What's your favorite Mopar moment?

[pabster]

My favorite moment is when I bought my Charger last year. I paid the man, jumped in it and headed south on US 101. All I had was the stock AM radio- found an oldies station, and "Fortunate Son" by CCR comes out of the speakers in mono. It felt like I had traveled back to 1974. So I'm cruising in the slow lane, learning the feel of my new old car, when I look to my left and see a Highway Patrol Crown Vic next to me, keeping pace. I look down at the speedo, heart skipping a beat- I'm moving at around 65. Look back at the CHP, thinking "Is he really gonna pull me for 5 over?"

The cop looks over at me, flashes me a big grin and gives me a thumbs up. Hits the gas and pulls ahead. I'm left smiling as the Beach Boys come on the stereo, no doubt in my mind that I was meant to buy this car.

Every day since, my Charger has made me smile.

 

[GinoX]

Okay, I know this waaay the eff old thread but it's always fun to read up the experiences we had. We have a stretch of an old highway road to the other side of the island that's exactly 1.6 mile long where we do our 1mile top speed test. I was 17 when I first bought the 300 and it was a dog at launch (it had the 2.93!). But when it hit around 40mph it would rise up its nose and haul ***. You know, that long ram 413 was something when it took its stride. We clocked my 300 floating at 129mph.

The second greatest was with the 4speed '71 Charger. I got it with a '69 440, 4.10:1 and Hedman headers and McLeod diaphragm hd clutch. The first time we prepped it for battle on that road it was screaming at like 122mph. After installing Direct Connection's hemi grind cam and new lifters together with a 3.23:1 out of an Imperial it hit nearly 140 still with some lungs left.

All is well and impressive, you know. But it was the actual driving of those cars, the lightness of the steering, the actual brake FADE and consequent drifting and sliding at road's end, the deafening sound after 5000rpm.....

 

[MOPOWER871]

MOPAR NATIONALS , COLUMBUS OH, SEEING BILL MAVERICK GOLDEN GET MARRIED AND THE LITTLE RED WAGON WAS HIS BEST MAN !!!,

ALSO , racing at virgin motors ports park, broke my rear stuck on the return road and having Bob bullet Reed also brake and he help me get my car back to my tailer.

And winning my class at the mopar Atlantic nationals at englishtown N.J.

 

[mmissile]

Best time....Engelharts in 2006
2nd best....all hemi reunion
3rd....probably getting hemi road runner.

I've had SO MANY great moments with the people and cars.

 

[Basket case]

another one for '82. The little blond I was dating and I were out in my '73 340 4 speed road runner. she said "why don't you find a place to park for a while........I did, and she taught me about the birds and the bees.....:evil4:

 

[Bladecutter]

That' a hard choice, but a keeper is one night in Nor-Cal, in 1982 on Hwy 1 shoreline, between Muir Woods & Stinson Beach i picked up a red CHP lite just coming out of Muir Woods headed towards the cliffs going towards Stinson...He was in Mopar 82 Interceptor, i was in my bone stock 69 Coronet 500 w/ 318....was running Daisies w/ pro-trac bias 60's & annd a nosedive...but i had shredded on of the rear tires a few days previous, so i had a mismatched Pirelli CN-36 Radial filling the gap. I WAXED the Cop....everything that ensued is a long long story, funny as hell....i never saw the cop, never got into any trouble and actuall got word second party, from the cop that He had been driving the HWY 1 swing beat for 25 years & He had never had so much fun trying to chase someone down...he popped the hood on the Coro...and my Friend heard Him mutter under His breath,,,"my God...it's just a 318"....i was hiding under a network of tree roots during all this. I put a major gap between us in about a 7 mile run along the cliffs, the route i chose, off of HWY 1 , 1/2 mile in, the barricades & caution lights...road ripped out, being redone....i pulled over and bailed down hillside....i heard the cop say to Squid, "Hell i'm not going down there, it's all poison oak!" Car did not get towed, no bench warrant ensued, because i was stopped a few days later and run w/o consequence. Bone stock with a radial & a bias on back.....can't fade the 116"/117" wheelbase 59" track.....numbers from heaven


Wow, that's pretty crazee...i just posted my comment earlier w/o reading thread much, then i came back and read a bunch...every body is posting about experiences in 1982 it seems...Twilight Zone

 

[Budnicks]

Best time....Engelharts in 2006
2nd best....all hemi reunion
3rd....probably getting hemi road runner.

