burntorange70
Moderator
Or girl.
I always like to here what got people in to the Mopar seen. So whats your story? :3gears:
I always like to here what got people in to the Mopar seen. So whats your story? :3gears:
(Mopar) a history of a madman
- Thread starter burntorange70
- Start date
Chryco Psycho
Well-Known Member
madman!! ... no just Psycho LOL
My dad usually had mopars but he was not into cars , But I got to work on them , found them easy to work on . Bought an AMC Javelin for my first car but the front end needed work for a cost that was higher then the price of the car !!
I had always been a Petty fan & Mark Donohue as well & a 70 Challenger R/T came up for sale a couple of blocks away , I immediatly bought the car & fell in love with it , unfortunatly a guy came along & offered me waaaay to much $$ for ti & it broke my heart watching it drive away . I bought the car in 77 & sold it in the fall of 79 , so that winter I swore I would replace it & I bought a 70 R/T SE 440 Challenger & even though I have been offered a Lot of $$ for the car I still remember the the way I felt watching my First Chall drive away so after 31 years I still have my Chall !! In the meantime I have owned close to 80 vehicles & at least 75 have been Mopar & at least 70 have been std trans .I have had numerous parts cars including numerous A,B,C bodies all as drivers & 10 Dodge trucks , I have always owned at least one truck since 78 , the last 4 have been Cummins powered .
I did unfortunatly own 2 gms , my 1st & my last LOL both were completely unreliable & cost a fortune in parts to keep running
My dad usually had mopars but he was not into cars , But I got to work on them , found them easy to work on . Bought an AMC Javelin for my first car but the front end needed work for a cost that was higher then the price of the car !!
I had always been a Petty fan & Mark Donohue as well & a 70 Challenger R/T came up for sale a couple of blocks away , I immediatly bought the car & fell in love with it , unfortunatly a guy came along & offered me waaaay to much $$ for ti & it broke my heart watching it drive away . I bought the car in 77 & sold it in the fall of 79 , so that winter I swore I would replace it & I bought a 70 R/T SE 440 Challenger & even though I have been offered a Lot of $$ for the car I still remember the the way I felt watching my First Chall drive away so after 31 years I still have my Chall !! In the meantime I have owned close to 80 vehicles & at least 75 have been Mopar & at least 70 have been std trans .I have had numerous parts cars including numerous A,B,C bodies all as drivers & 10 Dodge trucks , I have always owned at least one truck since 78 , the last 4 have been Cummins powered .
I did unfortunatly own 2 gms , my 1st & my last LOL both were completely unreliable & cost a fortune in parts to keep running
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AlleyoopMgv
Well-Known Member
Growing up at the dragstrips, and all my Dads old racecar's!
btceng
Well-Known Member
You guys have great stories. Mine is a recent love affair. Anyone that followed my threads knows that my son at age 5 or 6 became a Mopar man. I encouraged his love of cars and as he grew, I decided to follow a dream of mine to restore a car. I am a shadetree mechanic at best but have been around mechanical things all of my life. Living on a farm with no close neighbors, I decided to get my son his dream car for his 11th birthday and found this 72 Challenger. I wish that I had done it years ago. Thanks to you guys, it's moving along. We hope to have it painted by next summer.
P.S. I no longer refer to myself as a reformed GM man, I'm definitely Mopar now. Kind of like being born again, in that, my old self is no longer who I am.
P.S. I no longer refer to myself as a reformed GM man, I'm definitely Mopar now. Kind of like being born again, in that, my old self is no longer who I am.
msbaugh
Well-Known Member
... unfortunately I didn't grow up around muscle cars, didn't grow up around the drag strip, and never lived in the 70's, no cool story here... Im a newbie to say the least, but my love story started with my first job at a local shop, got the opportunity to help my boss work on his son's mustang fox body race car and a few other old cars from time to time.
A few years later my father and I started our own project, bought a beat up old 70 440 challenger, and we're still fixing it up as we drive it.
