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Brettbot posted:Finally, I forget if I've mentioned this before or not, but I'm looking for some advice. The car starts fine. When I put it in gear, drive OR reverse, nothing unusual happens. But when I give it some gas, the car wants to bog down and die. If I'm reeeally gentle on the throttle (or sometimes if I floor it), 99% of the time that's enough to get past the stumble, and then it runs without another issue until I park it again. I can stop at a stop sign, give it as much or little gas as I need to, and it's no problem. But just pulling out of the driveway, it wants to die. Now I just assume this engine needs a lot of TLC, so it's probably not any one particular thing, but where would you guys start? Does this sound like something obvious? Timing? Carb problem? Something else I don't even know about? New coil, New plug wires completely cured it. YMMV
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Apr 29, 2023 01:50
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my first thought is auto-choke setting wrong (too far on?) until it either gets warm enough to open up, or going wide open forces it off.
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Apr 29, 2023 05:24
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Brettbot posted:Finally, I forget if I've mentioned this before or not, but I'm looking for some advice. The car starts fine. When I put it in gear, drive OR reverse, nothing unusual happens. But when I give it some gas, the car wants to bog down and die. If I'm reeeally gentle on the throttle (or sometimes if I floor it), 99% of the time that's enough to get past the stumble, and then it runs without another issue until I park it again. I can stop at a stop sign, give it as much or little gas as I need to, and it's no problem. But just pulling out of the driveway, it wants to die. Now I just assume this engine needs a lot of TLC, so it's probably not any one particular thing, but where would you guys start? Does this sound like something obvious? Timing? Carb problem? Something else I don't even know about? I only know SU carbs, but in my world that stumble would have been a soggy carb float or bit of grit in the carb causing overfuelling.
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Apr 29, 2023 14:06
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Thanks for the advice, everybody. Very minor update incoming: I did eventually get the hardware replaced on the other side, so now both drums have everything new except the master cylinder. Took her out for a short drive since it's so nice today. Topped off the tank, and by the time I got home (6.76 miles according to the GPS speedo), the needle had already dropped off like 1/8 from full. Not exactly an economy car. Oh and the windshield washer pump is working again, although the hose popped off again and pissed all the fluid out AGAIN, so I've got to find a way to deal with that. So last time, I had fixed the trunk flooding. I went ahead and left the car uncovered in the rain after that, and next time I got in I discovered that the carpet on the driver's side was wet. I couldn't find any damp spots under the dash, so I have no idea where it was coming from. Maybe this corner of the windshield?  Anyways, I'm looking for a replacement speedometer before I go tearing mine out of the car. Which means I'm dealing with the boomer musclecar guys on another forum, god bless 'em. They're all really friendly, but computer literate they're not. I posted a want-ad for a speedo or the whole gauge cluster. I got one guy just asking me questions. One guy had the wrong speedometer. Two or three people said they had one for sale, but when I PMed the for pictures or prices, I got no reply. Finally somebody replied that they had one and just needed to get it out of the car. He said it'd be a few days since it was raining where he was. A week later I've heard nothing, so I messaged him again and he said he forgot all about it.  The next day he messaged me that he got the cluster loose, but he couldn't get it out of the car. I told him that I think you have to remove the steering wheel or drop the column, and he said "That's what I was afraid of." So maybe a few more days... I can't complain about the price, though, he only wants $40 versus buying a cluster on eBay ($125-$150) or buying a new speedometer from restoration places ($325+!).Oh yeah, and I haven't shown you guys the dog dishes yet:  Bought two pairs on eBay for less than the cost of one whole set. Best $60 I've spent on the car. 
Brettbot fucked around with this message at 00:29 on May 13, 2023 |
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May 12, 2023 21:16
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"That's what I was afraid of." Come on, guy. In my Nova, it's literally 2 nuts to drop the column down far enough to get the cluster out. I can't imagine it's much more involved in your Dart. Anyway, awesome car. I've got a bit of a soft spot for the green commuter-spec classics.
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May 12, 2023 22:43
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The hose on your windshield washer is probably old and brittle/hard. It happened on my (much younger) Corolla last winter. The bit that fit over the barb on the pump on mine had been stretched like the goatman's rear end. Put it back on, used it once, it popped off and drained the tank again. Had to cut the end of and shove it back on. Still holding. In your case it might be the whole hose if it's like 50 years old but that shits cheap.
