MA MOPAR BIT ME AGAIN or SO MANY MOPARS, SO LITTLE TIME

[1967 'cuda]

Despite my passion for all muscle cars, - Mopars have always been my favorites. Although I've owned some Chevys, I was always more likely to consider myself a Mopar guy. I realize that the Chevy and Ford guys are equally passionate about the cars they own, but there seems to me to be something different about Chrysler enthusiasts. Amongst the sea of Fords and Chevys we seem to stand out. When I go to local car shows I'm likely to see rows of Camaros, Chevelles, and Mustangs. But here and there a Mopar will be hidden. But not hidden well.

To the non-Chrysler community we must appear as blemishes. - Like pimples on a teenager's face, we refuse to be ignored. With the high optic paint and body lines that refuse to blend into the crowd, we stick out.

Just owning a Mopar makes us feel like rebels. We have not conformed. We have chosen to be different.

Many cars are referred to as being iconic. - Shoebox Chevys, GTOs, Mustangs, 442s.... - the list goes on and on. Hell, there are probably even Vega and Pinto owners that consider their cars to be icons of some sort. The basis for why - is that something about those vehicles is odd. Something that has set them apart from the rest of the tin sitting in the Walmart parking lot. Their owners can spot them at a glance no matter how full the lot may be. They catch the eye. Even small children that had never seen these cars before will stop playing and point. They don't do that with the average car.

One of the cars that I have on my personal list of iconic vehicles is the early Plymouth Barracuda. There never were too many of them around where I grew up. But the red, white, and blue Sox & Martin Hemi Barracuda and the Hemi Under Glass were a few of the coolest cars I'd ever seen.


So one day as I'm surfing the net for parts I came across an ad for a 1967 fastback. It was on an eBay auction and it didn't look like it was going to sell very high. I put a bid on it and won. The car was located in Texas. Time for another road trip.

At first I had thought about driving it back, but we had bought a really nice open car trailer a few months earlier and figured we might as well use it. It's a good thing we did. By the time we made it to where the car was it was dark. And the first thing the owner told us was that he had 'bad news'. 'For some unknown reason the lights (all of them) had stopped working earlier that day'. Although the 'sudden' light problem was suspicious, the car looked pretty good. I was so eager to finally have a fastback Barracuda that I didn't bother bitching about it. We loaded it up and headed home.

Backup lights are missing lenses and rear trim needs detailed.

Just back from trip to Texas, - haven't had much of a chance to look the car over in daylight 'til now.

The trailer worked flawlessly. Other than a drive that was way too long we did pretty well.

Online purchases are always a little spooky. The car looked much better in pictures than it did after we got there to pick it up. - Still, all in all a pretty solid car especially for 45 years old.

Spence and I went together on the purchase of this sliding axle trailer. The aluminum box houses the hydraulic pump, tie-downs, and jack. No need for trailer ramps because the rear of the trailer lowers to the ground as the axles move forward. I built a front 'gravel shield' on the trailer out of aluminum deck plate to protect our cars from whatever the tow vehicle might kick up.

Not too bad in the pics, but it needs a lot of work.

It's been years since I've seen one of these on the road. And apparently the first time for a lot of people. Whenever we stopped for gas someone would inevitably ask us what the heck it was.

I thought I was getting a car to drive 'as-is' but I'm afraid it's gonna be another project vehicle.

 

[peresvet24]

sounds good!

These old cars are just gorgeous,

 

[ralleygreen]

nice car !here are some pic's of the 69 cuda i had a few years ago

 

[1967 'cuda]

- And you had a big block in it to boot, - cool!

 

[1967 'cuda]

Interior had been re-upholstered, but missing lots of trim and needing dash rebuilt.

You've heard of Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein. I think this must be the Steering Wheel Cover of Frankenstein. This steering wheel cover has got to go.

 

[1967 'cuda]

On the Charger project I took more pictures as the car progressed so that I could send them to my son that was stationed overseas. The Barracuda was a little different. My original plan was to fix any of the major issues that kept it from being streetable. Then I was going to drive it as-is until the day came when I had more time to refinish it. So I didn't do as much documentation when I started on it.

First things first. The worst problem I had was with the wiring. The previous owner told me that the lights had stopped working on the car shortly before I arrived to pick it up. With the immediate goal of getting the car home, I didn't have the time to investigate what was going on until we returned to Nebraska.

