ramenth
Well-Known Member
Here's the story that started my love for the M-bodies.
In 1991 my parents buy an '82 Diplomat slant six car. Dark brown, tan vinyl roof, hubcaps. Sharp, not a speck of rust. The local Chrysler dealership took it on trade with 104,000 miles on the clock. Mom's a real haggler. He's asking $1400 for it, she gets him down to $900 and tells him to eat the licensing fees. Done deal.
Later on my sister and her ex buy an '81 Diplomat wagon that needs a motor, so Pop being Pop sells them the slant out of the Dip and hunts down a cop car for parts. Finding one we set about converting everything over. After a quick re-ring and re-bearing we swap K-frames, drop in the 318 cop motor, put in the SureGrip rear with the bigger brakes, rear sway bar, wheels, etc. Now we have the same car with a bigger heartbeat and a knew personality.
This car hates my sister's ex. Refuses to run for him when he has the occasion to drive it. It reluctantly starts, and when it does he barely makes it out of the driveway. Pop gets home and my sister's ex is complaining that the car won't run. Pop climbs into it and it fires right off and runs like a striped ape. This goes on for years. Runs fine for Pop, runs fine for my brother, runs fine for me, hates my bro-in-law.
Mom and Dad buy an Intrepid and the Dip sits, with me using as an occasional driver, but I have my truck and really don't need a car. So my best friend asks if he can buy it. It still belongs to Mom so she says sure. He's not filthy rich and he can't come up with the $500 asking price so Mom agrees that $50 down and $50 a week and the car is his. He takes the car, but a week later calls and asks if Mom wants the car back. It runs like s***, when it starts. Tells Mom to keep the $50 as a week's rent. A half hour later he pulls in the driveway and the car sounds like crap, hitting on maybe six cylinders, running rich. It's awful to hear. Pop asks him what he did. He swears he did nothing to it. He got it home and the next morning it was running like that and had been running like that all week. Pop raises the hood and I fire it off to have it purring like a kitten. Nothing wrong. Hitting on all cylinders, idling like it should. A quick once over and Pop decides a test drive is in order. Gone, Baby, Gone! My best friend is standing there shaking his head muttering he be damned. So the car is back in the family.
A year or so goes by and I meet my wife. The Dip is being used on occasion, but runs great. A friend of my wife's needs a car and inquires about the Dip. Mom again agrees to sell it. I take the women for ride, the 318 running fine, plowing through 6" of snow on unplowed roads thanks to the SureGrip. The woman happily forks over $500 for the car and goes on her merry way. A week later a get a phone call: the car won't run, it keeps stalling out. I drive to see what's the matter and it runs fine. I can't diagnose a problem that doesn't exist. She's standing there while it's running muttering that it doesn't run like that for her.I even have her take me for ride so I can see if it will stall. Runs great. I give it a good once over and tell her that if she has any more problems to call me.
A day later she calls. Seems she went out to crank the car and it wouldn't start without a lot of trouble. She got the car started and went inside to call me when the car caught fire under the hood. I go to her house and found out
she dumped fuel into the secondaries (somehow or the other, still trying to figure all that out) and when it fired it popped all the fuel in the secondaries and caught fire. One toasted T-Quad. Pop and I arrange for a buddy to tow it back to our place where we put a 2BBL on it, make sure it's running right and send it on it's way.
A month later my wife is talking to the woman's husband when we find out she hasn't driven the car in two weeks and they're talking about sending it the local U-Pull-It. Seems it won't even crank. I'm indignant! After some conversation, with me threatening to expose her husband for the cheat he his (he had the hots for my wife and even tried something...which my [future at this point] wife rebuffed knowing he is a married man) all is agreed that I would get the car back.
My buddy and I go down to get the car with his rollback. We pull up and no one's home, but the title is signed and in the glovebox, which is good enough for me. The neighbors, though, are sitting there, badmouthing the car as piece of s***, that it won't run, it belongs in junkyard, etc. I hit the starter, the car fires right off and I drive it on the rollback. The neighbors pretty much shut up at this point. Maybe they realized it was the operator and not the car. So now the car has left the family for second time and come back.
My wife needs the car, as the Oldsmobuick her dad gave her is pretty much on it's last legs. My wife drives it for months on her new job around the Middletown area of NY when she's headed home on Christmas Eve morning and the car stops running on RT17. My brother and I climb in the truck and fly down to get a tow dolly and bring her and the car back. Remember, Pop and I did just a quick re-ring and re-gasket on the 318. Seems that after all the abuse of being a cop motor and then a taxi motor, combined with 300,000 miles on the reciprocating assembly one of the rod bolts decided to give up. So out with the 318 and in goes a 360 out of my sister's ex's wrecked '76 Aspen R/T and the car is back up and running.
Not more than a month later my wife is driving through Binghampton, NY when the car shuts right down. Seems it was making a godawful noise just before it quit. Pop and I grab some oil and head down to get her, hoping the motor might have just been low and maybe, just maybe we can limp it home. Meet her at the tow company and pay up on the tow bill. Check the oil. There is none. Dump five quarts in and crank it. No dice, the engine is blown. Seems she ignored the oil pressure gauge when it went to zero and drove 35 miles at 70 miles per hour with the idiot light staring her in the face. So we make arrangements for the tow company to bring it the 70 miles from Binghampton to Watkins Glen where it still had all five quarts of oil in the pan when it got there.
Where is the car now? Back in the hands of my parents. Pop took the 360 out of the Duster to go in it, but moved to TN, leaving the car with me. Now the folks are back in NY and the plans are going forward to get project back up and running again where it belongs: in the hands of my parents. Where the car wants to be.
