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.

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?

Exhaust Replaced

Even though softball season is officially over, that was just the spring season (and the World Series trip). Now we are into the fall season, but not nearly as time intensive as the spring. I've also been traveling quite a bit over the last couple of months, so work on the wagon hasn't really picked up like I wanted it to.

But, last weekend I made it a point to do something.... anything.. to the Party Wagon. I ended up replacing the exhaust on it with the exhaust from the T&C. The reason for the replacement is the Smog stations in CA. For whatever reason, I'm not too sure, the exhaust on the Party Wagon had been cut off just above the axle. When I went to smog it when I first got the car to CA, several shops refused to smog it becuase when they would insert the probe into the tailpipe, it would contact the dyno rollers and was unsafe.

I had a temporarpy piece of pipe installed just to get it smogged, and once that was done I took it off. Well, my smog check is coming up again in January, so I needed to fix the problem. I did by installing the exahaust (from the downpipe back) from the T&C into the Aspen.



I did encounter one problem. The flange that connects the cat to the downpipe, the holes are spaced out just a little bit too far. I was only able to bolt up one bolt on the flange. I will need to elongate one of the holes to get it to work. I also have a small exhaust leak, and I believe that it is coming from that flange. I could be wrong, but I will need to fix that as well.

Aaaah.. the fun of modifying an old car. :)

All moved over

Well, we finally got everything moved over to the new house. The T&C was the last piece of the puzzle (from a car persepctive). Went over last weekend, called a tow truck, and had it flat-bedded over. Even with the cost of the flat bed, the engine and everything else that I can still get off of it made it worth it to haul it over.

Still have a little bit more settling in to do, and I should be able to start up again on working on the car. Once we're done with softball season (World Series coming up), I will finally get the engine yanked from the T&C and sent it on it's merry way to heaven.

New Color For Interior

It's been almost a month since my last post, but I actually have been working a little bit on the Party Wagon. I've read up online about what is the best way to change over the color of your interior. The first article I read was hosted on the AllPar.com website (http://www.allpar.com/fix/holler/inside-secrets.html), but it mainly dealt with restoring the original color (or close to it). The article talked about using Vinyl dye to bring life back to your interior.

I searched some more, and several internet forums also posted about using Vinyl/Plastic dye to change the color of your interior. So, I figured I would give it a try. The interior trim pieces from the Town & Country are in much better shape than those in the Aspen, so I started to dye those to the new color I want the interior to be. I am using SEM Vinyl/Plastic dye, graphite in color. I chose graphite because it isn't quite black, it will go with the exterior plans that I have for the car, and it isn't something that I'll see anytime soon (another Aspen/Volare with a graphite interior).

Here is a comparison of the original color of the Town & Country interior and the new graphite color. You can see from the close up shot that the grain is still visible. It appears to be very durable, and it is very easy to apply.

Here are some other pieces that I have already done. I also used the stuff on the metal trim that holds the headliner in, as well as the dash top. I'm installing the dashtop from the Town & Country into the Aspen, as it has the factory holes for the two dash top speakers. The Aspen's dash top only has factory holes for the single, center mounted 4x10" speaker as well as some holes my pops punched into the sides for the additional two dash top speakers. Spraying it on metal is also very easy. The dash top looks very smooth, and the molded grain pattern in the headliner trim also shows through very well.

New Stereo Installed

It's been awhile since I have put any work into the wagon, but this last week I was on vacation and I did spend some quality time with it. The engine is still in the Town and Country, so there was no work done with regards to the engine swap. But, I did install some of the donor parts during my projects last week.

Before I got the car from my dad, it was broken into and the tape deck that was in it was stolen. Nothing else but the tape deck was taken, probably some sort of gang initiation. :)

For the year that I've had it, it has been without tunes. This week I fixed that problem. Here are the components that I installed into the car.

