1960 Dodge Pioneer

what a handsome looking car.. said no one ever. I have a 61 Dodge 2 door post which is equally funny looking.

 

Hahahahaha! At least my fins are headed the right direction! Yea Exner gave us some "interesting" designs, but they were unique in their time and even more so now. I have always loved oddball cars. Thanks for following along @49ratfink !

 

Okey doke, time for a small update! I've been around on here most days, just nothing to add to the thread. About a month ago I called up an upholstery shop that a coworker recommended to do my headliner. We spoke a bit about what I needed done and I was given an appt 2 weeks out. Due some scheduling conflicts on both ends I wasn't able to get the car to him until this Monday afternoon. The owner is a super cool dude, probably about my age and other than 1 mechanic is a one man operation. His mom runs the books and appointments.

To say this guy hustles is an understatement. He had a packed shop when I showed up. He called me yesterday at 9:30 to ask a few questions about the windlace. At that point the headliner was laid out on a table. He called me at 1PM to make sure I was mounting 2 sun visors. The headliner was hung in the car and he was just about to lock everything in. A little after 5, he called again and said it was all done ready to pick up. This would've taken me a month or more and probably would've looked like hot garbage. If anybody in the Richmond area needs interior work done, check out Page Upholstery!

It has been really nice weather-wise here for the past couple weeks. Go figure right when I'm loading up to bring it home, it starts raining. Then tornado warnings and heavy downpour. At least my weatherstripping can get a good leak test. Well, that failed. Every window except the back glass leaks. The bright side here is that at least I found the leaks before any of the door panels or carpet were put in. The windshield seems like it will be an easy fix. I see a few areas I can address on the door and quarter glass, but if anyone has suggestions on sealing up side glass, PLEASE chime in. That will be the next step in the process before the interior gets wrapped up. I'm sure the crap central VA weather will provide plenty more leak tests for me. Sorry I got wordy... here's a couple shots of the headliner.

 

Digging this back up from the dead for anyone who cares ha. Wow has it been 5 months? Progress has been slow, but any step forward is good. After the headliner I found out the headers were leaking right at the mounting flange. I tried a thicker gasket to no avail. I pulled them off and took them to my machinist. The same guy who machined and built this 17(ish?) years ago now has his own shop, so that was cool working with him again. He took some time with both the headers on a low speed belt sander and got them leveled out. All said and done this set me back about a month. Here you can see the back 2 ports that were leaking the worst.


Next I mounted up the passenger bucket which was basically making some thick c-channel spacers to go under the back feet and get everything level. Then I located and drilled the remaining mounting holes for the front shoulder belts. This wasn't too bad as I already had the threaded anchors for the reel in the b-pillar.


Next up I tackled the carpet. I got this 2 piece pre-cut carpet from who knows where, but it has a nice heel pad and had the locator hole for the go pedal. After laying in the jute ( fuzzy insulation) I let the carpet sit out in the hot sun for a couple days so it would relax. The real challenge was getting the carpet to form shift linkage hump on the trans tunnel. Unfortunately, I had to cut the carpet to get it to sit how I wanted, but I was able to get the seams to butt up nicely. Most of the cuts were in hidden areas. All in all, I'm happy with my first attempt. Remember, this is a driver, not a show car. Somewhere in this time period I made up a quick adapter plate to mount the '60 gas pedal onto the Lokar base. I didn't document this like I planned, but the pedal bolts onto the base and the base/pivot is splined so you can adjust to.get the proper travel you need. Now I don't have a billet pedal sticking out in my otherwise period interior.


After the carpet I focused on the backseat area. Fitting one quarter glass/side panel took me about a week going in and out with it test fitting and all that. This week I spent a few minutes each day after work fitting in the other side panel. Yesterday after work I swung by my folks place and picked up the back seat and package tray. I hustled last night and bolted the lap belts in, then wrestled the back seat in there. It turned out way better than I imagined and it's really cool to see the interior coming together.



So next up is bolting the shoulder belts back in, bolting the buckets in, and installing the door panels. After that, it's a few odds and ends as always and the DMV legal dance. Feels like I'm getting pretty close to getting this on the road. Thanks for tuning in. Til the next time...

