1966 Plymouth Fury build thread.

[tRustyK5]

Worst kept secret ever, but last year while attending Max02's (Dean) birthday with 76Zimmer (Dave) we were over at Dean's neighbors place and Dave and I zero'd in on a car at the back of Dean's neighbors barn/shop.



It's a 66 Fury III VIP. It had no engine, but was originally a 318 poly car. As you can see in the pic it came with a Mopar Big Block which at first sight appears to be a mid 70 smogger 400. Dave and I dug around and cleaned off the ID pad and found it was actually a 383. Found the casting date, and this engine was cast in either July or Dec 1968. Near as i can tell later I am about 80% sure this was a 383 Magnum. As I got it it had been glommed with mid 70's parts.

Dean's neighbor told me it was a package deal, and the other car was a convertible. We had a quick look and to me it's a parts car, but I'll take it. Turns out it's a 65.

Anyways, Dave and I have a better look at the VIP and it's pretty intact, and the floors are solid. Rear quarters and trunk area has some rust, as well as some in the rockers but overall a pretty solid car. The interior is complete, but had been occupied by cats so it may need fire.

The goal here is a three parter. Part one is get the engine in the car, get the car roadworthy, plated and insured, as quickly as possible. I'm trying hard not to be too "Roadkill", but also trying real hard not to succumb to the might as wells and blow the whole car apart.

Once it's on the road I want to build a stroker for it, the goal is to hopefully one day attend Drag Week and not be embarrassed by the ET's.

The third goal is boost of some sort.

 

[tRustyK5]

Here is a better pic of the 383 and you can see all the smogger crap on it including my least favorite carb of all time, the Carter Thermo-turd.



Also got a pic of the interior, which was pretty "Furry".



I spent a few hours cleaning that mess, and it's slighty less horrible now. It will need much more cleaning, and I'm hoping time helps dull the smell. If not, it's all coming out. We'll see I guess. Bonus points for the AM radio still being there!

 

[Bent77]

Oh and congrats on the Fall 2019 MPS win!

 

[tRustyK5]

So Dean's neighbor was kind enough to store the car over last winter while I got my shit sorted out, sold some stuff and made some room here for the new project. I was finally ready to go pick it up this past May...but I hate renting or borrowing car trailers. I decided to pull the trigger on my very own car trailer instead.



I added a 3500 lb hand crank boat winch to it and headed down to Dean's neighbor's place in early June.

After copious amounts of beer and BS we finally got it loaded, and having had way too much beer I stayed the night at Deans place. lol





You can kinda see the 383/727 in the bed of the truck. I was a little worried with no engine I wouldn't have enough tongue weight, but once it was on the trailer it looked like it was gonna be fine...and it pulled like a dream the 100 miles home.

 

[tRustyK5]

Oh and congrats on the Fall 2019 MPS win!

Woohoo!! Thanks man, I chose the right weekend to get busy then!

 

[max 02]

Good start on the build thread....

 

[tRustyK5]

I initially thought a quick "tidy" of the 383, a kit for the carb and try and get it to fire...but I have my suspicious side and decided a little disassembly wouldn't hurt any. The first thing I did was remove the intake and I was pleasantly surprised. Someone changed the oil frequently and regularly by the looks of things inside. Pretty much zero sludge!



I removed the huge exhaust manifolds and a bunch of the other crap and quickly started to fill up the floor space in my garage.



That's where I ran into my first snag, the part where I congratulated myself for taking it apart...



Number 8 cylinder, the exhaust port is full of kitty kibble. The mice had been busy! I was amused...for about 15 seconds. What are the odds the exhaust valve is open on #8? Apparently 100%. Shit. I guess the heads are coming off. This engine should have had the somewhat legendary 906 castings, but had the less desirable closed chamber 516 casting heads with smaller valves. I knew at this point someone had been in the engine already. So I pulled the 516 heads off knowing I had a cylinder full of kitty kibble.

