Greatest "I found a car" story you have

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hemichuck

hemichuck

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I was just on the thread about the car that hooked me on Mopar and got to thinking about all the old boring stories I have about finding cars for sale that I'm sure my wife(and lots of other non-car people)probably wish I would never tell again. Since I'm new here and maybe your not tired of me yet I will throw one out for your entertainment pleasure and hopefully you guys will do the same.
When I was 18 a buddy of mine called and said he new where there was a 1968 Charger body for sale. Since I was the only Mopar guy around I got a lot of those bones tossed my way.He said the guy who owned it was named Poo and he wanted $50 bucks for it so when I got done laughing about the name he gave me a phone number and I called about the car. I got the guys mom on the phone and she said he would be home later and gave me an address. I couldnt help but laugh like Bevis and Butthead every time I said the guys name. So I get to his house and knock on the door and choke back a snicker when I ask if Poo is at home and his mom says yes so I'm on the porch waiting and out walks this Samoan guy about 17 years old and about 6 foot and probably 300+ pounds and said "Hi,My names Poo Pevelor"(thats when I stopped snickering for fear of getting pounded) So we go out back and there is a coppertone 1968 Dodge Charger with rusted quarters all the way up to the body line and a Hemi emblem on the door. Upon closer inspection of the VIN it was indeed a 1968 Hemi 4 speed car with a 4.10 Dana. So needless to say I ponied up the $50 and made arrangements to pick it up. When I got it home we dropped it in the field behind my dads house and I proceeded to try and find a set of quarters for the car. Remember now that this was before the internet,Mopar mags and RePro parts so ther were not a lot of options. I finally tracked down the quarters for $500 and got a price to install them for $500 and figured out the car wasnt worth what I would have in it so I decided to part it out. I listed the car in the Bargain mart and a guy called wanting the Dana to put in a GM drag car(tired of breaking 12 bolts) and we agreed on a price of $250 on the rear(hey,5 times your money back aint bad) but he said he didnt want to pull it out in the field and asked how much for the whole car. I figured at the time scrap was $18 a ton so I told him I would take a few things I wanted and he could have the rest for $300.He agreed so the next day I snatched the Vin and Fender tags and the Door emblem(which I still have) and the clutch pedals and told him to come and get it. I ended up making enough to buy another car in those days and had a couple of souveniers to boot. I sold the VIN Tags and Fender tags some years later but thats another boring story that I will have to tackle when the two fingers I type with cool down. I have a couple hundred of these tales...Whats yours?
 
1985 walking down a road in Stockbridge GA selling encyclopedias door-to-door, lady drove up alongside me in a '63 Belvedere 2 door with a For Sale sign, $500, one of my favorite cars, drove it a couple years til a drunk rear-ended and killed it.
 
My best would be finding the Spacer after 25 years, Been collecting parts almost 20 years, finally found it in Vermont last fall. Got It home after a hair raising tow down a snow covered Vermont mountain. 360, 4 speed, buckets, fold down rear seat, and all intact,...definatly in need, but all there.
 
I was touring the back roads as usual. I saw some scrap off in the distance at an abandoned farm yard. It was right on the Canada / U.S. border, which poses a problem for me, nother story. Binoculars showed me a pick up truck and some farm equipment. After looking at the map and determining it was actually in Canada, I wondered through the field and had a look. Turned out it was a :prayer: 1940 Willys! So I contacted the land owner who had aquired the property. He was busy with harvest and asked if I could wait. :protest: Under duress i said yes and gave him my phone number. A painful month or so later he called. He asked if I would give him $300 for the truck. I told him if he brought a tractor and loaded it on my trailer, I would give him $400. Done deal! It consisted of the frame, rear diff, motor and tranny, cab with doors, front fenders and the hood with the original emblems!! I found the original straight axle laying in the field with other junk. Just recently I picked up a 354 Hemi for it and will soon be working on it. Best find I've ever had! :D
 
I'm still waiting to be able to go see a '69 GTS 4-speed (supposedly big block) sitting in a barn but every time I try something goes wrong.
 
