Mopar Actionの December 2019 の目次

AIR-PORT Hi Rick, hope all is well–I was wondering could you help me setting up my new (to me) dual snorkel air cleaner, I figured out all the vacuum lines except for the last one that splits off on the T-connector that is supposed to go to the carb/vacuum port. I’m unsure where to put the final one on my carb and I couldn’t find it online either. I have attached a pic of my carb for you to look at, my timed vacuum port on the left is what goes to the distributor, and the front PCV is obvious. The only port I really have left is the manifold vacuum port on the right side of the carb...can i use that port? It’s the snorkel on the heat riser…

THOSE RECTANGULAR HOLES put onto the punch card for the monster IBM mainframe computer let the factory build a car just the way you wanted in 1969. Or as they wanted, such as in this case. With the new Dodge Challenger front and center as Dodge’s big entry into the ponycar worlds of Camaros and Mustangs, the idea the sales team had here was not raw street power but to showcase just how you could spend the most money on options. Well, maybe not really that, but certainly to see what could make you “Dodge Material” if you were figuring out possibilities in the showroom. Enough that it features two fender tags. Now part of the Wellborn Musclecar Museum’s collection, this particular car is coded Y28, which means it was…

YEAH , you’re looking at the Grinch that stole Christmas—a real Grinch, not a Dr. Seuss cartoon character. And it’s not something that we made up like some of the other stuff in this magazine. To get this story, we have to travel over the border to Mexico. Make sure your passport is in order and be sure to stick to drinking bottled water. We walk over to the local burro taxi stand, and for a few pesos more, the driver loads your stuff into the burro’s saddlebags, hops into the front perch, and with a sharp snap of his whip gets the burro in gear. Our destination is Hermosillo, a nice town, safe, a couple of hours from the border. Our contact is Abraham Vega. Vega is his middle…

BEEPER3 is, as the name implies, the third Mopar Action Road Runner project car. As with the original 1972 Beeper (circa 1999), this will be a very mildly modified restomod, with only a few upgrades as a tip of the hat to modern drivability, handling, and braking levels. Starting with a true V-code (440-6), Pistol Grip (which will now be connected to an SST 5-speed), Super Track Pack (4.10:1 Dana axle), Air Grabber, B5 blue 1970 RR, we’ve taken this bird from gutted rusty shell to better than new—literally. The powertrain is the original Dana 60, a new killer Silver Sport OD 5-speed, and a well-used 1969 440-6 mill, which was very mildly hopped up 25 years ago (or so said the seller, anyways!), 12" Disc-O-Tech cop brakes, and original…

I RECENTLY SWAPPED a freshly reman’d ThermoQuad onto a friend’s car. It immediately seemed super lean, and it would barely run unless you choked it. I took it apart and checked the float level, it was spot-on. Eventually I found the trouble: The gasket that was supplied with the carb, despite appearing to be good quality (thick, with torque-limiter grommets, etc.) was incorrectly shaped, allowing a vacuum leak around the secondaries. You can spot the difference at a glance now that you know—the straight, not tapered, sides are the instant ID giveaway. Fel-Pro 602736 is the good stuff.…

FLEXTREAD Products by Legendary Will Keep Your Carpets King AS AN EXCITING NEW BRAND, Flextread by Legendary Auto Interiors offers the first patented scenery floormats in the industry. Each scene is created as a functional part of the mat, meaning they have the same deep tread technology and cleaning functionality as regular molded floormats. These mats are 100% Made in the USA and feature a 3-year warranty. Designed for a perfect fit, they are laser-measured and available in late and current model Dodge and Jeep truck/SUV designs. The Flextread line has been licensed with NASCAR and is currently selling floor mats of your favorite teams and drivers as well, while concurrently developing custom universal shapes to expand product availability. Already trimmed to fit for most domestic and foreign vehicles, these…