• Panasonic AM/FM/CD/MP3 Player
• Blaupunkt 3.5" 2-way speakers (front)
• Blaupunkt 6x9" 3-way speakers (rear)

Initially, I wanted to install larger speakers in the doors of the wagon. I used the Town & Country to compare, and there is a cavity in the door for the speakers to mount. I pulled the door panel off of the Aspen, and sure enough the same cavity was there. However, since the Aspen didn't have any power options, there is no wiring routed to the doors and thus, none of the panels were punched out to run the wiring through the door jam. I could have mounted the speakers and routed the wires, but that would have required removing the doors completely to gain access to drill some holes to run the wiring. Too much work for what I wanted to do this week.

So, I mounted the speakers in the upper dash area in the factory location. That meant taking the entire dash top and front off to get everything mounted.



Here are the 3.5" speakers mounted in the factory location.



The first part that the Town & Country gave up were the rear speaker mounting brackets that mount the speakers to the tailgate. Here you can see the speakers mounted in the brackets.



The Aspen did not have rear speakers installed from the factory so I had to fish speaker wire through the cavity in the tailgate. Then I had to remove the entire left side interior trim to route the speakers up through to the head unit.



The next part that the Town & Country donated to the Aspen was the rear tailgate trim with the speaker cutouts. The piece is still the tan color that it was in the Town & Country, and it will get dyed when I complete the interior color change over.





Here are a couple of photos of the new head unit installed. It also has an AUX plug on the front, which will allow me to hook up my iPod to it. You can also see the cracked heater control unit in this photo. It was secured with thin wire to keep it attached to the dash.

This was the next part that the Town & Country has donated, a non cracked A/C - Heater control. You can see the replacement in the last photo.

Super Six Carb Rebuild

Even though I'm going to be replacing the engine with the V8 from the T&C, there was still some work to be done on the Aspen. I've been having hesitation problems with the car, somtimes it couldn't even get itself out of the inclined driveway at my house. My dad was in town this weekend for Thanksgiving, and when I explained the symptoms to him he immediatly said the "accelerator pump" in the carb was probably sticking.

So, Saturday I yanked the 2 BBL carb off of the 225 Super Six and proceeded through my first carb rebuild. It was a bit intimidating at first, since I've never really worked on a carb before. But, after some careful disassembly and some good teaching from my pops I was able to rebuild the carb.

After reinstallation, it seems like it has cured most of the ills that I was having. I still need to take it for a test drive to see how well it actually drives at speed (I only drove it down the street).

I still haven't been able to get any more work done on the T&C. We have been really busy getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday, and work has been a nightmare. I'm hoping that this weekend I'll be able to start work on pulling the engine out.

Diving Into The Engine Compartment....Almost

This evening I started on the main event, prepping the engine for removal. Since this is my first engine removal, I'm following along with the steps outlined in the Hayne's Manual. First order of business was to remove the hood. It's now resting on the roof of the car. As I read along, there wasn't much more I could do. The next step was to drain the cooling system. I had nothing to drain it in, all my catch cans were full. So, I elected to cut the night short and wait for tomorrow.

Decoding the T&C Fender Tag

Tonight I finished pulling the rest of the interior parts out of the T&C. The last two door panels were removed. The only other parts that I want to take are the outer rubber weatherstripping panels from the doors and the power window motors. That requires removing the windows, and I wasn't up to the task last night.

So I pulled the fender tag and decoded it. There were two, and here they are:

First Tag
M25 M31 N21 N37 N88 CTD
L81 M15 M18 M21 M25
G11 H51 J52 J55 L31 L61
RY3 U 3 B41 C06 C57
RY3 DYU5 000 C23 BD8900
E46 D32 FH45 H8G 219378

Second Tag
26 END
N95 P31 P41 R32 R37

Decoding the tag (the tag is actually read left to right, bottom to top)here is what all those codes mean:

