At the start of my senior year in high school, I told my dad that I wanted to drive the Dart to my senior prom. The Dart sat in my back yard until that March, when I figured out that my dad must have a selective memory when it comes to my Dart, either forgetting about it or just ignoring me when I bugged him about it.
The Dart was eventually moved from the yard to the garage on April 3; while we were moving it, we tried to compression start it on my driveway. Well it did not even turn over. Oh, the reason that I remember the date so well is that my prom was to be held on May 3, exactly 1 month later.
The Dart had a 1974 318 two-barrel and the factory 4-speed transmission. My dad had a set of 318 heads that had just been machined--not modified, just re-done. I put the heads on and I put a cam in that is given the title as a "towing" cam, which means it is slightly over stock (I got it from the guy that builds our race motors. It seems it came from the guy he bought his machines from). I then put an Edlebrock LD4B dual plane intake on, and a 600 cfm Holley double pumper.
The body work was completed in one week, and that's pretty fast, especially for a car that had sat since it had been last inspected in 1984. The car was painted a mix of 3 pints of 1979 Corvette yellow, and 1 pint of the orange used to make that color. We had used the yellow on my sister's Jeep, so we decided that since the body wasn't perfect on the Dart, we might as well use the paint we already had. It came out alright, but since the previous owners had repainted it 5 times, to get a real good finish, we would have had to strip all the paint off, and go from there. We probably would have done that if the prom wasn't only a week and a half away, and the headlights didn't work, the turn-signals had a short in them, and the motor ran lousily. The car and bumpers were painted and the bumpers were bolted on the Sunday before the prom. The week of the prom, my father and I spent every night trying to get the car to run, and trying to fix the turn signals and the other electrical problems. Well we finally got the motor running, but we could not get the turn signals to work.
I got the headlights to work the night before the prom, and that night was the first time I had ever driven the car. That was with the shocks that had been on the car for 12 years, and every single bushing in the front end needing replacement.
The day of the prom, my school let us out at 11:00 am so people could get ready for the prom. Instead of doing the "normal" prom preparations, I was having new tires put on the back, and I was down at my engine builder's having him look at the motor. We weren't able to get it to run right since there was no time to really try anything, including timing. I was lucky that it was raining that day--the car had no low end power, so I had to side-step the clutch at intersections, spinning the tires.
I used arm signals to signal every turn I made that, including the turns I made while wearing my tuxedo, even in the rain. That is because the cops in my area will stop you for not using turn signals.
In the end, the prom was a success, for the most part, and I was driving the car up until I came to school.
This winter, over my break, my best friend (he drives a 1968 Road Runner) and I are going to finish putting the bushings in the front end, and we are going to cut the rear wheel openings, so it has the look of a 1968 Hemi Dart. The reason we are cutting the wheelwells out is that they are hitting my tires, 235-60R14 on the Cragar wheels that are recommended for Darts, Demons, Dusters, and Valiants. If my car did not already have a lot of bondo in it from the previous owner (my dad is a tin smith so everything we did was done mostly with metal), I would not even drean of cutting it. When I redo the body correctly after I am out of college, I am going to put NOS parts on and put the body back the way it was. For now, however, I do not have the money for tires and wheels with the correct off-set, so I am doing what I can afford to do.
Before the body gets redone, I am having the 1969 340 I own rebuilt, which will cost a bundle, so that comes first. I hope that if you are not sixteen yet and you get a Dart, you bug your dad more than I did, so you don't have to rush to get it done.