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May 12, 2023 23:10
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Boaz MacPhereson posted:"That's what I was afraid of." Yeah, I think that's what I read, but I've never done it. And thanks, your Nova's great too! wesleywillis posted:The hose on your windshield washer is probably old and brittle/hard. That's the funny part, it seems plenty soft and pliable. Probably a previous owner replaced a rotten hose, just with one size too large. I'll figure it out. The extent of my efforts to fix it so far was: try to wrap some electrical tape around the nozzle, to make it fit more snugly, but it's got these wings on either side to protect the nozzle so there's not really any space. Then I just gave up and put the hose back on for now. v  v
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May 13, 2023 02:16
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 OK, so I suck at keeping threads updated. I took the Dart out around town doing errands the other day and it reminded me that I should post here again. So let's see, what have I done since the last update? Well, I don't remember if I ever said, but I did eventually get both rear drums "rebuilt" with a parts kit and have had no issues with them since. Also, following that tip from joat mon, I decided to replace the coil just to see if that helped, since it already has new plugs and wires.  Turned out to be Mopar-branded, with a date code of "123". That translates easily enough to "last week of March, year ending in 3". Considering that this car rolled off the assembly line on April 10, 1973, I think it's a fair assumption that that's the original coil. I didn't throw it away yet, just replaced it with a new, clean, "cheapest one you got" one.  This doesn't seem to have fixed the weird bogging, but it's pretty simple to avoid by just being easy on the gas the first time I put it in Drive. I might return the old coil some time, but for the time being I'm not having any issues with the cheap one. I also never heard back from the FABO guy about the gauge cluster, so I picked one up on eBay for only $100. It was missing a bunch of bulbs, but it had what I needed (including the alterator gauge, since the needle just straight up fell off of mine one day). At first I was removing all of the trim and every nut and bolt attached to the steering column, but eventually I realized that you only need to remove these ones on the bottom:  That'll let you drop it just enough to get the cluster out. Also, I don't know if this is supposed to happen, but when I dropped the column the brakes stopped holding.  Luckily I had one foot out the door and on the ground, so I felt the car start to slowly roll. I just set the parking brake and got back to work. Anyways, after that you've got the speedometer cable, one hardwired lightbulb, three different multi-wire plugs, and two wires for the battery. And your view the whole time is something like this: But eventually...  So I think the problem with my speedo was this little guy here:  This little watch spring is what resets the needle to zero automatically. It must have gotten over-wound at some point (maybe when the old speedo cable snapped (Oh yeah, I found out that the old cable snapped)) and just wouldn't return to zero. I couldn't see any way to disassemble the thing and try to fix it, so I just replaced the whole speedometer/odometer combo, so now it shows 14K miles instead of 63K. I combined the best parts of both clusters and put it back in. It's not perfect, but it all works now and I know how to remove it if I ever get around to re-doing the wood grain. After that I had to replace the speedo cable. I got under the car and pulled the old one, where I discovered that 1: it was leaking fluid from the cable itself and 2: although the cable looked fine on the gauge end, it was all twisted and mangled at the transmission end. Luckily, I had planned ahead and bought not just a new cable, but the gear and seals/o-rings too. So I went ahead and replaced the gear inside the transmission (even though it looked fine) with all new seals in it... and only then realized that the new cable was wrong. I had bought it online back when I got the car and never compared it to the old one side-by-side, so it turned out to be like 1/4" too small to fit onto the transmission. So one quick trip to O'Reilly later, I put it all back together and now I have a working speedometer!  Then I took the car to get inspected, and that's when I found out that the reverse lights weren't working! At first, of course, I was afraid that I had hosed up some of the wiring when replacing the cluster, but I went ahead and bought a multipack and replaced all of the fuses in the fuse block just to be sure. That fixed it, and while I was there I pulled the fuse for the rear window defroster. I don't plan on driving the car in the winter, but also: the wire from the switch was soldered directly to the fuse.  Maybe I'm being overly cautious, but that seemed a little sketch, so I figured I might as well disconnect it. Anyways, I think that's about it for now. EDIT: Oh yeah, I never mentioned it, but I pulled the big "5 MPH bumpers" from the front a while ago, since it was just 2 bolts each. They're still on the back, though, since I think I have to remove the whole bumper to get those ones off. Next mission is to sew the top of the back seat back together, while it's still all there. 
