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alright forum, you and me are ganna get this valiant back to running s

12K views 41 replies 8 participants last post by  Ellobo 
#1 ·
so my valiant is in a state of moderate disrepair, and has been for a few months, but now i'm about to come out of school and now have the time and money to make this baby roll. but before we get fixing heres a quick recap of how i got here:

alright, about two years ago my mom was looking to buy my first car and stumbled upon a guy who drove this sweet old 1969 plymouth valiant signet 200 (225 slant 6, white, 4 door, almost all original). we bought it from them right away and it served us well through my senior year, i learned how to change oil and do some very basic stuff in it, wooed the ladies with it. it ran super well through the winters and all the way up til about 6 months ago.

the first thing that happened was the little connector to the horn melted a little bit one summer day and made it so that the horn would sound whenever some internal steering wheel business would touch when i turned the wheel. but we just unplugged the horn and chugged on.

later my mom noticed the muffler was hanging a little bit low, and naturally, as a teenager, did nothing about, figuring the problem would solve itself. of course the hanger had broken and eventually the muffler split, so i just reattached what i could and drove it super loud. (i'm not proud of that).

eventually, the alternator went out, and, foolishly, i replaced it myself. i mounted and reattached it right, but the new alternator was missing what i later found out to be the grounding plug, i got the car running again noticed the alternator output was jumping really high on the reader and again, nievely, i just ignored it. and basically, right around when i went more than 30 miles an hour i blew the distributor and again the car was down.

at this point i was just ganna take it to a fix it shop. but my mom (a school teacher) said one of her student's dad was a mechanic and they would hook us up with cheap work. "what could go wrong?" i asked myself. "alot" answered the mechanic.

to shorten what happened with the mechanic, i was there the first day and he installed a grounding plug on the alternator, which was cool. but then nothing happened the second through sixtieth or so days, despite my attempts to help or at least inquire what was going on. it got really tension-us, and then one day the car was back at my house! and it ran! but when i went to but in my spare key, i noticed he had replaced the tumbler because (i later found out), he lost the key, so he just replaced it, i immediately looked under the seat where the key was, angry.

i drove it around again and fried the new distributor he put in there, cause he didn't fix the source of the problem.


so you've read this far, thank you. that brings us up to about a few weeks ago. i replace the old distributor and the voltage regulator, but that doesn't seem to be regulating the alternator output at all.


now for my questions in what i think is descending order of importance:

also, the distributor clamp he used is for the V8 version of the car, so i need to know which clamp would work for this distributor:
http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/sku/Plymouth/Valiant/A1_Cardone/Distributor/1969/A1303610.html
first and foremost. you tell me which and i'll buy it.

since i replace the old distributor and the voltage regulator,what else needs to be replaced so that i can actually regulate that voltage, or at least not have the output spike when i accelerate.

i saw the guy who creates replica exhausts for the old mopars, does anyone have any opinions about them? personal experience? things i should know about it?

do you have anything i can clarify? i'll post some pictures of it tomorrow, and thanks for any help in advance, also for reading all of this, it was a long post.
 
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Discussion starter · #5 ·
http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/details/QQPlymouthQQValiantQQStandardQQVoltage_RegulatorQQ19701976QQSIVR125.html?apwcid=P1135867996W43b3f85c7ab9e&apwid3Z2p15d
this product is what you guys mean by the voltage regulator right? how can i not wire that right? i just unplugged the old one and plugged this one in.

i'll get a voltmeter and see what the output looks like and see if its the alternator or just the measuring dial, and then i'll check some of the groundings i can see i guess.

alright, i'm ganna get this repair manual too give me refrence:
http://www.amazon.com/Dodge-Plymouth-Valiant-Haynes-Manuals/dp/1850102112/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334711071&sr=1-8

would one of these clamps do the trick?
http://www.drivewire.com/vehicle/1969-plymouth-valiant/distributor-clamp/

and @ valiant 67: the clamp is just not doing anything at all, the distributor just is hanging out inside the hole.
 
Discussion starter · #7 ·
well, alright, i guess a previous owner had the regulator converted, because that's the one i have in the car right now.

so next question would be: how would i tell if its been converted to an electronic ignition?

and the distributor is fully seated in the hole, but the plate used for the previous one or at least the one the guy left in there doesn't fit onto the distributor at all.

that's what all the clamp links were about
 
Discussion starter · #11 ·
here's a link to a picture of my distributor:
http://s1112.photobucket.com/albums/k497/ellobobro/?action=view&current=IMG_0412.jpg

so i guess its the original breaker points ignition.

and i guess i got the plate/clamp for it confused because the currently on there had very high clamp like qualities. regardless! i need a new one and i'm hesitant to drop $30 on something without someone telling me it'll probably work.

also: what does this do?
http://s1112.photobucket.com/albums/k497/ellobobro/?action=view&current=IMG_0409.jpg

probably the worst possible question to ask, but its not hooked up to anything nor does anything look like it could hook up to that. so....

and i'm about to order that service manual after this. yay!
 
Discussion starter · #16 ·
ok, if someone could trace the distributor plate and maybe give me an estimation on the height of it, my friend says he can fabricate it for me, which would be super amazing and save a lot of time.

And i have finals next week so i'm not ganna get a lot of progress done on mega shark til after then, but everything on this forum has been incredibly helpful, thanks!
 
Discussion starter · #19 ·
man... alright, i've just never been to a junk yard so its different and scary to me. i'll get my dad to go with me and stuff. classic fathers son bonding stuff
 
Discussion starter · #24 ·
so far i've been to 4 junk yards, but i haven't been able to find anything close to a slant six. any thing before 1980 i find is usual a junk ford car. anyone know any good yards in denver?
 
Discussion starter · #29 ·
yeah, so i've checked out 5 junk yards or so and i'm really just having trouble finding anything older than 1990 too. there's a very old post on craigslist where a guy was parting out most of a slant six, but i haven't heard back from him.

so basically mega shark sits and waits, covered in my back yard. waiting for a miracle.

also junk yards are a whole lot of fun. me and my sister bonded on that alot, which was super fun. thanks for the recommendation.
 
Discussion starter · #38 ·
http://www.streetperformance.com/part/mr-gasket/distributor-hold-down-clamp/394405-2503.html

so i took a little break on the car just cause i got frustrated and started working on my mopeds til they went to stuff (spent $60 on a piece of trash carb) and now i'm back on the valiant.

i'm ganna buy that clamp in that link up there to try it out, as finding an original one is way to hard. any junkyard i contacted online just spammed me, and this is the closest i can find to something that might work so i'm just ganna go for it,
 
Discussion starter · #42 ·
contacted all those places, hoping everything works out.

found the local club, but they meet on first fridays when i'm usually busy, i'm ganna try and make it though.
 
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