Table of contents for June 2023 in Mopar Action

Mopars rule (but you already knew that). THE CURRENT MOPARS sitting in my garage are a PT Cruiser, Dodge Durango and a Jeep. No go-fast toys at the present like the one I had years ago—a ‘47 Plymouth business coupe powered by a ‘62 413 Ramcharger engine. Yes, it was a Max Wedge-type engine with dual quads on a cross-ram intake manifold, solid lifter cam, and tubular headers that were always banging on the Plymouth's chassis. It was the engine the factory rated at 410 horsepower at 5400 rpm in 1962. Backing up the beefy engine was an equally beefy A727 TorqueFlite automatic transmission with the dial-a-win buttons mounted on the dash to the left of the steering wheel. And behind the trans was the beefiest rear axle setup available—a…

TANKED UP Richard–I just got a 1967 Dart GT, 273 2-Bbl. It runs fine, but every time I fill the radiator, and take it for a drive, some antifreeze spills out the small hose, and when I check the fluid again, it is always low. What is causing this? Joe Jackson Tempe, AZ Joe Normal expansion of the coolant, you are simply overfilling the top tank. The correct cold level is 1¼ʺ below the bottom of the filler neck. Alternately, as long as you look in (when cold) and confirm that coolant is covering the top of the tubes, it is adequately filled. Starting in 1972, Mopars were equipped with external “overflow” bottles, correctly called “coolant recovery” or “reserve” reservoirs. This feature allowed the top tank to be filled to…

MARK CASTER credits his grandfather for birthing one of his parents, and also for his roots in Mopardom. See, when grandpa wasn't home kissing grandma, he was working in the parts department at a ChryslerPlymouth dealership, and he always had cool Mopes in his garage. “The cars were awesome,” says Mark, and the cars really left a mark on him. Every year, the dealership would loan Chrysler and Plymouth convertibles for the Shriners’ parade, so Mark's early indoctrination into the Mopar faith has kept him a loyal fan for life. Thanks, Gramps! Mark bought his first car, should you care to know, in 1984 when he was 15. “It was a ‘70 Duster,” he notes, “and that was before I even had my driver's license.” He just worked on it,…

THERE IS MUCH TO BE SAID about “easy access.” Hey, ever work around big-tube headers on a 440 A-body? You know what we mean. Event access is the same way; a cheap hotel an hour from the show is still a PITA (no, not bread, Pain In The A$$!). The biggest thing about coming to MCACN (Muscle Car & Corvette Nationals) is that you take the shuttle from Chicago O'Hare International Airport for about 5 minutes and you are both near the hotel and the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center where the show is hosted. Bringing a car? Oops, back on the Dan Ryan, but we digress… …and segway into the biggest indoor show event on the yearly calendar, which chose to highlight Daytonas and SuperBirds this time around! Not…

THE CAR still has its real fender tags, which are decoded here by Mark Swingle. Oddly the car has no Y-code which would have indicated it was destined to be a show/promotional car. E44– 318 2bbl D32– A998 automatic transmission XH22– Dodge Mirada, high trim, 2 door pillared hardtop GAR– G=318 2bbl, A=1980, R=Windsor, Ontario, Canada 108936–Sequential number TA3– Burnished Silver Metallic ELC8– Leather and vinyl reclining bucket, blue 000– not used 913– scheduled bult date, Sep 13 004078– vehicle order number TA3– Burnished Silver Metallic U– Built to US specs B12– Front disc brakes 00– not used 26– 26˝ wide radiator A56– Handling package A75– CMX package C21– Center front cushion with armrest C55– Bucket seats, reclining C97– Trunk dress up G44– sun visor mirror illuminated, right G55– left…

M-O-P-A-R. Yep, those are the five letters that tell the story for most of us. Though originally the madeup word was a simple reference for Chrysler Corporation's old MOtor PARts group, the term has come to signify all things in our extended corporate family—new, old, positive, negative, etc. Whether it's “Mostly Old Parts And Rust” or “Most Other People Are Ridiculous,” it always means the same thing. We could have even more simply said all things “Mopar”, but you get the picture. So, with that intro out of the way for our newbies, let's get serious. Package cars. Package cars are something that have been part of the factory's storied history. Most of them were built for a specific reason, like spanking the Chevy boys on the dragstrip or the…

WE HADDA FIGURE A WAY to get the kickdown system on the standard A727-A trans functioning with the throttle-by-wire OEM throttle body, no easy task. Some said the solution was a computer-driven stepper motor rigged to the trans’ kickdown lever. Others spoke about electrohydraulically supplying throttle pressure directly to the throttle body. Our low-tech solution was nonetheless pretty slick: We learned, from our Hotwire Auto brain trust, that 2003 and ‘04 Dodge pickups equipped with the then-new 5.7L Hemi used a standard throttle cable through the firewall, actuating an underhood throttle position sensor. These are now crazy expensive (try junkyards, or rockauto.com P/N TH4556 if you strike out), and come in a fancy plastic housing, which does nothing for us. Once you gut the housing, you are left with this…

