New to Mopar, New to cars in general, Trying to restore a 1973 Roadrunner

[Critter]

My father has a 1973 Roadrunner with a 318 V8 in it. Im very new to cars and am still getting the hang of how things work, but I do know that the car has been sitting for +20 years and has 435K miles which is probably not great. The car is currently buried in a garage with completely flat and likely rotted tires. I don't have any experience with working on cars but I would love to learn anything about the process of getting the car driving

 

[493 Mike]

You will need to spend a lot of time reading first.
Mike

 

[ckessel]

Get it out of there and to your home. Get it cleaned up and start assessing. That many miles and extended incarceration, I would expect a complete redo of engine/trans/fuel system/brake system/suspension/steering/charging system/cooling system. From there, you have a good chance of rodent problems to deal with too. They love to chew on wiring and many other things. When you go to clean the car up, or even to move it, glove up and wear a minimum N95 rated respirator. Protect your eyes too. I would use ski or motorcycle goggles. The ones with a foam seal around your eyes. Rodent poo is very bad news. Get a factory service manual also.

 

[rickseeman]

It may not be as bad as you think. I (and my cronies) recently started 5 old Mopars (2 Challengers and 3 Road Runners) that hadn't been started in over 25 years. It's amazing how few of problems we had. It was fun. I'm not going to say what we did is right, I'm just telling you what we did. The owner didn't want to tear them down or spend any money. He admitted to us that he's never going to drive them, but he feels bad about neglecting them for so long. The first thing we did was go to Wal-Mart and get some cans of WD-40 that have the bendable metal hose nozzle. That way you can spray to the far side of the cylinder. Then we let it sit a week. One of them we had to hot wire because he didn't have the keys. If you are comfortable removing the distributor you should prime the oil system. You can remove the valve covers and squirt some oil on the valve stems and on the rocker shafts. He changed the oil in 2 of them first. Two of them had a stuck oil pressure relief valve and ballooned the oil filter then blew out the oil filter gasket and dumped all the oil on the ground. 1 fuel system worked. Another one we filled the float bowls on the carburetor. The other 3 we ran a hose from the portable electric fuel pump to a 1 gallon jug. We had ignition issues on one. Use a known carburetor. The owner of these cars hates Holleys. He said they always leak. When we started the 440 6-pak Challenger those 3 Holleys looked like the fountain at Ceasars Palace, fuel was going everywhere. We finally had to disconnect the outboards and just run the center carb. By the end of the day we had it idling at 900 rpm’s (FSM spec). When we started this project I never dreamed these things would start. I told him they were going to be froze up and full of rust, but that wasn’t the case. Only one of them took a big breakover bar to get it to turn over (thankfully Mopar's have a big harmonic balancer bolt). And they were all nearly rust free inside. So now we think we are the masters of the universe and can do anything.

 

[Kern Dog]

Good for you for taking these steps to bring a car back from the dead.
First off, the word restore can mean a variety of things to people but the actual true definition of the word is to return to it's original state.
Me? I have never restored a car but I have resurrected many, painted a few, rebuilt engines and all that stuff.
If you have ever watched the TV shows Roadkill and Roadkill Garage, you will remember seeing them take dead cars and getting them operational again. Very few of them were repainted, almost none of them had finished interiors or gauges but they ran and drove.
For you, it may prove to be most satisfactory to get it running and driving, then address stuff like the interior and any body and paintwork it needs.
I have some ratty cars that are still a blast to drive.

 

[Don Frelier]

435,000 miles is a very high number.
First see if you can get it running.
Then you need to get basically every hose (brakes for sure), belt, and replace all the fluids.
Keep us posted with questions and progress.

 

[RR Fan Dan]

and has 435K miles

Are you sure about that? Did someone keep track of the odometer rolling over 4 times?

 

[Critter]

Are you sure about that? Did someone keep track of the odometer rolling over 4 times?

That just shows how much I don’t know. I didn’t know the white was tenths of a miles

 

[RR Fan Dan]

That just shows how much I don’t know. I didn’t know the white was tenths of a miles

From the looks of the pictures that car could very well be 43k miles. Need to see more pictures when you get it unburied.