OK heres another one, My buddy calls me and says he needs help picking up a motor so being a big guy with a little mind I said fine. When I get to his house theres about 10 guys there and we loaded up in his truck and took off down the street and there was a 331 Hemi sitting at the curb complete with 6 dueces,Chrome valve covers and a T10 trans adaptor still attached So we wrestle the thing up into his truck and take it to his house(where its still sitting some 35 years later). Seems that the guy who owned the motor was a street rodder and had installed it in his 32 Ford Coupe and after driving it a while decided it was too much for him so he removed it and sat it on the curb with his trash can.After the second week of it sitting there my buddy stops by and asks if he can have it and he says "sure,the garbage guys cant get it into the truck"
 
$500

91,000 miles

V8, 4x4

I had to put a battery in it.

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I was about 300 miles from the house and someone had dropped by to look at an old Harley FLH shovelehead that I had for sale but wasn't trying to hard to do so. Nice old bike and pretty fast for a kick/electric stock Harley. My wife calls me, and says you need to get home to go and look at this car. My wife says some guy wants to trade you an old car for the bike. I told her I wasn't interested in trading, but maybe for the right car I'd think on it. I get home and meet this guy who I swear is a big man and weighs 400 pounds. He says he has a car around the corner for me to see. I see he's so big he can't ride this bike or kick it over. I go see what's in his garage around the corner where it's dark and dimly lit. So much dust covering this car, and to boot, a little old lady smoking cigs is smokin up the garage. I asked what it was, and just had to see it in the daylight. We push it out, and low and behold it's a 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger with 48k original slant six air conditioned miles, white with dark green alligator pattern vinyl top, and two-tone green interior. Wiped the car down, charged the battery, primed the fuel pump and carb, aired the tires up. And after 3 years sitting, and last tagged in 2008 the car fired and started. Hech, the AM radio even worked. My gosh, it was icy and -20 in Great Falls, MT that day, but I drove it to the house, parked it in the garage, and rode that old bike over to the big guys house, and told him I would sure help him start the old bike when he was ready to ride.
 
gdrill said:
I was touring the back roads as usual. I saw some scrap off in the distance at an abandoned farm yard. It was right on the Canada / U.S. border, which poses a problem for me, nother story. Binoculars showed me a pick up truck and some farm equipment. After looking at the map and determining it was actually in Canada, I wondered through the field and had a look. Turned out it was a :prayer: 1940 Willys! So I contacted the land owner who had aquired the property. He was busy with harvest and asked if I could wait. :protest: Under duress i said yes and gave him my phone number. A painful month or so later he called. He asked if I would give him $300 for the truck. I told him if he brought a tractor and loaded it on my trailer, I would give him $400. Done deal! It consisted of the frame, rear diff, motor and tranny, cab with doors, front fenders and the hood with the original emblems!! I found the original straight axle laying in the field with other junk. Just recently I picked up a 354 Hemi for it and will soon be working on it. Best find I've ever had! :D
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Dude! Ya gotta post some pictures of that!

George
 
All right,I got one more for today and I will give you guys a rest.(besides I gotta go look at a 408 Stroker some guys got for sale) A good friend of mine calls me up one day and ask me if I'm interested in his 70 Swinger 340 automatic car. Of course I said yes and ask him how much. He just told me to get the trailer and come on over,he would explain when I got there. This guy had married his high school sweetheart and got himself a job at Ford,bought a house,and had 2 daughters by the time he was 22. Apparently he had pi**ed off his wife and they had been argueing for a week over who knows what and she told him she was tired of him spending money on the Dart and if he didnt get rid of it she was leaving. So when I show up with the trailer he tells me I want you to have my car. He pulls the title out of his wallet and hands it to me.We push the car (which had the motor pulled at the time) onto the trailer and he pulls the motor which had just been finished at the machine shop out from under the tarp in his driveway and we load it in the truck. Then just as I thought my day couldnt get any better than this he opens up the crawlspace under his house and pulls out a new 727 and stall convertor that he had just purcheased from B&M and loaded it into my truck. He told me it was a tough choice but he would rather give me the car than lose his wife. But I think that was a double edged sword because his wife didnt like me at all (probably because I would help him spend money on his car) and I'm sure her intent was for him to sell the car and spend the money on something she wanted. Well that didnt work out for her...I got a nice car....she got nothing except knowing she caused me to get that nice car...and a couple years later they got divorced anyway. I ran into the the guy 10 or 15 years later(I wasnt welcome at his house as long as she was there) and he told me he should have kept the car and sent her packing.Oh well,hindsights 20/20.
 
