I've wanted a Dodge Challenger ever since I used to go to the IROC races with my father at Michigan International Speedway when I was a kid. The IROC, at the time, was a race with all equally prepared Dodge vehicles that were similar to stockcars. Before the main race, they would have a MOPAR parade, including some of the finest cars I have ever seen. They had it all. Oldies from the 30’s to new Vipers. My favorite, of course, was the 70-74 Challengers. For some reason I’ve always liked the way those cars looked.

At the time, I didn’t know much about Challengers, but I slowly began to learn about them. It was tough finding information on them--being a kid and not really knowing where to look. I eventually stumbled across books and of course the movie Vanishing Point. This movie was basically an hour and a half car chase starring, you guessed it, a 1970 Challenger R/T. The plot wasn’t all that great, but if people can like movies because of the actors, I can like movies because of the cars that are in them. :)

Ever since I was about 7, I’ve dreamed of owning a Challenger. During the summer of 1998, my dream came true. I had been browsing the internet for quite some time, trying to find a good deal. I finally came across a guy in Oklahoma that was selling a ’73 Challenger 318 automatic for a pretty good price. I traded email with him for a few weeks and finally scheduled a time to see the car.

He was nice enough to meet me half way, so I booked a hotel in St. Louis. A friend and I drove down to St. Louis on a weekend to take a closer look at (and most likely purchase) this car. We stayed the night in a hotel and he met us there in the morning. The next morning, he arrived with the Challenger in an enclosed trailer. I took it for a test drive, looked it over very closely, and bought the car.

Then the fun began... I had to drive the car home to Detroit (~600mi.). About 50 miles from St. Louis the gas gauge broke, making the trip a lot more interesting. After some quick tests, I figured it was the sending unit, so I gave up on it and just used the trip odometer as a gas gauge. At a stop for gas somewhere outside of Chicago, I noticed some minor lifter noise. I checked my oil and monitored the noise. It didn’t get much worse, so I continued on. We didn’t arrive back in Detroit until about 2am that night.

The next morning I investigated a little further for the cause of the lifter noise. It turned out to be a collapsed (and broken) hydraulic lifter--a cheap fix. I replaced all of the lifters and push rods and all seems to be well. Since then I have done some modifications to it, and I plan to do a whole lot more.

You can see some pictures of the car and its engine on this site. I hope to be able to document some of the projects I do with this car.