As some of you know, last spring I bought this 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger as a project car and it was a bit of a project (none of the lights worked - no taillights, signal lights, headlights, etc. The passenger door would not open. It would not idle, etc).
This winter I broke my cardinal rule which said, "Garages are for the vehicles that you drive!" (in other words - every night our good vehicles went in there instead of storing a bunch of junk while our vehicles sat outside) and I put the Swinger inside so that (maybe) I could get some work done on it over the winter.
Well - this past week I finally got to it. For one thing, I put some different tires on it. My brother had a set of 14 inch tires that he gave me so I spent one whole afternoon taking tires off rims and replacing them. Then I decided to tackle the interior. I tore out all the seats. I took out the carpet and underlay (ick!). I pulled down the headliner (and an entire mouse nest of poop ran all over my head! You aren't working on an old car until you find a pile of mouse poop!!).
Then I decided to take a closer look at a patch that someone had done in the floor on the driver's side. It was not done well and here is what I found underneath it (or more accurately what I did not find).....
The good news - one of the previous owners left a big piece of metal in the trunk.... which I figured out was a patch panel for the hole in the floor. It still needs to have the surface rust knocked off of it, but here is what the repair patch will look like when it is in place....
So - overall - it has been a good decision to put the thing inside for the winter. Hopefully, by the spring, the holes will be patched, the other list of issues will be fixed and it will be a fun, odd, cheap daily driver.
Who wants to go for a cruise????
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