The car Im working on now. Story goes, my gf at the time her uncle knew I was into Mopars as I had a 69 Sport Satellite and a 67 Coronet 440, but I was looking for a convertible. Well her uncle told me about a barracuda convertible and it peaked my interest. He wanted a finders fee, and I said if I like the car and work out a deal. Then the finders fee is fine. So me and a buddy go look at it, its in a drive-in shed and is looking rough...nothing too bad, but the top was pretty much rotted off it. Well we did a walk around and looked inside, interior is all intact and there 4spd console bucket seats. Interior had been recovered in some naughahyde(leather look alike). We popped the hood, didnt look too bad, no engine, but the fendertag was there so I took the info down as I didnt know what the codes meant. No engine, but original manifolds and exhaust were there. I get home and call my mopar guru and rhyme off the codes and he starts asking me questions about the tail panel, the vin # etc. Once he realizes its legit he says buy it!! Turns out to be a 1 of 34 340 4spd "S" cuda ragtop. He tells me no matter what the price to buy it! I call the owner as he wasnt home when we looked at it, only his friend was home at the time. I find out he is going bankrupt, so I didnt give him full asking $$ but close. He said how soon??? I said in an hour! Didnt get the engine, but 4spd and diff were still in the car and I got the x-heads as well. 20 years Still a work in progress......
 
I bought a 1969 Road Runner in 1989.It has 356 miles on it and was wrecked when it was 3 days old.The car was stored in a garage from 1969 until 1989.I bought the car for $600.00 and sold it a few months later for $1200.00.I found the car a couple of years ago for sale on ebay.So I called the Guy who owned the car.He wanted 10K.Someone started to repair the car but it was still off the road.The car had sat outside some and alot of the original parts were gone.I told him I still had the original title from 1969 and he was not even interested in it.I asked him about the original parts that were missing off the car and he had no idea what I was talking about.The car now is just a good solid car to restore and nothing else,what a shame.Last I knew the car was near Kansas City.

Jim
 
hemichuck said:
All right,I got one more for today and I will give you guys a rest.(besides I gotta go look at a 408 Stroker some guys got for sale) A good friend of mine calls me up one day and ask me if I'm interested in his 70 Swinger 340 automatic car. Of course I said yes and ask him how much. He just told me to get the trailer and come on over,he would explain when I got there. This guy had married his high school sweetheart and got himself a job at Ford,bought a house,and had 2 daughters by the time he was 22. Apparently he had pi**ed off his wife and they had been argueing for a week over who knows what and she told him she was tired of him spending money on the Dart and if he didnt get rid of it she was leaving. So when I show up with the trailer he tells me I want you to have my car. He pulls the title out of his wallet and hands it to me.We push the car (which had the motor pulled at the time) onto the trailer and he pulls the motor which had just been finished at the machine shop out from under the tarp in his driveway and we load it in the truck. Then just as I thought my day couldnt get any better than this he opens up the crawlspace under his house and pulls out a new 727 and stall convertor that he had just purcheased from B&M and loaded it into my truck. He told me it was a tough choice but he would rather give me the car than lose his wife. But I think that was a double edged sword because his wife didnt like me at all (probably because I would help him spend money on his car) and I'm sure her intent was for him to sell the car and spend the money on something she wanted. Well that didnt work out for her...I got a nice car....she got nothing except knowing she caused me to get that nice car...and a couple years later they got divorced anyway. I ran into the the guy 10 or 15 years later(I wasnt welcome at his house as long as she was there) and he told me he should have kept the car and sent her packing.Oh well,hindsights 20/20.
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if a woman told me that I had to choose I would tell her.... "well its a tough choice, actually its not, be gone by the time I'm done polishing it!":burnout:
 
