[raven68]

I'm now looking for all previous history and early owners of this sublime green 383 Western Sport Special Challenger. From all the paperwork I have on the car, MOT's, etc and from another thread on here I have the last 5 owners as follows;

James, circa 2009 onwards
Les, circa 2006 onwards
Carl circa 2005/6 very short period
Philippe circa 2005 very short period
Trevor circa 2002

There is an MOT in Thurston, Suffolk in Sept 2001 so someone over there must have owned it

And there are several MOT's going back to 1997 in St Leonards / Littlehampton area of West Sussex

Anything previous to that, any photos at shows & events, or any of the more recent owners, all information and history is welcome please as I love to build up a story of a cars life.... now starting to go through all the invoices and work out who spent what !!

I know you can pay DVLA to provide a list of owners but thats not much fun is it !!

[Adrian Worman]

That's a cool car mate, pleased you got it and brought it to the board
Can't help with the history but I got loads of e body heater parts, dash heater and vent parts etc

[dave-r]

I will send you Trev Young's mobile number if you want to text him. He might be able to tell you who had the car before him. I don't have my phone handy at the moment so I will PM it to you later.

He works as a long distance HGV driver so best to text him rather than phone as he is usually driving.

[raven68]

I will send you Trev Young's mobile number if you want to text him. He might be able to tell you who had the car before him. I don't have my phone handy at the moment so I will PM it to you later.

Ok that would be great, thanks very much. I've just totted up what Trevor spent on the car from the invoices I've got !! Would be really good to speak to him and find out what he did to the car.

[dave-r]

Sent you an email.

[raven68]

Cheers Dave for the number
Will ring Trevor sometime soon.........

[raven68]

Just had a blast driving this back from London to Bristol along the M4. I think the speedo is a little faster than the car but it sure does shift along! I can't believe that I got this amazing car. The plan is to use it as it is for the summer and do a few little TLC issues with the paint over the winter....

[Adrian Worman]

Lets see some in depth photos on this lil beauty please

[raven68]

More Photos? Ok will see what we can do over the coming weeks......

The details of the car were first posted by forum member dave-r in the Cars For Sale section on this forum with a breakdown of the body tag / VIN details, but I note there is nothing said about choice of rear axle?

The guy selling the car said he had someone who was extremely anal about the rear axle in the car and wanted loads of photos of it. The car is an original 383 Auto so how many options for the rear end would there have been? As a 'newbie' to the world of Mopar I've no idea what should be there or what it should look like, assuming its still the original axle..... any help will be appreciated

Here's another pic - its first day out today to the Bristol Queens Square 2nd Sunday of the month gathering



And a couple yesterday on its arrival in Bristol

[dave-r]

I don't know why the guy was being so interested in the axle because most Challengers came with the large pinion 8-3/4 inch ring gear axle. I don't think me and Trev changed the gear ratio from stock so it is probably 3.23:1 ratio. I did rebuild a rear end with lower gears for Trev but I think that was for the 68 Charger he bought later.

The optional axle was the 9-3/4 inch Dana axle which was optional on some big block cars with the 440 and 426 inch engines. Standard on the 426 hemi with 4-speed manual gearbox.

Back in the mid-90s I created a website for Challenger owners. The first in the world in fact. It still exists but I no longer own it. I didn't have time to maintain it or correct technical mistakes so I sold it for £1000 which was money I needed to help finish my own Challenger.
The new owner more just re-used everything I wrote despite him re-writing it being part of the deal.

You can find it here; http://dodgechallenger.co.uk/

It will be useful for you.

[raven68]

Cheers Dave for the number
Will ring Trevor sometime soon.........

Well it only took me 9 months but I finally spoke to Trevor today and got a load of good information about when he had the car and did some restoration work on it back in 2001/2002....

I also sent off the form and £5 to the DVLA for the list of previous owners, so if you know of any of these people (other than Trevor of course!) it would be good to hear from them about their period of ownership. Five owners in the first five years.....

Registered Keeper From;
Les Jeeves 04 August 2006
Carl Henderson 20 September 2005
Philippe Cristol 18 February 2004
Trevor Young 27 September 2001
Graeme Stock 09 August 2000
Matthew Chipchase 03 May 1998
Shirley Osgathorp 03 August 1997
Marc Harman 26 June 1996

[666Thunderbird]

PM Sent - I can fill in the blanks for you

[raven68]

PM Sent - I can fill in the blanks for you

Thanks for history via your PM - all good stuff !