawnmower ought to really wake the car up.

It’s a vehicular-cultural trope that has almost disappeared, still the occasional wee airbrushing on well loved semi trucks. The van did once have a particularly well done brush painting of a demon woman graphically masturbating with a crucifix, while of course smoking a comically outsized blunt on the bonnet. It was fantastic, my parents made me smudge out some of the ‘finer’ details ha. I wish I had a picture, in hindsight it was a fairly confronting image

I’m all for it, provided the midget is sculling a rheineck of course. I’m out there most Fridays, probably not this Friday though as the weather looks terrible.

It's really coming together, the carpet looks great. Do take care if the carpet in the front footwells gets wet through leaks etc, as you know the front floors are very rust prone and most of a marinas common leaks divert water into them. I'm a huge proponent of paint & oil to keep rust at bay in ancient jalopies - I ground back and por15'd my front floors and followed that up with a couple of coats of penetrol laced black alkyd paint. I've got marina rustproofing down to a bit of a science - enlarging the door drain-holes is a must, as is spraying your rustproofing of choice up in behind the headlights, at the back of the bottom of the front arches, both from the wheel side and from the inside of a-pillar. in the sills and front & rear valances, in the doors and in the panel below your rear window, in the little holes above the front shocks into that blind box each side of the engine bay - actually just everywhere, all the holes in the subframes underneath etc...

Did a little more work on this car ahead of using it for school ball duty this weekend coming. I had noticed that the left hand engine mount was looking pretty shabby, right hand was near new. Ordered a new one from rockauto and when it turned up it was quite different to what was in the car. Down the bizarre c-body rabbit hole I went, turns out the correct mount has been out of production for years (a polyurethane mount is available from one outfit at $299 USD not including shipping). The one I got was a b-body mount. Where it fits to the bottom bracket is the same, the top is different with a single large stud instead of two small ones. I just pulled the bracket off and drilled it to accept the stud - good as gold and means that the generic b body mounts will always fit. While I was fighting with the bracket mount from underneath I thought i'd do a good stocktake under the car. I just drove it up on a handy bit of terrain to get underneath, I really need a bigger trolley jack & stands for the weight of the vehicle. All the joints etc look great with the exception of the outer tie rods, which both have split boots. The underbody is fantastic and the transmission is practically brand new. Another job for the dwindling list is to change the wheelstuds on the left side of the car from left to right hand threads next time the drums are off for whatever reason, just because no one is expecting lefthand threads nowadays. I found two really good online resources for the car, mymopar.com which has field service manuals, wiring diagrams etc, and cbodiesonly.com, a forum for the foamers. There are also a-body and b-body forums under the same umbrella.

So I actually did some work on this van. I fire it up and drive it around the block every couple of months and noticed it was starting to run a bit ropey - the fuel was stale. So I drained and refilled the fuel, and thought while it's out, i'll do a couple of other backburner jobs. Replaced the steering column bushes (identical to early mini, plastic bush up top, oiled felt bush at bottom) and the rag joint. These had been on a shelf in the shed for a rather long time. I had been using morris minor seats which were a bit dilapidated, I had some marina ute seats which had mint upholstery but the frame had entirely rusted out where it contacted the floor. Turns out marina van/ute/presumably coupe lower seat frames are identical to morris minor, I just cut the tubes off the bottom of the minor seats and welded them on to the marina ones and now have great and fairly comfortable o.e seats. The vinyl is a bit stiff so will rub some vinyl stuff into them to make them pliable again hopefully. I have decided I am not really happy with my sticker-murals, next time I have a burst of marina focus I will refinish just that area on each side. I would still like murals, but real airbrushed ones. Ideas include an outsized, leather clad, buxom woman riding astride the boiler of a K class steam engine as it crests the raurimu spiral at midnight, along with a graveyard scene with a gold watched, rotten tweed clad skeletal wrist surging forth from the earth to claw at a leyland 'flying plughole' gravestone, while a hooded allegro and princess sacrifice a morris minor in the background.

Finally ditched the whitewalls for some white letter tyres, a much better aesthetic for this era of car. Anyone need some 215/70/r15 wide whites?

Not a huge update but I managed to silence the squealin' power steering, by the hugely complex task of tightening the belt. Must order a replacement for both belts, they are ok but pretty old. The fluid (definitely atf) was nice & clean too, must have been changed fairly recently - or has an as yet undiscovered leak.. Very nice being able to go from lock to lock in silence, especially in carparks. I went down to hawkes bay for the weekend and wanted to take this, was over-ruled by the better half on the grounds that it was too noisy ha

@440bbm I was reading about it on the c-body forum, apparently the 60s rubber doesn't take it well and it should have very basic p/s fluid. It's not offensively loud but noisy enough with twin pipes - a single mystery muffler on each pipe.

Yeah rockauto rules, I use it all the time even for non-u.s cars if the part isn't LHD specific. I thought i'd leave the ammeter in circuit, pointless for sure but its something to look at. Definitely a bit of peace of mind having the parallel circuit in place. I do intend to open up the bulkhead connectors at some point and clean all the connections, if it ever gave trouble i'd just replace with solid wires straight through. My headlight relay kit just turned up today, I might look into upgrading the bulbs in the future but I don't see myself driving it a lot at night, not least because it is raucously loud and will wake up the neighbours..p/s pump is a federal pump I believe, the level was well below the filler neck so I topped it up with atf, still squealing at lock and only at lock. Apparently atf is no good for the hoses & seals etc but I do wonder if that still applies as I doubt any of the rubber is more than 20 years old. Might wind it over for a while with the return line off and fill it up with lucas p/s fluid (not the stop leak) and see if that makes any difference, i'll swap out the belt too as it does look elderly.