Brettbot fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Aug 26, 2023 |
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Aug 26, 2023 04:05
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We've had some nice weather here lately, so I fired up the Dart for the first time since last fall. Or, to be more exact, I had to jump it with the CR-V since I forgot to disconnect the battery before I put it away for the winter.  Anyways, the trunk was damp yet again, so I took a look and found another small hole.  Basically the twin to the one I plugged with a dab of JB Weld last year. If that one was at the 10 o'clock of the trunk lip, this new one is the 2 o'clock. I also spotted this "repair" that I never noticed before, at the bottom left. Looks like expanding foam?  From underneath:  That one seemed to be leaking, too. I guess I really should learn to weld. It seems daunting, but this thing is only going to continue to rust out if I don't. Also, just moving it around the driveway, it really didn't want to shift into Drive. I didn't have the chance to check the levels that day, so in a way I hope it's just low on fluid. It shouldn't be, because I just topped it off after I replaced the speedo cable, but it would be better than something being wrong with the transmission itself. Then again I replaced the o-rings when I did the cable, so it also shouldn't be leaking from there either... I picked up a timing light and a pressure gauge the other day, I wanna follow Junkyard Digs' video on basic timing and tuning. I don't know when or if that's ever been done on this car, and I feel like that's something I should know (and know how to do), so it can't hurt to check it. My biggest concern with the car is 100% reliability, at least for now. That being said, if I'm making a To Do list: I'm considering replacing the air shocks in the rear, don't know if it's worth it but I don't totally trust the previous owner's install and I'd rather just have something solid. Especially since, judging from the stuff he put in, he just went to Amazon and sorted by Lowest Price. I'm also thinking Holley Retrobrights to replace the awful headlights maybe? $200 per light is pretty steep, but no one else makes LED headlights that look like normal sealed beams as far as I know. I've still got to stitch up the top of the back seat, I never got around to that. I should do something about the vinyl top, it's peeling even worse now behind the rear window. I'd love to replace the whole thing some day with a contrasting color. I think brown would look cool. Replacing the carpet would be nice, again in a contrasting color to break up the "all green everything" look.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:50
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How hard is that "repair"? It almost looks like it might have been seam sealer globbed on at the factory (or by a body shop ages ago) that's given up.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:25
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IOwnCalculus posted:How hard is that "repair"? It almost looks like it might have been seam sealer globbed on at the factory (or by a body shop ages ago) that's given up. Eh, it's... pretty solid? Closer to hard than squishy. v v
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Feb 13, 2024 01:21
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That makes me lean towards seam sealer rather than spray foam, personally.
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Feb 14, 2024 00:17
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Nice car! On my Cuda a similar stumble was related to a cracked hose to the vacuum advance.
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Feb 18, 2024 10:46
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I fkn LOVE Darts! Absolutely get that rear lip rust seen to because it will eat the entire parcel shelf out before you know it.
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Feb 18, 2024 13:11
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You could save a few bucks by doing the Hella H4 retrofit and then use whatever LED bulb you want, but if you want quality it's still going to be $200 or more. poo poo, the price has gone way up since the last time I bought a pair. Oh wait it's been a decade. Jesus Christ time flies. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G72SKQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 There are cheap $20 each Chinese versions if you want to experiment and see if the beam pattern is acceptable.
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Feb 18, 2024 20:18
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Toyota sells a kit with two Koito 7" housings, H4 bulbs, and a relay harness, for as cheap as $20 plus shipping depending on the dealer.
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Feb 18, 2024 21:12
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IOwnCalculus posted:Toyota sells a kit with two Koito 7" housings, H4 bulbs, and a relay harness, for as cheap as $20 plus shipping depending on the dealer. I am legitimately stunned at this. Holy poo poo. Wish I would have known about this when I bought that Hella kit for the Nova...