OK, long about 1995 or so I'm working with my buddy and he says we have a job just down the road from his house doing a nice addition on another friends place. We go down to look at the job and sitting on the other side of the road are 2 mopars, a 67 GTX and a 69 Sport Satellite. They are owned by a guy who works at Ford, and he gets home about 3 p.m. everyday, so I go over and talk to him the first time I see him. Nope the cars aren't for sale, the 69 is his sons and he owns the GTX which has a spun bearing in the motor. Open the hood on the GTX and there sits a 1970 SixPak setup complete, and on top of that is what I come to find out is an aircleaner from a 67 Tri-power Corvette. Hmmm, wonder how the bearing got spun???

So, everyday at lunch I go over and start checking into the GTX, running numbers, checking equipment and documenting what I soon realize is a numbers matching, almost untouched GTX. After a couple weeks I get a brainstorm... why not drive my 64 Belvedere to work one day and offer it as a trade, even up. So I do, and the next day when he gets home I drive the Belvy over and tell him "lets trade straight up, your non-running car for my running one". He couldn't get the title out of the strongbox fast enough, and secretly I was a wreck of nerves waiting on my buddy to come with his flatbed and take me and my new prize home. Got it home, stripped the SixPak off and sold it and spent the $$ to rebuild the motor, and buy an intake and carb. I then traded the air cleaner for all the soft items I needed for Wendy's 66..

What ever happened to the GTX??? Well.....
 

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Great old Wiilys and the GTX is sweet.These are the kind of stories I love.OK,I just got home from buying the stroker and its close enough to Monday that I will give you another one.I used to go through downtown Louisville all of the time and there was a red 1967 GTX that was always parked on the side of the street in front of a row of old shotgun houses.It had 2 spotlights mounted on the windshield posts like a cop car or something.This was not the better part of town. I stopped and left notes on the car about 10 times and got nothing so I started beating on doors all around where it was parked and finally someone told me it belonged to an older black gentleman who lived in this one house so I kind of haunted the place until I got him to come out and talk.He said he bought the car new and it wasnt a cop car but he had the spotlights installed.The original motor was gone but it had a 383 automatic in it. He wouldnt even talk about selling it,and believe me I tried hard to buy it for about 2 years. So one day around 1984 I was at a junkyard down on the Point(The bad side of town back then) and low and behold there was the GTX sitting out front. I went in and talked to the owner and he said he had just bought it for salvage. I told him I wanted the car and he said he would have to have $200 so I snagged it. Now this is the best part.I'm not the only guy who was trying to buy that car for years and when my buddies found out I had it a couple of them wanted it pretty bad. One guy in particular had this gun I had been wanting, a Colt AR15 H Bar match rifle. At the time they were about $365 new but he had a bunch of extra mags and some ammo. We talked and he said he would give me the rifle for the car so we swapped,$400 worth of rifle and accesories for a $200 car,not bad I thought. But the kicker was a few weeks later Bill Clinton and his mob enacted the assault rifle ban which turned my $400 rifle into a $1200 rifle and my buddy will swear to this day that I knew that was going to happen and I screwed him good. I still have the rifle,probably worth $1400 today.
 
plefe said:
I was about 300 miles from the house and someone had dropped by to look at an old Harley FLH shovelehead that I had for sale but wasn't trying to hard to do so. Nice old bike and pretty fast for a kick/electric stock Harley. My wife calls me, and says you need to get home to go and look at this car. My wife says some guy wants to trade you an old car for the bike. I told her I wasn't interested in trading, but maybe for the right car I'd think on it. I get home and meet this guy who I swear is a big man and weighs 400 pounds. He says he has a car around the corner for me to see. I see he's so big he can't ride this bike or kick it over. I go see what's in his garage around the corner where it's dark and dimly lit. So much dust covering this car, and to boot, a little old lady smoking cigs is smokin up the garage. I asked what it was, and just had to see it in the daylight. We push it out, and low and behold it's a 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger with 48k original slant six air conditioned miles, white with dark green alligator pattern vinyl top, and two-tone green interior. Wiped the car down, charged the battery, primed the fuel pump and carb, aired the tires up. And after 3 years sitting, and last tagged in 2008 the car fired and started. Hech, the AM radio even worked. My gosh, it was icy and -20 in Great Falls, MT that day, but I drove it to the house, parked it in the garage, and rode that old bike over to the big guys house, and told him I would sure help him start the old bike when he was ready to ride.
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The guy knew what he had though and what the bike was, but he just couldn't sit that big body of his behind the wheel.
 
