Table of contents for August 2023 in Mopar Action

They're Coming For You HEY, we're all for saving the planet, saving the whales and a chicken in every pot. But putting your beloved modified Mopar on the chopping block to achieve that goal? Hmmnn…maybe second thoughts? See, the EPA has a whole raft of neat ideas to further climate control and save us all from extinction. For instance, they want to regulate cattle's planet-poisoning methane emissions with anti-fart feed additives. Could regulating people be next? Like a fart patrol with hand-held sniffers to catch and cite folks passing gas in public, or maybe a fart tax using bathroom/outhouse meters to monitor and report emissions levels. But that's not all they're doing, no sir. They're renewing their attack of what comes out of your Mopar's tailpipe. ‘Course, that's something that…

“CLICK!” (dial tone). Reportedly, this was the sound that the late Steve Juliano heard several times once he had located the final car from the Rapid Transit System Caravan. The factorybacked RTSC had toured the country in 1970 and ‘71, highlighting Plymouth performance cars being offered by using custom builds and factory hop-up parts. By this time, Steve had already found the 1970 Duster, 1970 Road Runner, and 1971 Road Runner, the latter built by noted Detroit customizer Chuck Miller. Miller was also credited with this final car, the 1970 ‘Cuda, which had disappeared soon after the tour ended. On its trail, Steve is said to have went so far as to offer its owner a new BMW of his choice plus a bunch of money. Nope–“Click!” (dial tone), it…

RARITY AND SCARCITY are always driving factors in the collector car market. The idea that something is not often seen or was in limited production creates desirability, and few Mopar eras can match the brief seven month or so period in late 1969 when the Dodge Charger Daytonas and Plymouth SuperBirds were built. As most people know, these cars were not done to attract people to their big dream in the showroom but to legalize parts for superspeedway racing. Radical but considered special ever since they arrived (and not so easily sold new, we might hasten to note), the two “winged warrior” models remain pinnacles of the overall musclecar hobby to this day. So what would be the result if, say, 19 of these unique cars (11 Dodges and 8…

Hemis on nitro-from start to finish. ASWARM OF TECHNICIANS and worker bees anxiously attends to an odd contraption at the head of a straight ribbon of pavement. A brief, explosive show is about to take place and thousands are watching from grandstands on both sides of the asphalt strip. That contraption is known as a Funny Car. Its brightly painted body, which appears to be a cross between a conventional automobile and the batmobile, is hinged to the chassis and pointing skyward. For car geeks, it's fascinating, and the most interesting part of it is the power source: a supercharged nitromethaneburning engine–a linear descendant of the Gen-2 Mopar Hemi. A crew member hangs an electric starter motor on a bracket at the front of the car's engine. Another tech opens…

JOHN GADDY SAYS he's been a car guy since he was a toddler. His mom recognized his interest in cool rides and bought him a subscription to Hot Rod when he was only three years old. While John couldn't absorb all the technical articles at the time, he enjoyed looking at the pictures. Appreciating the words would have to wait until some years later when John discovered the jokes in Mopar Action. John bought his first car, a 1968 GTX, in 1992 when he was 16 years old. It's a car he still owns, only now it packs a Hellcat crate engine under the hood. The Plymouth proved to be a viable everyday ride, but it was deemed too cramped for a 10-day road trip that John was plan ning…

AS I HAVE REFLECTED BEFORE, there is always something more to this Mopar thing than the hardware. NHRA's Wally Parks was once to have reportedly stated, “The cars are the stars,” when talking about paying out higher racing purses, but for most of us, our Mopar ownership also immediately added us to a select circle of people. Not that guys became more civil as a result; if nothing else, it spurred on further automotive mayhem. But we liked it that way. I was not a car guy until I was “given” a ‘68 Charger by my father. I was 17, had bumped up the family's big-inch Pontiac station wagon one time too many, and he wanted me out of it. I still, however, needed to get to my jobs. So,…

