A tale of 2 two tones.

Ok, gonna do a quick back ground here.

Around '87 I was getting tired of paying mechanics too much money for anything, didn't want to learn on my daily, started looking for a beater. My girl at the time had a side gig picking up lease turn ins and driving them to Ohio for a niche flipper. While wondering the lot I found a 76 Daytona in red w/ buckets and 360 so I went in and bought it for like $700 no questions asked. Was kinda funny how many heads popped in asking about it while I'm shuffling paper. Don't have early pics handy, learned a lot.



It had all the trim, I kept legal inspection and registration stickers on it. Couldn't get the gremlin out of the ignition so mostly parked it. Apartment complex gave me crap, I got pissed, set it to a Dodge Dealer to have them install a 1994 MP crate 360 LA, 727, replace the blown K, rebuild front end. I put 500 break in miles on it and sent it to body.



Charged a guy $100 for this first because he was honest enough to track me down and confess.


Some number of years later with my daily Doba.

Stashed it in a storage locker for a year, bought a house, got busy with that, drove by this on a mostly Mopar used car lot run out of an old Dodge dealership. Couldn't not buy it for $2500. 1 owner, 70k on the clock, 360.





Put about 50 or 60 more on semi daily for a decade or so.

It took more than a decade to get back to it after tossing the interior back in and doing a few other bits.


Had previously done the tach dash / cop speedo. Tracked down and refinished a tuff wheel because the other one.


Finished up the Imperial 9.25 SG swap with NOS rotors and calipers.


Built a TQ.


Round up and refinish a set of Rallyes because the other one.

It took me until this damn year to put a plate on it.




The quick summary: they built this body 75-77, offered this package 75/76, very few built in red, probably rarer than my LRE. These 2 left the factory 4 months apart nearly identical with the only real differences being steering wheel, rims and radio. The kicker for me is that the custom one has a build date of April Fools Day.

Did switch plates and sneak it around the block a few times while shaking it down. Still a few things to wrap up, finally took a real run the other day and really wanted to hop in today. Ended up in the RC because trim rings. All (4) on the other one are nice and tight, all (4) on this one fight like hell going on and don't stay clipped.



I never really believed in coincidence.

That trade would have bugged me too because C-body droptop still on my list. Want to say 76 BB was first appearance of ELB and the historical footnote being clean enough to run without cats. Just about every one I've seen was shipped with 2:45 gears which really kill the bottom end acceleration but give it really long legs on the highway. I remember my mom constantly catching herself doing 70 in a 45 because rolling living room.

Best wire wheel cover ever and looks great on just about everything. Back in the day they were always getting snatched. Have a set stashed.

This one started life as 318/904/2.45 open. I bought it as a $300 parts car. Transplanted a C-body 440/727 and 3.21 SG entirely by accident when somebody else's parts car landed in my driveway.

Saw an old Cordoba awhile back with rotted out quarters, which I think you had to contend with if I recall correctly. She even hand a sunroof.

For a lot of years Chrysler made a kit for that. It was marketed as an upgrade from points to standard electronic. Works great for downgrading the ELB but it was way cheaper to hit the boneyard for an ECU, distributor and wire harness.

Factory sun roof cars are few and far between. One weird thing I've noticed is that they're most often seen in that exact color combo. Well, I've seen at least 3 of them in the yards. Grabbed this one years ago.


The tail rot problems on these things come down to a really dumb design flaw or two. The rear windows leak in both corners and for bonus fun the only vinyl top trim stud that goes through the body is about 2 inches away. End result goes like this:


If ya zoom in and look at the back side, there's an intentional gap in the stampings.




Around model year 77 they caught on and started flooding the channel between the glass and the panel with glass adhesive in that corner.

I dug em both out today, today the survivor for a run. Probably a year or more since doing that.

Worked on the trim rings a bit the other day, today I decided I'd rather run it.