"Baby Pictures" of your supercar....

[69M22Z]

Originally Posted by SeattleCarGuy

My '68 L72/M22/4.10 Biscayne when Larry Myers brought it home to his mother's driveway from Polar Chevrolet in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. And some photos from his days racing it.

Awesome

[Bill Pritchard]

Originally Posted by Big Block Bill

Do you know what ever happened to the 70 Dodge Hemi Challenger from the original owner car? Do you remember what you paid for it back then? I had the opportunity to buy a Plum Crazy 70 Hemi Challenger that had the motor apart, out of the car with 5000 original miles for $3500.00 back in 1977 and I passed on it because I was a Chevy guy and had never worked internally on a Hemi, Young AND Dumb. Bill

Bill, I paid $900 (talked him down from $1000) for it in March of 1980. It had 64000+ miles on it, it was his everyday go-to-work car. Same deal, motor out of car and apart, and radiator, air cleaner assy, and distributor had gone missing from the shop that took it apart (OO was not a DIY guy). It was triple black, no stripe, he special ordered it from Grand Spaulding Dodge in early fall of 1969. I owned it for 16 years, the first seven doing an every-nut-and-bolt restoration on it. I had never worked on a Hemi before either but I managed - not without incident! - to rebuild it and it ran strong when done. Sold it to a good friend in 1996 and he sold it 2 years later and it went to Bethesda MD to a guy who also had a black Hemi Road Runner. I could do an entire thread on all the trials and tribulations I went thru with that car.

[Xplantdad]

Here's Paul's pic right side up....

[markinnaples]

Originally Posted by Bill Pritchard

Bill, I paid $900 (talked him down from $1000) for it in March of 1980. It had 64000+ miles on it, it was his everyday go-to-work car. Same deal, motor out of car and apart, and radiator, air cleaner assy, and distributor had gone missing from the shop that took it apart (OO was not a DIY guy). It was triple black, no stripe, he special ordered it from Grand Spaulding Dodge in early fall of 1969. I owned it for 16 years, the first seven doing an every-nut-and-bolt restoration on it. I had never worked on a Hemi before either but I managed - not without incident! - to rebuild it and it ran strong when done. Sold it to a good friend in 1996 and he sold it 2 years later and it went to Bethesda MD to a guy who also had a black Hemi Road Runner. I could do an entire thread on all the trials and tribulations I went thru with that car.

Would love to hear more about it!

[Bill Pritchard]

Here’s the story on the 1970 Dodge Hemi Challenger that I used to own. Rather lengthy, but I think there’s a lot that is interesting, so please forgive me if it gets too lengthy for you. Pictures to follow.

I bought it from the original owner in March of 1980. We worked at the same place, but it was a huge factory and I never really knew him prior to buying the car. I paid $900 (talked him down from $1000) for it. It had 64000+ miles on it, it was his everyday go-to-work car. He stopped driving it in 1975 and had intentions of having the engine rebuilt and just using it for pleasure afterwards. He had the motor pulled out of the car and sent it for machine work. The shop doing the machine work turned the crank and took too much off the sides of the crank journals, which would have resulted in excessive side clearance. They deemed the crankshaft junk, which put a halt to the progress. In the meantime, he and his wife built a new house plus had another child unexpectedly, so the car just ended up sitting in his garage. At some point, the radiator, air cleaner assy, and distributor had gone missing from the shop that took it apart, so that was another roadblock to him. He eventually lost interest and that’s when I heard from another co-worker that he was going to sell it.

OO special ordered it from Grand Spaulding Dodge in early fall of 1969. Per the build sheet that I found under the rear seat (at least the portions that the mice had not chewed up), it was built on Veteran’s Day, November 11, 1969. It was triple black, no stripe, 426 Hemi, 4 speed, Super Track Pack (4.10 Dana and power disc brakes), console, AM radio with 8 track tape player, Rally wheels, and 6 way adjustable driver’s seat. (Regarding the seat, I believe I have seen our resident E-body Mopar expert njsteve describe it as offering ‘6 positions in which to be uncomfortable’ or something to that effect, and I would not disagree.) I owned it for 16 years, the first seven doing an every-nut-and-bolt restoration on it.

While beginning the deconstruction process, I made what turned out to be a wise decision. I had a good friend who was the Parts Manager at the local Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, and we went thru the parts book and ordered all new emblems, moldings, front fenders, exhaust tips, and many other small parts. Hadn’t yet resolved how I was going to have the body shell stripped so held off on ordering new rear quarters. By the time I decided I did need them, they had been discontinued. Eventually wound up driving to Columbus OH to Mitchell Motor Parts to get those (paying a lot more than if I had got them thru my friend) and also got a NOS H-pipe for the exhaust from them.

