I purchased this vehicle in 1994 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The car was originally purchased by a lady in Fargo, North Dakota in 1970. It was owned and operated in North Dakota and Minnesota for the next 24 years. I found extensive evidence that the car was drag raced frequently. During the summer of 1994 I rebuilt the engine and transmission. In 1996 I rebuilt the Dana 60 rear axle and put 3.54 gears in it because it originally had the Super Trak Pac option with 4.10 gears and I didn't like the high rpm's it would turn on the highway. By 1997 the car was in very bad shape and I decided to restore it. The pictures on this page show what the car looked like prior to restoration. The body was completely rusted, especially the trunk and floor pans. Many of the spot welds that hold the inner fenders to the shock towers were broken and there was a lot of flex in the body's front end. Besides the engine, transmission, and axle, the rest of the car was shot and needed to be completely rebuilt. The nicest thing about the car at that time was the interior which, aside from the carpet and headliner, was still in pretty good shape. Since the restoration would require massive sheet metal and body work, I started searching for a good body shop. That's how I met Dennis and Sean Duke of Warsaw Missouri. They run a small business called Duke's Body Shop, and do Mopar restorations on the side. All of the work you see under the During Restoration link was done by them, and if you click on the After Restoration link I think you will agree that they do fine work.
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In the middle picture here you can see that the black paint was severly oxidized on the upper surfaces. The car was originally painted Top Banana Yellow from the factory, and whoever painted it black did not even bother to strip the yellow off first, they just painted right over. As a result you could see yellow paint showing through every where there was a chip in the black. As you may also have noticed in this picture, I had installed a set of super stock leaf springs, and that is why the rear end sat so high.
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In the last picture here of the front end you can see the effects of a wreck which occurred while I was racing my buddy's '68 barracuda back in 1995. I wound up going into a ditch at about 110mph and the front end nosed into the far side of the ditch spinning the car four times and bending the front bumper and frame. Luckily, the ditch was vary wide and fairly shallow ;-) The front valence panel was completely smashed in, but I had ordered a new one and installed it prior to these pics, so the front doesn't look near as bad as it did right after the wreck. The wreck broke both motor mounts, smashed both headers, broke the transmission mount, and completely demolished my shifter linkage so that it was stuck in 4th gear. It is a testament to the awesome power of the Chrylser 440 engine that it was able to pull itself up out of that ditch in 4th gear alone and get me down the road to a gas station where I was able to call a tow truck. Now that's torque!
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