I bought this car in 1985 (one month before my 16th birthday). I paid $1900.00 bucks for it from a guy in South San Francisco. The car had a flat hood at the time, a 318 CID, and hub caps. I did not know what a "Gran Coupe" was at the time however this car had the emblems on the fenders and the trunk key hole. The seats were in mostly good shape except for the driver side backrest side was worn through to the foam.
Both rear quarter panels were rusted out at the bottom just in front of the rear wheels and the trunk was also rusted through because the material at the lower edge of the rear window had ripped and the water would pour through and settle below the OEM rubber trunk mat. All of the rest of the sheet metal was in excellent shape until I had a fender bender while driving to school and the left front fender was creased...fortunately the unibody was not damaged or tweaked. So for a number of years after that incident the car was red on black with a brown primer-ed replacement left front fender.
I bought the LA-727 transmission from Topcat's brother and rebuilt it myself in high school auto shop.
I left for college and the car sat (chained to a tree) in the driveway of my dad's house. I came one holiday to find that the tree had been removed but the car (and chain) were still there.
I chased jobs all over the place and wound up living in Naples Florida for about two decades and during that time I had the car shipped to Florida where I stripped the car completely down to the bare unibody and did a full pop restoration. I have lots of "pictures" of the process however since that was 1990 and the digital camera was not in vogue I made lots of 35 MM photos with an "Instamatic" camera of each part/component as I took it apart.
During the restoration, the two rear quarter panels and the trunk floor pan were replaced. At the time only Year One was the source of restoration parts and I thumbed through their paper catalog and circled everything that I needed to get the car back together and then I spent about three hours on their parts phone line. Lots and lots of boxes showed up.
The car components were all individually painted with Glasurit paint and the paint job is so smooth there is zero orange peel. The underside was left the brown primer and color was only sprayed where the factory would have over sprayed. Looking back I should have painted the underside color as well. I bought a Cuda hood from my brother in California and the car just looks so much more cool with the two scoops. I bought reproduction 15 inch Rally Wheels and had them color matched to the body paint.
The car has a new dashboard (I went with a stereo dash), new interior, and top.
Mechanical wise the engine is bored 30 over and has only 9:75 compression, larger 2.02/ 1.60 valves and a mild port. Exhaust is the OEM high performance manifolds with factory pipes, mufflers, resonators, and heat shields, and chrome non-Cuda tips. The gas and air is provided by a Holley Pro-Jection 4Di with electronic, computer controlled ignition (the distributor is an electronic Chrysler unit however the springs were removed, flyweights welded, and the vacuum diaphragm was disconnected so the distributor is simply a trigger unit). The Pro-Jection hides under a stock air cleaner unit and most people never even notice the extra wires and sensors.
After returning to California in 2003 I discovered that even though the car had been parked in a garage the whole time...the stereo speakers I installed in the dash in 1990 now were useless because the paper cones were all dried out and destroyed. I decided to remove the dash to replace the speakers (I went with plastic cones this time) and I also decided to remove the entire interior (again) and this time I lined the whole firewall and floor boards with the ceramic /latex coating and the peel and stick style sound deaden-er with the aluminum foil. Since new door hardware was now available, I also replaced all of the windows slides and rollers and also lined the doors and quarter panels with the sound deaden-er.
The transmission is an LA-727 with a Gear Vendors overdrive and I am running 3:90 gears in a Chrysler 8 3/4 with Yukon axles and OEM style taper bearings. I originally had an aftermarket posi in it however the posi was setup way too tight to the point where the tires would "scrub" around turns and even the minimal amount of gravel would cause the rear end to kick out and since the car is used more for country drives and not drag racing, I went with a limited slip differential instead of a posi. This limited slip is setup kind of tight because it still leaves two black tire marks when I get on it. Sadly the rear gears I chose are too low for highway driving because even with the overdrive the low 3:90 gears still make the engine rev way too fast at 75 MPH. I should have gone with 3:73 or 3:55's.
I'm sure the purist would blow a blood vessel in their brain at my modifications but hey...if you don't like it then don't do it to you car. Funny...you get these dick heads at the car shows pinging on my car because the valve stems in my rims are not OEM date stamped with the factory correct crayon markings but yet when you ask them where is their car they turn red and confess that they only own a frickin beat up old POS Hyundai.
Anyhoo...I hope to see you guys at one of the local shows and we can "High Five" each other because we appreciate some really cool cars!!!
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