My name is Sam, and my brother Josh and I have been working on getting a 71 Roadrunner(383 4-spd, pistol-grip, bench seat(owner had lost the damned bench), airgrabber, in Curious yellow with a transverse stripe), in shape for the street. When we bought it, it had been sitting for about 10 years, and had fallen into serious disrepair. The interior was gutted, the entire drivetrain removed, and most mechanical items, save the front and rear end, had been pulled and stuffed into the trunk or the inside of the car.
The adventure all started on 4/19/02-the day before Josh's birthday. We started the day by calling around the Sacramento area(where the car was located),for an available car hauler. We located one, and then hurried off to go and pick it up. When we arrived, we saw what kind of shape the car REALLY was in. It was pretty sad looking, and we almost decided to pass, but since we were doing this to help out a family member in need of money, and needed a good project car, we went ahead as planned.
So we loaded up the Runner, which had 3 flat tires and had to be loaded up backwards due to the width of this beast! What a pain. It probably took 2 hours of heave-ho's and grunting and sweating. The car just didn't want to move at first.
So then we were ready to get going! But no, we couldn't leave yet. The owner, MOPAR fanatic all the way, was like most other MOPAR guys...he had collected MOPAR stuff for 30 years and wanted to make sure we got it ALL. He spent the next 3 hours picking and rooting around in his garage for stuff(Now remember, the Trunk and inside of the car are already LOADED to the brim with parts-most ruined by weather-now he's giving us more crap)!
We ended up with a 400 engine, (stored outside for years), a 440 block(also stored outside), a 383(stored outside under tarps but reportedly "just rebuilt" by some guy he bought it off of), and another 440 engine that was waterlogged and worthless. We had 9 heads of different castings, 4 MOPAR hinges not meant for this application, tons of stock MOPAR disk brakes(ruined by rust), oil filters, air filters, 5 complete sets of MOPAR seatbelts in different colors...you get the picture, 30 years of crap which would all have to be scrapped soon anyways because it either wasn't useable, it was ruined, or just simply didn't belong.