THE EVENT AT MECUM Harrisburg the first weekend in August was scheduled to be a barn burner. Longtime collector Todd Werner, whom I have known since the early part of this century, had scheduled to sell a large number of his vintage racecars. Since I knew Todd and also knew these cars, some which I had shot for magazine work before he had even owned them, it was going to be interesting to see what would happen when they hit the auction block just after noon on Saturday, August 3rd. For Mecum’s part, they had pulled out all of the stops to promote the collection, which had many significant Mopar vehicles. There were two half-hour TV shows featuring the collection leading up to the event, multiple e-mail blasts, a large…

HEY GANG , Dodge has done it again. “Done what again?” you ask. “Why, roll out yet another model of their now iconic Dodge Charger”, we answer. Yep, this time it’s the 2020 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody Daytona 50th Anniversary Edition and it’s nothing to sneeze at (not that we would sneeze at anything our FCA benefactor rolls out.) So here’s the deal: In addition to having the distinction of possibly the longest moniker in FCA’s portfolio of fine motor vehicles, the new Charger gets 717 horsepower from its tweaked Hellcat Hemi. Gee, how’d they do that? Easy. All ya gotta do is hit the @#$ keys when tweaking the tune with your Commodore 64 computer and Voila! 717 HP. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that but…

YOU CAN OWN IT but you can’t buy it. A one-of-a-kind widebody Redeye Challenger that’s guaranteed to draw a crowd wherever you go. It’s the latest in a long line of outstanding giveaway Mopars by the Dream Giveaway Garage folks. But this one is the cat’s teats. First off, this dream machine obviously is a Challenger Redeye Widebody. You can’t start off any better than that. If you think you can pry one of these babies out of Dodge for a giveaway at your Second Annual East Third Street Mopar and Knish Fest-O-Rama, try it sometime. Happens that Dodge is 100% behind the charity work by DGG and approval for the project came direct from the top brass at Dodge. So, what’s special about this Challenger? Plenty. The white body…

TIM HENNESSEY WAS HAPPY as a pig in you-know-what. It was August, 1971, and the 22-year-old recent college grad had just signed a contract for his first teaching job that would start in September. And, he was looking to buy his first new car—had to be a Chrysler product. Tim had read all the popular car magazines about how the ’71 models were going to be the performance cars’ last hurrah. No more Hemis, No more 6-Packs. No more high compression. No more nothin’. Problem was, the ’72s were coming out the following month and dealer inventory on these cars was thin. Not only was it too late to order something, but Chrysler had been on strike for 6 months in the middle of the ’71 build so performance Mopes…

This 2013 6.2 Challenger cuts down Mustangs with a supercharged and nitrous-honed death sickle. VANITY PLATE READERS might think that Mike Brice’s “GLUMAKER” tag means he owns or works in a glue factory, much like Gromer’s “CAT JUGLR” plate reflects his side job as a street cat and chainsaw juggler. Well, think again. Mike Brice chose that plate because he says his 2013 SRT8 Challenger eats Mustangs. And you know where horses go when they are used up pulling Amish buggies or hauling barrels of Budweiser or doing any of the things that horses do, right? Right! The good ’ol glue factory (among other horrific destinations). ’Course, Mike’s ride isn’t the only Mustang killer. When Chevy introduced the Camaro, one of the journalists on hand asked, “What is a Camaro?”…

WE ALWAYS LOOK FORWARD to Musclecars at the Strip in Las Vegas. Not only is it a great show, but the wide open scenic areas allow TheBruntBros plenty of room to photo cars and parts and girls and birds and each other in between munching on their kielbasa hoagies, or heroes or grinders or whatever they’re called in this part of our great country. So here we are for the 2019 event and what th…? More than half the place is off limits. Small silver mylar bubble tents stretch seemingly endlessly—camping shelters for patrons of an upcoming rock concert—a trend we noticed also at Mopars at the Rock. Seems it’s tough to find real estate large enough to accommodate tens of thousands of music lovers packing into these events, and…