So... what did I find? - I found that the guy was a lying bastard. Are there actually any honest people selling cars on eBay? The lights hadn't mysteriously stopped working. It was obvious that they hadn't been working for some time. There were no bulbs in the tail lights. Most of the wiring was disconnected. There were missing fuses. The headlight switch was not only disconnected, but needed replacing also. The dimmer switch was disconnected and the harness that attaches to it was melted. Most of the dash bulbs were missing. The blinker switch was junk. Now, if the guy had been straight with me and told me that I was going to have to go through the lighting circuit, I wouldn't have been upset. But giving me the BS just sort of pisses me off. I'm just glad that we hadn't had to drive the car to get it back home.

It took me a couple of weeks to get the wiring sorted out. Most of that time was spent looking for whatever parts I needed and then waiting for them to arrive once ordered online or from the local Big A auto parts store.

I wasn't taking new pictures of the car at this time. But I was doing a fair amount of work to it. The car had no window cranks, interior door handles, or arm rests. When I bought replacements, I discovered what the problem was. When they upholstered the door panels they added about an inch of foam padding to them. So with the added thickness you couldn't get the window cranks to turn without digging into the padded panels. The door latch handles wouldn't return completely to their flat locations because of the extra padding either. Although I hadn't planned on replacing them, I knew that I needed to get different panels now.

The dash was missing several parts. There were no defroster vents. It didn't have a radio. There was no knob/handle on the glove box door. The speedometer wasn't working, nor were any of the other gauges. The horn didn't work.Not only did the dome lights not work, they weren't even in the car. No seat belts. No heater. None. The heater box below the dash was busted up with no heater core, fan or control cables. Just a hole in the firewall. No ashtray or cigarette lighter. The finish piece under the steering column was missing. The dash plastic surrounding the radio had been cut for an aftermarket radio and had a large chunk broken off. There were no kick panels. The vents in the doors were gone. None of the interior sheetmetal behind the front seats was there. The fold down panel that was supposed to cover the spare was missing. The glove box liner was shot. The rear seat would not fold down. All of the rubber door/window/trunk seals needed replacing. The same with the window fuzzies. The keys did not fit the doors or trunk.

Now as discouraging as the list of issues was beginning to look, I didn't care. After all, I finally had my fastback. Sure, I was upset for someone selling me a car that was supposed to be fully functional when they knew it wasn't. BUT, I finally had a fastback.

Naturally I had to fix any of the things that kept the 'Cuda from being roadworthy. I started with the wiring. Oh... - that was after I pulled that butt-ugly steering wheel cover off. Most of the wiring issues stemmed from missing wires or things disconnected. After searching online for a schematic, I muddled my way through the repairs. I wish that there hadn't been so many different color coded wires. Well, actually I'm glad there was because it would have been a lot harder tracing things out. But, I wasn't able to keep the color coding correct. I didn't have violet wire with a black stripe or pink with a black stripe, etc, etc...

I found a guy in Milford, Nebraska that had a '67 notch being parted out and picked up an extra dash, the defroster vents, an extra grill surround that had all of the P L Y M O U T H lettering intact, a set of red door panels, the ash tray, and all of the parts to complete the heater assembly. I think the parts from him ran me $300. Everything needed heavy duty cleaning but I was thrilled that I was able to get most of the parts that I needed so quickly.

The red door panels had to be dyed. Because my inspiration for the Barracuda was based on memories of drag cars, I chose to go with a silver to simulate aluminum. As far as I know it wasn't an interior color option but I felt it would blend in well with the charcoal colored upholstery. I didn't want to fab actual aluminum panels because this was going to be a street car styled to look like it might have been on the strip.





I NEEDED TUNES! Sure, it may not have been a necessity but it just ain't right to ride around in a muscle car without listening to some Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, or something! So I bought me a radio. I didn't need (or want) anything too fancy. - But I wanted it to sound good. I wanted simple controls without the micro sized buttons that are on most of the newer radios. I chose to go with a Retrosound radio in part because it was really difficult to find a radio that even came close to fitting the dash. It sounds really good (to me) when combined with the 6"X9"s in the rear and the 4"X6"s in the front.


I really didn't want to cut holes in the door panels that I'd just put on. Luckily while I was looking for kick panels I found new A-Body replacements with the speakers already built in.

