RM23U0A165367 Superbird on ebay

[cudavic]

Okay I am skeptical as the following listing on ebay has me scratching my head.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1970-Plymouth-Road-Runner/322900558294?hash=item4b2e5f81d6:g:abUAAOSwa0VaF15~&vxp=mtr

Does anyone here know its history? A few things in their ad have me shaking and scratching my head.
Don't get me wrong it looks good almost a bit too good to be true.

[birdsandbees]

Looks pretty complete, even has the nose lower panel in place and K frame rubber seal. Don't imagine it will take long 'till someone snaps it up for buy it now.

4 barrel car originally and you get the intake and carb, plus the 6 pack someone installed onto it. Heck the air cleaner assembly for the 4 barrel is even the correct one!

Now the "tremclad" overhauled suspension is another story, but if it was done correctly IMHO the car would be selling for more money.

[alfaitalia]

If its as good as it looks for 130G then it makes that $26,000  'Bird project in the other thread look massively over priced. You would struugle to get it to that spec using NOS for the $104,000 difference!

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,130760.0.html

[PettyMower]

ANOTHER Superbird for sale that's missing its battery hold-down hardware!!!

High quality restoration, and lots of attention to detail, yet leave something off that could cause VERY bad things to happen.

[Mytur Binsdirti]

Do I see 3 pieces of metal at the seam?

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Do I see 3 pieces of metal at the seam?

[Jim in Texas]

Hmm, I owned this car in the mid to late 1970s, and I can assure everybody of the non-authenticity of the restoration.

If the current owner will contact me I'll share details.  I have the ORIGINAL build sheet from under the rear seat -- as MoPar used to do it -- and it even has rust marks from the springs.

But a couple of big issues.  I bought the car in total original condition, less five years abuse by the two DPOs.  At 46,198 miles off the used-car dealer lot (yeah, you remember these things), it was clean but not cherry.  It was one of the many, if not most, Superbirds that got its nose whacked on the assembly line.   By the time I got it, it already had a dealer replacement block.  When I sold it, it had a second dealer block (NON-hipo 440 -) and trans out of a '69 Polara.

It originally had white fender and wing lettering, not black. It didn't have power steering.  It didn't have a tick-tock tach.  I won't go on ... but I will mention that this restoration was done very well, and has many features I'd have preferred to have when I got it.

BUT -- by googling, I found that it appears it had been nicely restored once before, and then wrecked by an errant drunk driver less than a week after the restorer sold it. 

So for now -- the new owner got a nice 'Bird, despitre all its non-original parts and details.

If the current owner sees this, I will GLADLY mail you a photocopy of the build sheet, and you can work with your restorer / dealer about the non-original aprts and the lies told.

[FJ5WING]

It didnt have power steering?!!!!!!

[Jim in Texas]

Nope, no power steering.  And a B body without power steering and an extra foot longer in front is quite a handful in a parking garage.

Now, I have not seen a lot of Superbirds, but to the best of my recollection, NONE had power steering ... in part because it's not really necessary except in a parking area and it adds quite a bit of unnecessary weight.

A modernized 'Bird with today's power rack-and-pinion steering would probably weigh the same as the standard steering of 1970.  Since this particular car cleaned up nicely as a very-low six figure car, but will NEVER be a  numbers-matching car, perhaps adding rack-and-pinion, the improved K member, bigger 4-wheel disk brakes, etc., would be suitable upgrades. 

Jim in Texas

It didnt have power steering?!!!!!!

[cudavic]

Nope, no power steering.  And a B body without power steering and an extra foot longer in front is quite a handful in a parking garage.

Now, I have not seen a lot of Superbirds, but to the best of my recollection, NONE had power steering ... in part because it's not really necessary except in a parking area and it adds quite a bit of unnecessary weight.

A modernized 'Bird with today's power rack-and-pinion steering would probably weigh the same as the standard steering of 1970.  Since this particular car cleaned up nicely as a very-low six figure car, but will NEVER be a  numbers-matching car, perhaps adding rack-and-pinion, the improved K member, bigger 4-wheel disk brakes, etc., would be suitable upgrades. 

Jim in Texas

It didnt have power steering?!!!!!!

Not trying to start an argument, however I for one have never seen a Superbird without power steering.
I have driven several of them and have seen in excess of a hundred of them. Not one of them had a manual steering box.

[70Sbird]

Power Steering and Power Brakes were part of the Superbird package, All Superbirds should have both.

[Jim in Texas]

Power Steering and Power Brakes were part of the Superbird package, All Superbirds should have both.

I don't know the complete history of this car, before I owned it.  I DO know that it came from a local Austin dealer, and I do recall seeing this car, or one exactly like it, driving around my neighborhood where the (suspected) first owner lived, in mid-1970.  One of the legends of this car is that a mechanic at the selling dealer, after performing warranty service, got a little too hot on the throttle and ran it into a wall in the dealer shop.  As I recall, that would have been for the first owner, and except for any intervening car dealers, I believe I was the third owner.  But I have no provenance except the build sheet from under the back seat.

True or not for the dealer crash, there was some REALLY crappy body work on the nose, along with a bad re-spray and grinder marks in the lead on the front.  A dealer would have used bondo, even in 1970.