 

That interior looks great!

 

Thanks @MRW1994 ! I got the shoulder belts and front buckets bolted back in this afternoon. Tried to start it / let it idle for a bit and the battery is flat. I'll have to check it this week and see if it's dead. Gonna focus on the door panels with my few mins of spare time this week.

 

Small update. Got the passenger door panel in and done except for the arm rest, need some bigger screws for that. The pictures won’t show, but I put the window trim surround and front kick panel in too. Creeping along, but still moving. This interior stuff is an a$$ kicker…

I might get a little rubbing for this, not sure how people feel about the bobbing head dog. I always thought they were a funny accessory and I’m an 80s/90s kid. Had to go with the most popular cartoon dog of my childhood. He’s a good fit for a Big Red Dodge too


So I’ll keep plugging away with the interior and I’ll do a few completed shots when I get there. See y’all later

 

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween! I’ve been picking away at all the final details in my spare minutes. My Mooneyes Oil Press gauge crapped out on me, so I threw an old Rochester in there I had, works great. I finished up the trim and all that for the interior, so here’s a look at that.


While I was getting together all my paperwork and proof of existence for the DMV, I found some cool stuff and figured it would be fun to look back to the beginning.
Friday, July 2nd 1999, my dad brought home a “Deals On Wheels” classified and showed me the add for this old junker

The next day we went to check it out and my dad bought it as an early 14th birthday gift.

Here’s the original jacking instructions I found when cleaning out the trunk and an owner’s manual with service certificates.


Can’t remember where these were, but I have a stack of every inspection slip from 1960 up through maybe 1991. I also remember it had a local college parking pass from ‘92 or 3, so that may have been the last time it was driven regularly. Here’s the first 2 inspection slips from ‘60. The first was done at Lawrence Motors ( later Lawrence Dodge ) which was a long standing dealership in the Richmond area. I think it’s a Kia dealer now


About a year after I got the car, we had a good plan in place about the direction of the build and finally pulled the engine and trans. My uncle was down that day to help out, it was a fun day. You’ll see some other disassembly had been done at this point. If you look by the tool box you can see the Corvair buckets in their original red color.


Here are the 1960 VA plates in the original wax wrapper that I got shortly after the above shown activity. The paper separating layer has some helpful instructions. Pretty neat.


Then after 2 fairly painless trips ( why is it always more than 1 trip??? ) to the DMV, I now have my very own street legal hot rod!


Big thanks to my family and good friends who contributed in any way. Thanks a lot to all you friends on the HAMB who have had a look at this project and given me a like or kind words of encouragement. If anyone else stumbles upon this, especially younger folk, never give up on your first project. We all need to step away sometimes or put family first, but always keep pushing through.

Here’s me a lifetime ago on day one and me today 23 years later



I’ll be out cruising this thing in the evenings and weekends. If you’re local and see me out, give me a honk or stop at chat. Thanks again everyone. See ya round…

 

I am deeply impressed and highly envious !
That is one KICK ASS MOPAR !
I love everything about it !
Don't ever sell it, its a magnificent machine!
Bravo, well done !
"Perfection cannot be rushed"
"Everything old, is new again"

 

Fabulous progress! Love what you've done in the interior. Keep pushing forward.......Don.

 

Thank you so much! I don’t know if I’d call it perfect, but I certainly did my best. My kid already claimed dibs on this when I’m gone, so I’ll never sell it.

 

You’ve been a big encouragement the past couple years Don. Thanks a lot for that. This weekend is supposed to be real nice, time to get out and enjoy driving this!

 

Ok, here’s a bit of an update. Last Thursday I made my first short drive to get some gas as I had planned to drive it to work the next day. It was fun, but it wasn’t great. Don was right when he said, “keep pushing forward.” As I expected, this old rod has some bugs to work out and they showed up pretty early. That 1st test drive lasted a little under 10 miles and here’s the issues that I noticed.
1. A pretty terrible vibration (felt like driveline).
2. I had to give it a bit more gas than what I’m used to when letting the clutch out in 1st from a stop. Wasn’t sure if this was a clutch adjustment issue or what…
3. The speedo is doin the bouncy thing, if it even moves at all.
4. The alternator isn’t charging.