I don't know if it was the old Roadrunner that I always saw on the way to the shop or just the plain overall bad ass looks of MOPARS, but I've always loved them more than anything. Never even drove one until we got ours.
Plus for the most part, cars made today just plain suck A$$
A few years later my father and I started our own project, bought a beat up old 70 440 challenger, and we're still fixing it up as we drive it.
I don't know if it was the old Roadrunner that I always saw on the way to the shop or just the plain overall bad ass looks of MOPARS, but I've always loved them more than anything. Never even drove one until we got ours.
Plus for the most part, cars made today just plain suck A$$
ramenth
Well-Known Member
You're wrong. It is a cool story.
I've been a car nut all my life. My buddy was given a 62 valiant for his sixteenth birthday. So we both got or drivers permits, and he said after he passed his test he would teach me and I could use it to take mine. Well he failed twice, and I ended up learning how to drive on the way to my test, on the last day of my permit, which I passed. Go figure. That car and it's typewriter transmission will always be special to me. Finances and a desire to have a car steered me to a lot of different brands over the years. Hell growing up finding a car for under a hundred dollars running was not uncommon. Still always liked mopars. After high school I bought a 67 Sport Fury convertible, hemi auto. Still have the title and some of the parts. Before anyone asks no motor parts. LOL. When the e body's came out I always wanted one, and here I sit today finally fulfilling a youthful dream.
ramenth
Well-Known Member
Pop was a Ford trucks and AMC/Jeep guy for the family trucksters. Some of my fondest memories from early childhood was my brother and I riding on the wheel wells of the '72 Commando so our sisters could have the backseat. Or standing up in the middle of the seat in Pop's extended wheel base '74 F350 stake body. Don't try that now-a-day's folks!
My sister bought a '72 Duster when she was stationed at Memphis in the Navy. This was back in '80, so I wasn't even 9 years old yet and the car was even younger than me.
She sold the car to a fellow sailor who drove it to Texas. The 318 blew up once he got there and he commissioned a rebuild from a local vo-tech. Car didn't run right after that so he trailered it back to Memphis and gave it back to my sister. She'd already spent the $500 he gave her on another car, but that was okay, since he gave it back to her.
My folks had fallen on hard times - like most of the country had back in the late '70's, early '80's - and needed a car. My sister and her husband tow barred the Duster from Memphis to upstate NY and handed Pop the keys, saying that it needed a lot of work.
The vo-tech who rebuilt the engine didn't have much in the way going for 'em, to say the least. In place of the 318, they put in a 360, a nice plus. But in putting the engine together they didn't bother to mic much. Thank crank was cut from the factory and they used standard bearings in it. When they put bearings in it. Yeah, you read that right: one of the mains and two or three of the rods didn't even have bearings. Knocked like an SOB.
Pop, being the old school hot rodder he was, with no money for a good rebuild, bought the bearings he needed for the ones that were missing and shim stocked the ones that were there. (Remember shim stock?) Oh, by the way, remember when I said the car had a 318? Yeah, the vo-tech used the 318's 904 converter for the 360. Pop was given a 360 that was pretty much beyond use by a co-worker for the converter. We drove that car for years afterward, with the shim stock still in it, before Pop finally got in the position to do an engine right, sometime around '88, '89.
Pop had cut his teeth building and hot rodding flat heads back in the day. He's laid his hands into just about everything since. But once he laid hands in the 360 he was converted almost instantly. Mopar got in the blood thanks to that Duster. Oh, we have a small contingent of Brand X scattered throughout the family, Pop and I are working on his '54 Ford Crestline more door, I have my '78 F250 bought new by my grandfather, I just bought an '89 F150 4x as a winter beater, my oldest bro-in-law has an '01 Silverado. We've converted my older bro-in-law to Mopar since his Chevy days. My oldest sister? After dabbling with a few Chevies after she gave Pop the Duster she's come back to the Mopar fold. Now she won't buy anything but.