I'll get the pics going on the current build as I go.
In 1991 my parents buy an '82 Diplomat slant six car. Dark brown, tan vinyl roof, hubcaps. Sharp, not a speck of rust. The local Chrysler dealership took it on trade with 104,000 miles on the clock. Mom's a real haggler. He's asking $1400 for it, she gets him down to $900 and tells him to eat the licensing fees. Done deal.
Later on my sister and her ex buy an '81 Diplomat wagon that needs a motor, so Pop being Pop sells them the slant out of the Dip and hunts down a cop car for parts. Finding one we set about converting everything over. After a quick re-ring and re-bearing we swap K-frames, drop in the 318 cop motor, put in the SureGrip rear with the bigger brakes, rear sway bar, wheels, etc. Now we have the same car with a bigger heartbeat and a knew personality.
This car hates my sister's ex. Refuses to run for him when he has the occasion to drive it. It reluctantly starts, and when it does he barely makes it out of the driveway. Pop gets home and my sister's ex is complaining that the car won't run. Pop climbs into it and it fires right off and runs like a striped ape. This goes on for years. Runs fine for Pop, runs fine for my brother, runs fine for me, hates my bro-in-law.
Mom and Dad buy an Intrepid and the Dip sits, with me using as an occasional driver, but I have my truck and really don't need a car. So my best friend asks if he can buy it. It still belongs to Mom so she says sure. He's not filthy rich and he can't come up with the $500 asking price so Mom agrees that $50 down and $50 a week and the car is his. He takes the car, but a week later calls and asks if Mom wants the car back. It runs like s***, when it starts. Tells Mom to keep the $50 as a week's rent. A half hour later he pulls in the driveway and the car sounds like crap, hitting on maybe six cylinders, running rich. It's awful to hear. Pop asks him what he did. He swears he did nothing to it. He got it home and the next morning it was running like that and had been running like that all week. Pop raises the hood and I fire it off to have it purring like a kitten. Nothing wrong. Hitting on all cylinders, idling like it should. A quick once over and Pop decides a test drive is in order. Gone, Baby, Gone! My best friend is standing there shaking his head muttering he be damned. So the car is back in the family.
A year or so goes by and I meet my wife. The Dip is being used on occasion, but runs great. A friend of my wife's needs a car and inquires about the Dip. Mom again agrees to sell it. I take the women for ride, the 318 running fine, plowing through 6" of snow on unplowed roads thanks to the SureGrip. The woman happily forks over $500 for the car and goes on her merry way. A week later a get a phone call: the car won't run, it keeps stalling out. I drive to see what's the matter and it runs fine. I can't diagnose a problem that doesn't exist. She's standing there while it's running muttering that it doesn't run like that for her.I even have her take me for ride so I can see if it will stall. Runs great. I give it a good once over and tell her that if she has any more problems to call me.
A day later she calls. Seems she went out to crank the car and it wouldn't start without a lot of trouble. She got the car started and went inside to call me when the car caught fire under the hood. I go to her house and found out
she dumped fuel into the secondaries (somehow or the other, still trying to figure all that out) and when it fired it popped all the fuel in the secondaries and caught fire. One toasted T-Quad. Pop and I arrange for a buddy to tow it back to our place where we put a 2BBL on it, make sure it's running right and send it on it's way.
A month later my wife is talking to the woman's husband when we find out she hasn't driven the car in two weeks and they're talking about sending it the local U-Pull-It. Seems it won't even crank. I'm indignant! After some conversation, with me threatening to expose her husband for the cheat he his (he had the hots for my wife and even tried something...which my [future at this point] wife rebuffed knowing he is a married man) all is agreed that I would get the car back.
My buddy and I go down to get the car with his rollback. We pull up and no one's home, but the title is signed and in the glovebox, which is good enough for me. The neighbors, though, are sitting there, badmouthing the car as piece of s***, that it won't run, it belongs in junkyard, etc. I hit the starter, the car fires right off and I drive it on the rollback. The neighbors pretty much shut up at this point. Maybe they realized it was the operator and not the car. So now the car has left the family for second time and come back.
My wife needs the car, as the Oldsmobuick her dad gave her is pretty much on it's last legs. My wife drives it for months on her new job around the Middletown area of NY when she's headed home on Christmas Eve morning and the car stops running on RT17. My brother and I climb in the truck and fly down to get a tow dolly and bring her and the car back. Remember, Pop and I did just a quick re-ring and re-gasket on the 318. Seems that after all the abuse of being a cop motor and then a taxi motor, combined with 300,000 miles on the reciprocating assembly one of the rod bolts decided to give up. So out with the 318 and in goes a 360 out of my sister's ex's wrecked '76 Aspen R/T and the car is back up and running.
Not more than a month later my wife is driving through Binghampton, NY when the car shuts right down. Seems it was making a godawful noise just before it quit. Pop and I grab some oil and head down to get her, hoping the motor might have just been low and maybe, just maybe we can limp it home. Meet her at the tow company and pay up on the tow bill. Check the oil. There is none. Dump five quarts in and crank it. No dice, the engine is blown. Seems she ignored the oil pressure gauge when it went to zero and drove 35 miles at 70 miles per hour with the idiot light staring her in the face. So we make arrangements for the tow company to bring it the 70 miles from Binghampton to Watkins Glen where it still had all five quarts of oil in the pan when it got there.
Where is the car now? Back in the hands of my parents. Pop took the 360 out of the Duster to go in it, but moved to TN, leaving the car with me. Now the folks are back in NY and the plans are going forward to get project back up and running again where it belongs: in the hands of my parents. Where the car wants to be.
I'll get the pics going on the current build as I go.
