Across the Heartland, the great car uncovering has begun. Shopping lists are starting to swell as the Dodges, Plymouths, and Chryslers slip out of their winter wears. Think you’re about ready to get that ’68 Road Runner driving? Nope, you forgot the throttle cable bracket. What about the ’71 Satellite that just needs some interior finished up? Well, all the screws are missing. And that ’74 Dart could really use an 8 ¾” rear to upgrade its 8 ¼”.
No worries. It’s all available just in time within the comfortable, climate-controlled confines of Indy Cylinder Heads’ annual Chrysler Performance Trade Show & Swap Meet. No thumbing through catalogs. No clicking through web pages. Just good ol’ fashioned one foot in front of the other going up and down the aisles of this Friday/Saturday show to comb through new and used, known and unknown, affordable and expensive, for that final missing piece.
Aye, as with any swap meet, there be trash amongst the treasure. But for those shopping for something specific, Indy marks the spot. This year, the Indiana State Fairground’s Blue Ribbon and Champions Pavilions were as packed as always at the perfect time for project car preparation.
Nearly fifty vendors filled a bunch of those spaces to offer the latest quality reproduction parts, but first on our list was to get eyes on the recently-released high-performance 340 exhaust manifolds. Mancini Racing had a new set to drool on and, at the show-special pricing of $800, they were actually cheaper than some pitted originals we saw languishing under a few folding tables.
Classic Exhaust was the next stop to check out their factory-correct exhaust. A vision “to be the most trusted name in OEM-style classic car exhaust by combining expert knowledge, historical accuracy, and handcrafted quality” was abundantly clear in the A, B, and E-body systems on display.
Each featured every exact bend, jog, and joint as Ma Mopar intended. Sure, you might gain a few horses by pairing headers with an X-pipe, but it likely won’t fit and look as good as this. For those of us that know and love the trouble-free sound of OEM manifolds, Classic Exhaust is clearly peak pipework.
Other usual suspects included Vans Auto, Glasstek, the giant AMD display at Stephen’s Performance, and, of course, Indy Cylinder Heads themselves. Indy’s pièce de resistance was an old-school Hemi build complete with dual quads, a stealthy coat of Hemi Orange paint, and slick serpentine setup. That drew a few eyes, but the better deal was their offering of a 10% discount on show purchases along with free shipping on many items.
Mopar Connection Magazine’s own Project Marsha was in attendance, as big and blue as the ocean, afloat in a sea of T-shirts and stickers with her top down. But she was not without beauty pageant competitors; Miss Direct Connection 1984, Claudia Abel, was there as well. It could be said that Miss Abel’s preponderance across Mopar shops in the ‘80s was every bit as important as Raquel Welch’s presence on that Shawshank Redemption prison wall with both signaling hard-fought freedom but in different forms.
Much less easy on the eyes were some of the swap meet spaces. Our list was short, per usual, and mostly comprised of G3 Hemi swap items hoping to be found. They went undiscovered, but the modern Hemi was represented better than expected as several 5.7L manifolds, cylinder heads, and accessories were spotted.
The real prize might’ve been a 6.4L long block with well-used Whipple supercharger for $4,000. Assuming engine and ‘charger were in good working order, the tag was well under what one could put together separately. Of course, they both might’ve been thoroughly trashed too.
Most used part price checks came in about as expected. Bigger ticket items like Six Pack intakes were $600 to $900 while the mating carburetor sets asked $1,800 to $2,500. A glut of 426 Hemi heads were on hand, many unmarked, and probably out of our price range. No less than six sets were spied, but more intriguing was a pair of 340 Six Pack cylinder heads. Looking fairly fresh, a tag of $2,500 for these highly-specialized pieces probably wasn’t too far off.
Other highlights among the vintage bits included a rarely-seen floor-mounted cassette stereo tape player-recorder, NOS 1971 Dodge Challenger front fenders for $3,500, and a pair of original 1970 Dodge Charger R/T door scoops for $1,000 (gasp).
The car corral was small but impactful. An H-code 1966 Dodge Coronet 500 roller took center stage and, in case you didn’t know, the “H” would indicate Hemi power. Its $25,000 sticker mentioned 1-of-135 provenance, two build sheets, Oklahoma title, and chrome dome air cleaner, but it had long been relieved of its elephant-sized lung.
Closer to our ballpark but still on the other side of the fence was a 1978 Dodge Li’l Red Express truck for $10,500 which was marked down from the Friday price of $12,000. With the right amount of patina, it seemed to be begging for a drivetrain to be dropped in just to get its kidney bean wheels on the road.
Alas, our meager bounty at the end of the day lacked all glitter and gold. A solid tailgate for a friend’s 1971 Dodge D100 crew cab project was the lone worthy find and picking it up surely saved several shillings on shipping.
We’ll be back next year and, as always, the real take-home after this Chrysler come-together was the same: don’t throw anything away because someone somewhere will give you something for it…except cast iron big block intake manifolds. Please feel free to give them and their $0 value a two-handed heave into the nearest scrap pile and save us all the eyesores.
