69 Barracuda FB. The next evolution

[gomopar440]

Hope you find one it will make the job much more pleasant!

I've seen a few on FB Marketplace now and then, but they go quick.

 

[gomopar440]

More sanding, priming and sweating out in the garage today. Not necessarily in that order.

I'll go back and hit the lower edges all at the same time. For now they'll have to wait till the store can get more primer sealer in stock. This quarter panel got the last can I had here.

The MSD Pro Billet distributor arrived in the mail today. Apparently the cap on it is from some other distributor as there is an open gap between the cap and distributor body. Sooo... Guess I'll add a new cap and rotor kit as well as a set of HEI style plug wires to the shopping list.

Edit: Looks like I'll also need to pick up a distributor hold down clamp and bolt. The 360 doesn't have one on it.

 

[RUSTY Cuda]

Dang, how are the bottom of the quarters & wheel well not all rusted out, metal looks fairly straight too! NICE!!!

 

[68R/T]

The dripping of sweat onto the paint was one of the reasons I stopped.

I can't fit a window unit in the tiny window in the garage. It's only about 12" wide x 18" high. Since I'm renting this place I can't add a mini-split either. I'm seriously thinking about at least getting a stand up portable A/C this payday.

Look for an AC unit intended for a "slideby" window. I have one leftover from my previous house in one of my garages.

 

[gomopar440]

Look for an AC unit intended for a "slideby" window. I have one leftover from my previous house in one of my garages.

Thanks for the tip. I've never heard of those kind. I'll look into it.

@RUSTY Cuda So far so good. I'm going to lay on the creeper and go around the entire bottom all at one time. Gotta get more primer first though.

Spent a little time this evening out there working on the Holly. It's cooled down enough that it's manageable in the garage with the fan.

First impression is that I probably could have bolted this carb on and ran it as is. So far I've just pulled the rear bowl down to the metering plate surface. Unfortunately it had the old style gaskets, so it took a while to, piece by itty bitty piece, remove all of the gasket. That's all for tonight, so I'll get back onto the carb rebuild tomorrow.

 

[gomopar440]

I didn't get anything done on the car today, but I was out helping a friend with his race cars. He's prepping the main car to drop in a freshly rebuilt 6.4L Hemi into his late model circle track car. His backup car currently has a 700+hp alcohol burning 360LA motor in it.

When he heard about the parts I'm looking for for my 360, he let me have a few of his old parts he wasn't running anymore. A MSD 6AL and a Mallory coil. We were also spitballing ideas for the Barracuda and I may have a few other new ideas for my car now...

Oh yea, he said the dark red/brownish cap I have on my distributor IS an actual MSD part. We found it listed in his race car parts catalog as a Chevy style female terminal v8 cap. I don't like the gap between the cap and dist body, so it's still getting swapped out for a male HEI terminal style cap. That's primarilly because of the plug wire retainer on the normal MSD male HEI style cap. When I take this thing on rough roads, that wire holder cap will prevent the wires from being able to shake loose.

EDIT: I got a call from the tire shop today. My tires and wheels arrived, so I'll head over there tomorrow and pick up the wheels. I'm going to head to a local powder coating place and drop them off for a little make over.
When they get back from powdercoating, they go back to the tire shop to get the new tires mounted and balanced.

 

[gomopar440]

The tires are being held for my at the tire shop while I get the wheels powder coated. Before I dropped them off at the powder coaters, I put the wheels on the car to verify fitment. Looks like the outer wheelhouse clears fine in the rear, as well as the upper A-arm and caliper clearing the rim up front.

Once the tires are on I'll be able get the full picture on the tire to wheel arch clearance.

 

[gomopar440]

This morning I headed out to the garage with the intent to pull the gas tank out of the car. Before that I wanted to close an open hole in the 360 by installing the new fuel pump I got last week. Unfortunately the two mounting holes in the fuel pump were too small to fit the original 3/8" diameter bolts. I had to drill the holes out to 3/8" before the bolts would pass through. When I tried to bolt the pump to the engine, the holes were too close together to all the pump bolts to align to the threaded holes. I had to elongate the pump holes, wallowing them out slightly with the 3/8" drill bit. The bolts finally bit the threads in the engine, but they still have a bit of binding, making tightening them down a tedious back and forth process to pull the pump all the way down to the engine. It's done now at least, even if it was a bit of a struggle because of the error in the size of the holes on the brand new fuel pump.