I've had SO MANY great moments with the people and cars.

I would think #3 is or should right up there, that is a great ride for sure,
ya gotta love a silver 68 RR with a Hemi
I know it would be a truly special & memorable moment for me...

congrats again :headbang:

 

[PP1RT]

Mine is teaching little brother back in high school that 350 chebbies dont pick fights with 440s!! He a mopar guy now ;)

 

[BeatersRus]

when i first joined the army,i bought a 340 duster off a used car lot.
what kills me >> now,is there was a teardrop galaxie there too,and i chose the duster instead lol.

anyways,i was a Terror on fort bragg with that duster,the Mps chased me for months and never caught me...because
my duster had some blue metallic flipflop paint that changed to glowing green at night/moonlight.
so they would look for me during the day thru allllll the parking lots on post and never find the green duster.

until..that nite..
i came up to the lite,and was next to a chevy vega with dual fours sticking out of the hood.
couldnt resist and goosed it,he gooses it back.
light changes he starts spinning i Leave him and as i do i see the cop car lights coming from the right side of the intersection and they are not only on me,but up ahead of me at next intersection as well.....doh!
i then spent quite a bit of time with the mp`s and jag...
when the dust finally cleared tho,they decided anyone this crazy should be trained properly and sent me off to some courses and then made me the generals driver on bragg :headbang:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

so i buy this 70 chrysler 300 2 door,its loaded and longer than the titanic,but o soo cool.
and its friday so im going to drive my new car right but hey no dmv so no plates
no problem,heres some cardboard,ill just make some up.
done deal,i cruise to fayettenam and go clubbing and meet some cool chicks.
go to leave,and im a bit young n dumb,start spinning the tires n doing donuts in the huge lot.
hubcap flies off.....i grumble a bit n drive to it get out and start popping it back on...
guy in avg clothes walks up and asks for my license and all that im irritated so i snap at him.

yeah,well who the hell are you??!!
turns out hey..hes an off duty cop....Doh.
turns out he Wasnt impressed by the cardboard tags......
turns out..i hadda leave the car there...and get some awesome tickets too.

so the next day im fuming cause my cars there n im here...
i say screw it,catch a ride to the lot and theres my car sitting next to some Corvette show in the lot.
at this stage in my life i wasnt impressed by anything corvette-ish.
and felt the need to express this by first Checking the parking lot and then doing 2 nice long donuts around the entire car show/lot of corvettes.
this angered the locals and a bunch of them piled in and started chasing me around the lot on my 3rd pass so i headed out to the highway and with them all in chase i floored it and left them wayyyyyy behind.
a Glorious moment for the 300/aka titanic as it sailed by
when i got back onpost i literally was pulling in my barracks when the mps went flying into the next lot,so i beat feet n watched them come back and scope my car and look around.
next weekend i sold it to charlie who raced in fayettenam he wanted the tnt 440 for his challenger,
i did hear years later my car went up north to get restored.
hope it did,it was a rare 300,right down to the console/buckets.

 

[HawkRod]

I know this is an old revived thread, but my favorite moment (so far) was the night I had my newly restored 73 Road Runner in a car show. This was in the mid 90s, and I had worked like crazy to finish it. The last night I worked through the night and finished the car at noon on the day of the car show - the show started at 4PM, called Lansdale "Under the Lights". They shut down main street and have ~600 cars parked all through the center of town.

