No More Posts for Awhile

Just to let anyone who happens upon this blog, I have put the Party Wagon up in storage for now. I currently don't have the space, time or $$$ to continue to work on the car. Eventually it will be brought back out of storage, and I will document it when the time comes. Until then, I am leaving this blog available for anyone to utilize as a reference.

A Busy Saturday

Today was a busy Saturday. The weather turned really nice, and I had some good quality time to spend with the car. First up was continuing to tear down the interior.

Removed the back seat, and this is the buried treasure that I found. All sorts of crap that had built up over the past several years.


After removing the rear seat, I removed the rear carpet. Found a little bit of surface rust, but not too bad. The floor boards were still solid.


Set the console brackets up to figure out where they needed to be welded at. Removed all the remnants of carpet glue and crap to prep for the welding. After this photo was taken, I shot the bare spots with some primer until I can get to the welding. The center console I got from an eBay auction.

Went up under the car and "sorta" installed the rear anti-sway bar. I installed the frame brackets, attached the bar, and mocked up where the spring pad brackets are to go. Those also need to be welded up. In this shot, you can also see the HD Police shocks that I installed a while back. The sway bar itself came from the junkyard, out of a 1981 Chrysler Imperial. The brackets for the spring perch I purchased off of a member of one of the forums that I frequent.

Here is a shot of the brackets installed on the frame.


Here is another shot of the anti-sway bar and the brackets installed on the frame.


Here is another angle of the anti-sway bar. You can see it snake it's way over the pumpkin in the rear end.

Budget Big Brake Upgrade Completed

Today I took a little time to complete the Budget Big Brake upgrade on the left side of the car. Much the same as the right side, here are a couple of photos.

Larger 11.75" rotor installed:


Fully assembled with the caliper and pads reinstalled:

Brake Upgrade - Right side

Even though I got a late start today, I was able to get some work done on the Aspen. I was able to complete the budget big brake upgrade on the right side.

Budget Big Brake Upgrade

A little bit about the Budget Big Brake upgrade. The Aspen came from the factory with 10.87" front disc brakes. These were essentially the same brakes available on A-bodies (Duster, Dart, Valiant), and earlier B- and E-bodies as well as M- and J-bodies (Diplomat, Fifth Avenue, Cordoba, Imperial, Mirada) through the 80s. In the mid 70s, Chrysler's larger cars received larger 11.75" rotors. These included B- , C- and R-bodies. These 11.75" rotors are very easy to swap over to the Aspen.

From the junkyard, I snagged a pair of caliper mounting brackets from a 1980 Dodge St. Regis. I also ordered new rotors for the same car. Those are the only extra parts needed for the swap. Everything else (caliper & pads) are the same between the St. Regis and the Aspen, so I am able to reuse those parts.

Front wheel removed. Here you can see the aluminum spacer that I run to mount up the 17x8" Mustang Bullitt rims.


A straight-on shot of the stock brake rotor.


Here is a comparison shot of the 11.75" rotor from the Dodge St. Regis (left) and the 10.87" rotor from the Aspen (right).


New 11.75" rotor installed. Also replaced the wheel bearings with new.


Stock Aspen caliper and pads installed on the new 11.75" rotor.



BEFORE: Stock 10.87 rotors:

AFTER: New 11.75" rotors:


The new rotors fill out the 17" rims a little better, and should provide some additional stopping power. Tomorrow after softball I'll do the left side.

The Mailman Delivers

Much to my surprise this afternoon, the new brake rotors that I ordered arrived via UPS today. I wasn't expecting them until next Monday, so I was pleasently surprised. This means that I get to do my brake upgrade this weekend.

Here is a photo of one of the shiny new rotors:



As I get the brakes installed, I will do a more thorough write up of the modification.

Trans linkage installed

Tonight I was able to take advantage of some of the extra daylight and worked on the car. I got the hole cut in the floor to allow the linkage to go through, and mounted up the linkage pivot to the floor pan. Next up; welding up the center console brackets, installing the floor shifter, connecting the shift linkage to the transmission, and disconnecting the column shifter from the trans.

Center Console Mock Up

On Saturday, the weather turned really nice so I decided to start with one of the projects, installing the center console (picked up from eBay) and converting the car from a column-shift to a console-shift. First, out came the front bucket seats and the console my dad made for me many years ago. Then, some of the interior trim came off to gain access to the carpet. With the carpet removed, I was able to get a view into the 30+ year old floor boards.



Being a daily driver for so long, and only sitting in the arid desert climate has been good to the Party Wagon. The floor boards are in great condition. I've seen some F-bodies where the carpet was the only thing holding the floor boards together. There is just a little bit of surface rust on the passenger side floorboard, but nothing major.





I put the console in for the first mock up . I realized that I'm going to have to pull the rear portion of the carpet too, which means more interior trim will have to come out and the rear lower seat cushion will also have to come out. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, if the weather cooperates. Supposed to be light showers tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Smog Check passed!!

It was time for the Aspen to undergo the once-every-other-year smog check here in San Diego. As always, I was very nervous in taking the car in for the test. When the test was over with, the technical told me "For as old as this car is, it runs surprisingly clean." San Diego county is one of the 6 counties in California in which the smog test is run on a dyno at two different speeds, 15mph and 25mph. Here's how the Aspen tested.

