Car Memories

[wheelzman]

I found this picture of one of the Tin Indians.  A guy that graduated a year ahead of me bought it in Akron and towed it home to Navarre.  Navarre had a little drive-in that all the car guys meet at on the weekends.  We were all sitting there eating burgers and fries and in rolls this beast.  No mufflers, slicks on the back, exactly like they raced it on the strip.  The windows in that building were shaking and dancing like we were having an earthquake but no it was the real thing the Tin Indian.  Talk about wow factor we were all drooling and jumped out of our cars and ran to check it out.  He told us don't touch the front clip as it was like really thin so we stood back and just admired it.  Later that night he lined up against a 63 Chevy with a 409 four speed right in front of the drive-in but that Chevy didn't stand a chance.  Those were the good old days. 

[wheelzman]

Cat had posted something on Draglist for Zappy about the past history of the Ramchargers and it reminded me of something that I saw a long time ago.  I thought you guys would like to read it. 


It brought back a memory of when I had the body shop and was doing a 65 Dodge for a guy. He called me up and told me to close the shop as he had found a front fender in Butler, PA and "we" were going to pick it up. Well we did buy the fender but this guy had buildings full of cars and parts to which I was in total amazement. I saw an old Dodge sitting in the corner with stripes on the top and asked if I could go look at it and he said yes go ahead. He came back and asked me if I knew whose car it was and I told him Dave Strickler's car and he confirmed that. Next to it was about five F/X cars and he began to show us all of his collection. Upstairs he had a funny car body from the Blue Max and again I was just awe struck. He took us into the basement of his house and showed us some ball head prototype heads which I think was for the max-wedge head Mopar motors or the Hemi that were intended for Nascar motors but never produced so this guy had an inside contact at Chrysler somehow. He also showed us a three deuce manifold cut and welded together from several two barrel manifolds that he said the Ramchargers were running on the street in Detroit on a 426 Hemi several years before the Hemi was offered to the public in 1964. I bought some parts that he had bought from Grumpy Jenkins shop in PA and some other small items before we left that night. Neither one of us had ate anything since lunch and it was 11:00 plus when we stopped to get a burger and we just sat there and looked at each other. We had and have never since seen so many goodies in all of our lives in one place and likely never will again.



www.moparaction.com/article/ballstudhemi/ballstudhemi.html