Dick Landy Challenger pics

[loiq]

I thought some would be interested to see how an old Pro Stock car was built. I took these pics of Dick Landy's '71 Pro Stock Challenger when it came to my buddy's shop for paint. Notice the dash inside the car, it was a fiberglass copy of a "real" dash. It was light as a feather. I'm sure we've all lifted body shells by the bumper, I could lift this car myself and it was clearly lighter than a "normal" shell. Dick Landy came out and verified this was his old car and signed papers saying so before he died. It is now in Todd Warner's collection.
The car:



The rear, set up for link-type suspension, looks like ladder bars?:

[loiq]

The front, I saw an interview where Landy said ths was the first "modern" Pro Stock front they built with a rack and coilovers:

[loiq]

The body was acid-dipped so thin it looked like it was pinholed from rust in some areas but the car wasn't rusty, it was just paper thin. Made it tough to weld. Notice the little brace they made for the roof skin and how much body was cut away like under the rear window. When they cut the cage out of this car it had rolled up Dick Landy posters in the tubing to make it sound thicker if it was tapped with something.

[loiq]

They put a piece of duct tape over the original colors before it was blasted so they could match the paint:



Here's the underside of an original Hurst Hemi Barracuda that was also done at my buddy's shop. Notice it's got the same pinion snubber bracing on the floor the Dick Landy car has:



Interesting stuff!

[CudaDon65]

Thanks for all thr pics..really cool stuff..

[68S]

Nice piece of history. Thanks for the pics.

Looks like some type of GM style upper ball joint. It would be interesting to know what spindle they used. The steering arms look quite custom as well. Do you have any other pics of the front suspension?

Pat

[loiq]

Sorry, no other pics of the front suspension. You can see where the tie rod hooks up though - it's definitely not the safest-looking setup.

It's funny, some of the homebuilt stuff on this board gets slammed but it looks safer than this stuff. There was an altered wheelbase Sox & Martin car in my buddy's shop not too long ago, holy moly was that thing cobbled together. It's hard to believe that car went 100+mph at any time. He's had some later Sox & Martin cars in there ('73 Duster (their last Pro Stock car) and a 'Cuda) and those were really nicely done.

[Bakaruda]

I hate he is not here anymore. I will always remmber seeing him run. Got to love the old mopar's. When a car was more than just a car.

[chryco]

Cool pics and info .
  Thanks !
     Chryco

[fourspeed]

Thanks for posting that. It's really interesting.

[68dodge]

Very interesting to see how they did it!!

[68_Val_Sedan]

It's amazing what they did to those cars back then  .... talk about engineering it on the fly ... Thanks for the pics ...

[The 1]

  for the pic's and info.very interesting got anymore?

[rules371]

very cool old pic, i have got some very old pics from a friend that he had send me of some very old por stock car and then some.  enjoy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29651135@N03/page2/


i don't know were he got them but they ae very good old pics.

[The 1]

man those old pic's bring back memories when I was a little one with my Dad and Uncles almost brought tears to my eyes,especially the ones from Union Grove.Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.