Altered E-Go Suspension, Trans Am Cooler & Overkill Wiring

Today on muscle car, the bird gets its big back altered ego gets some spring in its step.

How to refurbish painted trim and we're kicking up some dust in a 70 Plymouth.

Hey guys, welcome to Muscle car. We've got a year one tribute trans am up in the rack so we can install the cooler lines for a TCI Street Fighter 4060 E. Once we get all this installed, get to put our grill back together.

Last time we got the AC and heater lines run, installed the steering column, linkage and wheel and

fed out some steel radiator hoses.

Next, we're keeping it cool, more power and a higher stull converter equals more heat and that heat's got to go somewhere. This transmission cooler will take the hot fluid from the 460 E, cool it down and send it home.

These tabs make it easy to mount right onto your radiator or in our case, the AC condenser, I'm trimming off the leftovers to make sure the radiator doesn't get damaged.

Got a show filled in the gap between the tranny and the cooler with this complete line kit

just like the AC kit we installed last week. It comes with a single length of line that you have to cut down yourself.

These are time proven compression style fittings. They're pretty idiot proof. Just press the frow in between the inner hose and outer jacket.

Insert the male end of the fitting

and tighten the compression nut.

Be careful. They will poke you.

Ok. Wrench.

And I did it myself

now that everything behind the bubber is in place, the nose can be assembled, starting with the bumper brackets. We're leaving everything loose for now because once all the parts are on, we'll probably have some adjusting to do.

It helps to have an assembly manual for this job. What seems simple when you pull it apart? It turns into a huge puzzle. When you're putting it back together,

we're using a combination of new and refurbished parts. We hit up year one for all the new stuff, including the chrome bumper and grills.

After hours of fitting pieces together, the chin spoiler completes the puzzle.

Well, the birds finally got its beak. Now we use a lot of new parts to get the trans and grill looking this good. But if you're just looking to spiff up, you ride for a few bucks, check this out,

build on a budget muscle car projects that save you time and money.

Now you may recognize this third gen Camaro from horsepower. They tweaked it for more power and gas mileage but they haven't done a whole lot for its looks, but there's a lot of opportunities for do it yourself or to approve its appearance without breaking the bank like repairing this rusty window trim.

Now, this is a common problem but it's easy to fix. It can be done in under a day for less than 30 bucks in materials.

And your supply list for this little project is gonna be pretty short. Basically, what you need is a masking tape,

some sandpaper,

a scotch bright,

some primer

and some trim black

before you grab the sandpaper, grab the tape and protect your glass. The idea here is to get the tape as close to the trim as possible without covering any of it up.

I'm using masking paper, but you can use just about whatever you got laying around, doubled up newspaper, aluminum foil or those old bridal magazines. Your wife has stashed in your garage.

Don't forget to protect any exposed painted surfaces like the back edge of the room.

There's no need to strip it to bare metal, but I am hitting it with some 400 grip to sand off the surface rust and feather out the peeling original finish.

The scotch bright comes next to knock off any leftover shine and promote adhesion.

I'm using a finer gold one instead of the coarser red which would leave scratches. You can see through the new finish

if you got a compressor, blowing the dust off is easy. If not

just wipe it down with a T

rag,

you're almost ready to break out the rattle can. So it's time to do some more masking now, depending on the temperature, even spray paint can travel pretty far

and it's a lot easier to mask the car than it is to clean it up later. So you really can't overdo it here.

There's a lot of primers to choose from out there and most aren't designed to stick to bare metal, but etching primers are so read the label before you drop any green's

trim. Black is perfect for this job and holds up pretty well. You could use a flat enamel spray but the finish won't look quite like

the original

after the primer is dried for about 20 minutes or so. The first coat can be dusted on. Now, don't try to lay it on in one coat. You'll end up with a squishy mess that will take forever to dry.

I'm using four coats here waiting five minutes in between each layer and before I master

and there you go, the window trim looks like brand new and we still have enough materials left over to do the whole rest of the car. I know nowadays, not many of us have a lot of extra cash to be throwing around. So keep watching muscle car this season because we're gonna be showing you a lot more tips and tricks that'll keep you in the garage and keep you out of the poorhouse

after the break. How not to install leaf spring shackles?

