Table of contents for October 2022 in Mopar Action

Repairing A Failed K-Member KEEP CLEAR? Mr. Ehrenberg I am assembling a dead-stock 1971 383 for my Fury III. One question—and I have heard so many answers, I am going to the well of knowledge. How far should the oil pickup screen be spaced from the bottom of the oil pan? I know you’ll know! Charles Murphy Tampa, FL Charlie- The answer is simple: Zero. Assuming a stock 1960s-’80s pickup, the clearance is “built in” to the pickup (see drawing, above). The pickup should rest firmly on the sump’s bottom. I have answered this repeatedly, but it keeps coming up. If you see the wrong info on various chat rooms and websites, please educate the huddled masses. RACK 'EM UP I have read your suggested alignment specs for classic Mopars.…

SOONER OR LATER, it will happen: while removing or installing exhaust manifolds or headers, or during column removal or installation, the crimped sheetmetal cover on your steering column pot coupling will come unhinged, allowing water ingress and grease egress. Not good. Not at all—plus, ugly! Back in the day, Ma Mopar would sell you just a new cover (2530538). Still, you hadda remove the column, and disassemble the coupler to replace it. Dealership mechanics grumbled, the factory listened, and in 1969 introduced a TSB part, P/N 2996935, a wireform HD clip which simply snapped on and retained the once-loose cover. It was made for the ’67up 3-inch bodies. Then they were gone. Cheer up! eBay seller moparclip now offers excellent repros for pocket change. Stick one on your shelf, if…

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL DEPT TO ROCK OR NOT TO ROCK—that is the question Steve Earwood, honcho of Rockingham Dragway was struggling with on the Thursday before Saturday’s 31st running of Mopars at the Rock at Rockingham Dragway in Rockingham, NC. The projected weather forecast was calling for 100% rain on Saturday, which meant a 100% no-show of Mopar show cars and racecars. “I’m going to gamble,” Steve said to no one in particular. It was an expensive gamble, but it paid off. Saturday morning was mostly cloudy but the rain held off long enough for swapmeet vendors to set up and dozens of show cars and racecars to begin filtering in for the event. This would be Steve’s final Mope event as he’s turning the dragstrip over to new owners.…

EXECUTIVE UPGRADE DEPT HOOK UP EXECUTIVE RALPH GILLES, who’s a Dukes of Hazzard fan and head of design for Stellantis overseeing Challenger, Charger and the upcoming electric musclecar, with the crew at Speedkore Performance—custom carbon fiber fabricators extraordinaire with such over-the-top creations such as Tantrum, Hellraiser, and Evolution, and you know the collaboration will be nothing short of spectacular. And it is—especially since Ralphie is shelling out his personal dough to have this exceptional work of automotive art fill a parking spot in his own garage. According to the Speedkore folks, this project is the first time that they’ve had a client involved in the design process (‘course they’ve never had a client like Ralph before, either) and they said it was their most intense build to date. So it…

RECORD WRECKERS DEPT THE COWBOY'S BIG NUMBERS “WE SAW A COUPLE OTHER CARS RUN WELL, then my teammate Warren Walcher goes in front of me, and he ran a .66, so I’m like, ‘wow, it’s tight!’ When I let the brake pedal out and it ran through low gear like it did, I knew I was on a really good run. I was just hoping that it didn’t spin down track or get loose. To run a 7.60, I did not expect that at all. I had no idea that we could run that fast, and I’m not even sure my crew guys did, either, at 183 miles an hour. When my son Kyle came on the radio after I pulled the parachute and told me what I had run,…

The raffle is not sponsored, endorsed by, or affiliated with, Athlon Media or Mopar Action. YOU THINK YOUR JOB IS HARD? Imagine what the folks at Dream Giveaway go through to decide what Mopar to give away next Tuesday. Consider all the models and submodels they have to pore over: Chryslers since 1924, Plymouths and DeSotos since 1928 and Dodges since 1914. ’Course, if you add Stellantis’ early offerings, there’s Fiat since 1899 and Augustus Fiat’s Model 1 Chariot DeLuxe built for the Roman Italian Regiment in 467 BC. That one would look great in anyone’s garage. As you can see, however, the DGers passed on that vintage chariot in favor of the ’69 Charger 500 that you see here if the printer didn’t forget to ink the press for…

HOOKED ON CLASSICS DEPT HEMI? Nope. 440 Six Pack? No, sorry. 400 horsepower? As a matter of fact, yes. Which was a bunch more than the good ol’ 273 would have put out when Plymouth first sent this car swimming off the assembly line. For Pete Bell of Glen Arm, Maryland, putting this ’65 Barracuda together completed a dream he had wanted to fulfill for over 30 years. “I had one of these when I was younger, in 10th grade” says 57-yearold Bell, who works in the paint business. “I blew up the motor in that one, it never got fixed, it rotted away sitting outside, and that was the end of it. I’ve looked for 20 years to find a better one to replace that one.” The Barracuda had…

