Table of contents for December 2022 in Mopar Action

Call of the wild PT CRUISER. Not exactly my cup of macchiato, but my late wife Josephine's dream car. Back when the PTs first came out, I had brought home a press pool car for a road test when I worked for Popular Mechanics, and Jo was smitten with the car. Problem was, so was the wildlife in this rural upstate New York area. Or maybe they were smitten with her. Jo's first foray into the Wild Kingdom occurred in her Honda CR-V when a large (very large) female moose wanted to join her inside the car. Moosie figured it was easier to come through the windshield rather than trying to open the passenger door with her hoof. The moose ended up as someone's road kill dinner while the Honda,…

B-Body K-Member Variations STOPPING THE C Rick– Recently I picked up a '73 Fury III. The brake booster is leaking badly, and I would just as soon prefer to do away with it. Did these cars ever come with non-power-assist brakes? Is there any interchangeability in master cylinders and pushrods from the other body styles that I could use on this car? Kevin Clickner Demotte, IN Kev– Yes, they were available with manual brakes in the early years and will bolt on to your '73. They used a unique pushrod, 2409978 (see photo, left, but one of the adjustable ones commonly seen these days lately will do just fine. Yep, the standard B-body master bolts right up. K GAMES Hi Rick– What is the difference between the '70 B-body K-frame and…

Distributor cap terminals—brass vs. aluminum. DRUM ROLL PLEASE Rick– My 1971 Dodge Charger (318) has wornout Kelsey Hayes KH87087-3 (10 x 2½ʺ) finned rear drums with 8.25ʺ rear axle). I can only find 1973 Dodge Dart non-finned drums that share a common denominator with '71–'74 B-bodies P/N 3580-553, yet Raybestos has a finned drum #2963R that fits '73–'76 Dodge Dart and also is compatible with Chrysler p/n 4049661. Would these fit or did the 1975 Charger/Fury/Cordoba 10 x 2½ʺ drum with 8.25ʺ rear axle change dramatically with different backing plates or axle flange depth? Frank Janicek Pensacola, FL Jack, yes, they will slide right on and are a worthwhile upgrade. Go for it! DEUCES WILD Hi Rick– I just read your response to readers James and Cooper in the August…

TEARS & GEARS DEPT “Oh, where, oh, where has my Challenger gone, oh, where, oh, where can it be?…” MEET THE CHMIELEWSKI'S—Zac and Marilla. Married as teenagers, they quickly adopted Mopars into their family. First was an '05 Hemi Magnum R/T. A year later they bought their first house, which put a financial squeeze on their car payments, so the Magnum was replaced with a well-used 300C which unfortunately was less than reliable. In 2010, back when Zac was still in high school, he saw a purple Challenger with white stripes on a car lot. It became his dream car. So, in 2013, when Dodge brought back the Plum Crazy Challenger, Zac sold the 300C to come up with a down payment on his Challenger R/T Classic dream at a…

'DOBA 'DOBA DOO DEPT COVID: What a huge impact it had on our lives—and Mopar activities. If you were with us back then, in the fall of 2018, we drove a slammed-together 440-6 1970 Plymouth Road Runner from NY to San Fran, with only a leaky (40-year-old) power steering pressure hose causing a minor hiccup (see page 45 for the article index). Yours truly has driven the US coast-to-coast at least 25 times, starting in approx 1967. About half of those trips were made while competing in the One Lap of America, sponsored back then by Car & Driver Magazine. 100% of those trips were in Muscle-era Mopars. Since the Beeper3 trip in 2018, we had began planning another cross-country flog, but the Kung Flu kept interrupting. Then, about a…

3GHEMIS. No question they have been the mainstay of Chrysler's performance cars since their first appearance (5.7L) in the 2003 Dodge pickups. Their predecessor, the 360 Magnum, was actually quite good, but was never installed in a passenger car. With a more HP-oriented intake manifold, it would have been one of the '90s best engines, as we have proven in one project car (Savvy Savoy) and one project pickup (Scat Dak). But that was then, 25 years ago. Today, with roughly LA-engine overall cylinder block dimensions (including the bolt pattern on the back of the block), the 3G Hemi mill is an easy and popular swap into B, E, and even C-bodies. Yet A-bodies, the affordable, svelte, goodhandling 1967–'76 variety, have been a bit tougher. The exhaust (headers) is tight,…