 

[1967 'cuda]

Like so many of our other projects, I decided to go with white faced gauge covers. I don't know if others tend to like them, but for me they're easier to read. After having taken off the old steering wheel cover I saw that the rim had a few flaws so I put a new gray one on to hide them and to help tie in to the silver/gray/charcoal theme of the interior. While I had the dash apart I tried to detail out the cluster the best I could.

I think the dash turned out pretty good. I put a carbon fiber looking overlay on the top half, a silver overlay on the bottom half, and repainted the edges with gold. As you can see I still have some wiring to finish.

To keep the 'race car' look, I went with 3" camlock seat belts.

I wasn't sure how to cope with the broken portion of the dash plastic that was adjacent to the glove box door. I had been looking for - and not finding, a decent replacement. So, I decided to drop a CB radio into the dash. It meant cutting the dash frame but I didn't care because I had a spare. The hanging wires are from the yet to be hooked up air/fuel gauge. - And I have an ash tray now too.

Although it could use a bit more cleaning, the glove box now has a knob. I don't know if a lock was optional in '67 or not but the couple of '67s that I've seen used this style and the few '68s I've looked at had the locks instead.

I wasn't very concerned about running a tach with the automatic transmission but I still wanted to try to stay with that 'race' theme. I decided to go with a small 3&3/8" tach mounted above the dash so as not to obstruct vision too much.

It took me a long time to find these arm rests for a '67. The bases seemed to be for sale everywhere. The door handles are new too.

 

[1967 'cuda]

Whenever I have a picture in my head of the way I want something to look I usually have a hard time letting go of it.

The styling of the Barracuda hoods is really nice right from the factory but I still wanted to have that race car look so I purchased a fiberglass Hemi style hood online and painted it flat black. I suppose everyone else going to their local courthouse tries to find license plates they can relate to without having to spend for prestige plates. I was fortunate that the G318 plate was available.

You can barely see the '68 Charger inside the garage behind the 'Cuda.



In this photo you can see I was running the 14" Cragar's SBP that came with the car.

The engine compartment was what you might have expected in a car that someone had already started to fix up a few years earlier but never finished. Headers that were semi-rusty, an Edelbrock carb, generic chrome air cleaner, newer Chrysler electronic ignition, a set of generic one-size-fits-all spark plug wires, a nice set of Edelbrock signature series valve covers with no breathers (left open), a rat's nest of wiring, etc... I power washed the engine clean, repainted the headers silver, added an MSD billet distributor and Digital control box, replaced the ignition wires, added wire looms and breathers, switched to a Holley carb, changed out the stock coil to an ACCEL Super coil, and re-bundled the wiring. The new hood that I'd installed had such a large opening in the front of it that you could see most of the motor through it. I replaced the air cleaner with a taller offset JEGS one to get it up into the clean air and to give the appearance of a larger motor from the outside.

I remembered those blue tinted headlights that they used to run on the Sox & Martin Barracuda and decided to try to copy it. So, I replaced the headlights with a set of halos.

 

[1967 'cuda]

I really enjoyed driving the Barracuda as it was at this point. I had gotten rid of most of the problems it had, increased performance a bit, and added some modifications to make it feel more 'mine'. For the next 9 months it was my daily driver. From time to time my son would borrow it to drive back and forth to Milford's technical college where he was going to school. Life was good.

That's when disaster struck. One evening in January while driving the car in Columbus, Nebraska, my son ran over some debris in the road. It punctured the right front tire, blowing it out and the steering wheel pulled to the right. - Right into a pole.

When he called me up to tell me the news I thought he was joking. After realizing he was serious and ascertaining that he wasn't injured I went outside, hooked up the trailer and headed out to get the car. The temperature was sub-freezing.

It still ran but the fan was hitting the radiator. He had limped it off onto a side street. The damage was pretty extensive. After loading it up I headed back home.

My first priority was to tear it apart and assess the damage. I didn't take any photos of it when it was wrecked because my initial focus was on the tear down. Within a few hours of getting home with the car I had it unloaded, put into the garage, and dismantled the front end.

The passenger side took the brunt of the impact. It took out the bumper, both front fenders, the grills, the front header panel, the front valance panel, the radiator, the right front 14" Cragar, the upper control arm/ball joint.

I had already found out how hard it could be to find early Barracuda parts when I'd done the work on the car previously. Before I went to bed I hit the internet and started looking.

