General Information
My C body story starts with viewing too many online classifieds in my downtime, coupled with growing tired of modern cars as winter beaters. I found my 72 Newport listed for a reasonable price, but the car was 300+ miles away. I saved the ad but figured I’d do nothing about it. I showed the ad to a friend and he got me more thrilled about it. I call the guy, car is solid he says, and I quiz him trying to figure out if he knows what he’s talking about or not, car’s been in storage since ‘82 but runs good he says, no brakes/exhaust etc, damn we’re not heading down with the wife’s 09 impala and a dealer plate, I have a trailer but it’s some money if car is a rot box, call my brother who lives 1.5 hr away, forgot he’s in Europe, no risk no gain, supposed to have upcoming weekend with wife, kids at grandmas, hey hunny feel like a road trip? We head down trailer in tow, seller is honest, car is rough enough that I don’t feel bad wintering it, solid enough it should last some years. Good trip home with the car, tons of looks and compliments along the way, some pretty Canadian chuckles when I told them I’d be chaining the tires if necessary and heading out to the ice shack. You would think that me being an auto mechanic since 2005 would have told me to stick with something that was more fresh off the road but I was so pumped about bending my first set of big block Chrysler pipes and how much cooler that is than making a cat back on a 05 Silverado that I didn’t care.
I’ve ran into tons of teething issues bringing this girl back. Some of it is my fault because I try to keep old cars like this original as possible like keeping the old master cylinder after renewing the rest of the hydraulics, only for it to leak a week later and require replacement. All in all it’s still a good time and that’s old cars. I thought a couple weeks ago I was getting on top of it all and then the bolt came out of the top of the alternator, went into the fan and the fan tore up the rad. Can’t get a direct fit rad so had to recore-$450 new fan too-$80, get some new belts cause the Chryco marked ones on it are cracking now, new belts bite in better I guess and now alternator siezes, order a new one of them. Long story short the 1500-2500 offers won’t buy it.
It’s been a pain but it’s impossible to loose my car in parking lot and that in some weird way makes it all worth while.
