{"id":51230,"date":"2018-05-02T12:57:21","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T19:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=51230"},"modified":"2018-05-02T12:57:21","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T19:57:21","slug":"muscle-car-madness-tim-dunns-1970-plymouth-roadrunner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/muscle-car-madness-tim-dunns-1970-plymouth-roadrunner\/","title":{"rendered":"Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn&#8217;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"jetpack-slideshow-noscript robots-nocontent\">This slideshow requires JavaScript.<\/p><div id=\"gallery-51230-1-slideshow\" class=\"jetpack-slideshow-window jetpack-slideshow jetpack-slideshow-black\" data-trans=\"fade\" data-autostart=\"1\" data-gallery=\"[{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/05\\\/feature-min.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;51235&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#8217;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#039;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Click Here to Begin Slideshow\\n\\nTim Dunn has a unique story about acquiring his 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner in 1994.\\n\\n\\u201cI attended a wedding and joked with a gentleman about trading my \\u201951 Meteor Coupe for his \\u201970 Roadrunner. I owned a 1950 Mercury Pick-up and a \\u201972 Plymouth Scamp, but I had always wanted a Mopar,\\u201d confesses Tim. \\u201cThe man laughed and declined, saying this one was a keeper, so I assumed that was the end of it.\\u201d\\n\\nThe next morning, Tim was working on his Meteor when he heard a rumble coming up the street. He recognized the Roadrunner and the couple he spoke to at the wedding. \\u201cThe husband got out of the car and threw the keys at me and said: You want your Mopar, you got your Mopar! I was stunned, but I found out that after the wedding reception the husband took his wife for a little blast on the highway as it started to rain. As the car reached 110 mph, the wiper blade blew off the passenger\\u2019s side, scaring his wife as she screamed for her husband to trade the car before they both got killed in it.\\u201d\\n\\nHardly surprising when you consider the muscle under the hood is a V Code 440 Six Barrel, 4-speed that has one intention \\u2013 press the throttle and leave your brain slapped against the cranium. \\u201cIt\\u2019s a handful with the 4-speed and manual steering,\\u201d admits Tim. \\u201cThis car was built to go in one direction \\u2013 straight, a quarter mile at a time.\\u201d\\n\\nWhat a trade-off! At least, that is what Tim thought, but under the varnished purple surface, the termites of spite had already started to erode this impregnable body to an arthritic state. This was a car that had a pedigree of racing blood in it. \\u201cI know the second owner was John Adams, a prominent local drag racer, and I have some pictures of the car at Luskville Dragway during the early \\u201870s.\\u201d Although it only clocked 80,000 miles, it had experienced years of wear-and-tear, resulting in metal fatigue. The car\\u2019s vital signs were weak and Tim needed to perform a tracheotomy on the transmission, an EKG on the engine, and the dreaded colostomy on the frame and body. Little did Tim realize that such an operation would take six years to complete.\\n\\nTim had the help of Al Stigter of ASE Motorsports in Osgoode, Ontario. Al is a magician with anything metal, especially on Dodge Chargers and Plymouth Roadrunners, while Dave Power of Power Automotive in Ottawa, Ontario, rebuilt the engine \\u2013 an engineering feat that took two years to bring back to a recognizable head-turning rumble. \\u201cI have the correct date-coded engine block that has been bored 40-thousands over,\\u201d confirms Tim, \\u201cbut the hardest part to maintain is keeping the three carburetors in tune and leak free. I painted it FC7 in In-violet (Dodge called this Plum Crazy), because that was the original colour and that colour was only available in 1970 and 1971.\\u201d\\n\\nIt certainly paid off in the end. The car has won several awards, but two really stand out for Tim. \\u201cIt was the only Canadian car selected to be in the American Muscle Car exhibit in Norwich, New York. And in 2010, at the Chrysler Nationals in Carlisle, artist Dave Snyder picked it from 5,000 cars as his favourite. Dave is commissioned by NASCAR to do the official portrait of the annual Daytona 500 winner. His work is displayed at the Daytona International Speedway,\\u201d boasts Tim with a gleam in his eye.\\n\\nBut whatever you do, never tick off a Canadian. \\u201cThe day I was asked to put my car in the Northeast Classic car show (museum), my wife and I were at a show in Weedsport, New York and the weather was quite bad. I told the man from the Museum that I would think about it as I was unsure. Minutes later, two guys came by and one said, \\u2018Hey look at this car, it\\u2019s pretty nice.\\u2019 But his buddy replied, \\u2018Yeah, but it\\u2019s a Canadian car; let\\u2019s go!\\u2019 That made up my mind. My car was going into the Museum with one stipulation: that the Ontario license plates stay on so everyone would know it was Canadian owned!\\u201d It has been a sweet ride, but the history of the \\u201970 Roadrunner, like so many other Mopars during the decade, is an inevitable one as sales dropped by a dramatic 50 percent in 1971 partly due to exorbitant insurance rates on all high-octane muscle cars and the introduction of the cheaper, lighter and more fuel efficient Plymouth Duster 340, a car that qualified for a much lower insurance rate.\\n\\n\\u201cSince restoring the car, I have enjoyed every minute of it \\u0026#8211; even the blood, sweat and tears \\u0026#8211; for it has given me patience, determination and enormous pride in reaching a goal. I have had this car for 20 years and I think it\\u2019s time to stop wrestling with its manual steering and get myself a 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner convertible with an automatic transmission and power steering.\\u201d Tim laughs. \\u201cI must be getting old.\\u201d&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;},{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/05\\\/1970-Plymouth-Roadrunner-d-copy-min.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;51234&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#8217;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner 1&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#039;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;},{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/05\\\/1970-Plymouth-Roadrunner-b-copy-min.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;51232&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#8217;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner 2&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#039;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;},{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/05\\\/1970-Plymouth-Roadrunner-6-min.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;51231&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#8217;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner 3&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#039;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;},{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/05\\\/1970-Plymouth-Roadrunner-c-copy-min.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;51233&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#8217;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner 4&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Muscle Car Madness: Tim Dunn\\u0026#039;s 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;}]\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/ImageGallery\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Tim Dunn has a unique story about acquiring his 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner in 1994.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":51235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3700,3697,3470,4879],"tags":[5223,3629,4892,617,2820,41,477,3334,4888],"class_list":["post-51230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-vehicles","category-galleries","category-news","category-slideshow","tag-car-feature","tag-clive-branson","tag-galleries","tag-muscle-car-madness","tag-muscle-cars","tag-news","tag-plymouth","tag-plymouth-roadrunner","tag-slideshow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/feature-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-dki","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51236,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51230\/revisions\/51236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}