WEATHERSTRUCK Rick– Putting all new weatherstrip on side windows or my ‘68 RR, the old peeled out pretty easy. All the window weatherstrips are original! The vent window rubber seal is very difficult to put in. Lots of soapy water, and every plastic, wood, and metal push tool I have. Hands cramped after awhile. Any tips? Heat up the strip? Garage is 60-degrees, strip is identical to the old one. Thanks so much for your help, I appreciate your advice. Jeff Pitts Battlefield, MO Jeff– First, be sure any corrosion in the channels is addressed. I would not heat the synthetic rubber excessively, but a heat lamp should be OK. The closest thing to magic for this is silicone spray or lube. A nylon trim stick along the edge is…

Rearview Mirror RECOUNTING OUR PRIOR TREKS, we began in our December issue, wherein we (Aussie Brian Dowell and yours truly) left SoCal in a dead-stock, lowmileage 360 4-Bbl Cordoba B-body, In February, we crossed the Arizona desert after a late-day tire blowout, making our way through to Farmington, N.M., for a rough overnight, then, in the April issue, east into Kansas, with stops at the WPC boyhood home in Ellis, and more. In June, after we crossed the Mississippi River and with zero warning, the excrement splattered off the turbine blades–literally, leaving us stranded near Owensboro, Kentucky, exactly 902 miles (1452 Km) from our Hudson Valley, NYS base of operations. The finale for our saga picks up from there. THINGS WERE GOING pretty smoothly–until the A999 TorqueFlite turned into a…

CHRYSLER WAS RIDING HIGH in the 1950s with its awesome 300 “letter-series” parade of luxury performance automobiles. With the company's opening salvo of the C-300 in 1955, the lineup hit its peak in 1957 with the 300C when they produced a limited production version (only 18 built) of the model squeezing 15 more ponies out of its 392-inch, dual-carb Power Pack FirePower 1G Hemi. Produced on Chrysler's Industrial Engine line, even 390 mother loving horsepower wasn't enough, so Mother prodded and coaxed an additional 10 HP from the Hemi for an even 400. That muscled-up motor was intended for a one off concept car dubbed the “Super Dart 400,” with the “400” designation being a nod to the power potential lurking under the hood, Impressive as this hot rod Hemi…

TICKETS TO RIDE DEPT WE WERE HOPING for another wild or exotic Mopar this time around, but those innovative folks at Dream Giveaway came up with something much more appealing: a restored 1971 Demon 340. If you didn't win any of the great Mopes that DG has given away in the past, don't give up hope. This could be the time when the wheel of fortune stops on your number. And even if you did win one of DG's previous giveaways, we're sure there's always room in your garage for one more treasure. Here's your opportunity of acquiring your dream machine if you've ever lusted after a Dodge Demon, any ‘71 model, or even just a yellow car. We got the scoop on the car (along with two on the…

UP TO SPEED WE'RE UP TO INSTALLMENT NUMBER 5 of who knows how many? No matter, here's a quick rundown on what you've missed: We're currently building notone, but two green 1969 A-bodies with 3rd-gen Hemis. The first, the super low-buck version, is a pulled-from-the-mud in Oklahoma stripper Dart hardtop, which you'll be reading about momentarily. When we dropped our pen, the Dart had received a boneyardfresh 2014 (or so) 5.7L mated to a garden-variety A727-A TorqueFlite, and rolling on–gasp–14” wheels. We had made the column shift linkage play nice with the reman smaliblock A727, and even made the kickdown function 100% smooth with the now-underhood throttle position sensor (see or order the June 2023 issue). The dreaded wiring and PCM, from hotwireauto.com, was truly child's play. Second up, which…

