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Ok, here's my story. I'm Kelsey Dana, just turned 17 earlier this month, and I drive and restore my '72 Plymouth Scamp 318 with a 3-speed on the floor. My dad's a ford guy, he has a '47 Ford, and my sister restored her '62 Nova, so I guess I'm the oddball :happy10: . I found the car with my dad, it had been sitting in a field for at least 15 years, and the guy said the last time he started it was in 1991. I remember being a little apprehensive at first when my dad was telling me about it, but as soon as I saw it, it was love at first sight. My dad bought the car for an early 14th birthday present in August 2006 for $800 (with a restoration budget of $1200, after that it was out of my pocket), and it came with a '73 Dart parts car which I later sold for $100 :angry7: . We had to park the pair at my sister's house because my dad's got so many of his own resto projects going, there was no room for mine!
The first day of ownership consisted of cleaning the grime off the windows (the good thing about that is the grime saved the interior from being eaten alive by the sun) and vacuuming up the spiders (I *still* find dead spiders in there...) and mouse turds it had collected while it was sitting. The first thing I had to do was collect parts for it. It came with a carburator which we installed, but we still needed a harmonic balancer, radiator, water pump, timing chain and cover, camshaft gear, voltage regulator, and fuel pump. I didn't actually get to hear the engine until about March of 2007 (because of the Washington winter, it was impossible to be working on a car in the driveway with 12 degree weather), but my heart raced so fast as I heard it rev. At that time, if we primed the engine every time we tried to start it, it would actually start 1 out of every 13 tries, and die about 10 seconds later. Having sat in a field for so long, the gas that was sitting in the tank and the lines rotted so badly that we thought some little kid must've been dropping pennies in the tank. Trying to go the cheaper route, I've probably bought 15 fuel filters for this car since I've owned it. Anyway, the filters would last for about 2 days of fiddling with trying to start it, (4-ish hours a day). As if that wasn't enough of a problem, the person who owned the car before it had been sitting in the field had decided to put in a giant metric bolt for the harmonic balancer that was NOT the proper size, so every time we went to the hardware store we were trying to find a tool big enough to take it off.

Around October while I was out of town, my dad actually took it around the block. Without me there. I was pissed. Winter came and went, I finally got my license, and we were heading up on car show season. Sadly enough, the fuel line was still a problem, and my dad wasn't about to let me change it in a gravel driveway, especially since the house across the street burned down because someone was changing his gas tank and fuel line. So, every weekend we went over to my sister's house to work on it, we would just let it run to try to pull the boogers of gas out. This was the first time I had ever revved my own engine, and oh my goodness it felt good =P~ .
May came, and it was time for Mopars Unlimited car show, which I wasn't able to enter because of my stupid fuel line problems. Finally, it was running well enough to enter into its first car show, Cool Desert Nights an annual local car show that brings people from Utah, Cali, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, and Canada to my little Richland, Washington. I didn't place, since there was only one category, and resto projects weren't exactly welcome at the show. I loved being able to talk cars with everyone though, and surprising people when a scrawny 16 year old chick would come out from sitting behind the car to ask people if they had any questions. I got a lot of support from the people who actually knew cars, and it was a riot to hear those who didn't comment on my car. One guy said, "I used to have one of these when I was a kid. It's a '70 Duster". I had a hard time restraining my self, so my dad and I just laughed.
The week after that, I was able to bring it home!! I peeled the nasty vinyl top off and repaired the holes made from the rust.
Finally, I learned to drive it (since it was a stick) in about a week and had a great time cruising around in it during the summer. I'm a Junior in Highschool, but there’s a program at my school where you can go to the community college for free to ear your AA while completing your HS diploma. So I was driving it to school about a week before it started to prove to my dad that I could handle it for 12ish miles on the freeway. So, I merged on to the freeway, i was going about 40, and I shifted into 3rd. Nothing happened. I revved the engine. Nothing happened. Meanwhile, my dad's yelling at me to speed up, not listening to what I'm saying, and we die. On the freeway. Of course it was a fuel line thing, and I change the filter and it runs great. So, I told my dad, that’s the last straw, I'm buying a new tank and a new line. I bought the tank, I've been waiting to find a new line, and I'm changing it out once I run all the gas out of the engine. Joy riding here I come :cheers: . So my future plans are to change the tank and line, I need a new grille and rear valence, new Scamp stickers and Plymouth logos, as well as a new trim piece on the lower driver’s side, and a dash cover. Then I'm painting it FM3 Moulin Rouge with a black bumblebee stripe and black vinyl top. I'm debating whether or not to paint the bumpers black too, but I've definitely enough work ahead of me to have enough time to make up my mind.
(fredsmedina will be posting my pictures since I'm a ding dong and can't figure it out c: )

here's my photobucket account of the Scamp:
http://s870.photobucket.com/albums/ab266/Kelsey_Dana/