THE YEAR 1970 was the start of a new decade and heralded a lot of changes. For many, the new vehicle offerings were almost bewildering. E-bodies, wing cars, Hemis, and Six-Packs were all there at Ma Mopar's place, and add in all those Brand-X beasts like the LS6, 455 W-30 and SCJ429, and everyone only got a slice of the overall buyer pie. Then if Johnny Law or your friendly State Farm agent showed up, things got tougher. So the car seen here is not super common. Only about 18,000 performance models of the 1970 Coronet were built, and this would be the final year a musclecar was based on this particular Dodge design (or that the model would even be offered as a two-door). Ohio's Mark Obenour was smitten…

THE END OF THE 1970s means a lot of different things. Saturday Night Fever and Donna Summer. The Warriors and Zeppelin's final studio album. Cookie cutter Camaros, the Lil’ Red Express and, yes, the Plymouth Volare. The successor of Ma Mopar's beloved A-body model line, the F-body Volare and sister Dodge Aspen became the brand's last-ditch effort at domestic mid-size production until the dark days of Chrysler's bankruptcy, when it was superseded by the new front wheel drive K-platform for 1981. For Tony DeNoble, the F-Troop members have just been part of the family all these years. Now a seasoned citizen, Tony's first encounter with these Mopes had been back just after his high school years, with a '76 model bought in 1977 and used as family transportation until being…

FUN 'FLITE FACTS THERE'S LITTLE QUESTION that Chrysler had the best automatic transmission system available during the musclecar period. The heavy-duty version of their big Model A-727 Torqueflite could handle the tremendous torque of a Street Hemi engine, with neck-snapping shifts up to 6500 RPM without a whimper for hundreds of brutal street and strip bashes. Internal modifications included 4-pinion planetaries, extra clutch discs, high line pressure and stronger shaft splines. Also, did you know that every Street Hemi automatic was factory-equipped with a large radiator type transmission oil cooler positioned in front of the regular radiator? Transmission oil temps had to be controlled to around 240 degrees F. at all times to stand up in this tough environment. Another point that is not generally known is that Street Hemis…

Last Minute Details THIS COLUMN IS LATE. Actually, not the sort of late that gets you in trouble, but simply outside-the-comfort-zone late that sometimes makes more grey hair show up. Magazines run on press-time deadlines, and we keep to a pretty tight schedule here to make sure our designer, John Flannery, can start the herculean task of making our jigsaw puzzle of parts fit into 100 pages an issue. My deadline to get everything over to him is only 24 hours away, and the crazy summer work and travel pushed me to wait until the last minute to get this thing done, over to Cliff for a final OK, to John, and eventually into the format you're reading here. Hey, it's not like I'm the only one dealing with this…

I STUMBLED on a great old YouTube video explaining and showcasing the best of Chrysler's engineering advances just prior to World War II. Amazingly, they were analyzing even atomic changes in metals, aerodynamics. Check it out at tinyurl.com/chryslerengineering. -R.E.…

What Happened to the Black Max Mayflowers? Untangling the tangled web of some 1964 Plymouth Factory Lightweights HAVE YOU EVER GONE UP into the attic to retrieve your fishing gear you parked from the previous year only to find that every rod and reel has had their lines tangled into a mess that looks like your spaghetti dinner? That's what I came across when trying to unwind the history of the thirteen 1964 Plymouth Sedans that were painted Ebony with a Red interior. Indeed, a good friend of mine has a 1964 factory lightweight Plymouth. When he purchased the car in the early 1990s, he was told it was a very famous racer's old racecar. After I got to know him, together we began to take a closer look at…