Over the course of the next few months I was able to find most of the parts I needed. I couldn't find a 14" SBP Cragar though to match the one that got destroyed. The only ones I ran across were badly pitted or rusty. That's when I made the decision to change over to big bolt pattern wheels. I went back to the guy in Milford that I'd bought parts from before. I knew he had a later model K-member with a BBP disc brake setup on it. The ball joints and rod ends needed to be replaced, but for the $300 I paid for it I figured I couldn't expect it to all be like new.

Luckily the hood had escaped damage in the accident so I didn't have to replace or repair it. The front fenders were a different story. There was no salvaging the passenger side. The driver's side would have been repairable but it had been repaired once before by someone that had rebuilt the area around the headlight bucket by building it back up with bondo. I needed a new one. The front header panel and valance were toast. The only replacement sheet metal that I could find were pieces that either had a lot of rust or were bent. And none of it was going to be cheap - even without shipping.

That's when I started to look at more fiberglass. I was pretty leery about making the change. I'd seen a number of race cars running 'glass and I knew that often the fit was poor and the parts were flimsy. But I also knew that not all fiberglass was 'race weight'. After checking around I felt I'd found a company that I'd take a chance on.

I was amazed at how light everything was. Even though I had ordered the street versions of the fenders, header panel, and front valance, - it seemed as though they weighed next to nothing.

With the change to big bolt pattern, I was going to have to buy different wheels. I decided to order 15" to make it more likely that I wouldn't have clearance issues with the disc brakes. I still wanted that 'race look' but didn't want to go with any wheels that looked too modern. I chose the WELD Rodlites for a few reasons.
1) I wanted the nostalgia look.
2) They were available in the widths I wanted to run.
3) I hadn't seen that many other people running them around here.
4) They would clear my brakes.

I had these Goodyear frontrunners sitting in my shop for years and they were still new. I had purchased them for a T-bucket project that has yet to be finished. I decided that the Mickey Thompson cheater slicks would further enhance that race car look and still be street legal.

An aluminum 3 core radiator from Champion was chosen as a replacement. In this picture you can see some of the polyurethane bushings that were used in the suspension rebuild.

With the need to swap K-members came the need to pull the drive train. I had wanted to re-gasket the motor anyway. - And it would also give me a chance to reseal the transmission. While I was at it I decided to paint the engine orange.

 

[1967 'cuda]

The fiberglass pieces fit surprisingly well. None of the mounting holes were drilled out, but there were indentations wherever they were supposed to be. I did have to do a bit of grinding on the door gaps up by the cowl.

It felt good to get it back on the road but I was going to have to do more work to it before it would be ready for paint.

With the cost of painting a vehicle being what it is, I was determined not to have issues with any new paint going on the car. Instead of gambling on whatever 'might' have been underneath the old paint, I decided to strip the rest of it.

There had been telltale signs of problems in the old finish so I expected to run into some past repair work. Overall the car was still looking pretty solid until I got to the quarter panels. The left side had been hit in front of the wheel well and was starting to rust out behind.

The right side was really bad. Most of the lower quarter was gone behind the wheel well and someone had stuffed paint sticks in the opening and then fiberglassed and bondoed over them. You never would have guessed anything that bad was beneath the paint.

 

[Basketcase]

I think the scum that do these kind of things count on the buyer being far from home, and in a hurry to get started on the trip back. What sucks is if the seller was totally upfront, the buyer would still go thru with the sale. I bought mine 7 hours away. I told the guy to send me pics of any bad area. I told him that unless something showed up when I got there to consider the car sold. Luckily there were no surprises.
The fastback Cudas look great(plus it has Cragars!) There is a really nice '69 a few miles from me, but it rarely comes out.

 

[1967 'cuda]

I ordered a pair of quarter panels, a right rocker panel, and a right trunk drop from AMD. - No sense in leaving damaged sheet metal underneath new paint.

Normally I try to do as much of the work I can by myself. But until I can get a decent shop with a paint booth, I'll have to farm out the final finish work. I know that it's hard to find a body shop that will agree to take on project work such as these old cars. It seems that the few that will charge fees that make it a certainty you'll have more money in your vehicle than you're ever likely to get back out of it.

