Mr Cuda

This is our 1970 barracuda resto mod that we’re putting a 392, 6.4 L hemi crate motor in with a TKX 5 speed manual transmission from silver sport transmission.  this is an update video to show where we’re at and what we’re working on and basically we’ve got the engine and k frame installed.  after putting the engine and there were a couple problems with the engine mounts in clearance issues with the power steering and the aft transmission mount.  We show all the tight pinch points and problem areas in this video. We also showed the AC box, the dashboard and wiring that we’re working on. Brendan also tells a couple jokes because this is supposed to be kid friendly you know. The headers we have are the Holley black heart stainless steel headers, and the engine mounts are also the black heart mounts bolted to the 392 block.  it looks like the TTI headers and mounts might have more clearance from what I see in photos, but not really sure how sturdy and reliable the rubber isolators are going to be. The stock rubber was never any good.

In this video, Brendan and I show you our wooden transmission support that we added to the engine stand, the engine mount that we had to cut a notch out of on the left side to clear the engine block, the front of the engine block that we had to grind off to clear the header, then we removed the pilot bearing for the original transmission and replaced with a TKX transmission pilot bearing, then we install the steel flywheel, the McLead performance super street, clutch assembly, and then installed the bell housing.  After this, we measure the clearance from the clutch pack to the throw out bearing and there needs to be a little bit of clearance so that there’s not always pressure riding on the clutch.  Brendan was hoping that we can make our videos a little more entertaining for the younger crowd so we try to do that in this video a little bit. Hopefully it’s not too silly. Thanks for watching a video like and subscribe and I’ll see you soon.

We’re getting closer and closer to our goal but a little hung up on welding body stiffeners from US car tool. We found a local guy named Jeff that helped us out and we installed the upper fender stiffener and lower radiator stiffener. It’s hard to keep this project moving along with everything else going on but I’m still sticking with a spring time goal even though it’s approaching quickly. After this we can lay down some paint mount the engine and start hooking up accessory wires and things like that. There is a technical aspect of this video that I wanted to share because I tried to search online for information regarding the lower radiator stiffener from USCT and I didn’t find too much info. There was a channel that I did find where they installed the aft piece and boxed in the lower radiator support on another e-body project. I found with our car the lower radiator would rub on the aft mount unless I ground a significant portion of the aft piece so we just decided to leave it off. I’m not sure if US Car Tool bought another company but it looks like they may have and since then change their kit to not include the aft piece. When I look on their website I don’t see that the aft piece included with the new kits. Anyways if you’re having an issue with this, even though I’m sure there’s not many people putting radiator support on an E body, here you go. 

We need to roll the complete engine and transmission under the car, then left it into place. We can buy a pre fabricated stand, but decided to fab up this temporary stand. Once complete we can disassemble the stand and use the wood for something else. We built up some rear supports and lowered the engine into the k Frame. There are a couple spots that need to be ground down for clearance but otherwise this seems to work well. We also mount the shifter onto the tkx transmission, check the input and output spins without the resistance and the shifter moves without binding. Next up is to remove the pilot bearing, mount the flywheel and clutch. Measure the clearance of the fingers on the clutch to throw-out bearing after the housing is mounted.

We need to roll the complete engine and transmission under the car, then left it into place. We can buy a pre fabricated stand, but decided to fab up this temporary stand. Once complete we can disassemble the stand and use the wood for something else. We built up some rear supports and lowered the engine into the k Frame. There are a couple spots that need to be ground down for clearance but otherwise this seems to work well. We also mount the shifter onto the tkx transmission, check the input and output spins without the resistance and the shifter moves without binding. Next up is to remove the pilot bearing, mount the flywheel and clutch. Measure the clearance of the fingers on the clutch to throw-out bearing after the housing is mounted.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations. In this video I cut the center floor to a conifer the tkx manual transmission. Supposedly all I need to do is cut the factory hole and the tkx will fit. We will know soon since that’s the next step. Let me know what your think about this project.

We received our new dash pad from Dash Pad Pros. I have to admit the box was sturdy but the dash was not wrapped well. I paid about $1500 for the pad and $200 shipping. If the $200 included handling I think I over paid. It looks like the pad was probably dropped or banged around in the box. There are also quite a few blemishes and the frame or steel core of the replacement dash pad is not the equal quality to what I have. I saw this company was recommended by graveyard cars on their Facebook page a few years back so thought I would give it a shot. This pad will die for now, but If I had to do it over again I’m not sure I would go with the same company. Take a look at my video and let me know what you think.

We need to get our dash ready for the new pad coming from Dash Pad Pros. In this video we remove all the nuts and small screws holding this thing together and separate the frame from the top pad. Let us know what you think!