That's when I found this:



Lots of cleaning needed, but the cylinders actually look pretty good...and then there was this surprise:





Grabbed my calipers, 4.25" bore. Standard bore, one piston with valve reliefs. I rolled it over a few times and that cylinder looks 100% A-OK. Not a mark, but apparently it needed a piston at some point. My best guess is some detonation and that piston ended up with a hole. There is a bit of pitting on the others, so it has 'pinged' in it's life. I don't think it was something that went through the engine or there would have been damage to the cylinder wall. We're gonna run it, but we're not going to waste a bunch of time/money etc by throwing a new cam or anything in it now.



Stay tuned!

 

[Bent77]

 

[tRustyK5]

I'll skip the scrubby pics...suffice it to say it was many hours of dirty greasy work. The garage floor got even more "cast offs" and shit waiting in the queue for cleaning.

Around this time I was browsing kijiji.ca here and ran across a guy selling a 440. I looked at the pics and read the ad. Not a complete engine, but I plan on a stroker in the future and a 440 block is a pretty good foundation. This one has been tanked, align honed, bored .020" over, came with new cast pistons, new rod bearings, new mains, and a set of the vaunted 906 heads freshly gone through, 3 angle, dual valve springs. I gave $1000 for it. The downside is .020" is a stupid size to overbore to, oddball even. I'll have to have it bored to 030" at least to utilize an off the shelf stroker kit from 440source.com.

It will need a bunch of the "smalls, the tin, etc etc. Clearly this is part of my medium term plans. Short term, the 906 heads are now going to live on the 383 like it should had to begin with.

The 440 block:



Once it was stripped down to the short block I was able to inspect the timing chain. Nylon gear, and just a touch of play...





I ordered up a Melling true double roller timing chain from RA and a full engine gasket kit. At this point I'm changing every single seal and gasket and o ring this thing has. It'll still be a junkyard 383, but it won't leak (hopefully lol)

After a ton of cleaning. I intended on painting this engine the Mopar Turquoise...but I cannot for the life of me find it anywhere here. So, after a few weeks I finally gave in and bought some Hemi Orange. I added some new freeze plugs, massaged a few small dents out of the oil pan and finally it's starting to look like something.





More later...like probably tomorrow.

 

[max 02]

Glad you ended up with the car Rene!

I actually gave some thought to wanting it for myself at one point, mostly because i new Dan wouldn’t do anything with it and it’s kind of all there.
My thoughts for it are identical to what you are doing with it. Minus the stroker engine. That part will very cool BTW!
Look’n good! Can’t wait to see the pics I already seen last night!

Funny you telling the story about too much beer at Dans! Well that’s par for the course over there!? Lmao!

 

[tRustyK5]

Target for the stroker is 625-650 hp. Shouldn't be hard with 512 cid I don't think and should still be tame enough for street use. I'd need a crank for the 440 I bought anyways, and the pistons it came with are cast flat tops...definitely not interested in those. So the stroker kit just makes sense. That's a medium term thing though, parts and labor right now are focused on getting the car roadworthy, plated and insured.

 

[76zimmer]

Great to see this thread Rene...
That was another funnernhell weekend w my internet friends in Alberta!

 

[tRustyK5]

At this point the 906 heads from the 440 I bought went on, and much more cleaning, inspecting etc went into each step. I think I'm paranoid about missing some weird damage somewhere that will come back and bite me later.



Big block Mopar is new to me, so I am really enjoying seeing the differences in how they go together versus the GM stuff I've messed with in the past. In this pic close to the balancer you can see a machined boss for the 383's externally mounted oil pump. The oil pump itself I wanted to have a good look at, and during cleaning I found a broken bolt on it's top cover. Sounds worse than it is and I was able to remove the broken stub easily and find another bolt to replace it. It fully dis-assembled it and cleaned it to check for any scoring, or damage or signs anything nasty had gone through it. For as dirty as it was on the outside, it was very clean and damage free on the inside. On it went...and this is where i discovered that in the full engine gasket kit there is no gasket included for the oil pump. Sigh.



With the engine upright I started trying to sort out the front dress, pulley's , alt, power steering etc. With all the 70's stuff the engine had, none of it was gonna work with the car. Even the water pump housing had the lower outlet on the wrong side. I ended up ordering a bunch more stuff from Rock Auto and 440 Source. One of the larger parts orders so far, and it's only just begun. haha!



New parts are always good!