IAM JUST BACK from Mecum's yearly event in Kissimmee, Florida, where $234M in muscle, motorcars and more changed hands. Turn on the news, and there is a lot of banter right now about the general state of the economy. Historically, people have tended to move into other assets in times when it appears the stock market's hold may be a bit, shall we say, tenuous. The Fed's ever-moving interest rates and inflation isn't not helping matters, but, hey, we're all in this together. Let's talk cars… This auction was highlighted by a huge group of winged Mopars, more than have ever likely come to the market at one time before. Occasionally, there have been groups of vintage race cars offered in one place, and the sheer volume sometimes overwhelms the…

BEE TACH Mr. Ehrenberq I have a ‘69 Super Bee, 383. I have gotten a repro of the small tach that goes where the clock would normally be. I have the dash wiring figured, but how was it wired through the firewall to pick up the tach signal? Did it go through one of the regular 8-pin connectors? Moe Jacobs Jacksonville, FL Moe No, it was hard-wired though a separate rubber grommet. If the car was not OEM equipped, you'll find a drill-pilot dimple in one of the locations in the diagram above. The caption will explain the rest. DASH TRASH? Richard I was at a big car show last summer (Carlisle, Pennsylvania) but I came with a friend in his new Challenger. I was speaking to a guy with…

PICKING UP where we left off (duh) last issue, we began by heading east from Hays, KS, and mostly followed old US 40, then zigzagged north on US281. After this, it was east towards Junction City, a diagonal shot to Manhattan (the one in Kansas), and overnighted. We were eastbound again the next morning, this time stopping at the WPC birthplace. We went around Topeka and drove over into Lawrence, where I made a personal-history stop (see photos and captions) for a Mopar guy in the old country. A bit of a break for lunch in Kansas City (the KS side) and the flog continued by crossing the state line. We stopped for gas and some Dairy Queen at Sedalia (now in Missouri) up on US50, which we would follow…

IN THE MUSCLE MOPAR ERA, our cars had four basic electrical systems: • Ignition • Charging and starting • Lighting • Everything else Obviously, if the ignition system fails, you're suddenly a pedestrian. The last two items on the list can be ignored, for the most part, and you can still make it to your destination. The one that'll sneak up on you is the charging system. A failure will allow the car to keep motoring along just fine, but you will be, at that point, running at “total loss”—i.e., the battery will be powering the ignition system. With nothing else in operation, and a fully charged battery, you can easily drive 100 miles (a wild guess). Turn on headlamps, heater fan, wipers, etc., and the range drops quickly. Suffice…

WHEN WE LAST LEFT YOU DANGLING, we had our junkyard 5.7L engine sitting on the K-member, and we were just dropping the Dart shell over the powertrain and were just readying the tranny bolt-in. The Holley A-body swap components, as we have mentioned, move the powertrain forward by 1.75˝, which is obviously not the best plan for a corner-cutting G-machine, and which our first swap, the Dart, is surely not gonna be. We'll try to reconcile this quandary when we get to the G-machine second half of this project series. This relocation also plays havoc with transmission mounting. We fixed that easily enough, but the relocation, coupled with the extra length of Holley's special timing cover (which does make A/C installation a snap), make the water pump-to-electric fan situation kind…

HOLLEY SAYS, in no uncertain terms, that column shift automatic (and probably 3-speed on the tree) absolutely cannot be used with their header setup. Brian didn't wanna hear that, and flat-out refused to believe it: “I'll make it work”. The interference is mainly the linkage's horizontal (cross-car) torque shaft (from chassis rail bracket to trans case) to the headers/exhaust. I piped up that I had seen some TTi modified t/shafts with sort of a U-loop in them designed as a workaround, we wondered if something similar could be fab'd for the Dart. It could. Here's what we did. First, we mocked up the shift linkage—ignoring the exhaust, i.e., not installed yet. (Remember, the trans is now 1¾˝ forward from stock, and we went from a A904 to an A727). This…

IN MEMORY OF… ROBERT BOHNSACK's dad bought this 74 Challenger brand new in late 73. He special-ordered it from a stateside dealer while in military service overseas, and always worked in law enforcement after he returned from the service. Bob's dad traded the car in around 1976, before Bob was born, otherwise he would have stopped him. Bob's dad passed away in 1988 when Bob was 8 years old. For years, he has searched for this car; all he had were two photos, one you see at left, and the original sales invoice—that gave him the VIN. The original selling dealership sent him the original purchase contract, too. Bob posted what he had online, and 9 months later he found the Challenger 1,000 miles away. The Challenger, as found, was…