YOU CAN STOP holding your breath. We're going to announce the winner of the Mopar Action Best Customized Dodge School Bus contest. But, as is the Mopar Action way, we're going to keep you in suspense just a little longer, so put a fresh D-cell in your pacemaker if you can't handle the stress. Why a customized school bus? Heck, anyone can do a job on a ‘Cuda, or a Challenger or a Duster, for that matter. Roger Gibson can even restore Hemicudas in his sleep (he won't tell us what ol’ Rog's day job is). Go to any Mo'show and it's Alphabet City-A,B,E, A,B,E. We figured it was time for something different–really different. Like, how often do you see a feature in some Mope rag that starts off, “Joe…

TRUCKS…the backbone and workhorse of the automotive world. Even if you aren't considered a “truck guy,” you still love ‘em, right? Of course you do, because anything else is un-American. Whether it's your daily driver, street-strip brawler or drag strip hauler… at some point in time, you've been acquainted. Shaking your head, “no”? How did you ever get that stroker motor or swapmeet engine block home? It won't fit in your hip pocket, so you used, what else…a truck! How many NHRA racing events or swapmeets like Carlisle are just swamped with trucks? Crew cab, quad cab, hauler etc. Even the old rigs used to haul the really awesome stuff is wild in its own right–check out those haulers used by the Ramchargers, Don “the Snake” Prudhomme and many others,…

A READER SENT ME A LINK to an online advertisement (if still up: see tinyurl.com/69hemirr) for a ‘69 Road Runner, said to be the only white one built as a 4-speed 426 Hemi with a white interior. OK, let's roll with that for now. The fifi rst page of the listing claims, in bold font: “This is the ONE and ONLY white 1969 Road Runner Coupe with white interior and a 426 Hemi 630HP 4-speed engine ever made by Plymouth.” Say what? Drilling down through the other documents supplied, we see a dyno sheet specifying the displacement as 455 CID. We also see a huge oil pan hanging several inches below the K-member skid. And tubular headers with aftermarket exhaust. And a silver-painted swaybar. And a propshaft safety loop. As…

TUNING. The numbers boggle the mind: 1,025 horsepower. 945 lb.-ft of torque. 8.9 seconds in the quartermile at 151.17 MPH. A 1.29 60-foot time. Zero to 60 MPH in 1.66 seconds. 2.004 Gs on launch–the highest G- force acceleration of any street legal production car. We're not talking a jacked-up tuner car or some stratospheric-priced exotic. No, just a Dodge that happens to be the most audacious and delightfully ridiculous musclecar ever to roll off an assembly line. What Dodge has pulled off in the 2023 Challenger SRT Demon 170 bombshell is nothing less than spectacular–a street-legal dragster that will run those numbers on E85 fuel right out of the showroom. But don't try your luck at the local strip without a cage and ‘chute, as NHRA mandates those items…

TEN ENGINES. The new 1970 Challenger could be had with 10 possible engines. For the budget-minded, there were the 225-CI Slanties and the pedestrian V8 buyer could get the 318 and 383 in 2-Bbl. form. Even a 4-Bbl 383 was offered in the standard model. Now, the new Chally R/T series came standard with a 383-4 Magnum, while optional mills for that model were the 440-4 (in case you wanted A/C or cruise control), 440-6 (in case you wanted street/strip power) and, at the top, the 426 Hemi (in case you were just bad to the bone and had the extra thousand or so sitting in your wallet). That left 2 others, both 340s. Engineering code A53 meant the Trans Am package with the 340 Six Pack while A66 meant…

INDY. People outside of our circle of buds might think we mean “India” or “Indian”, you know, like those polite call center people you deal with when needing a computer repair. Beyond being the capital city of Indiana, Indianapolis is the location of many things–sports teams, museums, fairgrounds, and monuments, plus the legendary 2.5-mile circle track straight north of town and NHRA's drag strip / short track operation in Claremont to the west of that. Frankly, in our world, “Indy” simply means horsepower. Horsepower means business, and business means PRI. The Performance Racing Industry show is considered the hardcore trade event of the year for powersports fans. It occurs in December, after all the racing series are completed for the year. Unlike SEMA (who has actually owned PRI since 2012),…

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