Your first muscle car

[dieseldazzle]

1965 Plymouth Satellite with a factory 383 4 speed and 391 sure grip. It was old, primered and a bit rusty but man did I love it. Being 17 and my father having given it to me I couldt afford to content with it when it started to overheat and the front end was shot. Had to sell it for something to get to school and work in.......wish I could find it now.

 

[71airgrabberRR]

My first Chrysler product with some serious muscle, was an M-60 A-1 tank built by Chrysler....................... I had just turned 18, first time away from home. Started saving up some $$$ for the 2 cars in the pictures to follow.

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I'm in the middle picture, I'm second from the left. I'm halfway sticking out in the commander position in bottom photo,

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A few years later and this is the first time I took a tank down range on a gunnery live fire exercise as a Tank Commander. The weapons were clear here, that's why the green flag was displayed.

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This photo shows my actual first muscle car. It was a 72 Challenger Rally, originally had a 340 / 4 speed.

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When I bought it, the PO installed a 400 with a 727 auto. The clutch pedals were still in the car and it was B-5 blue with a black vinyl top from the factory.

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The 73 Charger on the right side of this picture is my 2nd muscle car. It was a "U" code Charger SE with a factory sunroof.

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Here you can see some of us "hanging out" in a parking lot in El Paso. A lot of people did this back in the day. If you look close at my Charger you can see the sunroof is open. El Paso got hot in the summer !!!!!

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I realized back then even, that there couldn't have been too many cars like my Charger, so I drove it back home to FL, and exchanged it for my 72 Challenger.

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Once I got the Challenger back out west, the first thing to go was the vinyl top. Then I started looking for rust free sheet metal to replace what was rusted out on the car.

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Here are a few snow photos...............

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When I bought it, the PO installed a 400 with a 727 auto. The clutch pedals were still in the car and it was B-5 blue with a black vinyl top from the factory.

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I ended up swapping out all of the bolt on sheet metal, and put a nice set of aluminum slots on it.

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I never ended up painting it. Instead I dropped in a nicely warmed up 440 and swapped it back to a 4 speed. I had a "Mr. Gasket" verti-gate shifter.

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It finally ended up being all in gray primer...........................

I never cared about show back then. I was more into "GO" !!!!!

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My Challenger is on the left. On the right was my buddy's GTO, and to the right of him was another Camaro. There was a Camaro parked in front of my car too. They were everywhere back then.

Some things never change, LOL

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This is how it looked with the 400 installed.

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I've learned an awful lot about Mopars since then..............

 

[dieseldazzle]

Is that a Rochester on your 400 in your challenger??

 

[71airgrabberRR]

Is that a Rochester on your 400 in your challenger??

No, if memory serves me correctly, it was a big 2 barrel Carter in that picture. Later on I installed a Torker intake on it with a Holley 600.

When that still didn't satisfy my need for speed, I located a 440 and built it to replace the 400 that was in the car when I bought it.

Thanks for asking.