I went to the show, and was thrilled that quite a few people stopped by to notice and compliment the car. At the end of the night there was a crowd right at the exit trying to egg drivers on to do a burn out. The car in front of me managed a tiny squeak out of his tires, so I let him move on and line locked my Road Runner. Smoke was billowing out all over, and the crowd went wild. As I finished and pulled up to the traffic light (to get back on the "open" road), there is a cop with his arms crossed looking sternly at me. I think he was deciding if he would cite me! When the light turned green, I slowly put putted away...

It was a great night!

Hawk

 

[Bladecutter]

Another

A Good Day was w/ my 1st B, a 69 Charger 318....bought it in 75 off a used lot for 525.00....was a Colo. Car, so road salt had attacked the rear rockers, but beyond everything underneath was pretty clean....i was going back & forth between bay area & southern az...working both ends,,,border bricks from tuc to bay & exotic fare back to az. one night in SF, i'm down in tenderloin looking for pking, going around a block, ( 200 lbs. in trunk, no lock, used screwdriver in console). i realize some guy is dogging my ***, so i keep upping the speed to put distance between us....He doesn't relent and before too long i'm starting to snap the *** out, then i look in rear view and i see passenger hanging something near the rear view in their car, di'nt take long to know that it was a light, so i pulled over before He even turned it on. Plain Clothes Guy comes up to door, (partner stayed in car, unlike today where they automatically surround the car) The Cop utters the expected comment about, "getting a little hot there weren't You?" Me..." You're in an unmarked car crawling up my ***, i don't care for tailgaters, you see i pulled over as soon as i realized you were the man." He just smiled and shined his light on the vin tag thru the windshield.(the car din' even have plates....temporary sticker in rear glass) I happened to look down at console a noticed a big fat roach, which i grabbed @ 1st opp and ate. Cop walks around the car, comes back and i asked Him why He got on my *** in 1st place, he said it was the absence of a hard plate. Asked me if i had any warrants, i said yes, traffic stuff....He goes across street uses pay phone...comes back and said yeah you got a few, got Money?...to which i nodded yes....He told me to follow them down the street to the precinct, and i could pay off the tickets there, done deal...i always thought it odd that He din't tell me address & follow me. So it went like clockwork. i paralleled in front of cop shop, went in, paid my fare and left. Deal is is that cop knew there was weed in the trunk...stunk to beat the band, the car is parked in front of a cop shop reeking.....moral of this is that in the 70's, they simply didn't give a s--t about reefer....why the f are we going backwards. Now the car saw a lot more action, i found some 50 series Dunlop racing Rains, got some Ford wheels and torched the centers out so they would fit over the taper and howled that SOB around SF, Marin & Sonoma Cos. In Santa Rosa, an outfit was sponsoring an annual autocross in the local mall pking lot. It was a tight course w/ two 180 pins. I stuck a 100 lb bag of sand in back to try to help keep it stuck, but din't have the presence of mind to secure it. There was some nice hardware out there including an air cooled Super Vee that took TTOD @ 28.5 seconds....several mustangs & camaros that had Rancho & Eibach, slammed, gumballed. They were running in 33 's. I drove the piss out of the Dodge, must have run fifteen times, i was having such a ball. 5.00 for two laps was pretty affordable cheap thrills. The Dodge din't even have a nose dive..just old racing rains....i was running in the 34's and putting on a pretty good show, i had several commenting to me in between runs.........the bag of sand had ruptured almost immediately and was being dumped out of the rust holes in the rockers under cornering pressure...the officiators decided that it was not a surface impediment, no other drivers complained,. so they let me keep goin and trailing sand....pretty much everyone there thought it was hilarious....like an airplane using smoke to show where he had been. And a damn decent performance by an old stock beater....actually, a Very Clean Creme Yellow w/ Black vinyl & Black hydes....less than a second off prepared american mid size competition..........was cleaning out sand for a while, loaded up under rear seat.......Drove the car a while longer, something had loosened up in the steering, play, but not due to joints, so i took it to a used car lot in SR and got 350.00. Most of the cars in my life(there's been a good many) i never paid over a grand for, w/ the exception of the Mangusta,...bought a 65 Buick Special V-6, very clean, broke windsheild, in 73 off a lot in Tuc for 125.00 & and put a new glass in for 40.00. No way in the world will i ever throw out the kind of money that's expected today...i'l never buy new, and any car i own from here out WILL have STEEL wheel wells, f plastik rivets & liners.....and i'll be able to replace headlight beams for 10 bucks

