35 or is it 40 years in the Mopar hobby?

Please excuse what will probably end up being babble!
I's 74 and I know its time to slow down because I have to. Time to sell off some cars so the wife won't have to one day. Hard to get up and down and my wife is no spring chicken. Hard for the two of us to swap rearends.
I have a couple cars advertised over on the sale site, on FB Marketpace, and some FB B sites. Buts thats beside the point I guess.
I have hunted, saved, restored, sold, parted...you name since maybe '83. All Mopar. OK so one day I dragged home a 67 Camaro 30 years ago..it was cheap!! I always had my "keepers" that stayed around for however long but they always found a new and hopefully loving home. I have had just about them all. I learned all I could about these cares and how to do body/paint, mechanicals, some interior. Because I love learning, I love doing, love driving them, and seeing my results, and I could never justify a hobby that would end up costing me in the end.
I have made some perfect although I have never entered a car in any show. I have made just solid drivers. I have cleaned up some and got them running so the guy that wanted a good project could have such. Years ago I have parted cars that guys would give their left *** for today because no one wold give me a $ for it back then. Who wanted a 340 3 speed 73 Cuda anyway in '94?? for example.
I love the hunt but hate dealing with selling. I always price my cars what I think is fair to me and to the buyer. I want the buyer to love that car I sold him as I do. I know I need to always price higher. Everyone has to haggle. I buy projects that are priced for what I feel they are worth, so that takes finding the right car at the right price, hard these days. That way if and when I sell,I can sell it for what I consider a fair price. Sure everything costs more.

Back in about maybe 95 I bought a pair of 64 slant Savoys. I built one with a 440 4 speed 66 8 3/4 3:55 gear. Added some early B buckets a tach and I thought it was just so cool, way more cool than the 68-70 real Roadrunners Chargers, Bees I had all around. Yea back then those cars were cheap projects and not worth that much totally restored either but a $ went further too! I degress.
I wished many times had had kept that Savoy. Such cool and cheap fun! A good friend put me onto another such Savoy about a year and half ago. I had the intention of that being my last real build. Its a roller and I have done all the body/paint and I thing it turned out pretty good. I don't think I have it in me to finish it.

Back when I was a young guy, I wondered why my old dad would trip and stumble, get down and could hardly get back up... NOW I understand!!! but he was 45 when I was born and he had seen two wars. Well not seen... but fought in them. RIP dad.

35-40 years, that's pretty respectable barbee6043, congrats. It's been about 30 years for "all mopar cars" for me. I hope to have another 20 years in the hobby but only one man knows how long I will have.

Great post, I've been working on Mopars since I was 15. I'm now 56 and still not tired of it. Don't get me wrong, I don't finish projects as quickly as I used to. But I still have the desire and really enjoy that feeling of accomplishment. 440'

440Coronet500 said:

Great post, I've been working on Mopars since I was 15. I'm now 56 and still not tired of it. Don't get me wrong, I don't finish projects as quickly as I used to. But I still have the desire and really enjoy that feeling of accomplishment. 440'

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@440Coronet500 Why do you end all of your posts with four hundred and forty feet?

Lol, just my way of expressing my screen name without typing it out. 440'

I bought my first B-body in 1967. It was a 1962 Dart 2-door post ex-OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) cruiser. I drove it as-is for about 6 months before pulling the 313, 3 on the tree and replacing it with as almost new junkyard 383, 4 barrel, 4-speed. That was almost 55 years ago. I had about a ten year break, where I got married, bought a house, and had two kids. I got back into my Mopars in 1980, when I bought a '64 Polara hardtop and convertible. I have driven nothing but Mopars ever since.

I am 70 and I am not sure when I started in the hobby. My parents brought me home from the hospital in 1951 in a ’47 Dodge, flathead six with Fluid Drive. Mom loved the Fluid Drive. She would manually shift it instead of leaving it in high gear. Then they traded the ’47 on a ’56 Plaza again flathead six with 3 speed column shift. Then after 2 or 3 years they sold the Plaza and bought the neighbor’s company car, a ’57 Suburban 2 door wagon, again flathead six 3 speed column shifter. The best thing for 2 young kids were the sliding side windows! Then in 1964 one of the Cub Scout fathers had his wagon for sale. A red and white ’59 Sport Suburban, 9 passenger, Golden Commando 395, 361, 305 HP, TorqueFlite, 3.31 Sure Grip, air leveling system, power windows, power tailgate with the switch in the back seat, power steering, power brakes with the bellows booster, AM radio, clock, inside adjustable rear view mirror, MirrorMatic, padded dash, Sport Fury steering wheel and doggy dish wheel covers! Who speced this one!? That’s when I became a MOPAR Wacko. In ’66 during a Boy Scout paper drive I found a ’64 Hot Rod Yearbook. WOW! Maxes, Hemis, 421s, 427s, 427s, Studebaker R1, R2, R3, R4 and OMG an R5! I think I “entered” the hobby about the time @Dave6T4 did in ’67. I bought the neighbor’s ’61 Dodge Phoenix convertible. Then 20 years later I bought Max and at the risk of hijacking @barbee6043’s thread I will end it here.

