Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2022 in Mopar Action

STREET CAR OR RACECAR … call it what you will, but this one-of-a-kind build owned and operated by Paul Swigart is all totally outrageous. By skating really fast, we caught up with this guy at a red light during the Mopar Nats to get the lowdown on this gnarly ride. “I’ve been street racing motor cars since 1984,” says Paul. He pauses for a minute to collect his thoughts, which are strewn about inside the car. “That all started when I turned 16 and was looking for a car—a Chevelle or a Camaro. I didn’t even know what a Dodge Challenger was. A friend of mine took me to his cousin’s house where she was selling a Challenger. It had been parked for years and wore a T/A hood with…

IT STARTED WITH A PHONE CALL. Larry Weiner of the Mr. Norm’s connection was building a ’68 B-body and was looking for a Rallye dash frame from a ’68 Charger to replace the one he had, which featured that long speedo that they used in taxicabs. He found one on eBay located in a boneyard in New Mexico. The guy sent photos and it looked perfect. There were no nasty surprises when the frame was delivered a week later. Larry calls to thank the guy for his honesty, and the guy says that if Larry is into Mopars, he has something that Larry might be interested in. “Like what?” “I’ve got this ’74 Challenger Rallye sitting here. It’s a complete rust-free car. I’m going to part it out and cut…

WHAT?? You don’t drive a truck? How’re you gonna haul all that stuff you wanna haul and still have room for the kids? Sure, it’s nice to load up everything to set off over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house you go. But maybe you wanna go over the woods and through the river to granny’s because you’re that kinda guy. Try that with your Hellcat Chally. Never mind that granny is just two exits down the freeway, you wanna take the scenic route, so you’ll need a serious 4-by. OK, we hear you. We know what new trucks cost these days—even used ones—even broken ones. We’d even be lucky to come up with the scratch for a down payment on a used ’91 Dodge Dynasty with…

THE SOUNDS of big-inch, normally-aspirated, gas-powered race engines at the launch of a 1/8-mile match race contest is pretty intense. RPMs rise to crescendo levels that rattle the windows. The launch comes from a tight final gear that momentarily pulls the RPM down, yanks the nose of the car upward, and the rear tires then jettison it forward. Pro Stock drag racing’s former popularity was based on this dramatic formula, and it still works. Jeff Rudisill and Gena Ellis host one of the more unique exhibitions of this past one day a year, when they honor the memory of the late Don Carlton, the factory Chrysler driver who lost his life in a 1977 testing accident. A number of real and tribute Mopars and other vintage Pro Stock cars always…

“THE ’60 PLYMOUTHS have the tallest fins of any American production car. I’ve loved them since I saw my first one back in ’59!” For fans of the Forward Look models, 1960 did prove to the apex of the Virgil Exner styling era. The decade’s changeover year also found the Chrysler Corp. floundering due to executive malfeasance and changing tastes. The following two model seasons, with cars designed by committee after Exner’s efforts were rejected, would be a struggle from a sales standpoint. However, for fin fan and racer Dave Schultz, this car, a 1960 Fury Suburban station wagon, became the perfect basis for his current racecar. Known on the “the Old Hippie” on social media, Dave is also one of us, a long-time Mopar guy who, as mentioned, recalls…

CUSTOMIZING has been a way of life for as long as people have owned machines. You can customize your car, your chopper, your lawn mower. You can customize your dogs or racehorses with selective breeding. Some guys with money even customize their wives, but I digress. When we saw this monster on display, we thought to ourselves, “now, that’s something you don’t see every day!” Truth be told, it’s not something anybody had seen before builder Paul Terlosky dreamed it up. Our story begins with Paul, who runs a custom shop he calls House of Mouse, located in Macedonia, Ohio. We didn’t ask about the mice, as the truck was taking up all our attention. The other part of our story begins with people who can’t drive. That was how…

LOOK SHARP, FEEL SHARP, BE SHARP ANYBODY FROM GILLETTE, WYOMING, should know that jingle for Gillette Blue Blades by heart. Jeff Winemiller may or may not be the exception, as we didn’t bother to find out. Jeff picked up this ’68 GTX in Spanish Fly… er, Fork, Utah, in March 2016. He says it is a matching numbers piece but needed work. He replaced both rear quarters, both front floor pans, trunk floor, and right-side wheelhouse among other body panels. The Plymouth had been blessed with 7 coats of paint. Jeff didn’t indicate what color(s), but he said the Geetex was in “bad shape” (also the usual state of the MA staff). Jeff’s dad—a bodyman and painter—helped Jeff along with the resto. Jeff said that he rebuilt the front end…