 

[Bent77]

Sexy!!

 

[tRustyK5]

I figure a stock 383 would do well with a Performer RPM dual plane and a decent carb. I have the intake on order, and the carb can wait for now but will be sourced locally. In the meantime, as much to amuse myself as well as help keep crap out of the engine I cleaned the factory cast iron intake and hit it with a few coats of razzle dazzle in a can. I also began trial fitting the front dress.

The intake and exhaust manifolds are "place holders" and are not gasketed or torqued. All the brakets from 440 Source were perfect, as was the new aluminum water pump housing. I boned myself thinking I already had the water pump pulley, so I deleted it from my order at 440 source. Then when I was fitting everything I found the pulley I have is the wrong offset and diameter to work with everything else. Now I have to wait a little and try and lump that single pulley in with a few other items I will need at a later date. The struggle is real...lol

I knew I didn't want to run manifolds for the exhaust. The big issue is there are only a couple of companies that list headers for the "C" body, and none of them make cheap headers. I did some reading, and then read some more, and came across a few people that were running headers on a similar car that were meant for the "B" body (Charger, Coronet, Belverdere etc) or "E" body (Challenger, Cuda)

I figured I'd roll the dice and I ordered a pair of inexpensive Summit headers for a "B/"E" body.



Cool!

 

[76zimmer]

Looking good Rene!

 

[tRustyK5]

Whilst browsing the 440 Source online catalog, I ran across an SFI flex plate. At $40 I couldn't see why I wouldn't go with that over the sheet tin stocker...this is the stock one:



SFI beef. This thing is burly, has to be double the thickness and full diameter. Also drilled for various convertors.



Next up was getting the 727 cleaned up. My plan was bolt them all together and drop it into the car as a unit.

The car came with a 727, but no engine. The 383 had a 727 attached. After al the cleaning and scrubbing I've done I have to admit I chose which trans I was going to use by which one needed less cleaning.

They both had normal fluid color, no smell of burnt anything...they're probably about the same condition. I fully drained the cleaner one, dropped the pan and filter and found nothing but a slight film on the bottom of the pan which is normal. More paint, because why not? It's just nicer to work on later...

This was the one that I chose not to use. Id probably still be cleaning it...

The other one after a clean and paint...





I have a new pan gasket and trans filter on order...but it isn't a rush.

 

[tRustyK5]

The pace of the build might get kinda slow here and there. I'm going to try to keep posting whatever I'm working on at regular intervals, but the reality is the pace is going to be limited to how quickly I can afford to buy parts. Even though "it comes with a 383 and 727 that are complete" sounded cool, the reality is aside from the main parts I need to buy literally everything...and I'm just a regular joe, aka working stiff.

Anyways, with all this cleaned and painted stuff it needed to go together finally in preparation for being dropped into the car.





I work probably 75% of the available Saturday's, sometimes 7 or 8 in a row. It's not too bad, I start early and get home by 10 am or so, grab a few hours of shut-eye, then out to the garage for what I've been waiting for all week.

Stabbin time!



I was hoping to leave the car on stands...but didn't have enough height. I had to drop the car down, and then choke up on the engine tilter as much as I could. Even doing all that I had maybe an inch of clearance over the rad support.





Ahhh, victory. I wonder if the headers fit?



After a bit of fiddling down near the linkage area, and dropping the kickdown stuff out of the way I managed to get it into position pretty easy. Clears everything and I thought this was going to be the problem side.

The passenger side, is no bueno. I started taking a more critical look at stuff and soon discovered Ma Mopar solved a clearance problem at the steering box by offsetting the engine 2" towards the passenger side of the car.

Even if I could get the header in position, the collector would land right on top of the torsion bar. At this point I cracked a beer and said some naughty words, then recruited a friend.





I have a bunch of "J" bend header tubes on order now. Guess we're gonna have to hand build the passenger header so it fits, and lands the collector outboard of the torsion bar. Stay tuned! This will be my first foray into header fockery...

 

[Bent77]

You’re gonna have fun playing fock Fock with the headers

 

[tRustyK5]

Yeah...looking forward to it, and dreading it at the same time. The thing is there is't any reason to bolt much else up until it's sorted...