I recently bought a 68 Dart 2d sedan with a slant six. It really was owned
by a little old lady and the 57,000 miles is no lie!
The motor runs very smooth and quiet.
My question is: Is there anything that would need immidiate attention?
The car passed Virginia inspection. It has factory AC.

If it runs good then just do a basic tuneup. Change the oil, PCV valve, air filter, spark plugs, cap and rotor, and such. These things might not be bad, but it's good standard procedure on any car you get. Other than that if nothing seems wrong I see no reason to mess with it. Is the suspension good? That might need new shocks, if you're picky it probably has never had a rebuilt suspension, though most people are quite happy driving around in non-rebuilt thirty year old suspensions. Sounds like you got a great find!

-Shivadart

Don't for get the brakes. With any old car no matter how many or few miles, I would expect all the brake lines and cylinders are all full of rust and crud. The wheel cylinders will have lots of rust pits in them too. Only proper cure for that stuff is replacement. Check the brake linings too.

Don't forget the fuel filter!

Use a metal one (not glass or plastic, due to fire danger).

Check anything made of rubber, too (belts, and hoses).

Might be smart to add a can of tranny stop-leak if an auto, just as a preventative measure.

Also - check the plug wires for shorts, those don't really last very long.

Did she drive it almost daily, or did it sit a lot?

If she drove it on a regular basis, chances are that most things are OK - if she drove it less often, then chances are that certain things may need replacing.

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1963 Dodge Dart, motor by Doug Dutra, Offenhauser two carb intake, Pertronix, Clifford 6x2, Flowmaster 40's, Erson RV15/295 RDP, head work. Addco anti-sway bar, urethane suspension bushings, KYB's, racing leafs, SSBC discs. Need ZDDP? Get STP.

Thanks for the advice people, much appreciated.

The shocks are good.
I don't think it was driven much as the little old lady didn't like
the 4 wheel drum brakes with no power boost.

Next on my list is to pull the wheels and check the drums, shoes,
cylinders and the condition of the fluid.

The tune up will be next. As a matter of fact driving home from
work a couple of strange things happened. First while driving at 35mph
on a flat road I think the motor lost spark. When I tapped the gas the
motor came back. A minute later while starting off from a light the engine
"hiccupped" like it lost spark or a bad accelerator pump. After that it ran
just fine for the rest of the trip home.
Any Ideas?

Also the harder I accelerate the more valve train noise I get.
To me this could be many things. Engine needs tuning, unleaded gas,
low octane gas, valves need adjusting.
So tune up and timing check should be the place to start.

Again thanks, and any advice would be appreciated.

Hmmm....

I would check all the wires in your ignition system - sounds like you might have a short in the 12 volts that goes to the coil.

I *think* if it was a bad accel pump, it would do it on a regular basis... (You can always look in the carb with the engine off (and cool, for safety) to see if gas gets squirted in there when you operate the throttle.

Your valves probably need adjusting, it's simple and fast - do it with the engine running (.010 intake / .020 exhaust) and valve cover off. Get the idle real slow, and then with a 3/8 (as I recall) socket or wrench, adjust them until the feeler gauge slides smoothly. You'll know what I mean when you do this.

I use lead substitute (CD2). One ounce treats 10 gallons. You can get it from most "big box" retailers.

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1963 Dodge Dart, motor by Doug Dutra, Offenhauser two carb intake, Pertronix, Clifford 6x2, Flowmaster 40's, Erson RV15/295 RDP, head work. Addco anti-sway bar, urethane suspension bushings, KYB's, racing leafs, SSBC discs. Need ZDDP? Get STP.

Waste of money, time and effort.

The additives available on shelves vary widely in what they do. Some of
them use a sodium salt and claim to duplicate the buffer effect of lead.
Some of them use "MMT" (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl),
which is not a very nice substance at all and is of questionable benefit
in buffering exhaust valves. Regardless of whether or not any human-health or environmental risk is posed by MMT, the stuff causes hard red deposits on your spark plugs that will cause you to need to replace them more often. Other additives are simply octane boosters of varying effectiveness and varying side effects.