The shipping UPS truck showing up said the gas tank was going to wait a bit longer. The box had general tune up parts (spark plugs, coolant hoses, fan belt) in it from Rockauto. Since the Spark plugs would close up another 8 holes in the block, I wanted to install those next. First, I had to clean up the spark plug holes, and the area around the holes. The heads and exhaust gasket surface areas were gone over as well. After the area was prepped, the plugs were installed without issues. Looking at the spark plug alignment, I've decided to get spark plug wires with 135* boots at the plug ends, and male HEI ends at the distributor.

I have new exhaust gaskets, but they,ll have to wait until I pick up a set of exhaust mounting studs/bolts/nuts. In the mean time, I just cleaned the burnt oil and surface rust off of the exhaust manifolds. I'll paint the manifolds after I pick up some high temp exhaust paint.

While I was cleaning the engine for the spark plugs, the FedEx truck showed up with the dual fan radiatior I bought from Ebay. I opened the box and inspected the radiator, and everything looked good, with one (not defective) issue though. The fans were mounted with the wires coming out of the top of the fan motors. I prefer them coming out of the bottom, so any moisture that gets on the motor will run off, instead of inside of it. It just took a few minutes to flip the fans 180*. Now I just need some zip-ties to secure the wires so they can flop into the fan belt on the engine.

Definitely not getting to the gas tank now. I'm already way overheated and need to get into the A/C and take some Tylenol for this headache.

 

[RUSTY Cuda]

Hmmm, not sure I would have done that to the fuel pump, just return for the proper one.
Just too fishy (yea pun intended) to me!

 

[gomopar440]

I agree that I should have returned it, but I was wondering if I'd just receive another one with the same issue. When I looked at the casting, there was plenty of material on it for the small amount of material I'd be removing. Judgement call on my part to proceed as I did. Time will tell if it will come back to bite me.

As a conisuer (sp?) Of puns, sarcasm and innuendo, all forms of humor are permitted in this thread. Well, on the whole Moparnuts website I'd say, given it's nature and history of posts archived here.

 

[b-body-bob]

Google says AMC 360s have 5/16 bolts. From photos it looks about the same as the Mopar part but Google also assures me they are not the same, and they mount to opposite sides of the engine.

Now that you've modified the fuel pump to hell and back to get it to bolt up, are you sure you've got the right pump?

 

[gomopar440]

I'm pretty sure I verified the application when I pulled it out of the box, but now youve got me second guessing myself. The arm engaged the cam properly, and the inlet and outlet match the original, so I'd say the casting likely missed a drilling step in manufacturing. I might still have the box around to check the part number.

It'll have to wait till I get back into town before I can look for it. I'm headed to Oklahoma for the race weekend at Thunderbird Speedway. My friend runs a 6.4l gen3 hemi powered dirt late model car in that series. We were dropping that Blackbird refreshed engine in it yesterday. Sounds sooo wicked with those open tri-Y headers when it gets up in the revs.

I didn't want to give up on pulling the gas tank today, so I went back out to the garage this evening. More fiberglass on the trunk floor, all the way to the raised hump between the inner wheel wells.

At least the tank looks newish and it had, by my estimate, around a quarter tank of not yet varnished gas in it. That tells me the claim that the car was driven to it's resting spot I saw it at is at least a possibility. The hardware wasn't too rusty, so dropping the tank by myself didn't give me too much trouble. I used a floor jack for an extra set of supporting hands. There was one funny thing I found while taking it out though. Instead of the factory insulator pad on top of the tank, someone used an asphalt roof shingle, gritty side up towards the bottom of the trunk floor.

I also spotted an AMD sticker on the inside of the rear valance, so that explains why that part is so straight. Surface rusty maybe, but straight nonetheless. The driver quarter panel also had a sticker on it's inner side, but I couldn't see if it was an AMD sticker or not.

 

[b-body-bob]

someone used an asphalt roof shingle

I bought an official A-body tank mat from Detroit Muscle, and it was pretty much just a shingle. I could've saved that money and used one or more of the extras I've had stored for decades instead.

I used liquid nails for seam sealer for the trunk floor repair on that same car. An old-timer recommended it.

 

[RUSTY Cuda]

Guess that explains the not rusted out quarters at the bottom, that crossmember is looking a little sad, that is daylight through the cracks right?

 

[gomopar440]

Guess that explains the not rusted out quarters at the bottom, that crossmember is looking a little sad, that is daylight through the cracks right?

Unfortunately, I belive you're correct. I've been told they use salt on the roads in Missouri winters. This car seems to confirm that statement.