PEOPLE WHO KNOW ME and have chatted with me at length sometimes come away with the sense I might be a little conspiratorial. As Steven Stills once crooned, “There’s something happenin’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear...” Actually, conspiracy is not really the best word. In speaking with his global Warroom audience, Steven K. Ban-non wryly notes almost every day that there are no conspiracies, and there are no coincidences. So, yeah, that’s the ticket, I just don’t buy the idea of coincidences, that’s all. Anyhow, as I write this, there is a push by the esteemed leaders of Beltway USA to spend trillions of dollars on a big government program called Build Back Better, and in the true spirit of bipartisanship, I wanted to show my approval for…

IT WAS LATE 1968 , and Dodge was…losing. People loved the new 1968 Charger styling, for sure. But get one up over 170 MPH and two things happened. The inset grille was a giant air scoop, lifting the nose, and air rising from the flying buttress inset rear window wanted to pull the differential up. If you wanted brown underwear, even as a he-man NASCAR hero, this was the way to do it. So Dodge boss Bob McCurry told his guys to figure something out. They did. They put in a ’68 Coronet grille and a flush rear window and, voila, problem solved. They called it a Charger 500. Except the Torino Talladega and Cyclone Spoiler showed up soon after, and FoMoCo won at Daytona in 1969. McCurry was really…

SOME TECH ARTICLES take many months to plan and execute. Project cars, which can encompass years’ worth of tech, tweaking, testing, and road trips, can obviously take even longer. There’s another category, though, which pops up occasionally: Tech that just sort of happens. What you’re about to delve into falls into that latter category. Mopar Action’s first project car, Beeper, is a ’72 Road Runner that looks dead stock under the hood but said hood actually conceals a moderately tweaked 451 stroker 400. With the massive RV2 “Thumper” cast iron Airtemp V-twin air conditioning compressor, and no attempt at weight reduction, it’s never going to be a serious track car. Still, down through the decades it has proven to be a reliable, fun, good handling cruiser. The paint, sprayed on…

REMEMBER THE 1960S “BRITISH INVASION”? Probably started with the Beatles, but it also morphed into British sports cars—Triumph, MG, Lotus, and a whole bunch more. Most of them were comically underpowered, running four-cylinder motors where all fifty horsepower had been snatched out of a tractor. Oh, there were a couple of quality departures (that dude Shelby built some modifieds), but generally, Sixties British sports cars meant looking good but moving with the speed of your eggplant ex-mother-in-law, and with an even worse electrical system. Except for Jensen. Jensen didn’t give a good rat’s whisker: they devised a sports/Grand Touring ride that they christened the “Interceptor,” and just went ahead and did it. And the “it” was taking this beautiful bunch of sheetmetal, then giving a transatlantic call to none other…

NO RACER SHOWS UP at Indy with the idea they will leave before the final round. 2021 marked the 20th running of the SS/AH Dodge Hemi Challenge, traditionally held on the Friday of the NHRA Dodge SRT U.S. Nationals during Labor Day weekend at Indianapolis. The class is reserved only for the 1968-release Hemi Darts and Barracudas and was even part of this year’s television package. For Steve Comella, preparation was a big part of getting ready for that evening final of the legendary “race within a race.” “Yeah, I would drive over to the shop at night, put on my suit and helmet. and sit in the car,” Steve laughed in the winner’s circle as he stood next to the Comella family’s 1968 Super Stock Barracuda. “Sometimes I would…

LIGHTER & QUICKER SEE COV. 3! 20:1 MANUAL STEERING BOX MOPARS WITH MANUAL STEERING of the 1960s and early 1970s came with a 24:1 ratio (standard equipment) or the close ratio 16:1 steering box. PST is now giving you the best of both worlds by designing a steering box with a 20:1 ratio. This box requires less rotation of the steering wheel from lock-to-lock as seen with the 24:1 and less effort to turn unlike the 16:1 ratio, offering the advantages of both boxes. For racing, PST’s new production 20:1 steering box gives weight savings and added horsepower by eliminating the power steering box and belt-driven pump from the front of the car. PST’s manual 20:1 Mopar box is available for A, B, and E body Mopars like the Dart,…