And the Duster? Still in the family. My 16 year old nephew has it! :icon_cheers:
My sister bought a '72 Duster when she was stationed at Memphis in the Navy. This was back in '80, so I wasn't even 9 years old yet and the car was even younger than me.
She sold the car to a fellow sailor who drove it to Texas. The 318 blew up once he got there and he commissioned a rebuild from a local vo-tech. Car didn't run right after that so he trailered it back to Memphis and gave it back to my sister. She'd already spent the $500 he gave her on another car, but that was okay, since he gave it back to her.
My folks had fallen on hard times - like most of the country had back in the late '70's, early '80's - and needed a car. My sister and her husband tow barred the Duster from Memphis to upstate NY and handed Pop the keys, saying that it needed a lot of work.
The vo-tech who rebuilt the engine didn't have much in the way going for 'em, to say the least. In place of the 318, they put in a 360, a nice plus. But in putting the engine together they didn't bother to mic much. Thank crank was cut from the factory and they used standard bearings in it. When they put bearings in it. Yeah, you read that right: one of the mains and two or three of the rods didn't even have bearings. Knocked like an SOB.
Pop, being the old school hot rodder he was, with no money for a good rebuild, bought the bearings he needed for the ones that were missing and shim stocked the ones that were there. (Remember shim stock?) Oh, by the way, remember when I said the car had a 318? Yeah, the vo-tech used the 318's 904 converter for the 360. Pop was given a 360 that was pretty much beyond use by a co-worker for the converter. We drove that car for years afterward, with the shim stock still in it, before Pop finally got in the position to do an engine right, sometime around '88, '89.
Pop had cut his teeth building and hot rodding flat heads back in the day. He's laid his hands into just about everything since. But once he laid hands in the 360 he was converted almost instantly. Mopar got in the blood thanks to that Duster. Oh, we have a small contingent of Brand X scattered throughout the family, Pop and I are working on his '54 Ford Crestline more door, I have my '78 F250 bought new by my grandfather, I just bought an '89 F150 4x as a winter beater, my oldest bro-in-law has an '01 Silverado. We've converted my older bro-in-law to Mopar since his Chevy days. My oldest sister? After dabbling with a few Chevies after she gave Pop the Duster she's come back to the Mopar fold. Now she won't buy anything but.
And the Duster? Still in the family. My 16 year old nephew has it! :icon_cheers:
DetMatt1
Well-Known Member
I was born in `69 here in Detroit, dad worked for Chrysler, but was a pencil pusher and not at all into cars or mechanically inclined. That being said my love/obsession for Mopars was something that I got on my own. The kids accross the street, who were probably 18 at the time that I was 4 or 5 were constantly working on a `68 Charger in there driveway accross the street from our house. My parents would allways find me sitting on the curb in front of the house watching them work on that car after the streetlights came on. To this day there is something about a `68 Charger that really does it for me and of course I was Mopar from that point on.
In my younger,"uneducated" days, I was all into shuvy's. Had a 69 SS/RS Camaro with an L-88, 4 spd, 4:11's, etc that I thought was a world beater. Cruising the south-side of Indy one Friday night, I pulled up alongside this "old dude" (he was about 35, I was 19) in this refridgerator white "Bulvidere"- (yup, dog dishes, column auto, bench seat, post car...). The first light, he stayed up with me. Next light, I launched a little harder; he pulled me 1/2 a fender. 3rd light,harder launch,worse result. 4th light full on launch mode, got beat a car length. Finally got through traffic and beside him, got him to pull over and asked what the hell he had under the hood. He held up the Hemi emblems and said "don't get to play much if I leave these on". Went right around the corner to K-Mart for a for sale sign. 2 weeks later went back to Indy with a 440 R/T; never looked back. (Jeez, I miss 280 Sunoco for 32.9/gal...)
msbaugh
Well-Known Member
Now that's a bad ass story... maybe I should take all the emblems off my cars! I might get to play more
TinCuda
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I was 15 and was working at a local Burger King. I had been working there for over a year and had moved my way from mopping the floor, straight through fries, and I had become a real mover and shaker on the muchly prized burger board position. I needed a car. The year was 1985. Knight Rider was still on TV. The brand new pontiac trans ams where kick'n.