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations. The K frame on the Cuda crossed under the front of the 392 engine when it is mounted. We will need a mid sump oil pan. In this video we have the front sump oil pan removed, install the pickup tube and all the hardware with a mod sump oil pan. B gets to try out a torque wrench for the first time.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations. The 1970 Barracuda steering column uses a rod attached to the transmission for the steering lockout. Since we have all the 1974 Cuda parts we decided to use the 1974 column in our restoration. The 1974 column uses a collar with a finger latch to actuate the lock collar. Here is a short video of the finished rebuild of our steering column. We used Cuda Cody as a reference when painting and rebuilding the column. Even though we did not use the correct paint we got it close.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations. We are beginning to amass quite a few parts for this project and this is a good time to show where we are and what those parts are. 1st. Up I want to show how frustrating restoration parts can be sometimes. This applies to any project. Replacement parts can be inferior and make your restoration hard to complete. This example is a simple part you wouldn’t put much thought into. The AC condensation drain hose is a hard part to find and like this example, many are not OEM quality. Remember to watch out for quality reviews. To catch up on our progress we take a look at the engine bay and fire wall. All the progress made in removing parts and cleaning the firewall shows. The engine bay is essentially bare less the brake lines and clean except for where the brake lines run. Under the dash, we have removed the steering column, pedals and wires below the column. So the dash will come out along with the AC heater box. Next up In this video we also show a little bit of our Dakota Digital dash. I think the fit and finish is awesome. We’ll see how the install goes and we will document that as well. The link to the dash is here: https://www.dakotadigital.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=product/product_id=1266/category_id=679/mode=prod/prd1266.htm Finally the steering columns. We have a little bit of a problem to solve. The 1970 steering column has a lockout tube that will no longer function with our new TKX transmission. What some people do is replace the column with something like the 1974 steering column that has a finger button to lock the steering vs the lockout tube. If you had the option would you keep the 1970 column but somehow rig it to remain functional. Or replace with the 1974 column we already have to keep the actual lock function as well but maybe not year correct. We already have many resto mods so I believe the 1974 column is the right choice. We have got a lot of good information from Cuda Cody so I will link his steering column videos here: https://youtu.be/GfXK2cJKrJY https://youtu.be/5GhnnUm94oA https://youtu.be/5GhnnUm94oA https://youtu.be/49L2sIR9OYc That’s all for this update, we are working on more so we’ll have more updates soon.

Thanks for checking out our channel Mr Cuda! My first car was a 1974 Cuda and now my son and I own this 1970 Barracuda that was passed down in the family. Ever since my first Mopar I have always been a Plymouth Cuda fan. From my early days I always wanted to make a resto mod type car. When the 1970 barracuda was passed down to me I was in the beginning stages of restoring the 1974 but I decided to sell the body of the car. At that time I saved a lot of the parts from the 1974 Cuda to help with this resto mod on the 1970 Barracuda. This 1970 Barracuda is a Gran Coup 318 car and sometime in the 90s the engine was swapped. It has also been well used and a road warrior that has seen its fair share of fender benders. The car has been repaired but not a perfect car. This car is a great platform for the Gen III Hemi swap and since we have so many Cuda parts to help make a transformation this will become a 1970 Cuda resto Mod. I want to document the process for myself and my son, but also share with anyone interested in these types of muscle car transformations. We just received our YearOne Mopar Rallye wheels, we want to unbox these wheels to get an idea of what they look like and see how the packaging is when delivered to us and also get an idea of how they compare to our original 14 inch steel rally wheels that came stock on our 1970 E-Body barracuda. Brendan is joining me in this video for the first time, and I hope he will continue to help me out along the way. If not that’s OK I’ll keep moving along on this project. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below hope you enjoy your video. Here is a link to where you can find some YearOne Rallye wheels for your Mopar project if you don't already know. https://www.yearone.com/Catalog/wheels/wheels/yearone-mopar-rallye-wheels

Our engine was delivered with several of the parts needed to complete this project. We purchased these parts from Roseville Moparts - Golling Chrysler of Roseville Michigan. They put together this parts kit to make it a little easier when installing the 392 into a classic Mopar. https://www.rosevillemoparts.com/ I found Roseville Moparts from an online forum https://www.e-bodies.org/ and so far everyone on this forum has been knowledgeable and helpful. Below is the parts list of everything I purchased from Roseville Moparts and shown in this video. Fuel tank - Cuda TCR8A-T Sending Unit - Stock Gauge TAN-ORG Fuel Pump GPA-4 Fuel lines and regulator EFI-Line-Kit 392 Factory Install Kit 77072454AH Headers Radiator Hose 380667 Holly Center Sump Pan Kit HLY-302-61 Motor Mounts BHS56 Power Steering Kit - Modified 64F778MOD-KIT AC KIT 64F917-KIT Fuel Rail Adapter 15118-1507 Starter (Left Side) 61R274 Alternator Kit 4801834AB-KIT 392 Engine 68303090AB Not Shown - Radiator Kit this radiator is being built

We removed the disc brakes, lower control arms, torsion bars, K frame, all the hoses and wiring from the firewall. After that we started to clean the engine bay. The engine bay is really greasy and it’s gonna take a little bit of time to get this thing ready for the TKX transmission and 392 crate. A lot of black grease comes off and drips onto the floor while cleaning, but we will get this thing done. Our engine and installation kit was picked up today so we should see that next week some time. We have also ordered year one Rallye wheels and new power steering gearbox. The Rallye wheels we purchased are the 17x9 rear and 17x8 front. I’ve seen photos of Cuda with that combo and they look good. Let’s hope they fit as well as they look. When we open the TKX transmission we will get some good video on that. Thanks for checking out or project!

This is our 1970 Barracuda my son and I are going to resto mod. We will install a 392 hemi crate motor and tkx 5 speed manual transmission. Feel free to send us comments or questions, otherwise this is just us documenting our restoration journey. Thanks for checking out or video.