I've been pretty fortunate. I found a guy in Garland, Nebraska that is great. His name is Larry Hoeft. I'd rank the quality of his work up there with the best of what I've seen turned out at any other shop. He mainly does restorations. He charges a flat rate of $30 per hour and doesn't gouge people. - Very honest. It's hard to go to any car shows in my area without seeing a few of the cars he's done. He's also a bit anal about how he does things. - He insists on very high quality materials and the majority of the cars that I've seen him do were stripped first. It's getting harder to get a vehicle in to his shop as his reputation grows.

So when he called and told me he had an opening for my Barracuda I didn't flinch. I told him I'd get the car down to him whenever he was ready for it. I hadn't gotten any of the replacement panels on yet, but I figured I'd rather make sure I could get the car in to him by letting him install them than risk missing the window of opportunity to get it into his shop.

 

[1967 'cuda]

Like the saying goes, 'It's sometimes more about the journey than the destination'. I think that's why I like watching webcasts like ROADKILL.

 

[1967 'cuda]

I was torn between going really wild on the paint scheme or doing it up more subtly. I had considered candy colors, metalflakes, and multi-color schemes. - Maybe using one of Chrysler's high optic colors. I played around with different striping ideas. I knew that if I played it too safe, the car would never have that eye-candy pop and appeal that I wanted. But at the same time I liked the idea of toning down the flash. No matter what - I wanted it to look like a muscle car.



I knew that the car had originally been blue. I knew that I sort of liked the gray that someone had chosen to re-paint it. I spent a lot of time online looking at as many pictures of early Barracudas as I could find in hopes that it would help me to decide what to pick.



One of my favorite things that I had seen Chrysler do was their use of tail stripes on the Dodges when they started the Dodge Scat Pack campaign. I realize that it was never a Plymouth thing, but after owning a '69 Superbee and a "68 Charger R/T, the look had really grown on me. I started toying around with tape across the rear of the car to see if I thought I could make it work. Dodge had made multiple versions of their stripes. Most of the time they incorporated an insignia with them. If I wanted to make it appear as if it was some form of factory stripe, I'd have to come up with the right combination of widths and a logo.

I went back online looking for any type of fish or barracuda cartoon image I could find that could be used. I liked the look of the Superbee and Rumblebee emblems and wanted something similar. The closest I could find was the design that Plymouth had used a one time in their advertizing. It was pretty good but I thought I'd like to make it a bit more subtle by doing a monotone version of it. A friend of mine had stopped by while I was working on the design and asked me what it was a picture of. I think the image was still a bit too complex. The wheels were distorted. The tail and fin were hard to identify. I decided I'd better modify it more to make it work.


I still wanted people to think of the image used in the old ads when they saw it so there'd be the impression that it was some form of factory stripe. This is what I came up with.

 

[1967 'cuda]

After designing the new logo I went to a local vinyl shop to have some decals cut. Eventually I did decide to keep the metallic gray color for the body. The new paint has just a little more pop to it though. There is a hint of candy pink and candy blue added in. It's hard to see it unless you're up close and looking for it. For the stripe I went a gloss black. It is painted on with a clearcoat over everything.

In hindsight I wish we hadn't put clear over the decals. Unfortunately it left a slight whitish look around some of the edges. It's not very noticeable when the car is clean, but when it combines with a little dust, it really shows up.

Although I liked the general look of the car, it needed something to give it a little more zing. I decided to black out the center of the trunk panel trim and paint the inside of the Barracuda emblem orange.


I moved the antenna to the rear quarter after I found out Plymouth did it on their AAR Cudas to clear up radio reception problems caused by using the fiberglass hood. Fortunately the new fiberglass fenders came without an antenna hole in them.

These Rodlites are a dual bolt pattern wheel. To give the wheels a bit more pop I decided to add a little color with these red anodized plugs.


Larry had talked me out of leaving the hood painted a flat black. It was too hard to keep clean. I took his advice and went with a satin finish instead. The side of the scoop was begging for some kind of lettering. It was another area that I chose to put a touch of orange. I'm still not sure I'm satisfied with the font design I made.

Damn birds!

I replaced all of the rear trim on the trunk, but it took me a while to find the 2 pieces that were missing here.

My goal was to have a racy look that was both subtle and had some 'pop' to it. I added an orange pre-filter to the air cleaner to give it a bit more detail.

 

[1967 'cuda]

There never seems to be an end to most of my projects. No matter what shape they're in, there's usually something more that I want to do.

The plot thickens...

In order to more closely resemble a Hemi-Barracuda, I needed a Dana 60. It sounds like overkill for a car running a lowly 318 but there were legitimate reasons to switch rear ends.