15 MPH

%CO2 measured : 14.1
%O2 measured: 0.7

HC (PPM)

• Max: 194
• Ave: 47
• Measured: 56

CO (%)

• Max: 1.26
• Ave: 0.20
• Measured: 0.34

NO (PPM)

• Max: 1286
• Ave: 554
• Measured: 140

25 MPH

%CO2 measured : 14.3
%O2 measured: 0.6

HC (PPM)

• Max: 161
• Ave: 37
  
• Measured: 27

CO (%)

• Max: 1.06
• Ave: 0.17
• Measured: 0.31

NO (PPM)

• Max: 1146
• Ave: 468
• Measured: 43

I was very happy with the results. Now, I can not have to worry about it for the next two years.

The Mail Man Delivers

Yippie! The electric choke (for the 2bbl this time) arrived today. I ordered it yesterday from Carbs Plus. Total includeing shipping was ~$59. Had I ordered the exact same part from Napa Online, it would have been $73 + shipping. Had I ordered it through the brick & mortar Napa store, it would have been $73 + $20 freight charge and I would have had to wait 2 weeks for it!!! Hopefully I'll get it installed this weekend.

A little disappointment

Well, this past weekend I wanted to install my newly purchased electric choke on to the wagon. However, when I pulled the part out of the box and started to mock it up... I realized that I had the wrong part. I had an electric choke for a 1bbl. :-( I was highly irritated because I was sure that I had ordered the correct part. I went back to NapaOnline.com (where i ordered it) to verify. LIke before, I specified my car all the way down to the 2bbl carb option. Even though I specified 2bbl, it listed both chokes for 1bbl and 2bbl. I just ordred the wrong one.

So, instead I took the car for a nice drive yesterday. Had to top off the tranny fluid, it was a little low. The drive went well, although I may have discovered a possible overheating problem, I'll need to research.

Ordering the correct choke today, so maybe by next week it will be installed.

Tire Overinfated

This isn't about the Aspen, but about the other Dodge in the fleet, the 2008 Nitro R/T. This morning we got in after breakfast and the low tire pressure warning system came on. When I looked at the on board diagnostic readout, this is what we saw.



Eventually it triggered on all three tires that registered at 32 PSI as being low, but the left rear at 193 PSI was hillarious. Lucky for me I had the camera in the car... because when I turned it off and back on, the system reset and it now reads at 33 PSI.

Right Side Sport Mirror - Installed

Last weekend the passenger's side mirror didn't get installed because I couldn't find the drill. I realized much later that night that I had loaned it to a friend and hadn't gotten it back yet. The drill has returned, and I was able to finish the mirror installation.

I used the gasket as a template to mark and drill the holes. I used one of those stepped drill bits to get the holes drilled.


Taped off the holes to put some primer down on the exposed metal to keep the rust at bay.




And viola... installed. Looks real nice with the matching one on now.

Junkyard Finds

This morning I went hunting through the Junkyards and ran across these two wagons.

#1 - 1978 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country



This one might look familiar to reader's of the blog. It's my old parts car wagon. It was actually the reason I went to the junkyard, to see if it was put out for parts or already sent to the crusher. It's a wierd feeling to see a car that had your name on the title in a junkyard.

#2 - 1976 Dodge Aspen



I found this one odd due to the position of the luggage rack. It is the factory luggage rack, matches the one on the Aspen (and on every F & M Wagon I've seen). But it is placed to far forward. Mine (and every other one I've seen) lines up with the rear of the car, and the front posts are above the rear door. But this one lined up with the windshield, leaving alot of space towards the rear of hte car. There were no other holes in the rear of the car (to indicate someone moved it forward after the fact). All the proper gaskets were there as well. Factory screw up?

Some Old Photos

Was just digging through some old photos and ran across these. These were taken soon after brining the car to San Diego, still had the New Mexico tags on it. As you can see, the first thing I did was slap on the Mustang Bullitt rims.

Gas Prices lowest in 8 years ... at least for San Diego

We moved to San Diego just over 8 years ago. When we got here in November of 2000, gas prices in our neighborhood were right around 1.75-1.80 / gallon for regular unleaded. We live in the same area as we did 8 years ago, and yesterday the local gas station in our neighborhood regular unleaded was being sold for 1.75/gallon (for regular unleaded)!! This was after this station was selling regular at 3.90/gallon (for regular unleaded) just 8 months ago. What a crazy drop in prices, I love it.

Chrome Sport Mirror : Installed Part 1

Today I did a little work on the Party Wagon. First off, I installed the missing piece of trim on the passenger side front door. The trim is green, so it will need to be resprayed. I intend on respraying all of the vinyl trim a darker maroon color to give the faded pink trim some new life. For right now, it looks Christmas festive with the red and green.

I also installed the driver's side chrome sport mirror that I snagged from the junkyard a while back. There were no installation issues at all, bolted right up. The driver's side door panel already had a piece of the cardboard perforated where the control mounts, I just had to remove it and cut through the door panel fabric to allow the control to pass through.I went to start on the passenger's side, but a hand injury from earlier in the week started acting up so I decided to call it quits for the day.