Indice dei contenuti per February 2021 in Mopar Action

PART OF MY JOB here at Mopar Action along with resetting the clocks for Daylight Savings Time and monitoring toilet paper usage is to figure out how to increase our magazine sales by coming up with our signature door-busting issues. This business is about keeping the corporate crew (the guys wearing shirts with buttons) smiling and rolling out the dough for the next issue. It’s really not rocket science. A lot of the big magazines have all kinds of editorial meetings and focus groups and Ouija boards to try and figure out how to stay afloat and sucker in readers at the newsstand. ’Course, that’s not necessary here, as that critical element of the magazine game is handled by a staff of one (me, if you don’t count my cat,…

YOU WILL HEAR Terry Toth’s ’64 Dodge 440 hardtop before you see it. At least we did—in the parking garage of the Downtown Grand in Las Vegas. The reverberation inside the building thanks to the DMH electric exhaust cutouts was amazing, and unlike anything a group of Asian women tourists in the garage must have experienced. The cacophony sent them scurrying to cower in a corner from the oncoming apocalypse. The intimidating appearance of Terry’s screaming red B-bomb with red-tinted windows, packing both parachute and wheelie bars, did little to assuage the female visitors’ frazzled nerves. ’Course, the fans at Mopars at the Strip took Terry’s “Shake, Rattle & Run” in stride while applauding its outlaw Super Stock flavor. Terry originally found the Dodge at a swapmeet back in 2007.…

TAKING HOME A CHAMPIONSHIP in any class requires commitment, but for Pennsylvania’s Steve Benecke, it was a two-fer in 2019, when he copped not just the 12.50 class Street honors but the King of Kings honors for getting the most points of any racer due to his racing efforts and attendance. His car is a street-driven 392 Charger with light tuning, and he has kept it consistent in 2020 as well, leading the points again in the Street division.…

WIPERS. You turn ’em on, and they wipe the glass clean. What’s to know? Short answer: Lots. First, some of us are concerned with original appearance. There’s a few ways to get that look: Original, reproduction, or NOS. Trouble is, these are consumables . Even if your car is rarely driven, the blades will harden over time, and streaks and smears are the result. Keep at it and the rubber totally rots out, then tears, then the steel blade makes contact and scratches your windshield. Not pretty. BLADES OF STEEL In the early Sixties, Mopars mostly came with Anco “Red Dot” blades, which were quite good. Then, for 1965–’66, virtually all Mopars were equipped with Anco’s “airfoil” (downforce) wiper blades, which retained the Red Dot. Later, slimline Trico blades appeared,…

IT IS SEPTEMBER 11, 2020, and Juan Segarra has just made it to the final round of the Modern Street Hemi Shootout’s 10.5 Modified category at Virginia Motorsports Park. The evening sky overhead is now darkening with possible rain, and it’s come down to his 2005 Magnum wagon and the normally-aspirated Challenger of Darla Kimak. At the green, he got a slight jump of the line and ran dead on, 10.504 to take home the event class title on what is normally a bittersweet day. “You know, my dad Carlos was working for a banking firm in the twin towers in 2001 that day, and he died helping another co-worker with asthma down the steps, so I was even wondering if I would do this event,” he noted later. “I…

TRAILER KING OUR PAL, RALPH RONZELLO, an avid Mopar Action reader, sent us this story on his latest acquisition. We’ll let him tell it in his own words while we go have coffee. “I was contacted by a friend of mine that lived in California to restore his ’65 A990 car. He offered me this ’71 ’Cuda for my labor. He would pay for parts, bodywork and paint etc. I took the deal even knowing the motor was out of the ’cuda and it was an ex-racecar. 10 years pass, and my friend asks me to sell the now-restored A990 Plymouth. During that time, I had moved from Michigan to Tryon, NC and transported the ’Cuda and all the stuff that came with it. I never did a thing with…

“SO THE PROBLEM WAS , they were mixing us in with Corvettes and the other modern car classes. Back then, they had about 300 cars overall to run in it and the new Chrysler guys would be only 20 or 30 in the class for them, so we would get just two passes, and it was like four hours between those. We were the stepchildren.” Dan VanHorn is relaying how the Modern Street Hemi Shootout series came to be. As the founder and promoter of the series, he has been front and center with 3G Hemi racing now for the past 11 years, organizing a series that today encompasses multiple racing locations around the east, Midwest and south. Back in 2007, Dan had just purchased a new SRT8 Charger. The…

IN 1964 , the popular singing duet, Jan & Dean, introduced their hit song, “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena,” about a woman who lived in a house in Pasadena which had a “pretty little flowerbed of white gardenias.” However, “parked in her rickety old garage was a brand new, shiny red Super Stock Dodge.” The song goes on describing the car with a 4-speed transmission and 426 cubic-inch engine. Most probably, this was a 1963 or ’64 Max Wedge drag package and the song describes her as an accomplished racer—“the terror of Colorado Boulevard.” This song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1964, and helped to launch a very successful Dodge advertising campaign in Southern California between 1964 and 1969, featuring a grandmotherly woman stating; “Put…

OTILLA “TILLY” RAUSCHER was 77 years old when she walked into Sanford Motor Co. in Toms River, New Jersey. It was hot and sunny that day, June 24, 1968, and Tilly looked over the cars in the showroom and the outside lot before deciding on a 1968 Imperial Crown 4-door hardtop. Base price on this baby was $6,089 but options kicked that up to $7,275.95, more than any Hemicar available. Tilly had no trade-in, but she was not one to be trifled with, hammering the salesman down to $5,600 and leaving him looking for his Excedrin. Tilly remained in Toms River another year before moving in with her son in upstate New York (sorta the opposite of what’s happening today where kids move back with their parents). It’s now 1972…