My dad had always been a ford man (1970 galaxie 500) and my brother was into chevys.(1976 Monza Spider) I was undecided. I was kind of in the market for a 68/69 camaro. They where still cheap enough to get on a part time, living at home with the folks, Burger King income. But, there where none to be had in the small town that I grew up in at the time. I did find a really smoke'n 1978 firebird that the guy wanted $6000. That was way too much for me to spend. Smokey and the Bandit had made these cars very expensive. lol My quest went on.
There she was, a dark blue 1971 gill equiped, hood scooped, fire breathing 440, Mickey Thompson tire wearing machine. The mold was struck.
I asked the owner what he wanted for the car and it was every bit of money I had to the penny. $1500. I tried to talk him down some but he told me that I had till the end of the week to make up my mind because he was going to a swap meet on saturday and he was not going to bring this car back. I will never forget that fateful friday afternoon as I drove away in what turned out to be my lifelong obsession.
At the time, I was not a Mopar fan. I was not an any car fan. That car was the crossroads and I have never looked back.
I bought the car when I was 15, two weeks before I turned 16 and at that time in Kansas I could drive with a permit. I was a farm kid and had been driving wheat trucks to town from the ripe old age of 12.
The car was blue when I bought it but when I was in high school, I painted it gray. After high school I went off to do what most do. I went to collage and got me a family. I lived in apartments and flop houses with friends throughout the years. The whole time, I paid $40 dollars a month to keep the car in a covered storage with solid cement floors. 15 years worth of 40 bucks a month when I was paying at times $150 a month for the place I lived. LOL
Anyway, I have always driven Mopars. In my poor years, I just drove cheaper Mopars. lol
I am in the middle of going through the old girl and putting here back to as original as I can. It is still a long road but a sweet, sweet obsession. lol
It was a FC7 in-violet purple car and I am really looking forward to how she comes out.
.,
My dad had always been a ford man (1970 galaxie 500) and my brother was into chevys.(1976 Monza Spider) I was undecided. I was kind of in the market for a 68/69 camaro. They where still cheap enough to get on a part time, living at home with the folks, Burger King income. But, there where none to be had in the small town that I grew up in at the time. I did find a really smoke'n 1978 firebird that the guy wanted $6000. That was way too much for me to spend. Smokey and the Bandit had made these cars very expensive. lol My quest went on.
There she was, a dark blue 1971 gill equiped, hood scooped, fire breathing 440, Mickey Thompson tire wearing machine. The mold was struck.
I asked the owner what he wanted for the car and it was every bit of money I had to the penny. $1500. I tried to talk him down some but he told me that I had till the end of the week to make up my mind because he was going to a swap meet on saturday and he was not going to bring this car back. I will never forget that fateful friday afternoon as I drove away in what turned out to be my lifelong obsession.
At the time, I was not a Mopar fan. I was not an any car fan. That car was the crossroads and I have never looked back.
I bought the car when I was 15, two weeks before I turned 16 and at that time in Kansas I could drive with a permit. I was a farm kid and had been driving wheat trucks to town from the ripe old age of 12.
The car was blue when I bought it but when I was in high school, I painted it gray. After high school I went off to do what most do. I went to collage and got me a family. I lived in apartments and flop houses with friends throughout the years. The whole time, I paid $40 dollars a month to keep the car in a covered storage with solid cement floors. 15 years worth of 40 bucks a month when I was paying at times $150 a month for the place I lived. LOL
Anyway, I have always driven Mopars. In my poor years, I just drove cheaper Mopars. lol
I am in the middle of going through the old girl and putting here back to as original as I can. It is still a long road but a sweet, sweet obsession. lol
It was a FC7 in-violet purple car and I am really looking forward to how she comes out.
.,
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