TIM WELLBORN was up in the Motor Trend channel's broadcasting booth with commentators John Kraman and Scott Hoke on May 23rd as lot F111 rolled forward. Back in early 2015, Wellborn had presented the world with its first-ever opportunity to publicly purchase the Hemipowered Charger Daytona he owned. At Mecum Kissimmee that day, the car had sold via an agent to actor David Spade for a huge $990,000. Today, at Dana Mecum's 2022 Indy Classic, the next opportunity to buy a comparable example of this model was being offered. This particular car is an example that Wellborn notably refers to as an “elite musclecar,” meaning not just rare but with the correct optioning, condition, and provenance to set a record price. Within the first 30 seconds, Wellborn's record price was…

PRIOR TO THIS CORDOBA RUN, our most recent transcon trip had us driving west in a 1970 440-6 Super Track Pack Road Runner, built in record time from a shell, which we covered in macro detail in our Dec. 2018–Dec. 2020 issues. The car ran, literally, like a quartz watch and was a total pleasure. 1962–'72 B-bodies were fantastic cars one and all, from a 225 Slant to a Street Hemi, you can't go wrong. As you'll find out, this trip was not as pleasurable… The Beeper3 Trip Remembered (print index)…

FOR MUCH of our 35-plus year existence, we have had a current project car. The first was project Beeper, a 1972 Road Runner (above) which appeared in the mid-'90s, and still pops up here and there in some kind of component testing capacity. Clearly the most famous Mopar Action project was the reader-named Green Brick, a stripper 1969 Valiant 100 that went from being a Slant-Six telephone company foreman's car into arguably the best-known A-body on the planet, primarily through our entries, with usually stunning results, in the One Lap of America. The car (and us) ran at least a dozen times, usually winning the vintage American class, and frequently finishing in the top 10 overall, one time as high as second, beating factory-entered Porsches, Benzes, ’Vettes, Lamborghinis, Vipers, you…

AUSTIN COIL swung open the door of John Force Racing, walked across the lobby and dropped a letter of resignation on the receptionist's desk, ending the most productive partnership in drag racing history, two days after the pair had won their fifteenth world championship. While it was Force's fifteenth title, it was Coil's seventeenth. Before taking Force from drag racing's outhouse to its penthouse, Coil had won two championships with Frank Hawley at the wheel of the Chi-Town Hustler, a car arguably more the stuff of legend than any of the Force machines. Turn back the clock half a century from the day Coil called it quits, his story began in a two-car garage halfway down a dirt and cinder alley in metro Chicago. The Chi-Town Years In the early…

STICK IT SEE PG.69 FIRM FEEL HD LEAF SPRINGS WITH HD MOUNTING & URETHANE BUSHINGS. FIRM FEEL will help you get the level of traction you want out back thanks to their HD Track/Street 6-leaf factory arch (custom spring rate and arch available) springs. HD rear shackle kits featuring urethane bushings and HD urethane front eye bushings, and there is an adjustable front hanger with reinforcement mounting plates as well. Contact them at Firm Feel, Inc. (360) 546-3633 firmfeel.com. MONITOR IT SEE PG.5 SUMMIT RACING NOW OFFER AUTOMETER INVISION DASH INSERT FOR A-BODIES OWNERS OF 1972–76 MOPAR A-BODIES can get in on the digital gauge advances with AutoMeter's InVision Digital Dash. This direct-fit kit features a 12.3 inch LCD display with a panel-mounted joystick that lets you configure readouts for…

Claim Game YOU KNOW THE RULES, no politics but let's talk about the rising cost of… I don't know… everything! You see it on the news, online, and everywhere you go in your daily life, so you don't need a reminder from yours truly. Wanna know what else is on the rise? The value of your trusty Mopar sitting in your garage or driveway. Care to guess who won't call you in your best interest to look out for yourself and check out your policy and increase the value of it? Most likely your insurance company. I'm not saying all insurance companies are bad, but I have heard and seen way too many horror stories to not put this out there so you can protect yourself. Go to your very…

