. Let me share my dream with you guys.. It began in the summer of 1990. i was 10 yrs old and i was flipping through the tv and came across this beautiful orange car with a flag on the roof and a 01 on the door. i was in love a 10 yrs old. once i figured out what car it was i just knew i would own one someday. i grew up loving the Dukes of Hazzard and the Dodge charger. It was a child dream. Fast forward to to 1999 and I'm 19 years old. I'm on the search for my dream car. i search auto trader newspaper and by word of mouth and im determined to find me a 68-70 Dodge Charger. i look and look and look some more and cant find one in my price range, so i quit looking. I figured it was just always gonna be a dream. Well, one day i was on my way to work and i grabbed a local paper and i seen an ad for a Dodge Charger for sale locally. problem was it said 1973 not 1968-1970. not my dream car, but none the less a Charger. To me Charger meant muscle. I went and checked out the car. it was a numbers matching 318/904/8.25 bench seat column shift 2 door hard top. i was in awe when i first laid my eyes upon it. I went to the local bank and they gave me loan to purchase my car. I was now the owner of a 1973 dodge charger and i was in love. it was loud and to a 19 yr old kid the little 318 seemed super fast. I drove this car daily for 2 years when life happened and i was made to have to sell my car, For a $1000.00. I was sick with myself. my dream was gone. Through out the years i had owned 4x4's and mustangs, but nothing was the near the same as my Charger. 12 years go by and i am now married to my soulmate and we have 3 amazing children. just living life. One day we were diving around lost looking for our oldest daughter at a friends house. We come to a 4 way stop and im checking traffic. i look left, right and back left. Something to the right caught my eye. IT WAS MY 1973 DODGE CHARGER. I told my wife that was my car ,my first car and she said, no way, I rolled up and knocked on the door and said "hey that’s my car ,Is it for sale?" he said yes. I said well i must find a way to own this car again. I explained my story with the car. He allowed me to make payments on the car to acquire ownership. Life we tight and with my wife's brilliance we were able to fit the payments into our already tight budget. I brought the car home and when we made the final payment he handed me the title. My name was still on it, It was never transferred, i showed my wife and she was like OMG. I am assuming this car was meant to be. I knew i couldn't fix it because of family and budget ,but it was mine. I didn’t care if it just sat. just owning it was awesome. I was starting to join Mopar groups on Facebook and forums to see what i could squeeze in cheap. On 11/21/2014 i fell 20' at work. I spent 10 days in icu,4 months in a hospital bed and wheel chair at the house. I had shattered my femur pelvis. fractured my wrist, elbow and tail bone also herniated 5 discs in my lower back. my dream was put on hold yet again. I know not only needed to take care of myself, but my family as well. .. I have been through 4 surgeries, learned to walk again and fought my way out of a depression. .. I have been through 4 surgeries, learned to walk again and fought my way out of a depression. i was moved to workman comp and they sent me just enough money to barely pay my bills and keep my family fed. People started noticing my accident on social media and seen me trying to do little thing from my wheel chair like rebuild my carburetor and even with the help of my amazing wife got the gas tank dropped and cleaned. i was determined to not just sit in bed or the wheel chair and feel sorry for myself. i was gonna do something. a lot of amazing people stepped up from the forums and would donate me old parts and i would restore them and use them or sell them and buy parts i really needed. I even had help getting the complete dash and interior removed and brought into the living room so i could go through the wiring and dye the interior black thanks to the donation from SEM Products. I was donated some old Chrysler cop car wheels from a Mopar man and they were awesome because i had 4 different wheels on before.. they were nice. it was ugly and my wife told me if it was gonna sit in the driveway i needed to paint it. It was spray painted lime green and yellow... hahaha. I spray can primed it black. I was roaming through the Facebook group one day and a guy offered to paint it for $800.00. I was like yes. I need to save money.. Well my mother surprised me and said she would pay to paint it for me,, i was in awe. car was picked up by painter. he worked on it and worked on it and come to find out it had more body damage than he thought so he blew through the $800 budget he quoted me and we didn't have any paint or clear coat. back to drawing board. i was explaining what happened in this Facebook Mopar group called Directly Connected. One day i came home to a package on my front door. I was like i didn't order nothing. I opened it and it was my paint. i found a note and all it said was "you have been Directly Connected". I contacted my painter and said we got paint. he said awesome, but were gonna need clear coat. ugh. more money I don’t have. i got some parts i had collected over time, but ended up having to sell a bunch of the needed parts to buy the House Of Kolor clear coat to go with the House of Kolor Pavo Purple Metallic paint. We finally got the car painted a year later. Runnels Glass tinted the windows for me. now for the goodies,, my 318 was on its last leg. It took me two yrs to build this 360 I currently have installed. I’m running a Hughes whiplash cam, Edelbrock Air Gap aluminum intake. a 904 automatic with 2600 stall and 3:55 gears and manual valve body. Minus the purple paint I have done all work myself and I learned a lot about engine work. i recently picked up a harbor freight paint gun and bought some O'reilly hot rod black because i got tired of the chalky hood and repainted it... took 3 tries until i figured it out, but i did.. wife also made me an awesome decal for the hood. My car is was in Busted Knuckle rod and truck magazine in 2020, Summit racing top 20 rides in 2015, featured on Speedway Motors blog in 2021 also was a cover car and feature for Chrysler Power magazine Sep/Oct 2021.