Oh, that's not good.

Hey, we're back and I just got back from o'reilly picking up the last few pieces. We need to get the suspension mounted up underneath. Altered ego here. Now, Eden Detroit springs hooked us up with these custom made springs using the measurements that we gave them. So that means it's time to get the come back on all four.

You got what we need for the mounts, man, you get the rest. I got

it. Cool, build something. Let's do it.

We're mounting the springs loosely to the axle first using U bolts and some shock mounts left over from the Firebird. We won't weld the spring pads to the axle until the chassis mock up is almost complete.

We're rolling the axle of the car so we can figure out where it needs to sit for the tires to clear. Once we get it in the right spot, we'll know where the front perches need to be

with original style springs. So you can use original mouse. But these springs like so many other parts on the Comet, they're not exactly original. So we're gonna

our own pers

Brent, starting with a chunk of four by four square stock. We had to sneak down to extreme to find

it's almost the right width for the springs. But like everything else on this ride, some modifications are in order these need to be strong enough to hold a lot of power, but light enough to not add a ton of weight.

Once the right width is achieved, the piece is boxed in for strength and to give us something to weld to the frame rail

with the front purchase built, they can be tacked into place to check tire clearance. One last time,

it's like an inch and a half.

Yeah,

that's about right. We're within about a 32nd of an inch.

Actually, it's not even an eighth of an inch. It's probably closer to the factory ever had it

in like

this.

Ok. So

we got 83 of the center eyelet, 83

skid nuts,

welder up man

with everything checked and triple checked. The springs are pulled out and the pockets are finished welded in place.

Once they have a chance to cool, the assembly is bolted back in so we can lay out the rear perches.

We want them angled slightly forward. So when the springs compress, the shack will swing back without binding,

adding sleeves will keep the rails from collapsing when we cinch down the bolts. So Mat Co's whole saw and a drill with a fresh battery will give us the clearance we need

with everything in place. We can check our work.

Hey, lower down, rick

down the wind.

Hey, whoa.

It's sitting already.

Oh, that's not good. Uh, uh,

uh,

apparently we should have had the weight on the springs when we measure for the shackles. Huh.

Yeah. Oops. What do you think?

Probably should just take that shackle loose and

just go ahead and lower it on down

and we'll see how far it goes. We'll just

pop into the hole with so many four link coil over cars roaming around the shop. Well, it's easy to forget little details about setting up leaf spring cars, like having weight on them to set up the rear shackles.

We'll end up with an extra set of holes. But since these are sleeve, we're not really losing any strength in the frame rails. So it's all good.

Here's a little tip that can save you some frustration

if you can't get bushings to slide in place. A shot of WD 40 works wonders.

Yeah. It's

like it's gonna work.

Oh D that's perfect.

Oh, yeah. Right on, man. Beautiful good job.

Hey, it'd be nice to get the front end underneath this thing. That'd be cool, man. I think we got bigger fish, bro. Yeah,

you're right. Hey, don't you guys go anywhere because we got a lot more muscle car to throw at you right after the break

up. Next. A Plymouth that leaves the competition in the dust.

Today's flashback. A 1970 Plymouth duster 340.

Back in 1969 the Barracuda was headed to the larger E body platform leaving behind its roots in the valiant a body.

This left Plymouth without a compact muscle car to compete against Chevy and Ford with a tiny retooling budget in just six weeks, they designed a brand new value

two

threw in a 340 wedge V8

and Voila.

The duster 340 was born.

It was unleashed in 1970

quickly left the competition in the,

the designers of Plymouth kept the frame in front end of the valiant, but that was about it.

They added a sleek fast back roof with large sea pillars and rounded out the rear with wider fenders.

This gave the car a muscular Coke bottle shape that was hugely popular.

If you ordered the 340 package, you got

racing stripes,

dual tail pipes,

a hearst shifter rally gauges and a full slate of wild colors to choose from.

This one is called in violet.

Oh, yeah. Don't forget the obligatory cartoon character. A

friendly little dust devil. Just a reminder. The car is what was passing him by

for owner Don Cartwright. This duster is a dream come true.