^^^^^ Love your story. We all relate especially if we are in thus generation!!!
More stories from anyone please!

I was raised in a very rural S W Ga town,cotton and peanuts. The Chrysler dealership was tiny. I was into quarter horses and poor. I had a friend that had a bunch of horses and she was old enough to be my (young) mother. I had one bad crush on here and I was 16!
She had a new 64 Sport Fury and she would let me and a girl take our horses in her trailer and car to shows!!!! Just the two of us. Go figure. Really!
My dad had no use for anything with a unitized body!!! LOL

@barbee6043 More stories. I posted this on Bring a Trailer a little bit ago.

We visited my grandparents on Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights right outside Philly and coming home, on the Roosevelt Blvd, Mom normally drove while Dad was sacked out. The boulevard is light to light 3 or 6 lanes depending on the time period and if Mom was first at the light she was first across! She would go right up against the secondarys but not pop the quad. My brother and I would be in the back seat laughing at the guys who got snookered off the line. One time Mom was at a traffic light and when it went green the guy in the left turn lane tried to beat her across the intersection. Operative word was tried! Mom punched the secondarys for the only time and she took off down the road. The conversation after school went like “Did that ever happen to you”? “Uh, yeah Mom, once or twice”!

So then in 1968 I got my driver’s license and yes my parents let a 17 year old loose on the public highways with 300HP! I lived in Levittown, PA and went to school in Langhorne, PA. The high school is on the hill overlooking what is lovingly known in the area as “The Superhighway”. The Superhighway is a 4 lane limited access road built in the late Thirties to go from right above where the PA turnpike RT 1 interchange is to Trenton, NJ. It didn’t get to Trenton until much later. What it did was go about 5 or 6 miles and end at a stop sign TEE intersection with piles of stone on the other side of the road. At least once or twice a week, it seemed, a drag racer or a drunk would end up in the piles of stone. The deal with my parents was that I was allowed to drive to school one day a week. First week, after school, I went out and did 90 MPH! Wow! Then second week, 100 MPH! Third week I followed one of the guys in his ’61, ’62 or ’63 T-Bird and we went top end! I couldn’t catch him, but he couldn’t get away either. My speedometer said somewhere around 115. I couldn’t “peg” the needle but above 110-115 it would bang against the peg.

Every time I drove the car I was looking for a race, at a stop light, from a roll or top end. I manually shifted the trans. At first I did the second gear and drive buttons. Dad said never to use first gear button, but when I lost a heads up to a ’57 or ’58 Fury by a car length I started using first. The tough part was the car weighed about 4,000 pounds and I was giving away 400 or 500 pounds to cars like neighbor kid’s 327 4 speed Impala. He beat me one afternoon after school on The Superhighway by about a car and a half. The other thing was a cast iron Torqueflite couldn’t hold second gear. At around 80 it would upshift automatically. A full throttle upshift into drive the car would jump anywhere from half a fender to half a car on whoever I was racing. My favorite place to race was the Levittown Parkway, a four lane road from one side of Levittown to the other. One night I raced a ’64 Gran Prix from a 15 MPH roll. I don’t think it was a 421, I think it may have been a standard 303 horsepower 389. We were even, fender to fender, door to door until I went into drive and pulled a half a fender on him. And we stayed into it. It was 1:30 in the morning and we were coming up to a blinking yellow intersection. A car had stopped at the blinking red and had plenty of time to go through the light but no he stayed to see who won! We went through the intersection at about 110.

Unfortunately she did not survive my youth. My mistake was I told my new girlfriend that I loved the car and she saw it as competition! She became my wife and the car was long gone. BUT, I still have the engine, transmission, MirrorMatic and other bits and pieces. I have the original tailgate, an NOS tailgate, the original, rotted out spare tire cover and an NOS one.

Nice to see how everyone came into mopar and stayed with it. Myself I fell in love in 1974 with my first 64 dodge. My girlfriend at the time loved it also and it was my first true hot rod. I learned everything working on that car. Finally the girl was gone and the car was gone. Life got in the way and the hobby slowed down. After I did a 69 gtx 440 4 speed Dana 4.10 gear and 74 challenger. Speed up till now and I have my new 64 called second chance to really do it correctly. When I'm gone my daughter will take control of it and she can do whatever she wants. The the feel of the rumble under the hood and the smell of rubber on the ground will keep me going till I'm under. This hobby is filled with some great people and as you pass it on to who ever is next in line may they enjoy it as much as we all have. My hat is off to all of you in many different ways. I thank each of you for the support and kind words as we all continue forward.