PAT TURNER SAYS that he been fooling with cars all his life. “My grandfather was a mechanic for General Motors dealerships pretty much his whole life,” says Pat. “So anytime I was around my grandfather, I was around cars.” In the '70s, Pat worked part time after school at a Chevy dealership, which allowed him to buy parts at near cost while modifying his own '57 Chevy. Pat resto-modded his ride before the term became popular, swapping an (old-school 1970s, then modern) LT-1 Chebbie motor, Muncie “rock crusher” 4-speed, and Camaro rear disc brakes into the Fifties-era Detroit iron. The Chevy was a distant memory when, in 1974, Pat bought his wife Shirley a 1968 Road Runner from the original owner for $792 plus a '65 Mustang. The couple happily…

LEGENDARY SOUTHERN ROCKERS the Allman Brothers once sang a bluesy tune called, “Dreams I'll Never See.” Molly Hatchet stepped it up a notch a decade or so later with a heavier rendering and made it a hit. About 10 years ago, this 1968 Dodge Dart GTS tribute was about to become just that for Mark Somma, after a lengthy stay in body shop prison to get the sheetmetal tuned up. Now, you can see from “them purty pho-tos” here that the car was finally done, after over a decade and a couple of stints in storage trying to find the next builder. We caught up with Mark at the Mopar Nats when he had the just-finished car on display in the HDKbacked celebrity tent, where Denny and John Laube host…

WHILE OTHER 8-year-olds were watching cartoons on TV or shooting marbles, Jayden Hawker was rebuilding alternators and starters in his father's auto repair shop. So instead of having fun, Jay was absorbing automotive smarts and picking up a few coins for his services that he stashed away. In September 2014, this '71 ’Cuda showed up on a local classifieds page in northern Utah. Jay, his dad, and his uncle (the dog took a raincheck) went to check it out on Jay's 15th birthday. The Plymouth didn't look too bad (at first). It was a roller with no motor, a TorqueFlite instead of the factory-installed 4-speed, and the original Dana under the rear. The interior was all there. The car had been hit in the front and the rails were bent…

5.7L HEMIS have been around since 2003, so the junkyards are crawling with them. But there are differences: All had 16 sparkplugs (mostly for emissions), but the early (pre-2006) engines had a weird wasted-spark ignition system. While they were perfectly reliable, there's really little sense in purchasing one of those, unless you live in Afghanistan and can find nothing else. In 2006, the modern ignition coil system was introduced, along with MDS (a cylinder deactivation system), which significantly improved fuel economy (auto, trans. only), but probably should be avoided in any swap application. The big change was 2009, when the Eagle cylinder heads, and variable valve timing appeared. The heads greatly improved HP output, and the WT cam phaser was amazing for both low-end torque and HP. So, 2009 should…

HOOTENANNY HEMI HIGHLIGHTS DEPT THEY COMES FROM ALL OVER. We are talking about the people who race in the late model Modern Street Hemi Shootout, or MSHS, series. From Texas to New York, Florida to right here in the North Carolina hills, they gather. Whether they are flat-out in the Outlaw class ripping the throats from their competitors or taking run-by-run consistency to win the 12.5 bracket, the guys (and many gals) show up for a weekend of enjoyment and racing camaraderie, then let the machines speak because the BS stops when the lights drop! (so says the series T-shirt). With MSHS founder Dan Van Horn and business partner Al Gennarelli recently buying Rockingham Dragway southeast of Charlotte, the event covered here would mark the 3rd of MSHS season's 2022…

NO-JIVE FIFTY-FIVE ERIC BROWN in North Port, Florida owns the only 1955 Hemi Plymouth Belvedere. No, it's not some owner swap but a conversion on the original 260 Polyhead V8. Here's the deal. SJ “Stoney” Denham, owner of a Plymouth-DeSoto dealership (est. 1945) in Redding, CA, ordered a '55 Belvedere 2-dr. for his wife. The car came with Plymouth's top power option, the aforesaid 260. SJ knew Chrysler had a Hemi in their lineup as the '55 DeSoto could be had with a 271-CI Hemi. SJ called the factory relentlessly requesting a Hemi for his Plymouth, which the factory wouldn't offer for that marque until 1966. After quite a while, the factory finally threw in the towel and sent SJ assembled Hemi heads plus all the factory parts required for…