Diesel Dodge Dart

[DieselDart74]

Hello, I am new to the forum but wanted to get my vehicle known, as it is very rare and not many believe me when I tell them about it. My daily driver is a 1974 Dodge Dart Custom with the marine application of the Nissan sd33 diesel, the Chrysler Nissan diesel. I get 32 miles to the gallon and have done all the work to the vehicle. I picked it up from a local farm for $500, put w battery in it and drove it home. A few years ago I was at a tractor show and found a newspaper ad for the diesel dart from 1974. I have loved driving this car, and I have straight piped it in order to get a better sound from it, as well as replacing the carpet inside with truck bedliner for durability. Anyone else seen or heard of these?? I have also purchased two spare engines for parts just in case something were to go out in the future.

[plenzen]

Have to admit I have never heard of one of these. Would love to see more pictures of it.
You say you have a marine application 633 in this car.
All the 633 engines that were used in marine applications started out as truck motors. They were "Marinized" at Chrysler Nissan Marine dealers. I did probably 150 of them (and 433's) back in the early 70's when I worked at such a dealership in Vancouver B.C.
We used one of these engines in our 1974 ( may have been a 73) D100 Dodge pickup shop truck.
It was painfully slow as I recall and was ultimately turbocharged which did smarten it up a bit.
That being said, with all the different guys driving it, and, kinda beating it up a bit it was starting to smoke pretty bad when I left in 77.
Would love to see some more pictures of your Diesel Dart and the engine room etc.
Would really like to read the article if you could scan it and post that would be great. ( or direct us to the publication author/newspaper etc.)

You have a rare bird there to be sure.

Thanks for sharing and look forward to reading and seeing more about it

P

[DieselDart74]

A few more photos of the rig.

[DieselDart74]

And here is the ad

[Carimbo]

"Renton Dodge!" I think they're still there

[Duaneclark]

I was thinking, this must be in Australia, but the ad really looks American. Never have heard of these diesels in Darts.

[Carimbo]

Renton is on the south edge of Seattle.

[plenzen]

Hey Diesel Dart.

Was speaking to a buddy that trades, buys/sells collector cars etc.
Sent him the link to this page. He's been doing it for many years and makes a living at it.
He too had never heard tell of such a beast.
He searched his books and found nothing specific on it however did find this:

"In 1974 DODGE had a Special Order 6 cylinder in line, 1 Digit, 11 (Engine Code) This code should be “E”" Strange….the books don’t indicate what the engine is…..just provides for the code. It would be interesting to see a picture of the fender tag or build sheet.


No chance you found a build sheet for it anywhere I guess. Under the back seat etc ???
Would you be willing to take a picture of the fender tag ?

He also said that back then some of the dealers started to think " Outside the box" as it were, and maybe some of them got together and had these things done someplace.
( Much the same way Yenko Camaros came to be ).

All the dealers listed in the ad are from the Seattle area so maybe that is a possibility as well.

As mentioned in the quote above I wonder if you could check to see if the 11th digit in the VIN has a E in it.?

Thanks

Paul