E46 - 318 CID V8, 4V Carb
D32 - A998 Torqueflite automatic
FH45 H8G 219378 - VIN number of the car
RY3 - lower body color Classic Cream
DYU5 - interior trim color, color name unknown.
000 - vinyl top color, color name unknown
C23 - build date, C=October 23
BD8900 - order number
RY3 - upper body color Classic Cream
U - built in USA
3 - ??
B41 - power front disc brakes
C06 - ??
C57 - 60/40 split bench with recline
G11 - tinted glass all around
H51 - single air conditioning w/heat
J52 - inside hood release
J55 - undercoating with hood padding
L31 - fender mounted turn signals
L61 - dome lamp switch for rear doors
L81 - door ajar warning
M15 - upper door molding
M18 - ?? (this maybe the wood delete on this car)
M21 - roof drip molding
M25 - wide sill molding
M25 - wide sill molding (it was on there twice)
M31 - belt line and hood molding
N21 - air pump
N37 - ??
N88 - auto speed control (cruise control)
CTD - continued to next tag
N95 - California Emissions
P31 - power windows
P41 - power door locks
R32 - dual rear speakers
R37 - AM/FM stereo with 8track
26 - 26" radiator
END - end of tag

Interior Is Almost Gone

Spent some more time this evening pulling parts off of the T&C. I removed as much as I could that was left of the dash. The lower right side dash I managed to crack while trying to take it off, so that part is now unusuable. I removed all the rest of the interior trim. This includes the header panel, A-pillar trim, upper door trim, B-pillar trim, and lower door trim pieces. I also removed the left side door panels, both front and rear. Here's a few photos of the current state of deconstruction.

All that I have left to pull from the interior is the right side door panels, and all 4 power window motors. Then comes the fun of removing the interior wiring harness. Who knows what I will need from it. And I still haven't decided if I want to keep the tilt steering column or not.

More parts coming off

Yesterday, I had a few moments to spare after work and dinner, so I pulled a few more parts off of the T&C. This was just the radio, HVAC controls, and the intrument cluster support structure.

I did have a revelation. A couple of months ago, while in the junkyard I swiped the HVAC control unit from a 1981 Chrysler Cordoba. I got it because the control unit looked to be a bit more upscale, it had fake chrome buttons on it and a nifty temperature scale (vs. the cool ---> warm of the Aspen). The HVAC control unit in the T&C is the same one as in the Aspen.

When I pulled the one out of the T&C, I noticed that the temperature control arm moved a lever on the opposite side of the unit compared to the one I had from the Cordoba. I compared the two, and that is when I noticed the letters "ATC" stamped on the top of the Cordoba's control unit. I managed to swipe out the Automatic Temperature Control unit. It doesn't look like it would work for the Aspen, unless I snagged the full heater box unit out from a similar ATC car.

Stripping The T&C

Today, I spent the morning cleaning up and organizing the garage to make room for the T&C. Once I got the T&C into the garage, I started pulling parts off of it.

I started at the rear, and pulled the taillights off (they will go to eBay).


I pulled all of the interior pieces out from the rear cargo area. Trim panels, the carpeted areas on the cargo floor, weatherstripping aroudn the tailgate opening, etc.


I then moved to the front seat area. I pulled the Instrument cluster, instrument panel, and dash pad and top.


At that point, it was getting to hot and sweaty in the garage and that became a stopping point. More disassembly coming soon.

Pictures Of The Town & Country

The previous photos I've posted of the Town & Country were from the original web posting that Nick had to sell the T&C. Now that I've gotten it home, and things have slowed down a little bit, I have finally gotten a chance to snap a few photos of the car. I haven't yet started parting it out, that will begin shortly. Here she is in all her glory.

Here are a couple of shots of both wagons in the driveway. These photos show that the Town & Country is essentially a luxury version of the Dodge Aspen (even though Chrysler called the Aspen & Volare an "F-Body" and the Chrysler was called an "M-Body"). On the outside, the roof, doors, tailgate, rear quarter panels and all glass are completely interchangeable between the two.

In this photo, you can compare the rear side windows. The Town & Coutnry has a small vinyl trim piece that is attached to the D-pillar. This effectively makes the rear window shorter in length than the Aspen, but if I had to guess there is window buried under there.

Here are some photos of just the Town & Country.

