My Eleanor: the 1974 Dart

By David Belau

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In the movie Gone in 60 Seconds, the main character has a car that always gives him trouble when he tries to steal it. Its name is Eleanor. My Eleanor is the 1974 Dodge Dart. While I don’t make a habit of stealing cars, the 1974 Dart has given me plenty of trouble.

My first experience with a 1974 Dodge Dart was ten years ago. She came to me with knife stab holes in the hood where a ritual sacrifice had taken place. The previous owner had left some pictures of head wounds in the trunk. The car would die randomly and start randomly. This should have been a sign to me.

When my friend Art called me and said, “Hey I found a 1974 Dart for $100! Wanna help fix it up?” I should have warned him. I should have known better. After helping him, I now know without a doubt that all 1974 Darts are possessed.

Continue reading after the jump!

The car didn’t run–the previous owner told us the fuel line was plugged. We got it home and tried to get it to run. First, we hooked up a separate fuel line to the carb to bypass the “plugged” line. The car fired off and ran just fine. Then it started spraying fuel out of the “plugged” line. We hooked up the fuel line and drove the car around the block. I looked at Art and said, “You want to buy a lottery ticket? You just bought a Dart for $100 that’s just fine.” It seemed really suspicious that the previous owner would sell the car so cheap. Even with the flesh-eating bacteria that inhabited the interior (that’s another story). We threw in some bucket seats out of an Intrepid and thought we were home free.

That’s when we found the black ski mask in the trunk. We theorized that the car was used in a robbery–but with only 63.2 raging horsepower, it was much too slow for that. It could have been used for abductions. “It’s got a two body trunk,” Art said as he climbed in. “More bodies if they’re children.” He gestured at the ample room in the trunk. A cold shiver ran up my spine.  “Do you think the police are looking for this car?”

“We’d better get it to your place and throw a paint job on it,” I said.

We waited until after dark to drive it. I wore the ski mask so that no one could identify me if the police were looking for the car. We stopped to get gas and I hopped out of the car to check the lug nuts. I grabbed the tire iron out of the trunk and walked towards the left rear tire where the station attendant was pumping the gas. He screamed like a girl when he saw me. I raised the tire iron above my head as a joke. “If you scream like that again, I’ll give you a whack, bro!” He ran away, still screaming like a girl. “I guess the gas is free tonight!” I said to Art, who was sitting in the car, sweating. I felt hungry, so I went into the mini-mart and grabbed a bag of candy. The person behind the counter looked at me in terror. “How much for the candy?” I asked.

“Take it, take anything you want!” she said.

“Alright, sweet!” I said. I went back out to the car and tossed the tire iron and the candy in the trunk. I slammed it shut before realizing that I’d put the candy in there accidentally. I decided to leave it since Art had the keys to the trunk.

We pulled out of the gas station with a full tank. A few miles down the road the car died. I heard deep, dark laughter coming from under the hood. That’s when reality struck. This car wasn’t cheap because it was used in a felony…it was cheap because it was possessed. I jumped out and started pushing. After a bit, I got tired and saw some kids on the sidewalk.

“Hey kids! Help me push!” They just stared at me. I decided to sweeten the deal, “I’ve got candy in the trunk!” I watched a woman come out of the house there and usher the kids inside. She was giving me dirty looks. I shook my head and kept pushing.

In the coming week, we went through the entire fuel system. The reason being that the fuel filter would not fill up as the car ran. We bent up new steel line from the fuel pump back to the tank. We cleaned out the tank and replaced the fuel pump, but the car still wasn’t getting enough fuel.

At this point, I picked up the phone book to find a priest to exorcise this car. I was dialing when Art said, “Let’s just start eliminating sections of the system until we find the problem.”

The next day, Art worked on the car while I was at my day job. He sent me an email that said he thought he found the problem. He had eliminated the fuel tank from the equation and drove the car around with no problems. I was wondering how he had done this when I came home and found this:

If you can’t tell, he hooked a rubber line to the rear of the hardline and ran it inside the car into a gas can in the back seat. Whiskey Tango for sure, but the car ran fine. Basically, this pointed to a hole in the pickup tube in the tank that was allowing air to enter the line. This was the only part of the fuel system that we did not replace. We dropped the tank again and pulled the old pickup tube out. This must have been where the evil spirits were since it produced a Nazis opening the ark moment. We kept our eyes tightly shut so they wouldn’t affect our own fuel systems. After installing a new pickup tube and a quick tune, the car purred like a newly exorcised kitten.

It was frustrating for sure, but in the end I think Art got a good car for the money. So what’s next for Art’s Dart? Would you believe junkyard EFI? Art is an electronics wizard by night and is pretty serious about the swap. You’ll read about it here first.