Okay--here's a look into my Mopar Young Gun story. I bought my 1968 Plymouth Valiant in August of 2009--just a month before heading to college at the University of Minnesota. Interestingly, I first found my car on Craigslist as a potential vehicle option for a friend rather than for myself. He had money that was burning a huge hole in his pocket, and that money had old car written all over it. I sent the link to the Valiant to him on Facebook, but I could tell right away from talking to him that this wasn't quite the car he wanted so desperately. [He later went on to buy a 1970 Pontiac GTO... Cool, but not anything like our old Mopars!] As a lover of [mostly] all things Mopar myself (my dad and neighbor especially are big Mopar nuts), I couldn't help but visit and revisit the car's Craigslist posting. I knew my parents were planning to sell my mom's car and give her the Ford Focus I had been driving after I went away to school, so I realized that I was probably going to need to find my own car if I planned on going anywhere in the next couple of years. Consequently, I took the risk and emailed the owner of the Valiant to see if it was still available. To make a long story short, I scooped the up off a fellow Mopar guy who was in the process of moving to Hawaii. He had a couple other Pentastars that were way nicer than the Valiant, so I was happy to buy the Valiant off of him and save him the freighting costs for another vehicle.
As far as the car goes, it's a 63k original-mile 1968 Plymouth Valiant 100. The car was a Grandma's church transportation and grocery-getter in Missouri for decades, and it has the paint chips all over the deck lid edge from stowing a walker in and out of the trunk to prove it! The motor is a 225 Slant 6 with a 70s Super Six intake and carb kit on it. Putting the [little] power [and mostly torque] to the pavement are a 904 Torqueflite and a 2.76 geared 7.25 open rear. The car is extremely solid; I'm going to need a passenger front floorpan and some little patches on the tops and bottoms of my front fenders, but otherwise the car is pretty intact. Even my interior is beautiful minus my front bench seat!
I got some good stuff for the car from the guy that sold it to me, and I hope to be able to do some fun things with it all. Over my school's semester break I ditched ignition points and installed a 70s factory electronic ignition kit. With that completed, I'm thinking about tackling the really big piece that came with my car. Included in the sale of my Valiant was a vintage, never-used military-surplus Paxton Centrifugal Blower and a blow-through Stromberg carburetor. I'm seriously toying with the idea of installing a blower onto my Slant 6 and making it a truly buzzin' half-dozen.
In addition to doing that, I've got numerous other ideas for performance upgrades to do in the next couple of years before I finish school. I'm thinking a conversion to an A833 OD four speed, a big cam, and headers to name a few...
So this is my story thus far with my Valiant. I'll surely be more active in the forums in the coming spring and summer, but in the mean time I'm biding my time at school. Good thing home is only a half-hour away!
