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Guess I should probably add my story to this thread. Thanks in advance for reading. Really put some effort into this.

Nearly as long as I can remember, cars have been my passion. It just so happens that one of my earliest memories was standing in my

late grandfathers garage looking at his red '78 Corvette. That car is long gone now, but that thought remains.

Could that have been what got me hooked on cars? Maybe.

Of course I haven't always been a die-hard MoPar guy like I am now. (There is no reason I should be. My great grandpa worked for GM,

and my other great grandpa worked for Ford. Dad is a Camaro guy. Brother is too.) For a while I was interested in '55 Chevies, and

later Mercury's. Before MoPars came around AMC was my big interest, and I think that might be what led to my Chrysler sickness.

Probably my earliest MoPar memory was from like 6th grade when I saw a poster somebody had made at school about Dodge Chargers. One of

the pictures was of a bright green Daytona, and from that day on I was hooked. Chargers became my obsession, and my dream was (and

still is) to build a Viper Snakeskin Green Daytona clone with a 6.1L HEMI stroked out to 440cu.in., a Kiesler 5spd manual transmission,

and a 3.54 DANA-60. However as we all know B-Bodies are worth their weight in gold, so that dream probably won't come true for a

good amount of time.

Luckily the good ole' Chrysler A-Body is still within the budget of a teenager, so I ended up here. Right now I would like to thank

Jeremy (JMacsMopars) and Cody (69BronzeT5) for their help. Without them I probably wouldn't be interested in A-Bodies, or own one in

the first place. By this time I had been hunting for a MoPar using CraigsList, and had looked at a handful of cars. One was a Scamp

that needed an entire subframe. Another was a 1972 Plymouth Satellite Sebring Plus with a truck 400 and raunchy body (featuring a

trailer park leaky sunroof). Me and my dad had driven over a hundred miles to look at the Satellite, only to come back empty handed.

I was really down in the dumps about finding a car after that, but God works in mysterious ways, and the next weekend along came the

Dart! One night really late I was surfing CraigsList, just like I always do. Normally I only search on my cities site (mainly because

after the Satellite affair I knew my dad wouldn't want to drive any distance for a car), but that night for some odd reason I searched

Columbus' page for a Dart. Up came a 1972 Swinger listed at $2,000. It may have been 9:00 at night, but I called them up, and asked

about the car. It was still for sale, but somebody was going to look at it the next day. If it didn't sell, my older brother agreed to

drive me there with a trailer to pick it up.

That next day at school I was on pins and needles, afraid of what I could have swore was going to happen. But it didn't! First thing I

did when I got home was call the owners, and the guy was a no-show. WooHoo!!! My brother was true to his word, and off we went up

North. It was a long haul (the car was located above Columbus) but we made it there, albeit dark by that time. Say whatever you want

about not buying a car without seeing it in the light, or what could have been hiding on the underside out of the view of our crappy

flashlight. So what! When I heard that screamin' Chrysler starter, and the dim glow of old-school taillights, I was in love. The green

repaint was done kinda crappy, and the floors were shot, but otherwise the body was straight and rust-free. A final price of $1,800 was

agreed upon, and the Dart was loaded on our ag equipment trailer. (A story all its' own. The PO was an idiot and said we were on a ramp

okay. Yeah, we sure were when the rear wheel slipped off and tore my exhaust up. Thanks a lot!)

Because it was dark when we got home, inspecting the car would have to wait until tomorrow. You can rest assured that I didn't sleep a

bit that night though! I finally owned a vintage MoPar. Green paint, 225 slant six, rusty floors and all. When morning came, my dad

helped me wire the torn exhaust up to the body, and I was able to back off the trailer and take it for a drive. Despite a constant

stalling problem at low speed (which I am still fighting today), the little slanty ran fine. Those wide G60-14 bias-ply tires hooked

great, so a burnout was out of the question; unless of course it is slightly damp on the road.

Immediately after unloading the car I started thinking of how I wanted to modify it. The first thing done was a Thrush glasspack on the

exhaust (after fixing the torn hanger, of course). Then I had a real old-school mechanic I am friends with rebuild the carburetor

(which helped with the stalling problem somewhat). Unfortunately I had purchased the car in October, and without money to register or

insure it, the car was not driven before winter. I wanted to drive the car so bad, but it would have to wait until spring. I got a few

things done during that time though, such as shackling the rear springs for some rake, buying a complete 8-3/4" rear for $50,

purchasing two "well used" Plymouth Duster parts cars for $300 (later figuring out that one is a Feather Duster!!), and just a few days

ago grabbing a disc brake setup off a junkyard Diplomat.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got the Dart registered and insured, and drove it for the first time. What a feeling. While I was

filling up at the gas station, a little like 6-year-old kid asked me what kind of car it was. I told him, and he said "it was real

nice." His dad started talking to me about it too. After I paid and was pulling out on the highway, I saw the kid and his family

walking down the sidewalk, so I laid into it with the single glasspack screamin'. Saw the kid smiling in my rear view mirror.

What will the future hold? Well, you know as well as I do! Money is the big factor now, but I have applied for a job at a couple of

places, so hopefully I can get some income going. I really want to get the disc brakes rebuilt and mounted up, and I was recently

offered a '74 318 for a $100. The front suspension needs rebuilt too. Now that I have air shocks and slot mags, my '70s style is

starting to come together, but there is still some more to go. (Think: traction bars, quarter window "scare stickers," and hopefully a

hood scoop.)