Started tinkering with edger motors at about 13 and snow balled from there. By the time I got my driver's license I was taking care of my sisters 65 Mustang in exchange for driving it. First engine swap was in 70 when 19. Dad did all he could to try and discourage me from messing with cars but he lost. Learned a lot in the mid 70's from parting several Mopars.....now I'm forgetting things

1960. I was 13 when dad brought home my first project. A 1953 DeSoto with a blown piston. He opened up the tool box and told me to pull the head and the pan. Long story is I rebuilt that motor in my back yard with his help. We sold it for 250 profit. Paid cash for a Nash Ambassador that needed head work and we did that till I joined the marines at 17. I have had so many cars over the last 61 years I can’t count. My 63 Polara is my last car. My health is going fast and I want to enjoy what ever time I have left. In high school a guys dad bought him a 63 Max Wedge. He was the king of the hot rodder’s. So after a life of chevys,ford,pontiacs, motorcycles. I chose to finish with my dream car. A 63 Polara. Yeah it’s rough but it’s got a 440 and it vibrates and sets off car alarms. I get thumbs up from everyone. I never got 1 from my SRT8 300 Chrysler. So my first was a Mopar and I’m finishing strong.

Great stories! 1963 for me. I was 13 and Dad bought a 63 Dodge wagon with a 361 in it. He put it in the garage up on blocks and had me paint the entire underside of the car with zinc chromate primer. It took me two days to complete it. I had that damn paint in my hair, ears, eyes, etc. Dad and I would go out early Sunday mornings after church when the roads were empty and he'd open it up. Gosh that was a thrill.

So that started it for me. I was messing around with them from then on. He'd have me do oil changes, grease jobs, help him pack wheel bearings, etc. Most important was putting a half quart of kerosene in the oil during winter. It got cold and he wanted to make sure the oil would flow on cold winter morning.

My first car was a 69 Charger back in 1976.

Cranky said:

Started tinkering with edger motors at about 13 and snow balled from there. By the time I got my driver's license I was taking care of my sisters 65 Mustang in exchange for driving it. First engine swap was in 70 when 19. Dad did all he could to try and discourage me from messing with cars but he lost lost. Learned a lot in the mid 70's from parting several Mopars.....now I'm forgetting things

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……….forgetting things. Yeah , what I used to just go ahead and do , I now find myself going to the service manual first . Still fun though

Parents had Mopars since Hudson went out of business.
First I remember a 1956 Chrysler Newport 4dr sedan.
Took my PA driver's license test in a 1962 New Yorker wagon cause dad didn't want me to pass. We also had a 63 Dodge 2dr Ht at that time he didn't let me use. Aced the test bc 5000 miles as his personal chauffeur on business trips.
Since then 64 Plymouth Fury conv and Savoy 2dr Sedan that got a 440 by way of a 65 Dodge 361 powered Coronet bc somebody needed an engine w the oil pump boss drilled for a motor mount.
Several other driver, parts, resell Mopars later I'm full circle with a 64 Plymouth Sport Fury in the garage.

The first car I remember my dad having was a 46 Plymouth coupe. He had bored it out .030 and rebuilt it and it ran real good. He was the shop foreman at the International Harvester dealer and he said when they got off work at 5 every day the guys would race home from the dealership. They would race to see who could get to a hill in the road first about a mile from the dealership. Nobody could beat the 46. I used to go to work with him while I was still in grade school at night when he was working overtime to get somebodies tractor fixed for harvest or planting season. When I first started driving we had a 59 Plymouth Fury 4 dr. It was so big you could fit the whole senior class in it, well almost. I do know you could haul 10 people to the drive in by putting 6 inside and 4 in the trunk. In 73 my first car was a 65 Coronet 500 2 door hdtp with a 318 automatic. A buddy of mine from school had bought the car and drove it for about a year and blew it up and parked it. I payed $25 for it and dad and I drug it home with a chain. We pulled the motor and rebuilt it and I went to the local junk yard and got the interior out of another 65 that had bucket seats and a console and fixed mine up nice. That old poly ran pretty good for what it was. I've never owned anything but Mopars except for a couple of Ford pickups since 73.

My parents said that I used to buy up all the Chargers hot wheels cars as a kid before I even knew what a Charger was. I bought my first real Charger when I was 15 before Ieven had my drivers license. A TX9 440 70 R/T and have had at least one Charger in my ownership and still own two 70 Charger's today. So 37 years for me on full size cars. Can probably add another 6-8 years with whole cars obsession with toy cars.

Drove my first Mopar in 1970. and ever since. So let's have some arithmetic fun. 2022 - 1970 = 52 { and I did that without having to use an eraser at the end of my pencil to correct it }

Bough my first Mopar, a 1967 Coronet in 1978 when I was 14 years old.
I remember riding my bike to the speed shop to buy a 284/0.484" Direct Connection Purple Shaft cam kit for the 318.