Some history and tech:

With an unhardened exhaust valve and seat, the valve and seat can micro-weld to each other if they get hot enough. Then, when the valve opens next, the metal pulls apart like taffy. This roughens the meeting surfaces, and they become quite abrasive. The pounding/turning of a valve with such "pulled" metal on it creates a nice grinding wheel effect on the seat. In addition, the roughened surfaces no longer seal against each other properly, which eventually allows still-burning combustion gases to flow through the "closed" valve, causing a blowtorch effect on the poor valve and depriving it of any prayer of a chance to cool while it's on the seat. The blowtorch effect rapidly deteriorates the seal further, snowballing the seat recession.

Lead acted as a buffer to prevent this localised welding. Very *VERY* little lead is required to prevent the localised welding and
"taffy pull apart" effect that leads to the abrasive surface which,
through incidental or positive rotation of the valve, eventually
grinds-down an unhardened seat. I'll emphasize that again: VERY LITTLE
LEAD. The remainder was in the fuel as an octane booster, that's all. It
was widely used because it was a very cheap and very effective octane
booster. The important thing is that exhaust valve and seat recession ONLY takes place when the valve gets hot enough to undergo localised welding.

Whether the valve reaches the crucial temperature depends mainly on how
the engine is loaded and run. Other factors in the margin of safety
include the size of the exhaust valve, its material, and the efficiency of
valve seat cooling in that particular engine design. If you have an old engine that is in a low-stress application (such as virtually any street-driven Slant-6), not heavily loaded or run at high RPMs, then you need have no qualms about using whichever octane grade of lead-free fuel your engine runs well on and drive it for a Loooooooonnnnnng time with nary a valve or seat problem.

When unleaded fuels were first widely introduced (which introduction was
brought about by legislation) , there was generally only one grade of
unleaded available, and the octane was *quite* low--less than that of
leaded regular. We all know that when you use a fuel of insufficient
octane, your engine pings (detonation, pinking, pinging, spark knock--call
it what you will.) This phenomenon creates *tremendous* heat in the
combustion chamber--certainly enough heat to push the exhaust valves to
the crucial temperature.

These days we have universal availability of high-octane unleaded fuels,
which obviate the insufficient-octane cause of valve heating and
subsequent localized welding.

The way to eliminate even the *possibility* of valve heating causing
localized welding and subsequent seat recession is to install hardened
exhaust valve seat inserts and exhaust valves of upgraded material
(typically 21-4N stainless instead of 21-2N) when an engine rebuild is
undertaken.

Hard seats and valves are readily available for just about anything you
want to put them in. It's a very common operation and a competent machine shop can handle it, and it adds very little to the cost of a cylinder head reconditioning job. But the main thing here is that there's absolutely no reason to tear into the engine solely to install hard seats. There is no
collateral damage from seat recession; the engine simply runs poorly once
the recession advances.

It's worth noting that on the East Coast of the US, Amoco marketed
unleaded high-octane gasoline for *decades* before the EPA decided to
"unlead" the country's fuel by regulation. That Amoco high-test unleaded
was widely regarded as quite a fine fuel indeed.

Some feel that lead-substitute additives will "give you peace of mind".
That's about all the good they'll do. They're expensive, messy to work
with, often hazardous to store, are a hassle to handle, and really
aren't necessary on a street-driven Slant.

Of greater concern to you should be the growing use of "reformulated" and
"oxygenated" fuels in many areas of the country, either year round or
seasonally. These fuels can attack and degrade some parts of your fuel
system and can cause running problems. There's a lot you can do for very
little money and effort to proof your old engine against these new fuel
formulations, including replacing rubber and plastic materials in the fuel
system with parts made of modern materials.