Sweptline.ORG

Howdy, hooking up the trailer to the back of our (ahem) Toyota and heading N.West.
Found this for my wife: https://seattle.craigslist.org/kit/cto/6107613107.html

We're going to be there Sat. am (Leaving Thursday after work and taking our time forth & back. Google says 19 hours
one way.
Anywho, as this will be the wife's summer driver I'm unsure of a few things and would like to find some answers.

Power steering for the /6. Doable.? Anything bolt on available.? I know these are great motors, what should we
look at first when we get it home. This thing hasn't been driven much, assuming the gas tank will need cleaning as well
as the carb, gas filters, oil & other fluids (brake-tranny-rearend). If the carb's crusty what can we replace it with
that will keep the reliability thing going but maybe make a few more hp.? Will be looking for a header as well to help it exhale.
Any chance of a.c.?

Would like to add an 'unobtrusive' small back up camera that doesn't shout 'hey I'm a back up camera'. What are you kids using.?

Lastly, this thing is a whole lot of green. Breaking up the paint a little would go a long way I think. Maybe repaint the bumpers
front/rear, and do the grille and headlight surrounds/bucket things back to silver or the colors we go with on the bumpers.

I know I've seen pictures where the belt-line at the top of the doors is used as a paint color break line to change tones to something
'else'. Anyone did this to their trucks.? I'd love to see a photo if you have.

I think this is the cleanest townie I've seen in a while for this kind of dough (we've talked the owner down some, we actually reverse bartered back up some as we thought she'd come down too much (I know, I know, but wanted to be fair). It even still has the third row seat.

So honk/wave if you see a silver Tundra with Colorado plates pulling a trailer that has a rottweiler sticking his head out the window.
Looking forward to hearing from the sages on this truck, and their ideas about it.

63 Town Wagon uses same frame as the D/W Swepty pickups. You could do the conversion that has a long thread on this site.



Various threads on this section.http://sweptline.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=20

Electric power steering is an option.

Nice score. I would paint the top and the bumpers white.

It probably has 4.88 gears or something steep like that. I would get rid of the slanty and drop in a small block with an overdrive trans behind it. 225 cubes just isn't enuff.

bring a business card magnet. Stick it on every square inch of the body. Then you know where the bondo is. Just in case it has been rusted or wrecked and bondoed up.

dodgeboykim wrote:63 Town Wagon uses same frame as the D/W Swepty pickups. You could do the conversion that has a long thread on this site.



Various threads on this section.http://sweptline.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=20

Electric power steering is an option.

I searched using first /6 then slant 6 then powersteering and got 40 pages of any thread that mentioned steering.
Was trying to whittle it down somewhat. Bot of course I'll go to the brakes=steering section and poke around.

HemiJoel wrote:Nice score. I would paint the top and the bumpers white.

It probably has 4.88 gears or something steep like that. I would get rid of the slanty and drop in a small block with an overdrive trans behind it. 225 cubes just isn't enuff.

The wife insists on manual shifting, but this is non-4WD for now, so yeah maybe we could do that. She's not that big into 'power' like I am. I've still got the 360 (LA) that came out of my W200 crewcab when we built the 408 stroker. Maybe someday we'll do a mild build, will see how it goes.

Yeah, we think it's good score too. We've looked at about 25 pictures of this truck from every angle and damn it looks really original. It's spent all of it's life being garaged in a barn, so not too much patina to it, and we hope we can bring the paint back. Good call on the white bump's and roof. She's leaning towards more of a light beige, or olde English white....
And to the other poster, I've got a buddy checking it out Monday for rust-bondo-etc. Monday evening. He's done this before & was a Dodge guy before he got into Volvo's (don't ask!) so he knows what cab mounts are etc. He's bringing his awl to jab floors, and he's a body guy sooo, hoping he can tell me how paint is original and where it's been 'worked on'.

Cheers,
Cris

it's nice that your wife likes her manual transmissions. Mine is the same way. You could put a 4-speed manual overdrive from a 1970s pick up behind that 360 and drop it in, that would be a sweet combination!
I drove a slanty powered four speed Town wagon as a daily driver for a couple of years in the early eighties. When the national speed limit was 55 miles an hour it was okay. But now with everybody doing 75 to 80 on the freeway, that slant 6 will be a rolling roadblock. But that's what's in there. She can always drive it for a while as is and see how she likes it.

I have PS on my 64 D100 /6. The Federal pump is from a 73 Dart, the hoses I made with field replaceable fittings (PSC). The steering box is from CPP. Works great. I probably didn't need it but, I got it with a dropped axle I bought.

A/C shouldn't be an issue either with the hot rod kits available online. You're going to have to make a bracket for the Sanden compressor. There is a guy on slantsix site selling them but, I talked with him the other day and he isn't going to make any for a while. I'm just going to modify the RV2 bracket from the 73 motor I pulled parts from. It already has the idler pulley and the belt adjuster. My 2 cents.

HemiJoel wrote:it's nice that your wife likes her manual transmissions. Mine is the same way. You could put a 4-speed manual overdrive from a 1970s pick up behind that 360 and drop it in, that would be a sweet combination!
I drove a slanty powered four speed Town wagon as a daily driver for a couple of years in the early eighties. When the national speed limit was 55 miles an hour it was okay. But now with everybody doing 75 to 80 on the freeway, that slant 6 will be a rolling roadblock. But that's what's in there. She can always drive it for a while as is and see how she likes it.

She won't be doing any 65-75mph runs. Her commute to work is all two lane farm roads. I doubt she'll say it's slow for several months
while she gets the feel for it.
Good news that the p.s. sounds like not too big of a deal. She'll be parking in her company parking lot & in town too, so I don't want to be sleeping with 'Popeye" so thought it might be a good investment. AC will prolly be next year. Kinda curious how much power that compressor (and the whole setup) will be robbing from the /6.
Thanks fellas.

You can look at some Power Giant era photos here:
www.powerwagonadvertiser.com

Nice Town Wagon!

John