Hot Rod Power Tour 2024

DionR said
To be fair, there is broad range of skill levels and as hot rodding has advanced into the electronic age there are some that aren't comfortable or just plain don't want to move forward. It has gotten easier with some of the self tuning options available now, but before that people were stuck with systems that might have sucked either because of lack of skill or attention to detail during the install or issues with tuning.

Then there is the guy that doesn't want to hack up his floor pans to install an OD trans. And he hates wheels bigger than 15" and doesn't want to wear out his BFG's because they are stupid expensive. And no way will he clutter up his engine bay with an AC compressor.

That same guy will then buy a late model muscle car because it is comfortable and fun to drive and then have no problem taking it on Power Tour. It's a slippery slope.

And while it certainly has gotten easier, I'm not sure it is cheaper than just buying a late model car. Once you factor in the amount of labor to modernize an old car, it gets even more tempting to just buy something.

As an example, I have $12.4K in parts for my G3/T56 swap. This includes the purchase price of a '73 Duster to do the swap into, and a T56 Magnum kit. And that is with a really cheap 5.7 and most of the parts to swap it in. A rough guess puts me at $14,200 to build a G3/T56 car, and that is still without AC and doesn't include the work I need to do to bolt it all together. And no paint/body work and still a worn out interior.

Contrast that with the 2010 Challenger SRT8 6M for $20K that was a couple of hours away from me a month ago.

Now factor in an upgraded suspension, bigger front brakes and rear disks and new 17" or 18" wheels and tires. Pretty quickly, the above SRT8 is starting to look much cheaper, even if you ignore the labor to bolt the '73 together.

Shoot, I forgot about the rear axle with 3.55 or 3.73 gears.

Note that I don't own the SRT8 I saw, and I still have the '73 and am actively working towards the swap.

I'm not saying this is the cheapest way to do this, nor the smartest. Just where I decided to go and one example of how easy it might be to end up in the sea of late model cars on Power Tour.

If a 15" BFG is too much money to drive 1500 miles the car never gets driven at all...like most of them including my neighbor that has 2 GTOs. These are like the "go get ice cream" cars.

The Challenger, especially the older ones are basically full size luxury cars with V8s anyway which somehow are incredibly small inside. I wouldn't want to own any LX car made before 2015 at this point anyway, the ones after that are much better so I'm suprised its $20k for a 2010 SRT-8 to begin with. Its kind of like the C5 Corvette of Modern Mopars, I didn't think it was too wanted anymore. I don't get the allure of them outside of anything 392/Hellcat/Demon honestly. The Mustang and Camaro are much better performing all around cars if you're going to have something everyone else has anyway.

I own this, if my car broke at the last second this would be on Power Tour, but this is way more rare to see than a Camaro/Challenger/Mustang from the last 15 years...

You put suspension on the Duster and it handles better than those. If it hooks it would be signifigantly faster with the same engine. And you can be proud of it because its built differently than everyone else's and you weren't just writing checks.

I still have a 1965 unrebuilt 3.23 sure-grip 742 center section. 2.97:1 1st gear transmission so its like having a 3.6:1 axle with an A-833. Totally fine.

I started working on this car when I was 14, I think a lot of the talent thing is actually people being afraid of pushing themselves. Wiring isn't that hard and most of the rest is something others help with on forums, you can learn on Youtube, etc.

I don't have a total but I probably have 30k in the car. I'm sure I spent thousands more on tools and whatnot. The thing is the total could be a lot less because I sold a lot of the mid-level parts I had for an alright return. Still not that expensive in todays world. I like the imperfection of the car.

For everyone staying in a hotel for this its likely $900 for hotels, $150 for food, $350 for gas, and $200 for registration to do the long haul at minimum. Gotta pay to play.