| njsteve |
08-04-2019 03:34 PM |
I don't remember the name of the guy I sold it to. Could be a guy named Daryl? It was in the late 1980's. I bought it for the parts that came with it: a NOS 1970 engine block and engine parts. I built an engine that was later featured in a build article for Mopar Muscle Magazine in the early 1990's. The block was a super rare, over-the-counter, high nickel content block. As you may or may not know, there were no 1970 date coded blocks installed in assembly line cars. The 1970 and 1971 cars all had 1969 cast blocks in them due to an overproduction of engine blocks that year. So if you find a 1970 or more recent date coded block it is something special.
(This brings me to a random trivia item - there were several unscrupulous mopar hunters back in the day who would target unknowledgeable sellers with this fact. They would show them the 1969 dated block in their 1971 car and claim it could not be the original engine and therefore bargain the price down based on the "replacement engine".
Anyway, back before the internets, there was no widely known info on who bought the original batch of Super Stock Darts and Cudas. So I had no way of crossmatching a VIN to a particular racer. But I should have seen the clues. The 1969 grill setup (Landy campaigned the car in 1969 with a 1969 grill). The special front spindles (in the pile of parts) that were cut and rewelded to alter the wheelbase forward by an inch. The modified magnesium crossram intake by Diamond engineering that had DICK LANDY as the mailing address on the box (DOH!!!!!)
I think I paid $25K for the complete car and parts and sold it for the same amount a few months later (and I kept the complete engine minus the intake setup). I sold those spindles and some other random other race parts that came with the car via Hemmings a few years later because I didn't realize their significance to the car.
The crazy thing was that this car actually had a "Certicard" (the Mopar version of a Protectoplate), in the card holder on the radiator support. Remember, these were cars with no factory warranty and should not have had such an item to begin with. The card had the full LO23 VIN stamped into it. I still have photos of that card.
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