1) The 7&1/4 that was under it made a bit of noise and I didn't want to invest any money fixing a rear that most everyone seems to believe is too light to handle any real power.
2) I wanted to run a deeper gear ratio than what I had.
3) The lips on the new quarters were around 3/4" wider than the original quarters were. This made tire clearance pretty tight. I know I could have ground down some of that lip but there was some extra room inboard and a rear 1&1/2" narrower would have fit better.
4) And when I switched over to big bolt pattern I drilled the axles out to do it - realizing that was only a temporary solution.

Once again I contacted Ken Zimmerman out of Rising City, Nebraska because I knew he was sitting on a small mountain of Mopar rears. (no pun intended) He sold me a Dana 60 from a '70 Dodge pickup that had an 8 lug bolt pattern on it. It was wide enough to make a good candidate for narrowing to whatever width I wanted it to be. After torching off the axle tubes on both ends, I slid the axle/hub assemblies off and began cleaning it up.

The tubes were badly pitted and were actually rusted about 1/4" deep in the areas that the leaf spring pads had been. So as I was grinding off all the crud and corrosion I built the rusted sections back up with weld and ground them back down.

The next step was to take the rear end to Spider Prososki in Duncan, Nebraska. I would have him put it in the rear end jig he has and finish it out to my length. We'd have Moser make the new axles.

I ordered another disc brake kit from RIGHT STUFF DETAILING. I had already purchased a new master cylinder and proportioning valve from them when I installed the factory front brakes. Their tech line had advised me of which components to go with to do a 4 wheel manual disc setup. I didn't want to add a booster by going to power brakes.

These are some pictures of the brake components that came with the kit.


I sprayed some gunmetal gray on the discs to keep them from corroding.


I painted the calipers orange.

 

[1967 'cuda]

These are some more of the parts with the brake kit.








These brake kits are so easy to install. With the axles out you begin by putting the bolts through the axle tube flange.

The next step is to add a spacer that makes up for the space normally used by your old brake backing plate.

Then you slide your axle back in.

The bracket shown here is then bolted to the axle flange where the bolts had been sticking through. It retains the axle.

Another series of bolts go through the bracket that was just bolted on. They stick in towards the center section of the rear end.

Next spacers are put over those bolts.

And now the second bracket is attached.

This is another view of the attached brackets.


Time to slide the disc on.

The caliper install is pretty much self explanatory if you've worked on disc brakes before.

I still have to run the brake lines.

There was a time when I was too gun shy to attempt something such as installing disc brakes on a rear end. But with internet information on sites such as FABO it makes tackling jobs you're unfamiliar with possible.

 

[1967 'cuda]

I had a bunch more pics that I had taken shortly after the car was painted. I figured I might as well post what I have.

One of the things that I hadn't mentioned earlier in this post was that I did change leaf springs. When I purchased the Barracuda it had a fairly new set of Eaton replacement leaf springs on it. They had an extra 2" of arch in them and I wanted to lower the back of the car down after adding those taller cheater slicks. If you go back and look at some of the pictures of the car from when I first bought it, you can see the difference.







I was able to polish out the sill plates that came with the car. It had been missing all of the windlacing too. So I bought a bulk supply of it and cut it to fit along the headliner and door jams.

One other thing that I'd done was to install a '68 grill. I liked the vertical lines more than the rectangular grid. I purchased the grill pieces from multiple people, re-polished them out and put 1/4" pinstripe tape back over the part that was originally painted black.

 

[1967 'cuda]

I think the scum that do these kind of things count on the buyer being far from home, and in a hurry to get started on the trip back. What sucks is if the seller was totally upfront, the buyer would still go thru with the sale. I bought mine 7 hours away. I told the guy to send me pics of any bad area. I told him that unless something showed up when I got there to consider the car sold. Luckily there were no surprises.
The fastback Cudas look great(plus it has Cragars!) There is a really nice '69 a few miles from me, but it rarely comes out.

Ya, I agree. I know that after spending a full day of driving to get there I've got to see some pretty major flaws to prevent me from coming home with the vehicle. On that '68 Charger that we'd bought I was perfectly willing to return home empty after we saw it though.

 

[1967 'cuda]

Here's some pictures of my back yard. It's become sort of a parking lot where the cars each wait their turn to get into the garage for more work.