So here’s my findings and solutions thus far.
1. This was of course a combination of a few things. The 1970s vibration dampener started pushing the rubber out and was shaking bad enough to make the front crank seal seep oil.

Luckily, I already had the upgrade. It’s a super nice fluid-damper from Fisher Industries. It’s real beefy. Not sure why I didn’t just use it in the first place, but oh well it’s on there now.

As you can see, it sits out a good bit further the original. I dug through my junk stash and came up with a nice old aluminum spacer that puts the water pump pulley right in line. Then I had to cut, rework, and weld up the alternator bracket to move that forward enough to line up also.

2. I described the clutch condition to a coworker and he said it sounds like the brake pedal pushrod is binding. You need to check that pushrod and make sure it has a small bit of play. Sure enough, Friday evening the master cylinder piston was still pushed in 1/8th” from the night before. Back to the junk stash, I found a good stiff spring, drilled a hole in the pedal, and hooked up the return spring. Problem solved.

3. I knew the cable was spinning smoothly and the odometer was still recording mileage so something is going on with the speedo head. I have 2 spare speedometers so I’ve got plenty of parts to work with. My best looking spare was also doing the bouncy thing HAHAHA. I haven’t shared before, but I have a slight obsession with gauges and I love to tinker. After a couple hours of careful tweaking and bench testing I have the backup working smoothly and ready to go in.

4. I thought maybe the harmonic balancer being shot wouldn’t allow the alternator to spin enough to charge the battery. I was wrong about that. I’ll have to pop it back off and get it tested. If that’s not it I’m guessing it’s the voltage regulator.

So yesterday I got it all back together, fired it up, and it still had a noticeable vibration. Just poking around I found the header down pipe resting firmly against the torsion bar. Last time I was resealing the header I left the dang exhaust hanger loose . So I got all that back where it was supposed to be and that definitely made a difference ha. I took it on a short test drive this morning and with the other issues out of the way, I could feel A LOT of tire vibration. Obviously this is from years of sitting in different garages etc so it’s got some serious flat spots. Other than that it drove really nice and I’m enjoying working through these bugs. Sorry for the shortage of pics. I know we like pictures here.

 

I've had several early 60s Mopars. Great cars and yours is the bomb.
And I love your positive attitude. Some guys would be bummed about the test drive issues but you just dug in and fixed them. Great job!
Wishing you many miles and many smiles behind the wheel. Terry

 

Hey thanks alot @ratfink56 ! This old car and I have that kind of relationship ha. I fix/accomplish 1 thing, it shows me I did it wrong and need to try again. Eventually I’ll get past these bugs and it’ll be just regular maintenance and tuning.

As stated, I went and had the alternator tested at an OLD shop near my work and it was working. So they ordered me a good quality ( hopefully) regulator. While I was waiting on the regulator, I went back and rechecked all the wiring. In my attempt to make the Painless wiring work with a factory Mopar regulator I added an extra switched power and connected it with the negative field wire. Yikes! Definitely fried the 1st regulator, but at least I didn’t hurt anything else. So I removed the extra switched power and also made a new ground directly to the frame. It’s not real attractive without my polished cover, but I’ll worry about that later. The alternator is also supposed to ground through the bracket, but just in case I ran a ground from the stud on the back to the head. Here’s a couple pics..


