This page is dedicated to the resurrection of my 1986 Dodge Daytona Turbo Z C/S. I've had this car since around 1990 & I drove it my last couple of years of high school. It served as my driver from 1991ish till 1994 or so, and then was used sporadically & parked for a while awaiting an engine swap since it was blowing both water & oil out the exhaust. I swear during those years I must have gone through a half dozen turbos & lord knows how many axles. I was pretty damn rough on it. In 1997 I swapped the original engine out for one of a donor 84 Daytona & once again it served duty for a few months before the original transaxle went south. The car was then parked in a shed out back, covered up, and pretty much forgotten till June 2005. I finally had the ambition to repair it, and had recently lucked into a complete drivetrain out of an 84 New Yorker.
The Daytona, circa 1997. Looks good, eh?
The Daytona, June 2005. The original transaxle had been pulled long ago & is sitting there on the ground. So many years had passed that I'd tossed stuff underneath the car to get it out of the way. There were 3 or 4 tires, some bathroom tiles, and other misc. junk. Originally the car had a nice cover & a tarp draped across it, but the Texas sun reduced both to shreds over the years.
The Daytona finally back on all 4 wheels. I got the transaxle in there, but wasn't getting any fuel to the injectors when trying to start it. It was so tight in the shed that I had to roll it forward about 4 feet to have enough room to jack the back up to pull the fuel tank down. Turns out there was around half a tank of old gas in there which had gummed up the pump. I managed to get the pump working with the help of some B-12 chemtool cleaner, and hopefully it'll last for a while since it was an almost new pump before it was parked.
The original license plates, issued when we got the car.
A shot of the drivers side showing some of the junk that had been piled around the car. Over the years I had accumulated a pile of lumber that was stacked about 10 foot in front of the car. We moved every piece in order to get the car all the way out of the shed.
The drivers side as seen from the front. I'd started moving stuff out of the way so I could get it out of there. Before you could barely open the doors.
The passenger door has some dings in it, and the molding piece is off of it. I'd put them in the back hatch so they wouldn't get lost. I haven't got around to reinstalling them yet since I've been tinkering with other issues. The speedometer isn't working and neither is the fuel gauge. I've also got to install the tensioner & belt for the A/C compressor and charge the system.
The mightly 2.2 liter turbo! I'm actually amazed the engine still runs, since it had sat for around 8 years without being started. The only thing I did was pull the plugs and squirt some oil in there when it was first parked, and then when I began reassembling the car I pulled them again & filled the cylinders with a mixture of diesel fuel, lucas oil, and transmission fluid. I let it sit for a couple days and then rotated the engine over a couple dozen times. New plugs were installed and with the help of some starting fluid she fired right off. After I got the fuel system straightened out it was started & warmed up while I finished filling the tranny with new fluid. It smoked horribly for a couple hours, but finally after a few days it completely cleared up with no signs of anything out the exhaust.
I was curious and ran a compression test and to my surprise every cylinder was at almost 100 percent. Hopefully it'll last for a while so I can build up another engine for later on down the road.
Pulled into the back yard & hosed off just a bit to remove some of the dust and dirt. The paint on the hood is trashed, but since it's been dinged up before I think I'll just swap the hood off an 84 parts car that I have. It'll have to be resprayed, but it doesn't have any filler in it like this one does.
That's all for now. Check back for updates!
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me.