SOMETIMES the thrill of the hunt is as much of an adventure as everything else that happens in the Land of Mopar. So, you’ve heard me mention the Crecco brothers? Of course you have, my grey hair is the proof that they exist! We’ve been in the Mopar life a long time and we have it down to a pretty good science. Since my brothers both are techs, they check the mechanicals on a potential Mope, and if everything looks OK, they give me the “Roman thumbs down” which means I get to get dirty and check the body/underside of a car. But seeing there’s only one “body guy” in the family (me), it means I’m in demand whenever a potential purchase comes up. Right? Story time, boys and girls,…

BUFFALO BILL Rick–I have a 1972 Charger, 360, A/C, 67K original. The water valve under the hood leaks. I bought one at the parts store, I was amazed that they were able to get it. But it looks very different than the original. The guy ordered me another one, and it is the same as the first one he got for me. He triple-checked the part number and is sure it is correct. I can see where it would work OK, but I don’t like the fact that it kind of messes up my survivor. What should I do? William Salerno Rye, NY Bill–The original was referred to by the dealership mechanics (back in the day) as a “water buffalo,” which, from some views, is accurate. They were ridiculously complex…

FORGET SANTA. Scott Davis bought his 1970 ’Cuda in 2000 as a Christmas present to himself. Woulda been hard to fit in Santa’s sleigh anyway, and who knows what kind of damage would have been done in jamming it down a chimney. Seems Scott had been searching eBay for a ’70–’71 440-6 4-speed Shaker ’Cuda and had found a Plum Crazy one that he was bidding on. A further search for that specific combination pulled up another B5 blue model with no bids. The seller was the owner of a GM dealership, and we all know how smart GM guys are. The ’Cuda was listed in eBay under “other” instead of ’Cuda or Barracuda and there were no pictures or much of a description. So who’s gonna stick his neck…

THE INVITINGLY-NAMED DENNY GUEST has three defining characteristics. First, he is a rabid Mopar guy. Second, he has owned Chrysler and Dodge dealerships for decades. Third, he is a Vietnam-era veteran. When you put those three together, this car was pretty much inevitable. Denny got his start in the Pentastar world with his father, who was a salesman for Chrysler. That set the hook. So, his first job ended up being a porter at Bauer Dodge. Since the statute of limitations is now passed by about 50 years, he can state that he did some helacious street racing down Western Avenue with the Bauer Hemi cars. He then became a dealer mechanic, learning more and more about how these monsters worked. As he says it: “Mopar is in my blood.”…

WHEN WE LAST DROPPED OFF THE PLANET , we had the glass in, along with a temporary (read: boneyard) interior. What was left? Mostly final details, a first fire, and the usual teething problems, which we’ll be discussing here. That left a few local test drives still to be attempted – short, and not nearly as many miles or days as we had planned, but the date for Brian’s non-megabuck non-refundable Qantas air ticket from SanFran back down under was rapidly approaching, as was the reservation on the shipping container, also in SFO, and bad weather crossing the Rockies. And—well, you get the picture. OK...that said, after this installment, we only had something in the vicinity of 3,500* miles to go. What could go wrong? Ask us that next issue!…

WENDY WHITE , a New York City-based artist, is originally from Connecticut. Her 1972 Plymouth Scamp came from Randy Gilbert in Gardner, Mass., who had bought it at auction and did some light body work, new carpet and headliner, Rallye wheels and the beautiful B5 paint job. Wendy’s Scamper is a standard 225 “leaning tower of power” Slant-Six now backed with, she says, a 727. It looked clean but ran a little rough when she got it, so her dad, who’s a Pontiac guy, made a few tweaks to get it right. They had the 1-Bbl Holley carb rebuilt and upgraded the single exhaust to 2¼" pipe themselves. Now she says it flies on the highway and still gets 24 MPG. After watching YouTube how-to videos, she ordered a bumble…