Table of contents for June 2019 in Mopar Action

DIVERSITY and non-discrimination. That’s our creed in hiring staff for this fine publication. You can have two heads, be illiterate and drunk 90% of the time, but it doesn’t matter to us. You still make the level hiring field here because we can’t discriminate against those who can’t speak or read or write English, two-headed applicants or drunks. Yeah, it’s kind of liberal, but we’re just anticipating upcoming anti-discrimination and diversity legislation and we want to be ahead of the curve. As far as the authorities are concerned, competence or lack of same on the job is a non-issue as long as there is a live (or semi-live) person who meets the diversity regs. For the first 29½ years of Mopar Action we had a staff of two. Which made…

IT AIN’T JUST PAINT , or is it? I hear and read a lot of stories from way too many people bad-mouthing the body shop business, and it’s the same BS over and over. “I took my car to a shop and it took longer than they said it would.” “They were supposed to do this and that and they didn’t!! ” “I didn’t get the magenta metal flake mural of Ehrenberg and Gromer wearing matching Speedos!” BLAH BLAH BLAH. So whose fault is it? Is it their fault--or yours--that what you got isn’t what you wanted or when you wanted it? Did you want just simple bodywork and paint or a full-concours resto? Guess what? There’s no such thing as “simple” in that business. If you think you’re gonna…

“J” IS FOR... Rick–I just found a 1963 Chrysler 300-J project car up for sale not far from me. The body is pretty solid, the engine and trans are out of the car. The numbers on the 413 seem to be correct. The seller says the transmission is a 4-speed, he thinks it is called a T-10. How many were built with this combination? The guy is asking $7,500, is this reasonable? Jake Murphy Royal Oak, MI WHAT’S A “TINNERMAN”? Rick-O–An old guy at the body shop where my friend works helped me change a fender on my 1966 Coronet. I got new hardware, as he worked with me, he tapped the U-nuts into place on the inner fender. He said: “great that you got new Tinnermans....”. I asked him…

THIS CAR is B5 blue with a matched blue interior; stunning, as Frank B. says. But the steering wheel is not blue. Why not? Well, first of all, blue ‘70 wheels were darker: B7. “The steering wheel looked like it is faded to green or even was green when installed, though the build sheet notes that a blue steering wheel was installed. This may be an issue with a certain run of blue-dyed parts. The lower kick panels on this car also showed that one had faded to green as well, so it might have been a faulty dye, not from the sun but from age. If we could have the luxury of taking it all apart, we might find some additional information, but we can’t really start just unbolting…

THERE WAS A TIME not so long ago when Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus was tagged “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Often called a 3-ring circus, it was a real spectacle, known for massive tents that featured a variety of acts and entertainment, all running simultaneously. The largest rings showcased a menagerie of animals that were were trained to perform amazing tricks. Among the animal acts, one of the most popular featured a number of large, imposing elephants that amazed the crowd with their balance, poise and brute strength. The SEMA show appears to have taken a page from the famed circus. Not only does it have three distinct halls, each featuring different types of parts and accessories, but this year, an imposing elephant quite literally stole the…

IF YOU’RE GOING TO TAG a moniker like “Sinister” on your ride, you’d better have something better than a stock white Dodge Dynasty, unless you have some sort of twisted sense of humor—something we deeply frown on here at Mopar Action. Fortunately, Ross Gordon doesn’t have a stock white Dodge Dynasty or a twisted sense of humor. What he does have is a black slammed ’70 Duster that carries the “Sinister” tag quite well thanks to heavy-duty license plate bolts. ’Course the idea for the Duster or its Sinister name wasn’t part of the original plan. See, it all began when Ross returned from his deployment as a fabricator in the Air Force and was looking for a project. Perusing his local Craigslist, he came upon a ’73 340/727 Duster,…

YOU KNOW HOW some guys are. They’ll get a Mopar and go nuts customizing and customizing until they’re hauled away in a straight-jacket or until TheBruntBros agree to take a few snapshots with their company-issued 1924 Kodak. Gary Sheldon isn’t one of those. But he’s not the kind of guy to leave well enough alone (stock) either. Although he likes to show off his 2017 Charger at shows, he happy not to attract hordes of rabid Mo’fans foaming at the mouth and dripping said foam all over his hood and fenders. And shoes. Gary’s a mellow dude, although his last ride raised some eyebrows—a twin-supercharged ’02 Dakota R/T. Yeah, that was nuts. Gary eventually sold it because it wasn’t “him.” It was, for a while, but then it wasn’t. And…

