What it weighed! 1974 Duster - Dart - Valiant (Plymouth and Dodge), cars, engines, and options...

Hi, this is Dave and I'd like to play

How much did it weigh? And we're going to use a 1974 Plymouth Valiant for this one

That was the year it moved to the same wheelbase as the Dodge Dart, so it should weigh exactly

the same as a dart. The duster body was unchanged for 1974

It had a shorter wheelbase, therefore, than other valiance. And so it was the lightest of the valiance

And this is all based on information sent by Chrysler to the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association

So let's start out. Can you guess how much a Plymouth Duster weighed in 1974? It turns out it was 3,055 pounds. If you got the V8, that added exactly 100 pounds. If you got to 360 V8, that was the hot V8. Even then, it had the 340 valves and such, so it was still a heck of an engine. That adds 240 pounds over the 318, and a lot of that was probably due to the need to have a heavier

duty differential, better brakes, heavier-duty transmission, bigger shocks, and so forth. So Chrysler would change the suspension to match the output of the engine as needed

The scamp. And they weighed 3,090 pounds because they were a little bigger

And the same goes, you add the 318 V8, that's 100 pounds. There was no 360 with a scamp

That wouldn't have been a scamp. That would have been a rogue or a rebel. As for the Valiant itself, again, this is the long wheelbase version

of Valiant that previously was sold only by Dodge and that weighed 3,115 pounds with a slant six. Not very much

And the V8 again adds a hundred pounds and the 360 again was not available because they thought who would want a really fast four sedan And in 1974 that was a fair question but later on BMW and Nissan

and others would all ask the same question, and they'd find out it was a lot of people, and so we have

today's Dodge Charger Hellcat. I say today's, I know that they stopped making it

Just so you're aware, the numbers that I'm quoting are the shipping weight, not the curb weight

So this is the weight of the car, the coolant, the oil, the transmission fluid, three gallons of fuel

Curb weight had the same car, but with a full quantity of coolant, oil, and fuel

So Chrysler thought that the difference was about 80 pounds between curb weight and shipping weight

And most of the difference was gasoline. Today they only use curb weight. Also, these numbers are clearly rounded off estimates they all end in a zero or five

So you know that that's not really accurate, and they probably don't include things like air conditioning

This would be the basic version. Today, when they figure out these weights, I believe that they average all the option packages that you'll get with them

Now, I should mention that when I say the slant six weight, I don't mean the 225

I mean the 198. The original small slant six was the 170, and at some point the company said

why are we making a different block for the 170 and 225

And so they used the 225 block for both the small and the big slant six

which meant that they had a 198 and a 225. I really don't know why they decided to have two almost the same size

almost the same power slant six engines, rather than just dropping the 170 completely

but that's what they did. So the 225 weighed just four pounds more than the 198 Now let talk about some other items And here where we start to have a little more fun because in what other video do you learn that power steering added 42 pounds

Power disk brakes added 31 pounds. Those were included with the 360

and for whatever reason they only added 12 pounds for the 318 V8

probably because the 318 would have bigger drum brakes. A radio, believe it or not, added 5 pounds

The center console added 26 pounds. A fold down rear seat, which came with trunk dress-up, which added a little bit of weight, cost 58 pounds

Quick story, Al Bosley, the body engineer for the Valiant told me that the original Valiant, that is

told me that they originally wanted to have dress-up for the trunk, period

partly to hide the gasoline pipe, which goes through the trunk on its way down to the gas tank

but the management said not in the budget, so it didn't happen, and it never did end up in the budget

A sunroof added 34 pounds, sound insulation adds 41 pounds, undercoating for rust

Remember that? 40 pounds. A rear window defogger? You're talking five pounds there

A vinyl roof added six pounds. Keep in mind that the vinyl roof was glued on to the regular steel roof, so that explains that

And finally, the short-grip differential, that's a limited slip differential, GM called it posy traction, that was an extra six pounds

Now, some options varied in weight depending on which engine you had

When they weighted out these cars, they did it with the torque flight automatic

So if you looking at a six engine at the slant six car then you take off 13 pounds to go to a manual transmission That the three manual by the way not the 4 speed which you couldn get with a slant six Air conditioning added 97 pounds and that includes things like a bigger radiator with more

anti-freeze, a heavier-duty fan, and a shroud. And then the heavy-duty suspension adds 26 pounds

Oh, going back to air conditioning, you also have a bigger alternator and a bigger battery. So one of the interesting things here is that the automatic transmission actually weighed much less

than the manual transmissions, the 3-speed manual was available with either the 2 V8s as well as the slant 6

and it weighed 60 pounds more than the torque flight. If you got the heavy-duty torque flight with the 360

then you're talking about just a 6-pound difference. The 4-speed manual added 96 pounds over the basic

lightweight A-904 transmission and 33 pounds over the 727. By the way, the difference in weight you can really

see why they use the 904 transmission every time they could and not the heavy duty 727

Finally, the heavy duty suspension, 26 pounds if you got a slant six

And with the 318, that was 20 pounds extra to get the heavy duty suspension

And the 360, of course, had a heavy duty suspension standard, so it didn't add any weight at all

So those are just some weights that you don't normally hear about and some tradeoffs that you can

see when you get a different car. So if you really want to find out what your car ways, put it on a scale

But if you want to get a pretty close approximation, you can use these, add in your weight

add in the extra fluid weight to go from the shipping weight to the curb weight

and then put in whatever options you've got, and there you are. Oh, and just a reminder, if you are interested in slant sixes and other cars from this area

you might be interested in My Slant on Things, the book by Gary Platts