The Story
Dane's 70 challenger prodject!

As I was away at hockey camp during the summer of 2004, my father recieved a call from a former customer. He had this mint 70 challenger for sale. Just a roller with no powertrain. My dad and I had been looking for a project car so he thought about it. He said fine and had it delivered sight unseen. I'm not sure what day it got there but the day after I got home, Sunday, my brother told me that we were going to go clean the floors at the shop, my Sunday job. I didn't think anything of it and my parents were already there. When we got there I walked in and saw this baby blue 70 challenger on one of the racks. Instantly I got butterflies in my stomach and I wouldn't even look at it. My dad said something about it and I was just like yea whatever. He had this little sign on the dash that said, "sold to: Dane Kilpatrick" I smiled and gave my dad a hug. At that moment I started to take a good look at it. At that moment I saw how much of a solid car I had. It had absolutely no body rust and a beautiful floor. My dad then lowered the car and had me sit in it. He then told me that was the original interior. The car had baby blue primer on it with the engine compartment and such the original red. The car was bought in October of 1969 by an old lady who lived in dry sunny califoria. It was ordered as a regular hardtop 6 cylinder 3 speed manual. After she drove, it a guy put a 440 in it but didn't drive it much. When I got in it and looked at the original dash, it read 14,088.1 No, thats not a typo. As a 35 year old car it only had 14 thousand original miles. That following week I was leaving for the biggest mopar fanatic show on earth. The Mopar Nationals. I had been saving my pay checks from work and had a total of 350 bucks to blow on challenger parts. When I got there I was in awe of how many other fanatics were there and how much stuff was there. On Thursday I looked around for all potential buys and such. I found a dash and a set of rims. Most of the other stuff was in traliers not taken out. On Friday I found more and more things I needed. That day we bought the dash pad, rubber door sealers, chrome carpet bezels, gas cap, carpet, wheel well mouldings, and consel. While being there my dad's friend Bill bought a 67 coronet with some sweet looking rims on it. Being the old man Bill is he didn't like them. Saturday night I was chomping at the bit to get them. Bill agreed that a deal could be worked out. There we got two books that we needed to look up all the parts that we need. The next week my dad, my brother Clinton, my dad's friend Jerry and I wents nuts trying to get the thing together. The first couple days Jerry and I took out the interior put in the new carpet, painted all the interior plastic and cleaned everything up. The worst part about that was doing the dash. My arms were just too big to fit in all the tight areas to get every nut and bolt out. That offically sucked. All during that time my little 383 was built. All I going to tell you about that is there are all stock Mopar parts. Nothing else. We salvaged together a nice little 4 speed and the rear end already had a nice 3.91:1 gear ratio for the back. After the interior was done and the motor was built it was time to drop the engine in. It was a Saturday morning and I had football practice so I couldn't be there. My dad dropped the motor in and a dummy trans was installed so we could build the exhaust system. My brother being the innovator he is was listening to my dad tell him how my dad's old challenger had the resignators right by the gas tank and no mufflers. Clinton then had a light bulb go off in his head and told me to go get a muffler and tips. The muffler for choice was a flowmaster, delta seires, 40-series street muffler. It was just the right fit next to the gas tank. A couple nights later and the exhaust was tacked. We started with just straight pieces, couple 90 degree angles bends, muffler, tips and a pipe bender. The weekend of the week that we had been building the exhaust, we had the dyno challenge. I was going to set up a concession stand to make money for the challenger. I started selling and by Saturday afternoon I broke even. Finally after looking over my sholder waiting for the challenger to pull up, we went down and took a look at it, the front of the exhaust was all fully welded but not the back. Sunday morning I woke up to it sitting outside. Clinton and I drove it back to the shop. No working lights no license plates. Nothin, just my dad right behind up so no cops saw. By the end of Sunday the challenger was dynoed and raced up and down the street a couple of times. Marking a two week scramble from getting a car that rolled to dynoing it, two weeks. It was quite an acomplishment. We built a motor, trans, did the brakes and interior and built a fully custom ehaxust kit includding a hand made x-pipe. I lost many hours of sleep that two week period. By the end of the weekend I had made 575 bucks from selling soda, beer, chicken and brats. That next tuesday we went down to the DNV to get it registered. I think that cost me around 200 bucks. So as a running car and everything, clinton was the main driver for awhile. He's the type who has to listen to music while hes driving. That meant I had to spend big bucks buying the sound system. We bought a Pionier deck, two 6 by 9's and two little 1.5 inchers for under the dash. After all that I was left with like a little under 100 bucks. 2000 miles later we took it to the track. It was a cold day, maybe mid forties and overcast. We packed it in the traler and put on the slicks. We made maybe 10 runs and then I got to make 3. All of them I missed 2nd because the pistol grip was falling off. It ran a 12:40 something and just kept getting faster abd faster. It's best run being 12:04 at 112. Very respectable for being a 383. The last run with my dad driving, it ran a tenth faster 60 foot time but he missed 2nd. When Thanksgiving rolled around and Clinton drove home from Wyoming, we pulled out the engine. For the next three weeks I stipped it down and then it finally got over to the body shop.