Dick relates his love affair with MoPars: "My first
NEW car was a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Convertible, I courted my wife
of
45
years
in that car and I still have her, the identical car can be seen on
57heaven.com. I have always loved
the Chrysler winged cars, As far as I'm concerned nothing beats their
styling. I started looking for
one several years ago but not many were left and of those that were,
they were out of my reach financially -- so I started looking for a
1960 Desoto which had always been one of my favorites. I found
a 49,000
mile
all
original survivor in Georgia. It originally came from S. Dakota,
I'm the third owner. All I had to do way detail it and drive it. The
only
major thing I have done to it is add air conditioning (South Florida,
you know). Anyway I took it to my first Mopar show at Moroso Drag
Strip here in Palm Beach Gardens, when this beautiful Red and White
59 Plymouth
Sport Fury drives in... Almost immediately I knew I had second place
locked up, sure enough he got first place and had won it the previous
3 years. Real nice fellow owned it, we got to talking and he mentioned
he was thinking about selling it. Come to fine out he only lived
about 4 miles from me and had owned the car for about 15 years, he
only took
it to that one show each year. About five months later I finally
convinced him to sell it to me, I see him once in a while and he is
still kicking
himself. "
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"The
car was originally white, he had it painted and had the engine (318
Poly) rebuilt. The red and white cloth upholstery had turned brown
with age and the cloth in the seats was shot. He could not find
the correct material so he left the door panels alone and had the
seats
done in white vinyl. I found the material at SMS, so I had the door
panels redone and left the seats alone because the are pretty nice.
I have spare material to do the seats later."
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"This car was originally
air conditioned but it was taken out, I have an original AC setup that
I will be putting
back in. The tranny leaked oil pretty bad so had all new gaskets and
seals installed, the power steering box broke, found a used one and
had it resealed and gasketed, NAPA has a kit. It has 57 hupcaps on
it now,
but I'm putting the 59's back on. I added skirts, dual rear antennas
and had Forward Look Frank fix my radio and fix it so I can play CD's
and FM radio through the speakers without messing up the radio. Works
great. I installed front disk brakes with a dual master cylinder because
I never
knew what lane I was going to be in when I stopped. Great Kit from
AJA brakes. Rebuilt the AFB carburetor twice and and it still had problems
so gave up and installed a New Carter 625. The engine and tranny are
so smooth now its unbelievable. When I was a kid I always wanted to
have
Smitty Glas Packs on my car but my mother would never let me have them.
Well I'm 69 years old July 05 and I finally have my Smitty's." |
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