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Feb 18, 2024 21:52
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You guys raise a good point. I should go cheap first (sealed beam or LED or whatever) and see if that makes enough of a difference before I think about shelling out the big bucks. I don't know how old the headlights in the car are, I just know the one time my wife and I accidentally stayed out after dark in the Dart, the drive home was pretty bad. I didn't get too much done this weekend, unfortunately. Of course it was 50 degrees when I was working and like 30 and windy as hell on my days off. I topped up the transmission fluid and took it for a drive, everything was fine. It took 2 quarts, so it's definitely leaking somewhere, but I never noticed any red snow around the car all winter... The battery is still dead, though, so I bought a charger and had it on the battery all day yesterday, which means I didn't get any timing or tuning checks done. I've got to park it on the street tonight because our neighbors are having a tree cut down next to our driveway tomorrow, so we'll see when I get home whether I need to just suck it up and buy a new battery or not.
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Feb 18, 2024 22:33
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IOwnCalculus posted:Toyota sells a kit with two Koito 7" housings, H4 bulbs, and a relay harness, for as cheap as $20 plus shipping depending on the dealer. Boaz MacPhereson posted:I am legitimately stunned at this. Holy poo poo. Wish I would have known about this when I bought that Hella kit for the Nova... $51.99 for the cheapest shipping, though. Edit: Ordered it for pickup about 20 minutes away for only $16+change. Thanks for the tip! Brettbot fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Feb 18, 2024 |
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Feb 18, 2024 22:53
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Brettbot posted:$51.99 for the cheapest shipping, though. Yeah, that dealer is local-ish to me and I ordered for pickup at the old price of $43 and free shipping a long while back. The drop to $20ish is recent and I suspect they're clearing them out of inventory altogether. For anyone else, definitely worth shopping that part number at local dealers.
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Feb 19, 2024 01:19
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IOwnCalculus posted:Yeah, that dealer is local-ish to me and I ordered for pickup at the old price of $43 and free shipping a long while back. The drop to $20ish is recent and I suspect they're clearing them out of inventory altogether. For anyone else, definitely worth shopping that part number at local dealers. I need that run that by the local Toyota shop. May be worth picking up the kit just for the harness and to have the housings on deck just in case.
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Feb 19, 2024 03:06
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IOwnCalculus posted:Yeah, that dealer is local-ish to me and I ordered for pickup at the old price of $43 and free shipping a long while back. The drop to $20ish is recent and I suspect they're clearing them out of inventory altogether. For anyone else, definitely worth shopping that part number at local dealers. if you have personal experience with this kit, do you know if it has the standard sealed beam mounting tabs, or if it's something proprietary to whatever toyota this is for, and would need mechanical adapting to work in whatever sealed beam jalopy one might be upgrading?
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Feb 20, 2024 08:16
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Ok, so the battery worked fine when I moved the car, good to know that I didn't totally kill it. I noticed something interesting the other day though. First off, I had been working under the assumption that the carb is a Holley 1920, since I believed that was the standard on these Slant Sixes. When I took the aircleaner off, though, it was marked 6R 5147 B, which is apparently a Holley 1945 (and looking at photos, that matches up). The date code is 4 digits (post-1973), and ends in a one, so '81? '91? Some day I'll learn to stop assuming anything about a 50-year old car. Anyways, that's not the interesting part. The car has always run at a very fast idle, never slowing when warmed up. Then you put it in gear and the car practically jumps as the engine slows WAY down. So I took a look at the fast idle screw, which should look like this when cold:  Photo found on the internet The idea, as I understand it, is that as the engine warms, the cam turns, opening the choke little by little. Why the screw "steps" down the cam I don't really know. Just to slow the cam, holding it at each step until the cam has enough force to move to the next step, I would guess. Regardless, mine looked like this:  Fast idle cam all the way up, holding the choke all the way open, and the screw underneath, holding it in place. So with the engine running, I slowly backed off the screw and the engine slowed until it was just barely running faster than when it's in gear. Ok, cool! Then I got in the car and backed out of the driveway, and when I put it in Drive the stalling and choking problem it always had was gone! Great! It was not that simple, though. When I came back to start the car later, when it was cold again, I had no luck. The starter would catch, the engine would burble once or twice, and then it would die. It did this over and over again until I put the fast idle cam back the way it was, then the car started first try. Ok, so help me out here. Am I correct in thinking that this means the carb is running much too rich? The engine won't run correctly without the choke wholly open, meaning it wants a ton of air, right? That should be the leanest mix the engine sees, only once it's warm, but that's what it wants just to start.
