padam
Well-Known Member
Ok, I'll start it off.
I bought my 73 Charger back in 1981, and used it for my daily driver until I started modifications in about 1985.
It was originally had a 318 automatic, so keep that in mind in the following adventure.
I am from Ohio, and for you those that don't know, one of the main reasons its called the rust belt is what it does to cars. My charger was originally from North Carolina and after 4 years of use in Ohio, most of the body panels had rusted through along the bottoms.
One of the things we did back in the day was to bring up cars from down south and flip them for a profit.
Well, sometime around 83 or 84, two friends and I did just that. Joe, Rob, and I traveled to North Carolina, went to a few auctions, and ended up with an early 70's Ford XL GT (Joe is a Ford guy, more stories for another time.)
Being in our early twenties, we could get by on very little, and as a matter of fact all 3 of us spent 3 days in my Charger, including sleeping in it. (We may have had more sleeping room once we got the Ford, but I can't really remember.)
Now for dumb thing number one. We had to get the Ford home. Why we didn't want to just drive it, I don't know. We probably didn't want to spend extra money on gas. What to do? Put a trailer hitch on my Charger of course. At least we had the foresight to bring a trailer hitch and tow bar with us, plus tools. Tells you how much room we had in the car for personal stuff.
So there we were, in the parking lot of a gas station in the Carolina summer heat, drilling holes in my car frame with a corded 1/2" drill motor. That thing would get so hot you couldn't hold onto it. We got the hitch mounted and everything hooked up, we were ready to go, but man were we hot! Luckily for us there was a hotel next door with a swimming pool. My buddy Joe was a real out of the box thinker. It's not that we weren’t guests of the hotel we just weren't paying guests. I can still remember how good it felt to cool off in that pool. I also remember being surprised to see all the dirt from the gas station parking lot laying in the bottom when we got out.
On to dumb thing number two. We towed that POS Ford all the way home with my 318 powered Charger. I guess about 400 miles, up through the Blue Ridge mountains. I don't really remember the Charger having much trouble pulling it. We did a lot of the driving at night through heavy rain, so a few thrills there.
But I guess that’s how we did things back in those days. The cars were just cars, tools to us, and were young and didn't know any better.
I bought my 73 Charger back in 1981, and used it for my daily driver until I started modifications in about 1985.
It was originally had a 318 automatic, so keep that in mind in the following adventure.
I am from Ohio, and for you those that don't know, one of the main reasons its called the rust belt is what it does to cars. My charger was originally from North Carolina and after 4 years of use in Ohio, most of the body panels had rusted through along the bottoms.
One of the things we did back in the day was to bring up cars from down south and flip them for a profit.
Well, sometime around 83 or 84, two friends and I did just that. Joe, Rob, and I traveled to North Carolina, went to a few auctions, and ended up with an early 70's Ford XL GT (Joe is a Ford guy, more stories for another time.)
Being in our early twenties, we could get by on very little, and as a matter of fact all 3 of us spent 3 days in my Charger, including sleeping in it. (We may have had more sleeping room once we got the Ford, but I can't really remember.)
Now for dumb thing number one. We had to get the Ford home. Why we didn't want to just drive it, I don't know. We probably didn't want to spend extra money on gas. What to do? Put a trailer hitch on my Charger of course. At least we had the foresight to bring a trailer hitch and tow bar with us, plus tools. Tells you how much room we had in the car for personal stuff.
So there we were, in the parking lot of a gas station in the Carolina summer heat, drilling holes in my car frame with a corded 1/2" drill motor. That thing would get so hot you couldn't hold onto it. We got the hitch mounted and everything hooked up, we were ready to go, but man were we hot! Luckily for us there was a hotel next door with a swimming pool. My buddy Joe was a real out of the box thinker. It's not that we weren’t guests of the hotel we just weren't paying guests. I can still remember how good it felt to cool off in that pool. I also remember being surprised to see all the dirt from the gas station parking lot laying in the bottom when we got out.
On to dumb thing number two. We towed that POS Ford all the way home with my 318 powered Charger. I guess about 400 miles, up through the Blue Ridge mountains. I don't really remember the Charger having much trouble pulling it. We did a lot of the driving at night through heavy rain, so a few thrills there.
But I guess that’s how we did things back in those days. The cars were just cars, tools to us, and were young and didn't know any better.
The two poster the mirror was busted and I had that. Needed mirror to pass DMV inspection. Didn't know car would be collectible.