A neighbor of Nick's backed her car into the driver's door of the Town & Country. Here you can see the damage left behind. This causes the lock mechanism in this door to always be locked, so you either have to keep the window rolled down, unlock it with the key all the time, or climb in another door.

The vinyl top is coming off.

Here's a closeup of the taillight area. You can see that the taillgate has the same cut around where the Aspen taillights went. Also, you can see below the taillight a filler piece that was poorly installed to fill the gap where the Aspen's taillights should have gone.

The main reason for this parts car, the 318 4V V8 engine. The engine in this car is actually a cop motor out of a 1989 Dodge Diplomat police car, so it makes a bit more power than the 318 that would have been in this car in 1978. Runs real nice. Once the engine is out, I'll do a mild rebuild on it.

A few shots of the interior. Tan & Brown, to match the exterior. The leather front seats are torn up, but the driver's seat is a power seat. The back seat is in suprisingly good condition for it's age.

Power windows too. I think I may transfer these parts to the Aspen, to give it some new features it never had.

Here are a few shots of the dash and gauges. I'm still contemplating moving these parts also over to the Aspen. One part that makes the Aspen an Aspen is the square speedometer and instrument cluster. However, most of the mid 60's and early 70's Chrylser products had a standard dash and a Rallye dash. The standard dash was very plain looking, typically square or rectangle in shape (of the instrument cluster). The Rallye dash had round gauges, and more of them. There never was a Rallye dash for the Aspen, but I'm thinking I'm going to create one. Just have to see how that works out.

This is definitely more luxurious than the Aspen. The entire cargo area is carpeted. These parts are definitely coming over to the wagon. The rear tailgate even has speakers (the Aspen came from the factory with one speaker in the dash).

The T&C Arrives

Last night James and I went to retreive the 1978 Town & Country wagon from Chula Vista. Our original intent was to try and drive it back home, approximately 20 miles. The car fired right up, transmission fluid was full, oil was full, brakes worked.. so off we rolled.

Before getting to the main road, the transmission started to occasionally slip into neutral (the car had sat for over a year). But, up to speed it was OK. We hit the freeway (but very slowly), and before long the car felt like it was going to shake apart. The tires were just too rotted to roll very well.

So, a quick call to Two-Bit Tow, a little bit of a wait, and they hauled the wagon to the house. Now she sits waiting for me to start the disection. Photos to follow shortly.

Another Wagon Joins the Fleet

Last night I went by Nick's place, paid him and he signed over the title to me for the LeBaron Town & Country Wagon. The beast with the V8 is mine now. We will go sometime later this week or this weekend to actually pick it up and drive it back to the homestead.

V8 Donor Car Located

A suitable donor has been found for the Aspen's engine transplant. Of all places to find it, I actually got wind of it at the San Diego Gay Pride parade. While waiting for the parade to start (I used the Mustang to drive one of the "dignitaries" through the parade), I was chatting up with some other members of the Great Autos of Yesteryear car club. One member heard I had the Aspen wagon, and asked me if I wanted a parts car. He had a 1978 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country wagon that he was looking to get rid of... cheap.

I went and looked at it tonight. The pictures below are from Nick's website. It is a 1978 T&C wagon that has the wood-delete option. It has a 318 4V V8. The motor was replaced a while back with the 318 cop motor from a late 80's Diplomat. The car has been sitting for awhile, it is much dirtier than in these photos. But, it started right up. Engine sounded good. I didn't drive it, it is registered PNO (Planned Non-Operation).

It doesn't fit with my original plan for swapping in a 360 V8, but I'm still going to go this route to start with. The engine has all the smog-related equipment on it, and since this car is based off of the exact same platform as the Aspen, everything is a bolt-on replacement. There are other parts that I will be able to scavenge off of this car as well for the Aspen (just have to re-dye or repaint them); such as interior trim pieces, headliner, weather stripping, power windows. I'm not sure if it has one, but if it does, I will swap out the Sure-Grip (limited slip) rear end as well.

I should be picking the car up sometime this week. I'll continue to post and chronicle the engine swap and other things related to the Aspen on this blog.