 

[GinoX]

I forgot the Duster with its leaning Tower of Power! This heap fell in my lap.... yeah, literally!! It was my aunt's and she knew I was in need of a car. It was in dire need of a brake job so my cousin and I worked on it. Young and stupid we were, we supported the vehicle with its bumper jack and after I had tighten a new front drum, the car fell on me. Got stuck under the fenderwell haha. You could image a 6'1'' 210lbs guy crumpled under that fender.

Anyway, my aunt felt sorry for me and just gave me it. I dd it for about two years, going to work, even rally it some weekends. Yup, I won around two races with it against some V8 Mustangs, a Chevette, Falcons, Mavericks etc and the only mods I did was using my Satelite 318's 2bbl carb and a carb spacer, the Accel coil and sparkplugs. Man, I should say there were several grand moments I had with this car now that I remember. I think with a lethargically slow car you can have more fun than an uber high hp monster...

 

[mmissile]

I wouldn't say slow cars are more fun.....but I won nearly every weekend at Detroit Dragway back in the late 70's, in my deadly consistent/low-15 sec car. If I stayed sharp on the tree....I was takin' home the money.

 

[texas69bee]

Budnicks, this is more of the car you speak of. PureHell... And the driver. The 3rd pic is of him now on the right. I saw these pics on a wall where I was getting my bell housing welded and asked the guy about the posters. He explained he was the first guy to do 200 mph, married his sister and now makes all fuel pumps for NASCAR.
Favorite Mopar moment was buying my first bee back in 1985 and being able to rebuild the motor with my dad.

 

[Bb70charger500]

My first street race in my big old 73 charger. Was racing my friend in his 79 t.a. we had a nice open road so we went for it . Sadly he took me we were neck and neck till about 130mph he slowly pulled away . We were heading to a car show so we got there and 5 mins latter a cop car pulled in and blocked our cars in and waited for us to come back over .first thing we here is do you boys know how fast you were going we both shrugged .Our shoulder and said no the Speedos were at the max so he told us the charger was 132 the t.a. was 140 He then proceeded to tell me what mods I should do so I can woop the t.a. the next time .turns out he was a huge mopar fan and helped me swap out to a 440 a few mouth latter. Go figure . Lucky for me no jail .

By the way if anyone is interested the charger raped that poor old trans am after the 440 swap .

 

[kiwigtx]

Too many magic MoPar moments for me over the years...one of the most memorable involves me towing a Club BBQ Trailer at over 140mph with my '70 Roadrunner, and seeing the President and Treasurer in their '66 427 SS Impala 4-spd, and '70 428 Cobra Jet Mustang getting smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror. No sh*t...it really happened. The guys still talk about 27 years after the fact. My wife (then girlfriend) was sitting beside me on that big ole bench seat, watching me hold on to the wheel. Beep Beep.



440, 4-speed, 9.5:1 comp, 8-3/4 sure-grip with 3.23:1 gears, 14" wheels, bad-*** burnout car :headbang:

 

[72Fourspeed]

As a kid, we had a neighbor who drag raced. He was regional Pro Stock guy. I got a ride in his 68 Hemi Barracuda on the return road. Stood it up on two wheels to scare me. It did.
Coming home from school one day we saw his new toy in the driveway. He & his racing partner had bought Butch Leal's 71 or 72 Duster. After much begging, he let me ride shotgun on a warm up around the block. Pretty cool for a 15 year old.
Other coolest was first time I drove the older brothers 68 Rr while he was in 'nam. Boiled the J60's. Fun stuff.