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Feb 20, 2024 15:40
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Raluek posted:if you have personal experience with this kit, do you know if it has the standard sealed beam mounting tabs, or if it's something proprietary to whatever toyota this is for, and would need mechanical adapting to work in whatever sealed beam jalopy one might be upgrading? I have not installed mine yet (going into my TJ) but I haven't seen anyone else complain about needing extra mods. It's officially for FJs and as far as I know those just use standard 7" bulbs. I'll go check them against the bug-eye LEDs I took out of the TJ and see if there's any difference.
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Feb 20, 2024 17:36
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I had a similar issue on my '72 back in highschool and the expedited and cheap fix was to fit the manual choke cable from a lawnmower and mount it under the dash. I'd let it idle for a few minutes with the choke pulled, then push it in to drive off. You could also do it the correct way, but a choke cable is like $12. EDIT: for context, I was 17 and barely had money to fill the tank after working for the weekend, so most fixes were along similar lines. I miss that giant shitbox despite it being objectively the worst, least reliable car I've owned (I paid $600 for it after test driving it around the seller's back yard since it didn't have plates).
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Feb 20, 2024 17:50
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I'm not a car guy and this might be way wrong, but I used to have an old 70's car with a GM V8 in it, and it had an auto choke. It took me a while to figure out because the lady I bought it off couldn't tell me a lot about the car, but reading the manual for it the idea was: Start the car and let it run in park for a few minutes to warm up. The revs slowly creep up as it warms up. You give it a good blatt of the throttle, a real decent Vroom The choke kicks off and the car settles into a nice low idle. I used to have the same problem before I figured it out, it was revving too high in idle on starting and putting it into drive it would bang and lurch. This might not help at all but it's another uh piece of data? Cool car though I love reading these threads and living vicariously through them.
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Feb 21, 2024 09:41
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Project M.A.M.I.L. posted:I'm not a car guy and this might be way wrong, but I used to have an old 70's car with a GM V8 in it, and it had an auto choke. It took me a while to figure out because the lady I bought it off couldn't tell me a lot about the car, but reading the manual for it the idea was: this is how auto chokes usually work, yes. the fast idle cam is trying to pull off, but it can't really rotate against the throttle return spring. so you need to blip the throttle to get the throttle open (i.e. off the fast idle stop) long enough for the cam to rotate out of the way, and when it comes back down it'll land on the normal idle stop instead. on my car, i ended up just zip tying the choke all the way open cause it sometimes would get stuck and the idle wouldn't come off the cam unless i poked the linkage a little. seems to start fine without it, so no loss
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Feb 21, 2024 10:49
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Ok, I picked up the headlight kit, looks nice! Especially for $15. I also did a quick and dirty experiment: With the engine cold, I reset the fast idle cam where it was supposed to be and also turned the idle mixture screw out like half a turn, maybe more. I figured since you're supposed to adjust it in 1/8-turn increments, that should be plenty. It started no problem and idled much more slowly. Maybe a little too slowly, as I couldn't help but give it a blip or two of throttle when it seemed like it might stall. Regardless, I think that proves my theory that someone jammed the choke all the way open on purpose just to make the car run. My fix is not at all the way you're supposed to set your idle speed and mixture, obviously, but I think it puts me much closer to where I'm supposed to be for doing it the right way. Of course, when I took it out for a drive around the block, there was a weird scraping sound coming from the front, synced with the wheels. It's always something with this car! My first thought was maybe the tires were so low that the driver's front was scraping, but after double-checking the tire pressures I think it was actually the speedo cable inside the gauge cluster. Spinning it by hand I couldn't replicate the noise, but it only happened above like 10 MPH. The needle has always been a little jumpy, so combined with the trans fluid leak I gotta wholly own that, as I replaced the cable AND the cluster myself. So it's back to trouble-shooting mode!
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Feb 29, 2024 21:27
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Raluek posted:if you have personal experience with this kit, do you know if it has the standard sealed beam mounting tabs, or if it's something proprietary to whatever toyota this is for, and would need mechanical adapting to work in whatever sealed beam jalopy one might be upgrading? Finally remembered to come back to this - yes, they have the same three tabs. Slightly tighter tolerances than the cheap Amazon LEDs I had on the TJ, so at least when going into the plastic buckets it has to be lined up perfectly to slot in.
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Mar 30, 2024 05:16
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