The Chargers deck and bumper look pretty good for almost a half-million miles.
First, it could have easily been a 1972 Charger. “I wanted a ’72 Charger but when I tried to buy it they told me they were out of ’72 models with bucket seats and if I wanted one with bucket seats I would have to special order a ’73. So I did.”
 How many naugas gave their hydes for this interior? |
Since he was making a special order to get a car with the bucket seat option, he deleted another option when he ordered it. “I ordered it without the vinyl top. I figured with the Florida weather being what it is a vinyl top would just encourage rust so I deleted it,” he explained.
When he went to Bob Dance Dodge in Melbourne, FL, to pick up his new car he had no idea what the car would look like. “I’d never seen a picture of a ’73 Charger before they rolled it off of the truck at the dealer.”
Since taking delivery of the car Knight has driven it every place you can imagine except, interestingly, down a dragstrip. “I’ve drag raced motorcycles and driven dragsters but I’ve never been down a dragstrip in a door car!”
Dash appears to be in good shape still, even though from the numbers on the odometer, the car had 487,250 miles on it when we shot the feature
Over the years Knight has done all of the maintenance on the Charger. At 70,000 miles he replaced the timing gear set, at 200,000 he did a valve job and at 327,000 -- even though the 400 big block was still running -- he decided it was probably time to rebuild the engine. He turned to Mopar specialist Dave Koffel at Koffel’s Place in Ohio to help.
Koffel drilled the 400 block .030 over, bought some new top replacement pistons, kept the stock crank and rods, and balanced the assembly. When assembling the engine he did use a Crane (what else?) Hydraulic roller cam, (.459/437 lift and 216/206 duration) and all Crane valve train components including push rods, crank timing gears and double roller chain. The 854 model heads used all Crane components including 1.6 roller rocker arms, valve springs and retainers. The 954 model steel heads with the 2.078 intakes just had the ports cleaned up by Koffel before installation and the final compression ratio came 8.75:1. A 650 Holley carb delivers the gas.