Well, I just bought my Dart for $1 about six weeks ago. But, I think my best is the 70 HEMI 4spd road runner I found in a privet yard in Idaho in 2001. It was a Teton Flood victim, so had been off of the road since 1976. I paid $50 for it and sold it three days later to a guy in Florida who heard about it just by word spreading that fast. I wasn't sure if I wanted to sell it or not, but he made an offer I couldn't turn down.

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Back in 1980, my brother tried to buy a 383/4spd 69 Road Runner that had been sitting up on blocks in some guy's driveway for several years... guy wouldn't sell. In the mid 80's, the car moved to that guy's neighbor's yard. In late 1989, I stopped and asked the old guy living at the car's location if he wanted to sell. was told it was his son's car, but would let me have it for $800.... We agreed on $500 and i called a rollback. Car was solid, but missing the engine and trans. I sold it in 1994 and paid cash for a 24x32 two story garage at my 1st house.
 
Some time in 1994, I had spotted a 69 fury ragtop sitting under a tarp. The man living there said it was his father's car. He had bought it new and all the kids learned how to drive in it. ( I learned to drive in a 66 Fury III ) He said his father was going to restore it one day. (He was 80 at the time.) Five years later, I received a phone call saying "come and get it, if you want it". Turns out his father had no interest in re-doing it. His wife worked on him for 5 years to just let me have the car so at least somebody would save it and enjoy it. So I dragged it home. It is a low optioned 318 car with only a power top, power steering, power drum brakes, light package and the exterior trim package. June of 2000 I started to take her apart. June of 2004 it was on the road... It's the front end you see in my avatar. The car was complete and retains it's original short block. I never took a pic before dismantling it...duh...don't know what i was thinking there...... First pic i took was after rebuilding the front end.

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I was on the hunt for a winter beater mid-80s. Saw an ad in the local buy&sell for a Dart & Demon - $600. I called an spoke to the wife of the house, and she provided a little info. 74 Dart Sport with a V8, and an old Demon race car - not running. She told me the Dart was at their house, and the Demon was at a house across the street.

I drove over and casually cruised by, and saw the Dart on the street. Definite winter beater material, but tagged and driving. I started a hunt for the Demon, and after about 10 minutes of driving down back lanes, came across a 72 with a snorkel scoop sitting up on blocks. It still had shoe polish on the windshield from the defunct local racetrack. A quick look inside, and it was still sporting it's white interior. Car was painted black. I went to the seller's house and pretended to look at the Dart, but I was really interested in the Demon. The owner started telling me it was used for brackets, the motor was gone, and he was sort of losing storage on it. He told me where it was, and I asked if it was open to check out. He said no problem, so I went back and started going over it. I reached through the missing rear speaker opening, and found a perfect broadcast sheet, removed it, and with my limited ability at the time, confirmed what it was.

I ended up bringing the Demon home for $200. After more research, I found it was a loaded TB3 340 car, white side/tail stripes, white vinyl top, performance hood w/scoop, white bucket/console interior, dual sport painted mirrors, P/S, PDB, 8-3/4, matching 727, complete with no motor. Still got it, has been stored a loong time. I have paid way more than the purchase price keeping it as found lol.. First one in once the shop is up :).

Grant
 
[/QUOTE]I ended up bringing the Demon home for $200. After more research, I found it was a loaded TB3 340 car, white side/tail stripes, white vinyl top, performance hood w/scoop, white bucket/console interior, dual sport painted mirrors, P/S, PDB, 8-3/4, matching 727, complete with no motor. Still got it, has been stored a loong time. I have paid way more than the purchase price keeping it as found lol.. First one in once the shop is up :).

Grant[/QUOTE]

SAWEEEET!!! :cheers:
 
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