After a new front end, new tires and suspension adjustments (crank a few turns on the torsion bars in the front to restore ride height) which turned out to give the car an interesting front high-nose-in-the- air look, I was ready to take it over the mountains to school. The previous owner had thrown in a couple of rims in the trunk, so when I got to Idaho, I bought some studded treads and the Dart became the unstoppable snow tank.
With the raised front end, the fireroad performance was quite capable, I used it to explore and hunt on many back roads. Plus I could take along more than two friends plus stuff in the trunk on our collegiate escapades.
The Dart had an indispensible feature. The ashtray made a perfect bottle opener which was important in college. However, there were a couple of drawbacks to the car. With only an AM radio, long trips were extremely tedious. Also, the heater worked with the outside temperature. So in the winter, if you were taking long trips, you needed electric socks and frequent stops at truck stops. However, in the summer, the car would overheat, so I had to keep the windows down and the heater on to keep the car inside the temperature range. I tried everything, flushing the radiator, cleaning the heater core, and a new thermostat; in the winter I would tape cardboard over the radiator to keep the car above freezing.
Once I bought some bad gas with water in it. So I had to have my car towed back to the station where I had bought the gas. There were other cars there with the same water in the gas tank problem, and all the station attendants were fixing carburetors and charging batteries on the customers' cars that had been towed to the station.
My car was waiting its turn to get its fuel system cleaned, conveniently parked over a sewer drain, when an attendent bumped some charging clamps off of a battery on one of the cars he was working on. A gasoline fire broke out! engulfing the car the attendent was working on and spreading to all the gas that was floating on all the water in the station lot. Since my car was over the drain, I got to watch as the fire spread right under my Dart. I ran to the car, jumped in and started it (even with the water, it would start and run for about 4 seconds) jammed into Drive and got it off the drain. The rear tires were on fire, lots of black smoke was pouring out and I was screaming for an extinguisher. Fortunately someone came over and put out the fire on my car. The tires were saved, but the rear doors on both sides were burnt to bare steel.
The insurance company for the gas station let me keep the car, and gave me $700 for the damages. I buffed out the black soot, painted it with red primer, paid $20 to have the tank drained, and continued to drive the car for the rest of my college tenure. I bought it with 107k miles on it and drove it to 154k, and it never once didn't start. Even after sitting outside for 4 weeks in the snow wating for the settlement. I never figured out the heating/cooling problems, but it was the definition of reliable.
With the cash, I bought a '73 Plymouth Scamp to use in the interim. It didn't run as well, but drove better, and the 2-door styling was a little more sporty. Plus I think it was faster and the heater worked much better. We'd use it on the longer road trips, but I'll save those stories for the Plymouth page.