Rodzilla
Well-Known Member
I spent my 20's hot rodding around my hometown in a '73 Dart Sport, which was a 360 powered 340 car that was quick on the street. In reality I was probably lucky if it was mid 12sec car, with 400HP or a bit more. But it was alot of fun. Below is the only digital copy I have (around 1991), a practical joke that I wasn't to happy about. The pic is before a switched out rims to centerlines and rubber to drag radials. With the 4.56:1 gears it was quick from light to light. Several of my friends owned Mopar Muscle as well,,many of us became friends because of our cars. Close friends had a Duster, Challenger, Charger, Dart, and one good friend owned the Demon you are about to see built up here.
Pic of the Dart Sport:
This '71 Demon was bought by my friend in the early to mid 90s for about $4500 if I remember correctly. And it was a real clean looking driver. 340 car with non original 340 4gear, car was an auto from mother mopar. Somewhere around Y2K we all slowly got away from the cars and most of us sold off our Mopar Muscle. The Demon ended up being sold to my ex-wifes step dad, which he kept as a driver for a couple summers from what I was told. Several years ago I had heard he started a rotiserie resto on the car and a couple years after that I heard the bodyshop had syphoned $20K out of him and not much had been done, I wasn't even sure if he got the car back or not.
Up untill 7 months ago that was the last I had heard or thought of the car, till I was cruising threw a local online ad website where I seen a pic of the car posted sitting in a storage locker. I did a quick double take and decided I should make a couple calls and see if the car was the Demon I thought it was. Low and behold it was the very same one. The Ex-Dad-in-law wanted to recoup some of his losses and had no intensions of dropping more money in that pit.
Heres a couple pics of how it looked when a bought it:
So I scooped it up with intensions of at first only bringing it back to a stock look with mostly stock parts. The 340 that came with had supposedly been a fresh build but I had no intensions of trusting that it wasn't a pile of crap with fresh paint since it had been recovered at same shadey shop that had "done" the body work. So I sold it off and aquired a virgin 340 for a new build, which is in progress as I write this.
After my buddy got wind of my recent purchase of his old car it must have ignited an old mopar spark in him as well. With in a couple months he had a '71 Duster in his garage, 383 auto that needed alot of work. It was a nice build and he got his car out for its maiden cruise just last week.
Its been great getting back to cars, all the BSing and bench racing has been a hoot. After a ten year gap I'm thrilled to get back to owning a sweet ride from mother mopar. I've never left being an autosports enthusiest, just shifted gears a few times between modern sports cars, crotch rockets & Mountain Sledding. Need for speed has always been there.
Enough with the background story and on with the build.
Pic of the Dart Sport:
This '71 Demon was bought by my friend in the early to mid 90s for about $4500 if I remember correctly. And it was a real clean looking driver. 340 car with non original 340 4gear, car was an auto from mother mopar. Somewhere around Y2K we all slowly got away from the cars and most of us sold off our Mopar Muscle. The Demon ended up being sold to my ex-wifes step dad, which he kept as a driver for a couple summers from what I was told. Several years ago I had heard he started a rotiserie resto on the car and a couple years after that I heard the bodyshop had syphoned $20K out of him and not much had been done, I wasn't even sure if he got the car back or not.
Up untill 7 months ago that was the last I had heard or thought of the car, till I was cruising threw a local online ad website where I seen a pic of the car posted sitting in a storage locker. I did a quick double take and decided I should make a couple calls and see if the car was the Demon I thought it was. Low and behold it was the very same one. The Ex-Dad-in-law wanted to recoup some of his losses and had no intensions of dropping more money in that pit.
Heres a couple pics of how it looked when a bought it:
So I scooped it up with intensions of at first only bringing it back to a stock look with mostly stock parts. The 340 that came with had supposedly been a fresh build but I had no intensions of trusting that it wasn't a pile of crap with fresh paint since it had been recovered at same shadey shop that had "done" the body work. So I sold it off and aquired a virgin 340 for a new build, which is in progress as I write this.
After my buddy got wind of my recent purchase of his old car it must have ignited an old mopar spark in him as well. With in a couple months he had a '71 Duster in his garage, 383 auto that needed alot of work. It was a nice build and he got his car out for its maiden cruise just last week.
Its been great getting back to cars, all the BSing and bench racing has been a hoot. After a ten year gap I'm thrilled to get back to owning a sweet ride from mother mopar. I've never left being an autosports enthusiest, just shifted gears a few times between modern sports cars, crotch rockets & Mountain Sledding. Need for speed has always been there.
Enough with the background story and on with the build.