POWER AND LIGHT TRICK FLOW POWERPORT 270 ALUMINUM CYLINDER HEADS FOR BIG-BLOCK MOPARS BUILT FOR POWER, the Trick Flow PowerPort 270 cylinder heads feature larger, raised Max Wedge-style intake runners with a high resolution, CNC Competition Ported surface finish, great for cleaner air movement and added balanced flow from runner to runner. The runner shape is optimized to increase flow velocity and add strength to the rocker shaft bosses. The PowerPort 270 heads can use factory-style big-block Mopar pistons and will accept aftermarket roller rocker arms and headers. They’re available fully assembled and as bare castings. Get yours at Trick Flow Specialties www. TrickFlow.com 1-330-630-1555 FLUIDIC SPACE MAKE SEASONAL FLUID CHANGES WITH ROCKAUTO.COM SPRING IS A GREAT TIME to check your coolant and change the engine oil in…

WE ALL LOVE MOPARS , but every once in a while, one comes along so possessed that you would think the car was a result of Christine and the Amityville horror house having a one-night stand. The A-Body in this story is no exception and no names have been changed to protect the innocent. Since all the last names in this story end in Crecco…’nuff said. Turn the clock back about 25 years and my cousin John was on the hunt for a Dart, and it had to be a ’68 or ’69. In typical fashion, this hunt leads to several “rock boxes” before finding the ’68 Dart of his dreams. The car passes the “Crecco under/over test.” John and my brother Mike go over mechanicals and yours truly is…

CHARGED UP Mr. Ehrenberg–My grandfather says he had one of the first year Dodge Chargers, a 1966. He says it had a big-block 361. I thought I remember hearing that you did an article on a 1965 Charger. Am I right? Nelson Ward Chattanooga, TN Nelson–Good memory! There was a 1965 production Dodge Charger, it was an option package on the Dart GT. There was also a 1964 Charger show car, one built, now in the hands of private collector Joe Bortz (see MA, Dec, 2007 issue, and pix, top). There’s always been disagreement as to whether the ’65 should “count”, since it was an option package, not a standalone model. To my way of thinking, since the factory built 180 of them (all factory-built at the Los Angeles assembly…

AN ARMY VETERAN, Lieutenant Colby Davis of Georgia is one of the guys now racing in the NT (no time) Heavyweight class with his blown Hellcat-graphic Charger. The tuned, reworked four-door now makes 1100 HP and is dedicated to warrior friends who fought alongside Davis during combat operations. The NT designation came about due to increased times and speeds that were showing up constantly on YouTube. This one is hard into the 9s. Rear-quarter tape makes rubber clean-up easier after the racing ends.…

ROD WALLACE lives in two worlds—one beneath the grass and the other above. His company, Wallace Auto Parts & Services, does a lot more than just selling fuzzy dice (when they’re in stock) to hang on your Dodge Dynasty mirror. They manufacture underground transportation equipment for subterrainian mining operations. That’s the “beneath the grass” part of Rod’s life. When his comes up for air, Rod cranks out a line of utility trailers and, in between all that, does some restorations plus a hot rod or two. Busy guy. When it comes to Rod’s rods, Rod is partial to E-bodies. This ’71 Challenger is the second that he’s built. The first was a ’70 convertible that he says wasn’t up to the level of his current ride. “The company got into…

GET READY to make room in your garage, gang. You’ll want a nice clean spot for a 2020 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody that’s a one-of-a kind custom build which could be coming your way. Yup, the Dream Giveaway folks are at it again. No need for Disney’s “wish upon a star” to make your Mopar dreams come true (we tried thatdoesn’t work no matter what Jiminy Cricket says); you got a better shot by entering the Dream Giveaway Raffle. In case you’ve been living under an Antarctica iceberg for the past decade, you wouldn’t know that the DG folks have been making dreams come true since 2008. That’s for over 70 motorfans, including last year’s highly-modified Hellcat Redeye Challenger. “Heck,” said the DG folks. “The Challenger was such a…

“WHO’S THAT GUY?” That question was answered from the first session to the final round this year at the 2020 Dodge Hemi Challenge. That guy is Stephen Yantus, a seasoned driver from Charleston SC, and the car he was driving, a Barracuda which began life as a real BO29 1968 factory build, dominated from its first pass on Thursday to his victory over Steve Comella’s “stealth” Barracuda in the Friday evening final, Plymouth vs. Plymouth in the Dodge-sponsored event. Until August, it was not even certain that the event was going to happen this year, however, Indiana is one of the more open states during the present crisis, and the NHRA had already hosted 3 national events at Lucas Oil Raceway this season. In the 2020 Hemi wars, there had…

DURING THE ENTIRE MUSCLECAR ERA , our cars—100%—were equipped with sealed beam headlamps. Interestingly, these were first engineered at Chrysler and introduced just prior to World War II (although Chrysler left the actual manufacturing to vendors). The brand name seen on unmolested ’60s/’70s Mopars was something of a crapshoot. During this era, GE sealed beams were used on approx. 50% of Mopars, with Tung-Sol and Westinghouse splitting the other half approximately equally. This mix varied during each model year. No doubt it was sort of a bidding war, and there were no records kept regarding which lamp brand went into any particular car, In fact, it was not unusual on 4-lamp cars to see one brand for the hi/lo ’beam and a different one for the hi-only, I even saw…