THE IDIOT BOX/TV and the automotive world are two places that have yet to reach common ground. You guys and gals walking into a shop daily know exactly what I am talking about. Dealerships? No, you guys are excluded since there are way too many rules, regulations, and customers to contend with. Also, you guys are so boring that no dealership, with the exception of Mr. Norm, is interesting enough to have its own show. Crec? Get to the point… Ok, here goes. How many shows out there are car-related? The answer? Too many! How many are actually relatable? None. A ton of these storylines are the same stuff. A crew hunts down a car, finds a car, fixes it, and flips it for big money, with some minor-to-overplayed issues…

Wanna submit a resto question? Please follow the instructions on page 10. SHIVVY SCHMUCKS Dear Mr. Ehrenberg–Please help clearing the muddy waters of fact concerning the first factory engine (production issue) producing one horsepower per cubic inch. Chevy claims the ’Vette and some Ford guys say the T-bird. David Colburn Ontario, CA Dave–Shivvy and Phord guys are both smoking their underwear; no news there. Yes, the waters may be a bit muddy, but it’s Mopar versus Mopar. The 1956 Chrysler 300B’s optional engine produced 355 horsepower (at a then-stunning 5,200 RPM) out of 354 cubic inches. It wasn’t until 1957 that the ’Vette’s crude mechanically fuel injected optional 283 supposedly produced 1 HP per cubic inch. Within a year, however, Chrysler was producing Bendix multi-point electronic fuel injected big blocks—the…

ANYTHING CAPABLE of slowing down Las Vegas is a big deal, and when the entire SEMA trade show was actually canceled due to the Wuhan lab subversion last year, we knew things had gotten profoundly serious. A year later, the Las Vegas Convention Center flung its doors wide open for the first time since 2020, as over 100,000 people showed up for the 2021 SEMA Show. This marked the first full capacity event on its calendar, and SEMA’s parts and party extravaganza returned with a vengeance for the city’s first big gathering. So the MA faithful could take a peek at the latest and greatest, we sent Dan Gallo out to Nevada on a red-eye flight, as the Brunts were back in quarantine again for traveling out of state against…

“HEY, I know what that is! What is it?” A statement like this can sometimes be heard uttered when amidst the crowds at a car show. Even we have learned the hard way to “never say never.” When Ed Jinks, Jr. bid in an online auction on this Challenger with a broken engine, the price was right, but there were a lot of questions. The car was a standard 5.7L model with an aftermarket hood, a swapped-over supercharged 392” Hemi with operating issues, and a funky-looking blower. “I wanted to get it running again, and meanwhile was looking for information about it. I thought the blower was something Mopar had done.” This compact supercharger tucked nicely underhood with a trademark-style M logo milled into the housing. It was actually a…

SO HERE I AM, hangin’ out at Muscle Cars at the Strip basking in the 106 deg. Sunshine, trying to get some color on my pale white bod when who should roll by in a 2019 Challenger Hellcat Redeye but my old bud, Freddy Krueger a/k/a Mopar Freddy. Haven’t seen him in ages. Used to play stickball with him and the boys over on Elm Street back in the day. That was before he got a little…let’s just say, weird. “Yo, Freddy! How’s it going? Nice wheels, what’s the deal?” Freddy tells me how he’s been crashing with Kathy and Terry Rezac for a while. “I’m really popular at Halloween, and they send me to the door whenever those vacuum cleaner salesmen and Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking.” He goes on…

A FEW—VERY FEW—Mopars were equipped with adjustable hydraulic valvetrains. Shown is a W-1 340 (T/AAAR), a similar setup was used on 1970–’71 Street Hemis. Adjustment is similar to solids, since when adjusting a rocker, the cam must be on the base circle. The difference: You adjust for zero lash, then tighten ½ to ¾ turn more. This can be tricky, especially finding the zero-lash starting point, since the lifters are not “solid.” The surest bet: Remove the intake manifold and observe the lifter plunger cap. When it just begins to move (depressed), that’s your zero-lash point, continue the extra ½ to ¾ turn. Remember, just as with solids, the cam lobe for the valve you’re adjusting must be on the base circle (see main story for more). -R.E.…

COULD THIS CAR have saved Plymouth? We think so, if the price of gas gets back up to over $4/gallon. And, even if it doesn’t, we predict Mo’fans will be beating dealers’ doors down for this nifty little car. Built in secret during the DaimlerChrysler period under the code name Schmadt Kar (but rebadged after the split to the more catchy “Short Sport”), this little honey seats two and has tons of luggage room (relative to its size, of course). The plan was not only to build the car on the line, but to have conversion centers (new car dealers, muffler shops etc), where you could drive in with your big gas-guzzling minivan or SUV, and, in a matter of a couple of hours, drive off in a stylish, svelte…