When I was a kid, I had a next door neighbor that had a blue 344 speed duster

and uh I just always wanted one.

He got his wish when he found this numbers matching beauty in 2005. Me and my son did the total rest of registration sale built the engine transmission rear end,

all the mechanicals. Basically every nut bolt

has been totally replaced or restored on car dusters came with several engine choices including two slant sixes and a 318 V8.

But the real powerhouse was the 340.

It pumped out 275 horses of 5000 RPM.

Weighing in at just over 3000 pounds meant this car got about one horsepower per 11 pounds.

The duster 340 could go from 0 to 60 in just 6.2 seconds and do the quarter mile in the mid 14 s.

That power was matched underneath with heavy duty suspension,

high rate, front torsion bars and a front anti sway bar. All riding on E 70 by 14 poly glass tires.

It's easy to pick out a 70 duster. This was the only year they included the valiant badging because the next year

the duster would become its own distinct line.

The duster was hugely successful because it packed in so much bang for the buck

at only $2500. It was nearly 500 less than the similarly equipped Chevy Nova. 350

over 200,000 dusters were sold in 1970

double. The number of valiants sold the previous year of those nearly 25,000 were optioned with a 340 package.

The duster continued to thrive in the 70 s new package

were added with cutesy names like feather duster, gold duster and space duster.

But the duster 340 was the most powerful version ever built

and Don Cartwright, he still enjoys kicking up the dust in his pristine purple ply

coming up the highs and lows of project overkill.

I like the in the weed stance, man. They look great like this.

Hey, we're back for their 70 challenger project overkill. Now, last week we showed you all the plumbing on the brakes and the fuel system.

Well, this week, Keith Manny is back from year one to give us the lowdown on the air ride install and give us some advice on wiring harnesses. How you doing, man? Welcome back. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

We've got a couple of reproduction wiring harnesses here that we used in project overkill. And one of the cool things about a reproduction wiring harness is the fact that not only is all the wiring new

but all the colors are correct. The connectors are correct. That means you can use a factory wiring diagram, you know where to put all this stuff. Awesome. So it makes it plug and play, basically makes it plug and play. And so what we've used on project overkill, reproduction and harnesses everywhere we could, which is virtually the entire car

and then custom touches like the air ride, set up the stereo that's on top of the factory stuff. Got you very cool. And this has uh extra circuits in it that you can plug other things into, right, an exact duplicate of the original. So the the extra circuits that you had in the original car you'll have in these. Awesome, let's take a look at it. Ok.

Well, Linda Hood here, I see. We have a nice mix of, uh, OEM and aftermarket. Yeah, it's really kind of a microcosm of the whole car. Really. If you think about it,

you'll see back here we've got an electronic ignition conversion. We're using Mopar performances, electronic ignition system on this thing. And one of the really cool things about our repro harnesses, they come already set up for that electronic ignition. So that's not piggyback that's actually wired into the system. It's wired in, right? It's part of the engine harness. Now

over here on this side, you'll see some of the custom stuff. These are main feed wires for the stereo and for the air ride system.

So it's pretty neat. You know, we've got a good mix of OEM resto look and, and some custom high rod stuff. Very cool. Very cool. Let's check out the inside.

If you look inside the car here, man, you can see that we've got the dash harness in place. We've got the, the stereo wiring in place, although we don't have the stereo quite yet.

We've got the uh controller for the air ride in place. You look down on the floor and you see the, the main power feed, the controller

wiring for the air ride system and the airlines for the air ride system. Speaking of air ride, skinny guys here are air ride expert.

You wanna show us how this thing works.

Coolest thing about this system, man is you can program three different ride heights or control each wheel individually. Very cool. Let's see it in action. All right.

It looks like we got the yard working good.

I like the in the weed stamps, man. They look great like this. Sweet. Well, hey, we're out of time for it today, but don't worry because you're gonna see a lot more project overkill coming up later on in the season because we still have to finish the interior,

the stereo, the exhaust. We still got a lot more work to do

and then we get to take this thing out. Listen to that big old Hammy Whale. Well, hey, thanks a lot for coming down, man. I really appreciate you

guys

for now. We're out of here.