LE HODGE IS A HUGE COTTON OWENS FAN and his passion is to keep the Cotton legacy humming. That’s the motivation behind this ’68 Charger Cotton tribute. Le slapped this car together in a couple of weeks to make it to a local car show at the vocational center. “That’s where all the kids go, and the event also was attended by the Cotton family,” says Le. Everett “Cotton” Owens had passed away in June, 2012, but the Cotton clan, down to his great-grandchildren are into cars. Le put Cotton’s name on the car as an honor to him in the area usually reserved for a sponsor. Le is pretty close to the Cotton clan, having gone to school with Cotton’s granddaughter, Cari, and staying friends with her and her…

“WOW , that’s cool!” The problem with places like eBay is that it is too easy to spend your money. Of course, you need to be looking for something. Since I was a kid, I have always liked printed items, and eBay is a one-stop shop for just about anything in that realm. Magazines, photographs, books, postcards, negatives, catalogs, and so on. There is something to be said for what you can still hold in your hands, one of the reasons why Mopar Action remains viable and coming in your mailbox every 60 days or so. Magazines in general have always had that effect, at least on me. When I first became a “car guy” in high school, it was back issues of Super Stock and Car Life that fueled…

PAUL ROSSI WAS SOMEBODY most of us greybeards remember from the pre-Mopar Action days. That was back in the late ’70s, when you bought an entire rack of car rags just to find that one Mopar feature that one of the west coast mags might give a page to. Next thing you know, this Rossi guy shows up with a killer ’70 Six Pack Challenger with factory backing, and he is even getting covers and more. Orange and white with big Dodge lettering, they ran those pictures because Rossi knew how to go big. Big wheelies, big wins, and big interest. The Chally was, in a word, bitchin’. Times change, and for Chrysler, the Carter-era malaise had sealed the brand’s coming fate. The company was in trouble. Rossi, for his…

As a G-rated family Mopar magazine, we’re bringing back, by popular demand, our widely acclaimed Haul in the Family Series, featuring Mom, Dad, junior and the cat and parakeet all enjoying the family Mopar(s) for all our family-friendly readers. So here goes… “SOÕS WHOÕS QUICKER , Randy, you or Linda?” Randy Harris thought for a moment. “Well, I’ll tell ya. The 4-speed ’Cuda won’t go from the dig. It’ll just spin. So Linda will get me out of the hole. But if we go from a 20 or 30 MPH roll, it’s no contest. Both cars weigh about the same and they’re both 4.10 cars, but I have the edge in horsepower. Heck, we’ve run up to well over 100, but not side by side. I lead and she follows.…

THEY WERE THE HEROES in Chrysler’s NASCAR golden age, wheel men like Charlie Glotzbach, Buddy Baker, and Richard Petty to name just a few, and by the late 1960s, their racecars all started out as rollers from the factory. These were lightweight bodies that were set up for a 4-speed, but came out of the factory with neither engines nor transmissions, and they lacked seam sealer and paint, having just primer. Importantly, these rollers also had no VINs or numbers of any kind. It was sort of the way you’d get a body today from a company like Dynacorn, but right from Detroit—not China. While some mistakenly refer to these rollers destined for NASCAR as bodies in white, the true bodies in white, obtained by drag racers, came with no…

LAST TIME , when we left all you participles dangling, we had a well-used 440-6 engine bolted to the awesome Silver Sport 5-speed manual tranny and mounted on the K-member, along with a killer super-small new Bergman fast ’n’ firm steering box. We also mounted a new set of Coopers (Brian’s choice) on repainted original 15X7" Rallyes. That left us with just a few “minor” details: Installing the K-assembly, the suspension (Brian thought it easier to do this with the K already installed [I disagreed, but deferred to keep peace]), Disc-O-Tech cop brakes, get a fresh propshaft measured and ordered from Silver Sport, and install that along with the shifter handle and boot, then slamming in some seats, sound deadening, coming up with some kind of exhaust system, reinstalling all…

