The Dodge Challenger Message Board

Quite like this angle of photo on my car, whaddya think ?
Yes, it is a 72 with an earlier grille, I stuck that in cos I prefer it...

I don't think I have seen your car before? Looks cool.

Looks good mate you done a great job on the grill.

I was at the Euronats last summer, but then so was everyone...hard to see any particular car in among hundreds of 'em...
I saw your car there, Dave, you were working on the motor, but then I recognised it cos I'd seen your site.
Next year I'll come over and say Hello, I'm relatively new to American cars, having had an E Type Jag for the past 8 years, but kinda like the Dodge as it's just crazy...and I mean that in a good way !!
My 12 year old son and all his mates love it...
I need a drivers door handle at the moment as it just broke..

If you were not there Friday or late Sunday afternoon I would not have seen your car. The rest of the time I was trying to get the Chally running again after throwing two pushrods and damaging two rockers and a lifter.

So I guess it is most likely you saw me sometime saturday or early sunday?

Not much of a weekend for me that time. My view of the event was not much more than what is in the photo below. But there is always this years event!

Both of my door handles went within a year of each other. Lucky for me my mate Trev Young had just replaced his. Good man is Trev.

Yeah, thats how I saw your car...
Incidentally, do you find that you can keep your wipers from smacking against the rear bonnet lip when they operate..as I'm buggered if I can?
Also, if you don't mind me asking, I think you recommended Hauser for having rebuilt your motor somewhere, what was the (ballpark) figure for that job, and what lengths did they go to...I'm interested as I have a considerable amount of blow-by on my motor at the moment, which I think is down to a broken ring, but I have no time to pull the engine and set about it myself, so need to get it done...just the bottom end as the heads are ally ones that i bought when i dropped a valve just after the EuroNats...

Well.

I will list the work Hauser Racing did for me (that I can remember)

Had the block desembled/stripped and chemical hot tanked.
Bored 30thou over with torque plate.
All new bearings fitted. New dizzy/oil pump drive shaft and bushing.
Block modified for 1/2" oil pick-up.
Supplied new oil pump.
Brass freeze plugs.
Fitted my new pistons to existing rods. New rod bolts.
Fitted used internal balance harmonic balancer.
Balanced rotating assembly.

He then;
Assembled everything.
Fitted all new gaskets/seals.
Fitted my supplied cam, heads, rockers.
Supplied pushrods.
Degreed cam.

Whole lot came to around £3K if I remember right. Or was it £5K? Can't remember. Hell it's only money.

neuralyser wrote:Incidentally, do you find that you can keep your wipers from smacking against the rear bonnet lip when they operate..as I'm buggered if I can?

Sounds like you have something not quite right with yours. Maybe non-original items fitted?

is that car a 340 4 speed, paint peeling in a couple of places?

Yeah, that's the one...and I was the one who bought the U.K. Vanishing point poster from you, I've got it framed on the wall...I've got a few movie posters that I've collected over the years, but could not resist one with an E Type as well as a Challenger in it, the best looking car in the world along with the best looking American car.
Where have you seen my car...or did you look at it when it was for sale last spring ?

I sold it to a young couple in London, think they ran a pub, a couple of months later the guy rang back as they had split up and he wanted rid. I did see it on Ebay after that.

When I was working at Dream Cars on the sales side. We sold the car to a promotions company and they covered the whole car in decals to promote Mariah Carey's 'Glitter' tour and movie. The car went all over Europe with a couple of other muscle cars. When they had finished with it, Dream Cars bought it back. We took the decals off and thats when i sold it to the couple in London, think the guys name was Andy, Peckham or Lewisham rings a bell.

We were really careful taking the decals off but on a couple of places the paint came off too, shame as it was new paint prior to the decals. I always thought it was a fairly good car, solid and not to bad mechanically just needing a tidy up. A good basis to make a nice car.

That UK Vanishing Point poster has great art work and is really hard to find, glad you were pleased with it.

Cheers

Andy

Thanks for the interesting info...
Yes, the guy was called Andy that I bought it from and he was a publican in London...near Tower bridge.
I came to Dream cars and looked at the car well before he actually bought it..think this was late 2001-ish maybe 2002.
I could see then that it was solid, but it was very obviously a running restoration that was gradually going to take a fair amount of cash on the mechanical side, so didn't see it being worth the 8 or 9 thousand that Dream cars were asking, especially at that time as another private sale car I looked at was a numbers matching 71 R/T in very good nick which I could have had for 7,000.00....really wish I had bought that now !
I eventually bought this one because I had said no to it at 7 grand after it failed to sell on e-bay and he came back to me a couple of months later saying I could have it for 5 and a half.
As it turns out I was right to pay that sort of money, cos it will have cost another 5 or 6 on top by the time I'm finished this year, and even then it won't be perfect.
Anyway, thanks again for the information...

Antony.