Doullama's 65' Dodge Polara

[doullama]

Feeling like I am entitled to a midlife crisis, I have gone and got myself a mid 60s dodge. An oddball car, don't think i've ever seen another one. I was looking at 50s cars but quite liked the long straight lines of this, reminds me of an oversized VG valiant hardtop. The car is in pretty good nick, has been repainted & reupholstered but being almost 60 years old will doubtless need constant fettling. Is "polysphere" 318 & 727 with power drums and steering. I just picked it up a couple of weeks ago, so far I have reinstalled the AM radio just for looks and put in a little fm/bluetooth radio, put in a battery isolator switch, investigated some suspicious bubbles in the paint which were luckily just humidity blisters in extraneous filler & patch painted, basic single stage black is a joy to blend. Changed the leaky vacuum advance and ordered a bigger aircleaner to hide the tiny 2bbl ha. Somehow the (doubtless chinese) points have failed, by the amazing expedient of one contact block sticking to the other and separating from the sprung arm! Luckily this occurred just up the road and I was able to limp it home in an undignified manner. Future endeavours are to dig out sealant from the gutters to check no rust is developing underneath, put in a basic pertronix ignitor, change the wide whitewalls for white letter tyres, install a usb socket somewhere and see if I can find a 4 barrel manifold for it. 

 

Abuse thred 

 

[doullama]

I have been really enjoying this car, driving it all over the show. Have got it tuned well, still running points for now but the pertronix has arrived. Couple more wee things on the list to sort out, the power steering belt squeals at full lock and i need to dig into the dash to get the original fuel and temp gauges working, they have a shared 5v voltage regulator that commonly fails so hopefully its just that and the gauges aren't fried - hopefully..

[doullama]

Had a bit of a win with the dodge, the fuel gauge and temp gauge weren't working. Reading online it was common for the points type 5v instrument voltage limiter to fail, often frying the gauges if failed with points closed. There are solid state replacements, bit spendy with freight and I thought - know what else is 5v? A usb charger. So I got an aliexpress 12v double usb, wired it in behind the dash using the original 12v limiter feed, cut the end off an old usb cord and put the appropriate connector on the red wire - boom, working gauges and a handy spare usb socket. I also performed the "underhood ammeter bypass" - a common problem in old mopars is the main feed from the alternator travels to the ammeter via sketchy bulkhead spade connections, then back out to the starter relay. A failure of the ammeter will disable the car and is a fire hazard. Running a wire direct from the alternator to the relay with a fusible link as a parallel circuit takes most of the load away from the ammeter, makes it a bit less accurate but meh. Think I might swap the headlights over to relays too, get the load away from the elderly switches etc. 

[doullama]

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

[doullama]

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?

[doullama]

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. 

[doullama]

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. 

[doullama]

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. 

[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.

[doullama]

Been getting more good use out of this car, still can't believe the difference the pertronix has made. With the amount of roadworks around and some very hot days I noticed the temperature creeping up while sitting in traffic, when it got to 215f one time I thought I'd better have a look at the cooling system. Had a 195f thermostat which I think is a bit hot for a 60 year old car, changed that out for a 160f. It now won't go over 180f in traffic which is much better. I also added a recovery tank and changed out the 17lb radiator cap for a 7lb, bit friendlier to the ancient brass radiator. Took it down to taumarunui Thursday for our work breakup, slept in the back - it hosed down with rain in the night, the car didn't leak at all to my pleasant surprise.

[doullama]

Random car update, no further work has been carried out but I have been using the car a lot. Took it to OSnats which was great fun. I was a bit nervous about descending the kaimai range each way with single circuit drum brakes but it was fine, no drama. Spent quite some time removing all the mud from underneath! 

[doullama]

And then a photographer asked if she could take some pictures of the car while I was out to breakfast with the wife, happy to oblige. Going to mopars in morrinsville this saturday, be interesting to see if there are any other polara/monacos there.

[doullama]

And so there was, a 66 monaco. Different tail-lights extending onto the trunk lid and different grille for 66. The monaco was the up-spec 'fairmont' to the polaras 'series 1 au falcon forte'. Great show, roughly 100 old mopars in attendance, split pretty evenly between aus & yank. I especially appreciated the rainbow array of chargers. Suprisingly there were no ap5 or ap6 valiants or dodge vans in attendance.@Roman came too in order to graph number of antiquated jalopies vs soil hydrocarbon levels. 

[doullama]

Rustproofed underneath both the old cars with my usual mixture of black oil paint & penetrol. This handy ramp makes it much easier, but still came out looking like a seagull in the aftermath of a shipping incident. Polara's wof has just run out, I think I will leave it shedded until september or so before bothering to get another. Where are our 40+ year long wofs at by joves