I WAS ASLEEP IN THE CAR. Luckily, not at the wheel. My wife and I had left the Ft. Myers, Florida area in the morning after a week of rest on the Gulf Coast, stopping in to see family members at Lakeland, where I had once worked when I was with the late Mopar Muscle. Now, after lunch and winding our way up US 301 between Ocala and 1-10, Linda took the wheel for the “easy drive” before we would hit that “NASCAR street racing” event known as I-95 at Jacksonville just past rush hour. Then it would be my turn. Lying “on the rack,” the back seat of the Pacifica, I think the dreams were sweet… BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! “Geoff, I ran over something!” “Yep. You did.” Due…

DUSTER 6-PAK TO QUOTE HENRY FORD when describing his Model T: “You can have any color as long as it’s orange…” Well, that might not be 100% accurate, but it’s close enough for the Mopar Action staff. ’Course, when describing Woody Wadsworth’s projects, “orange” is right on target as its the color of choice on the six projects that he wrenched on over the years. Woody’s day job is working as an inspector for Stellantis. We don’t know what he’s inspecting, but he must be doing something right as he collects a regular paycheck. He’s also worked on the side for noted Mopar collector Harold Sullivan, as his main man for transporting and showing some of his collection that includes the famed Jimmy Addison “Silver Bullet.” He’s done well in…

INS & OUTS DEPT A primer on Mopar door strikers, hinges, and latches. MA MOPAR used several door striker and latch designs over the years, totaling three during the muscle era. Each has their own quirks, but the basic tweaking methods are the same: The door should, obviously, be centered in the opening, with equal gaps all around (the spec is ⅛′). As the door is closed, contact between the striker and the latch should raise (pick up) the door either not at all, or by a minuscule amount, if the distance moved is greater than, say, 1/16″, you know that the hinges need to be adjusted, and/or they are worn. (They can be replaced or have bushing kits installed if that’s the case). The trailing edge of the door…

THERE IS ALWAYS an evolutionary reality to horsepower design, and one of the most positive ones has been the advent of the intercooled supercharger design. Of course, the versions in today’s modern Mopars are created to make lot of power using an off-the-shelf package of reliable assembly-line hardware. The Factory Stock racecar Mark Pawuk drives is quite a bit more exotic and is run on the edge to win races. What we are looking at here is the blend of those two combinations thanks to Don Schumacher Racing’s manufacturing capability and the long-term development work of A.J. Berge and his team at Billy Briggs Racing Engines. During the same Charlotte race weekend that we created our feature on Pawuk’s new record, DSR announced the release of their new performance crate…

WAY OUT WEST DEPT THE FIRST BIG WEST COAST-DEDICATED MOPAR SHOW OF ’22 broke cover over the April 22-23 weekend. The 34th edition of the Mopar Spring Fling, held at Woodley Park in Van Nuys, California (northwest of downtown Los Angeles), found great cars rolling in for this event. Actually, this show was the second event this reporter attended that Sunday, along with Hurst Equipped and Hemi Under Glass co-author Mark Fletcher. Don’t tear the pages out, but the first event we attended at sunrise was the huge, 1,000-car Fabulous Fords Forever! show held at Irwindale Raceway in, yes, Irwindale! (and yes, that same Irwindale Raceway where Bob Riggle rolled Jay Leno in the Hemi Under Glass back in 2016). With a 45-minute drive to Van Nuys’ Woodley Park, we…

FUEL FOR THOUGHT EXTRAVAGANZA DEPT GAS MILEAGE, fuel economy, whatever you wanna call it, with gasoline prices surging by the day, it is the current hot-button automotive topic. Now, if your weekend cruiser is a 528” Hemi with dual Holley 4500s on a tunnelram, don’t even bother— you already know that your fuel economy is measured in gallons per mile. Nothing’s gonna fix that, short of swapping to a 1.0L 3-banger. Still, it proves a point: Engines like that, except maybe at full throttle on a dyno or drag strip, are woefully inefficient. Where does the wasted fuel go? Out the exhaust or into the oil pan, as raw hydrocarbons. And therein lies the main goal shared by both tree-hugging envirofreaks, econo-minded tightwads, and performance mavens: Burn it all. Of…

FAST Class SO YOU WENT TO THE TRACK and watched a bunch of late model muscle make some impressive passes in the 10-to-12-second range. I am sure it was an awesome sight to see when you compare it to the high 13- and 14-second passes of some older iron. It’s a dilemma for many… you love the old stuff, but how can you not stop staring at the new stuff flying down the 1320 like 2 to 3 seconds faster? Well… it’s Christmas come early, boys and girls, so let Santa Crec give you the gift of the FAST Class. If you don’t know what the FAST Class is by now, get some ice, because you musta’ hit your head harder than you think on your K-member. The FAST Class…

