Rocketman's 1973 Road Runner

This is my 1973 Plymouth Road Runner. It's got a low-hour somewhat built 440, 3" headers, Flowmasters, a 727 automatic with bands and a shift kit, a 4.10 Dana 60, a 750 Holley carb, Edelbrock Performer manifold, and various other goodies. The guy I bought it from started working on it but told me that he decided that he wanted to do a small block instead. The running gear was all in good shape. The interior was fair. The chassis was fairly solid and straight. The body was pretty bad with rust around the wheel wells, trunk ledge, trunk bottom, and various other miscellaneous places. It also needed a paint job and new graphics.

I bought this because I always wanted a muscle car, especially a Mopar, ever since I got my license back in 1970. I didn't spend a lot for it, and as the saying goes - you get what you pay for. Since buying it I have learned a lot about older cars and the restoration thereof.

When I bought this car (on April Fools Day, 2004 ha ha) I figured I could spend about $10,000 total (including the $5500 I paid for it) and have it nice looking, solid, and reliable. Well, that figure was way, way, way low. In late November 2004 I finished a fairly complete restoration and exceeded my estimate by a considerable amount. It took way longer than I thought and cost a whole lot more. However, now that it's done it's pretty damn nice, but unfortunately it's questionable if it's worth what I have into it. Oh well, I don't plan on selling it anyhow. If you like these older cars and want to see what I did to fix this one up, I have a bunch of pics of the project. They are all text linked by date. Click HERE to see them.

So what's the bottom line? Beats me. Probably if I had it to do all over I would have been better off spending more money and buying a better car up front. On the other hand, I probably would NOT have spent that money and thus never would have had something I wanted for my whole life. Despite the higher than expected cost, I really do like the car. I'm glad that I bought it and I'm glad that I fixed it up. It's fun to drive a car that you don't see every day, that sounds totally badass just idling, and has big fat tires and lights 'em up if you give it a little too much gas!

Oh yeah, speaking of lighting 'em up, I have a few improvements planned for 2005. What good is a muscle car without some serious muscle, like about 500 horsepower? On the downside, 500 horsepower doesn't come cheap, and it means everything in the driveline needs to be bulletproof and that doesn't come cheap either. On the upside (for you guys at least), as long as I keep screwing around with this car I won't be retiring from the Terminator™ Muskie Lures business anytime soon.

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the Rocketman