AH, THE FEISTY FIFTIES. Before the advent of the flashing fins and chrome that defined that era, it was a more mellow brand of transport. Pastel colors, duo- and tri-tone color combos that soothed the visual senses before the era of high-impact hues that gave your retinas a searing workout. Many ’50s rides were mere appliances like refrigerators. They provided a function of getting from Point A to whatever in an efficient but non-memorable manner. ’Course, there were exceptions, such as the Dodge D-500 and Plymouth 350 Golden Commando packages just for starters. But take something like a family station wagon… Consider the 1956 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Suburban wagon as an early forerunner of the current SUV (sport-utility) craze. The wagon’s 277" poly engine coupled with a 2-speed PowerFlite automatic…

“I DON’T KNOW.” That statement can mean a lot of things to different people. For researchers like Frank Badalson, a former police officer, forensic analysis—not theories, requires an honest answer. For collectors like Eric VanDamia, the opportunity itself helps decide what should be done even if the answers are not there yet. For the secondary party like the lady from Cleveland who sold Eric this Six Pack Road Runner, sometimes that answer is simply the fact. So, what do we know? This is an as-built ’70 V-code Road Runner, in B5 with blue interior and a four-speed, ironically, a virtual clone of our latest Beeper 3 project car. Moreover, you are looking at what might be the lowest mileage unrestored Six Pack beeper on planet Earth, a car that was…

THIS LEFT LOWER CONTROL ARM is something really unusual in that it has both the ’69-down and ’70-up swaybar tabs installed! The part is dated Nov. 3, 1969, so it was most likely earmarked for 1970 vehicles. The forgings for both arms were created at Chrysler’s New Castle, IN foundry, but it is not known if the complete arm units were also riveted together there. Did the factory have a lot of leftover ’69 arms and simply add the ’70 tabs? That possibility seemed unlikely to E’booger, since the Mopar parts division was still selling lots of replacement ’66½–’69 arms and could still “move” them. Indeed, many replacement LCAs were tab-equipped, whether you needed ‘em or not. Though he had not seen the car himself, Rick thought it may have…

WHEN YOU’RE ON TOP WINNING, everybody wants to knock you down. Look at the president’s detractors. Regardless of your position on politics, history showed that the sheer efficiency of Chrysler’s focused development program led to no small amount of whining by the losers. Guys with names like Jenkins and Nicholson did not like to see those taillights every weekend, nor did their fans, and they rattled cages in North Hollywood (NHRA), Kansas City (AHRA) and later Bristol (IHRA) to get the rules slanted in their favor. You can’t blame them. The Mopars were cleaning house at most of the big events, not to mention what would happen when they showed up in match race trim. In the end, NHRA did two things that would seriously damage both the technical advantage…

THIS IS A TYPICAL BODY IN WHITE. Components such as the fenders, hood and decklid were not always considered part of a body in white. This varied by assembly plant. The fenders were almost always installed when the car received its 7-step dip, cleaning, rustproofing/phosphating, and epoxy primer Drag racers usually bought their cars as bodies in white which meant they had to show up at the assembly plant with a forklift, crane, whatever and a flatbed truck. This made loading and unloading much more of a project. NASCAR teams on the other hand, arranged for the factory to supply them with “rollers” which included a K-member, steering, suspension, brakes, rear axle, etc. This made loading and unloading much easier, and would have given anyone so inclined the ability to…

BEEPER3 is, as the name implies, the third Mopar Action Road Runner project car. As with the original 1972 Project Beeper (circa 1999), this will be a very mildly modified restoration, 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 a SST 5-speed), Super Track Pack, Air Grabber, B5 blue 1970 RR, we’ll take it from, as the saying goes, junker to jewel, in record time. Then it’ll get interesting: We’ll drive it cross-country, NY to San Fran, where we’ll load it onto a steamer to owner Brian Dowell’s home, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where it will see many more road miles (OK, kilometers). Down under is…

THE NUKE OPTION DAVE STARKEY , from Illinois near St. Louis Mo. and his son Alex both own Scat Pack Shaker 392 Challengers. Dave ordered his 2015 model in March of ’15 and then left home in early May to canoe the entire Missouri River, which took three months. Would’ve been shorter if he had a paddle. His Sublime beast was delivered in the middle of May and he didn’t get home to see it until August 15th. Alex drove Dave’s car home from the dealership and it must have left a big impression on him because he bought his own 2018 Scat Pack Shaker in B5 Blue. Alex is a Nuclear Propulsion Officer in the Navy and happened to be on an assignment in San Diego when his car…