After I had it stripped down to the bare shell, I was considering taking it to Redi-Strip for immersion to remove all traces of rust. But I had heard, especially on unibody cars, that the stripping solution would remain in cracks and crevices and seep out after paint, ruining it. A friend had heard of a place in Chicago that did “water blasting”, which was sand mixed with water, the idea being that the water would keep the metal cooler to prevent warpage of the sheet metal. Sounded promising, so I decided to go with that. I took them the bare shell, hood, and doors. When done, I went to pick it up and was horrified. They obviously used way too much pressure when blasting, and the roof and hood had dips more than an inch deep. Doors were somewhat saved due to the side impact beams behind the outer skin. I didn’t even bother to bring the hood home. Using a die grinder and small cutoff wheels, I ground off every spot weld holding the roof skin to the sub-structure and removed the damaged roof skin. Went to a junkyard and had them cut the complete roof structure off another Challenger, where I repeated the process to remove the good roof skin.

In the early 80’s, there were virtually no reproduction parts being made for Chrysler E-bodies, so it was a challenge (pun intended) to find what was needed to progress. I bought a complete running driving Challenger just to cut out a portion of the drivers front floor pan to replace the rusted section on my car. Bought another one just to get the vent tube for the fuel filler neck. Had to weld in small sheet metal patch panels in the front inner fenders, the passenger side rear seat footwell, and trunk floor.

Finding the missing parts turned out to be not terribly difficult, even in pre-internet days. Got the air cleaner assembly from a guy in Indiana. I decided to use a Direct Connection electronic ignition kit, which came with a distributor. In the local “Tradin Times” paper, found a guy up in Grand Rapids Michigan who had the correct p/n radiator (2998956, still burned into my memory) so I drove up there to get that. He told me it came from a car that he had parted out….ready for this??....a Panther Pink 70 Cuda 440 six pack convertible! Even back then, I thought to myself, that’s gotta be a pretty rare and valuable car.

In June of 82 I was laid off from my job, and for the next 3+ years never had steady full time work, so restoration progress slowed considerably. Finally got to the point where it was time to build the engine. I mentioned previously about the crankshaft being deemed junk by the OO’s machine shop. Well, my experience had been that, as long as a crank wasn’t physically broken into pieces, it could be fixed. I took it to a reputable shop that did a lot of performance work, where they welded up the journal sides and remachined them, and it turned out fine. I had zero experience building a Hemi engine but figured as long as I followed my trusty “Motor” manual, I’d be OK. When it came time to install pistons and rods, that manual noted “notch or arrow on piston head toward front of engine”, so that’s what I did. Took my time and got everything buttoned up, engine installed into the car, and it was time to fire it up. It started with no issues, but there was a loud ticking noise, which I just assumed was the hydraulic lifters taking time to pump up. I was very nervous as this seemed to be taking too long to happen, so I had my hand on the ignition switch the whole time. After a few minutes, there was a loud “BANG” and I instantly flipped the switch off.

A couple days later I began the teardown process. IIRC, when I pulled the passenger side cylinder head, I found the problem. All the intake valves on that side had been hitting the pistons. One of the valves finally broke. The broken piece put a good gouge in the combustion chamber of the head, but thankfully not even a scratch in the cylinder wall. All the other intake valves were slightly bent, but not broken. Now the puzzling part; why did this happen? Eventually I noticed that on the other side, all the pistons had valve reliefs on the top (intake) side and on the damaged side, all the valve reliefs are on the bottom (exhaust) side. I found that strange. I noted that all 8 pistons had the stamped arrow pointing forward, just as the Motor manual had said they should be. I eventually found out that the 426 Hemi engines had different pistons for each bank of cylinders. The reason for this is there is a very slight (thinking it’s like .002” or something) offset in the piston pin hole. For whatever reason, this engine had originally been built with all 8 the same pistons and the Chrysler assemblers were smart enough to put the valve reliefs all at the top side, which meant that the arrows on top of the piston head were all pointing backwards on the passenger side bank instead of forward. Having the wrong offset pistons on one bank was good enough to get this car through 5 years and 64000 miles of use, so apparently not a big deal. Sure made a lot of work and expense for me though!

I found a guy who had the four correct pistons and got it all back together with new intake valves, and it ran fine. In the spring of 1986 I took it to my old college roommate who, along with his father and brother, ran a body shop south of Springfield IL. They did all the finish body and paint work and then I brought it back home and did all the final assembly. The car was completed in 1987. Sold it to a good friend in 1996 and he sold it 2 years later and it went to Bethesda MD to a guy who also had a black Hemi Road Runner.

[Bill Pritchard]

"As purchased" pictures. Note patinaed Grand Spaulding Dodge decal on trunk lid.

[Bill Pritchard]

After being stripped to the bare shell, it was time to cut off the quarter panels. I guessed that it would be rusty underneath them, and that proved to be a good guess. This work was done by a couple of my friends, who are pictured here.

[Bill Pritchard]

.

[muscle_collector]

out of curiosity what did you get for it after the restoration? (not trying to twist the knife lol)

[Bill Pritchard]

Originally Posted by muscle_collector

out of curiosity what did you get for it after the restoration? (not trying to twist the knife lol)

Let's just say I did not lose any money on it, but got nowhere near what they're going for today. But then, even though I did the best job I could on it at the time, the level of knowledge that is available for current restorations was not even in the same stratosphere back then. It would need to be completely re-restored to bring it up to current high standards.