Continuing on… I got in another test drive last week and things were going… better, still not great. It drove fairly smooth other than all the flat spots on the tires. I took one of my favorite backroads over to my folks’ place which entails plenty of curves and a couple stretches to wind it out. For a big@$$ boat it actually hangs a corner pretty well and that slant pulls strong. About 2 miles from my parents house it started having different vibrations and the clutch was acting funny. So I eased it the rest of the way there and tried making some tweaks to the clutch linkage. It drove a little better, but needed some more, so I left it there for the night. The next day after work, I went back over and made a few more careful adjustments and it just didn’t make a huge difference. Basically the car would shake hard when the clutch was released in neutral, but pressing the clutch back in would help it smooth out. Good enough to get it back home. My dad and I kicked around a bunch of different possible causes. I talked to a coworker who drag raced and has been building transmissions for decades. He knew the issue almost immediately after telling him the symptoms. And here’s where I confess my short coming, I forgot the flippin pilot bushing. So today out came the trans…


Not the end of the world. Got the trans out in 2 hrs flat. The back of the crank looks good and so does the input shaft. Again, I’ve only got a couple short drives on this, so I’m not too worried. I can get the bushing local which I know will work just fine, BUT if anyone knows of a pilot bearing that’ll work instead shoot me a message. I doubt I’ll get this back together as quickly with all the festivities of the month, but I’m glad to be heading in the right direction.

Til the next time…

 

Well I know this isn’t all that exciting, but it helps to document. Got back under there today and pulled all the clutch linkage and bell housing. Then popped the clutch off. Flywheel, both sides of the clutch disc, and pressure plate all look fine so I think I’m in the clear.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! Hope you all had some good quality time with family and friends. Got the new pilot bushing in and clutch back on. Once the temperature gets back to 35 or 40, I’ll throw the trans back in.
My Christmas parts haul…

 

Happy New Year folks! Today was about is nice a day to be working outside as I could ask for and a I had a day off. At the end of last week I got the trans loosely sitting back in the car. Today my old man came over to help me get everything lined up and slid back in place. I’ve had this trans in and out a few times during the build, but for some reason this car likes to put up a fight. What should’ve taken a couple hours took the most of the day. We had to dig deep and use every trick, but we prevailed and finally got it back together. Now I’ve got to put back all the little pieces, clutch linkage, etc. No pics of the progress, but you know, it’s all painted black on the bottom and the trans is grey. Woohoo.

Also went ahead and fixed the bouncy speedo needle. Swapped in the good internals from a spare. While I was putting the dash back together I swapped in my DeSoto headlight and wiper knobs. They have stars that match the speedo. Put two more delete plugs in place of the map light knob and cigarette lighter. No more options for this ride.


So hopefully a couple more weeks of spare time will have this boat cruising around again.
Seeya

 

All good things going on here! There’s a big indoor car show close to here every February. I jumped in on an open invite from The Heaps CC to have breakfast and cruise up to the show. They even arranged preferred parking for us outside the show. I’ve never tried to meet a deadline with this car, but I busted my ass the past 2 weeks sorting out the clutch linkage and working through more of my wiring mishaps.

Hard work and determination finally paid off and I actually made the breakfast, albeit a bit late ( sorry fellas). My dad rode up with me and we had an awesome time. People seemed to get a kick out of the car, which is cool. I was too busy having fun to take more pics, but here’s one parked up with the group.

Thanks again to The Heaps for having me and my old man along for the fun!

As it goes with this car, I was fighting with an oil leak, even the day of the show. It wasn’t terrible, but definitely not just a drip. When I got home I pulled the plugs to check out the mixture thus far. Not too bad except check out 3&6.

#3 has a good bit of oil on it because it was barely past finger-tight. That allowed oil to shoot all out past the spark plug tube. What did I learn here? Always torque slant6 spark plugs to 30 ft lbs so the tubes will properly seal. #6 wasn’t firing at all. Turned out the plug wire wouldn’t clip on no matter what I did. No biggie, made up a new wire today. I guess from here on out it’s just more tuning, tweaking, and test drives. There are other plans for this car in the future, but no need to make changes at this point. If I do any cool trips or find cool photo ops I’ll be back with updates. Thanks everybody for all the kind words and encouragement over the past couple years! I really appreciate it! Seeya round
Tommy

 

Glad you're back on the road Tommy! Did the pilot bushing take care of the vibration?

 

Yup sure did, like night and day! Smooth sailing now

 

...I see you parked next to the fine '53 Coupe of @ClutchDumpinDan ...

 

Oh yea man, that thing is a smooooth operator! Beautiful car