Bad Birds? POLLY WANT A HEAD? I saw a 1965 Plymouth Fury II for sale. $7,000.00 with 70,000 Km on it. The seller says the engine is a 318 polly. What kind of engine is that? Never heard of that before. No pictures at the moment. It has a Holley head on it with three carbs. Maurice Heter Vancouver, BC Mauri- Poly is short for polyspherical combustion chambers, not potty. It was the only 318 cubic inch engine built from 1956 thru 1966 (1967 in Canadian cars), it is referred to as the “A" engine, it is easy to identify: Look for the 2-nut (or screw, some years) valve covers. In 1967, a wedge-shaped combustion chamber version appeared in the US (’68 in Canada). This upgrade, based heavily on the…

GIMME A HALF-DOZEN DEPT LIKE MANY MO’FANS drawn into buying Mopes they just can’t resist, Frank Cole was bitten by the collecting bug at a young age. ’Course, at that stage, money was the determining factor on what would end up bearing Frank’s license plates. While in high school, Frank would scoot around in a 318 Duster. When he scooted that car to a willing buyer, Frank was able to upgrade his act with a Duster 340. Buying cars, fixing ’em up, and selling them to climb to the next rung of the Mopar ladder became Frank’s goal. The Duster was superseded by a 383 Charger and on and on. Frank’s father was a mechanic. “He wasn’t a good teacher,” he says, “but he had a heck of a bunch…

WHEN A SURPRISE BABY popped up (oops!), Anna Konya needed something bigger than her Camaro. Searching for a musclecar, she found this 2015 Scat Pack Challenger on Car Gurus in Leesburg, Georgia in 2019. Dodge told her it was one of 24 built in Sublime Pearlcoat (available only in 2015 and 2019) and options that included suede leather heated/cooled seats. The Chally gradually morphed from a daily driver to a custom show car, the first mod being tinted windows and taillights. When that didn’t get enough attention, she summoned Outlaw graphics to hydrograph her engine compartment. They did her Camaro and her boyfriend’s car in the same motif, but she went with larger skulls for better visibility. We thought you should know that. Note how it matches the color of…

FOR YEARS we’ve heard the incredible stories of some of the greatest discoveries in the land of Missing Mopars. Who doesn’t remember the 1972 440-6 Road Runner pre-production car hitting the wire over a decade ago? Or how about the Panther Pink 1969 Super Bee that poked its head out of the garage showing us a glimpse of what ’ma Mopar would have in store for the 1970 model year? Those were some fantastically curious Mopars that most folks would greet with the phrase, “with Mopar, you never say never”! With that settled, let’s get right into our bird-of-the-day, the 1969 Plymouth SuperBird prototype. After “King” Richard Petty packed up his helmet and left for the Blue Oval in the fall of 1968 due to Plymouth’s stubbornness in delivering a…

BADASS TO THE BONE DEPT I CAN REMEMBER feeling like the proverbial kid in a candy factory in 1964. I was editor of Custom Rodder and Speed & Custom (formerly Car, Speed and Style) magazines and managing editor of CARS. Not only was I making a living doing what I loved, but I was able to borrow the latest and greatest performance cars. It was like Fantasy Camp for car guys! Of all the cars I borrowed that year, one stands out for delivering the ultimate pulse-quickening experience. Nothing else even came close and the encounter has been indelibly recorded on my internal hard drive. It was early in the week of April 13, after the close of the 1964 New York International Auto Show at the Coliseum when I…

IN THE OPINION of both Mark and I, probably the most unusual car at the show was the 1958 Chrysler 300 D of Per Blixt, who works in Leno’s Big Dog Garage. Now you might say, “What’s so unusual about a 300 D?” This one has the uber-rare Bendix Electrojector electronic fuel-injection setup. First offered in 1957 on the limited production (1,500 units) AMC Rebel (arguably the first by-definition street “muscle car” when defined as a powerful engine installed in an intermediate-sized or smaller car, predating the 1964 Pontiac LeMans GTO), the unit ran well in hot weather but not in cold climates so the first modern EFI system was quickly pulled from the market. Bendix offered it to Chrysler in 1958 with improved electronic controls. It found its way…

WHEN WE HEARD, in early 1964, that Plymouth would be releasing a fastback sporty Valiant A-body, and amazingly with a V8, we were all psyched. My entire clique loved the responsiveness and agility of the A-body, but we all yearned for more power. My close friend, Howie W., stepped up to the plate and ordered, sight-unseen, a new Barracuda. His was one of the first to hit the streets and was quite an attention-grabber, being bright red, with the “peeka-boo” wheel covers. Tires were 7.00X13” Goodyear Power Cushion. No options. Howie ordered it with the 273-2 (the 4-Bbl version would not appear until 1965), and a 2.94:1 7¼ SureGrip. There were no suspension or brake options. The car ran consistent 16-flat quarters at close to 90 MPH, which was enough…