EHRENBERG, E-Booger, the Tech Headitor, my man Speedo are just a few of the aliases he goes by. I get these questions more times than I care to mention, so in an effort to not inflate his ego, I'll keep it to the top 2. The two questions I get a LOT are, “Is he here?”, and “Hey, what is he really like?”. Well… I have probably about 630 words left to get this out so here it goes. I first met Ehrenberg on a road trip to the Mopar Nats back in 1988. I was 19 and riding out shotgun with Levandowski (RIP) from the Bold Beeper ‘72 RR fame. After the 1st 7 hours of that trip with the top down to drown out my voice, I guess…

REMEMBER BONDING with your first car? Adam Schlesinger does. It was 1979 and 16-year old Adam was on his way to check out a Camaro. He never got to see it, as his trip was cut short by a car parked on the side of the road with a big For Sale sign smacked on it. By all rights, Adam should have passed up this forlorn-looking ‘70 Road Runner with its smashed-in bumper scrunched about ¼ʺ from the radiator. But there was Adam knocking on the door and asking about the beeper. The man responding to the knock was a father, and his son owned the car. “I told him not to take it out in a snowstorm,” the father explained. “But he wouldn't listen, and he hit a telephone…

1980 WAS NOT AN EXCITING YEAR for the big auto shows. Musclecars were dead. Performance was dead. There wasn't much to cheer about on the show floors of New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and elsewhere. A Dodge public relations press release from PR guy “Moon” Mullins was headlined “Dodge Emphasizes Value in Auto Show Exhibits” That should get your adrenaline pumping. While Dodge emphasized its “budget-priced” models, the exhibit also featured two concept cars, one of which was a turntable-hosted Dodge Mirada. It was described as being given “an ultraEuropean sports coupe look of understated elegance combined with contemporary expressions of styling touches made classic by Cord automobile.” The press release continued, “The show Mirada has a T-bar roof, concealed headlamps, turbo silver body paint punctuated by black grille…

“CURSORY RESTORATION.” That's what the seller of this 1970 340/4speed Dart Swinger said the Dodge that he was listing on Craigslist needed. He said the car was “halfway back from a non-essential restoration” (whatever that meant) and would only require a “cursory” amount of work to complete the job. He was also including about $10K worth of parts to go with the car's purchase. Brian Dunn from Olney, MD was interested in the car and bought it, figuring that since it was already “half-done”, it wouldn't be too big a deal to take the Swinger through the other half. Wrong! The seller's idea of his cursory resto was just to swap in a 4.11 gear for some unknown reason (never mind that Chrysler never offered a 4.11:1 gearset). So Brian…

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Reading the latest Mopar Muscle? Not likely, they folded up shop three years ago (sob). Maybe you've been reading those mags that come in a plain brown wrapper? Either way, here's a quick rundown on what you've missed: By sheer coincidence, we're currently building not one, but two green 1969 A-bodies with 3rd-gen Hemis. The first, the super low-buck version, is a pulled-fromthemud-in-Oklahoma stripper Dart hardtop, which you'll be reading about momentarily. It had, when we walked away from the keyboard a few weeks ago, received a boneyard-fresh 2014 (or so) 5.7L mated to a garden-variety A727-A TorqueFlite, and rolling on—gasp—14˝ wheels. Victim #2, which we'll be wrenching on soon enough, is an even-more stripped 1969 Valiant 100 center-pillar sedan, an ex-Bell System foreman's car that…

POST-IT SEE COV. 4 & PG. 25 NEW C-PILLAR VERTICAL POST FOR '68-'70 DODGE / PLYMOUTH B-BODY MODELS FROM AMD AMD ANNOUNCES the release of a new C-Pillar Vertical Post for '68–'70 Dodge Charger, Super Bee, Coronet, and Plymouth GTX, Road Runner, Satellite, Belvedere models. This high-quality replacement part is essential for maintaining the structural integrity and appearance of your vehicle, as the C-pillar vertical post is located between the wheelhouse and rear window frame, critical to roof support. Made with durable OE-style automotive grade steel and is designed to fit perfectly, this Mopar Official Licensed Restoration Part is AMD Part Numbers 6101468-3L– Driver side, and 610-1468-3R– Passenger side. These and other OE quality components from AMD are the perfect touch to your restoration. Call 1-877-575-3586 today for full details…

HERE'S AN IDEA we've been working on for a while—a 2-way cop car that appears to be what we'd guess is based on two ‘72 Coronets (since there are no pix of the grille or rear, your guess may vary). We figure this configuration is a safety revolution for our boys in blue when they're hiding in the shrubbery waiting for some errant driver who may be exceeding the speed limit or have one of his daytime running lights out or too many bugs on his windshield. If the cop is pointed in the wrong direction to catch the offender, he must make a U-turn to get on the malfeasant's tail, which could be dangerous on a busy highway. With this setup, all the officer has to do is jump…