timk225
Well-Known Member
So VL29C3G213680 is / was a 1973 Plymouth Duster in Autumn Bronze Metallic. I bought it in 1993 for $650 and sold it in 1995/1996 for I forget how much.
When I got it, it was a standard column auto shifter bench seat car, but after a while I found a rusted 1973 Dart Sport 340 and swapped all the interior parts, including the steering column, to make it a bucket seat / console / floor shifter auto car. The 340 and 727 and other parts got sold.
Not long after I got it, I was doing a lot of cleanup on the car, the previous owner was some idiot kid who owed his Dad money, and among other things I did one of those engine cleanouts where you put a quart of something in the oil and run it for 15 minutes. It cleaned it out all right, after that the Slant 6 had a tick tick tick to it, but it never hurt anything.
2 years and a lot of miles later, while driving to college classes, the tick tick tick became BANG BANG BANG as only a bad rod bearing can. After classes, I still had to get home 20 miles so I drove it, hammering loudly all the way. It made it home.
At the time, I was too broke to pay attention, so even the cheapest possible junkyard engine swap was out of the question. So it got sold to some guy in Ford City, PA. I think he painted it some ugly purple color and I never saw it after that.
So who knows where it is now.
It has a shiny chrome VIN tag, because all the black paint came off one day while I was cleaning the interior and windows. It was a low option car, the fender tag had nearly nothing extra on it.
At one point in the winter on 1994, I got it sideways on an icy road and took out a telephone pole. It hit the drivers side fender in just the right spot to not hurt anything major, except the left front wheel lower control arm took a shot and broke loose the tube that goes through the K frame to hold the control arm in place, so I had to jack up the engine and swap the K frame. Then I took off the left front fender and hammered it as straight as I could, and painted with the closest color paint I had to Autumn Bronze Metallic, so from them on it looked like the fender caught on fire with the darker paint color. To make it more fun, the hit was in just the right spot to shatter the ballast resistor and one plastic plug, so when I put a new resistor in, I put it in upside down, as the indexing pin was broken. The car ran unbelievably bad for a couple days until I tried flipping the resistor over, then it was fixed. The hood got bowed slightly but I bent it back. At the time, any repair that cost money was a last resort!
Ah, the good old days, as crazy as that may sound!
When I got it, it was a standard column auto shifter bench seat car, but after a while I found a rusted 1973 Dart Sport 340 and swapped all the interior parts, including the steering column, to make it a bucket seat / console / floor shifter auto car. The 340 and 727 and other parts got sold.
Not long after I got it, I was doing a lot of cleanup on the car, the previous owner was some idiot kid who owed his Dad money, and among other things I did one of those engine cleanouts where you put a quart of something in the oil and run it for 15 minutes. It cleaned it out all right, after that the Slant 6 had a tick tick tick to it, but it never hurt anything.
2 years and a lot of miles later, while driving to college classes, the tick tick tick became BANG BANG BANG as only a bad rod bearing can. After classes, I still had to get home 20 miles so I drove it, hammering loudly all the way. It made it home.
At the time, I was too broke to pay attention, so even the cheapest possible junkyard engine swap was out of the question. So it got sold to some guy in Ford City, PA. I think he painted it some ugly purple color and I never saw it after that.
So who knows where it is now.
It has a shiny chrome VIN tag, because all the black paint came off one day while I was cleaning the interior and windows. It was a low option car, the fender tag had nearly nothing extra on it.
At one point in the winter on 1994, I got it sideways on an icy road and took out a telephone pole. It hit the drivers side fender in just the right spot to not hurt anything major, except the left front wheel lower control arm took a shot and broke loose the tube that goes through the K frame to hold the control arm in place, so I had to jack up the engine and swap the K frame. Then I took off the left front fender and hammered it as straight as I could, and painted with the closest color paint I had to Autumn Bronze Metallic, so from them on it looked like the fender caught on fire with the darker paint color. To make it more fun, the hit was in just the right spot to shatter the ballast resistor and one plastic plug, so when I put a new resistor in, I put it in upside down, as the indexing pin was broken. The car ran unbelievably bad for a couple days until I tried flipping the resistor over, then it was fixed. The hood got bowed slightly but I bent it back. At the time, any repair that cost money was a last resort!
Ah, the good old days, as crazy as that may sound!