Plus, a dealer repair would have meant a new nose, and nobody, even in the early 70s, would have signed off on the shoddy work my car exhibited.  EXCEPT a Plymouth dealer getting one off the truck from Detroit.  Now, we know that a third-party was involved in that pre-sale conversion work of all Superbirds, and that more than half of all Superbirds got into collisions at the end of the MoPar assembly line because there wasn't enough room for the car to roll off safely. 

The true and complete provenance on this car would be very, very interesting.  I can supply info from September 1975 to maybe early 1980, and I can find the person I sold it to if he's still alive.  The 70s were hard on us, real hard.

But for this car to be converted from power steering to manual?  Nope.  I think it's likelier that this was a customer-ordered car by a buyer who checked the "power steering delete" option -- it was a very, very lightly optioned car.  It just barely even had a radio. 

On the plus side -- while power steering in that era was nice, it made the lighter cars handle like pigs at speed, especially when they had lighter-weight wheels that lacked the centrifugal properties of massive (i.e. HEAVY) wheels.  This car came with Rally wheels and the trim-ring delete -- I say that because there were no scratches from the trim rings being removed. 

If there's anybody left on earth besides that ol' boy in Oregon at Graveyard Cars who can read every field of a build sheet -- well, I still have the original build sheet.

Can anybody here read it?  I'm not going to dig it out unless somebody has the actual MoPar decoder ring.  Me, all I can remember from the day are the VIN fields for a 1970 and up MoPar.

Jim in Texas

[hemigeno]

Can anybody here read it?

Yes. 

There are two separate places on the Broadcast Sheet which would confirm Power Steering (or lack thereof).  One place towards the top of the sheet, and one place towards the bottom... just in case there are inconveniently-placed holes from the seat springs.  If you would like to email the sheet to me, you can use the email in my profile - and I'd be happy to re-size and post the pic in this thread if you're agreeable to doing so. 

[Jim in Texas]

Hemi G.,

As I recall, those fields are numbered on the build sheet, and the factory printer put the numbers in them with some kind of Frankenstein typewriter.

Can you tell me what those field numbers are, and what the codes would be for manual steering, power steering, and power-steering delete?

I'm fairly sure that those fields and numbers won't be on the fender tag ... alternatively, is there a relatively complete guidebook out on the internet for free that lists the fender-tag codes as well as the build sheet codes?  I know thios document exists, because fluffy-boi at Graveyard Cars has shown one on TV.

As far as this particular build sheet, it offers some valuable provenance and I want to reserve its release only to the current owner of this car, because it adds provenance value to the car, and the information it contains is potentially harmful to the previous restorer.

Thanks
Jim in Texas

[Arnie Cunningham]

Hello,
And welcome

Now, we know that a third-party was involved in that pre-sale conversion work of all Superbirds, and that more than half of all Superbirds got into collisions at the end of the MoPar assembly line because there wasn't enough room for the car to roll off safely.  

This is a myth that has been carried forward similar to the one about the nosecones being aluminum.  The Daytonas had a third party (Creative Industries) involved in the pre-sale conversion work.  The Superbirds did not.  And the nosecones were not on the Superbirds when on the assembly line so they could not have been damaged in the manner described.  They were installed at the Chrysler sub-assembly plant Clairpointe using Creative industries components.

I am not trying to flame you or start an argument, just trying to clarify a few common misunderstandings about the cars.
Brennan

[hemigeno]

Can you tell me what those field numbers are, and what the codes would be for manual steering, power steering, and power-steering delete?

There wasn't a code for "power-steering delete".  A car was either coded to be equipped with power steering, or it had the default steering equipment (manual).  Selection of a certain option package (e.g. A13 Superbird) would automatically code the options which were part of that package... and Power Steering was indeed part of the Superbird options.  IF it were possible to delete power steering from the Superbird option package, there would still be no Broadcast Sheet indication of "power-steering delete"... only that the coded information would match what a manual-steering car would normally display.  Speaking of which...

Look on Line #10 towards the bottom of the sheet, within the "   SUSPENSION--STEERING    " area near the middle of the line.  Underneath the box labeled "STRG.  FAST/PWR" you will almost certainly see the numeral "7" typed out by the factory.  That would denote Sales Code S77, or Power Steering.  Lack of a "7" under that box would indicate the car was to be equipped with manual steering, or it could indicate that the continuous-feed printer on the assembly-line floor somehow mis-typed a series of codes in the wrong column(s).  Sitting on my desk is a 1970 model-year Broadcast Sheet (Hamtramck-built 'Cuda) which displays just such a jumbled mess.  While it's OK if you don't want to send or post the Broadcast Sheet, that explains why being able to see the actual sheet can tell a lot more than discussing what codes are in a particular box.

If you would care to divulge the first six characters from Line #3, that might be another clue to what's going on with this car.

[Jim in Texas]

I'm looking for that build sheet now.  Because I'm truly curious!

Oh yeah -- I was aware of Creative's involvement with building 'Birds, but for the life of me could not understand how Plymouth would be so careless on its assembly lines as to crunch a thousand cars a year.  In my current job, I have some involvement with quality and kaizen, and we look at that kind of preventable damage and waste very seriously.

While none of Detroit even KNEW the word "quality" in 1969, I've been baffled about  that crunch-Bird myth since the first time I saw it, since the 'Bird was Plymouth's most recognizable car car EVER, even more so than shaker-hood Barracudas with gills.

[70Sbird]

Here is a really good read on the assembly of the Superbirds:

http://wwnboa.org/patik.htm

[fc7cuda]

In case it's relevant in the future regarding the car, maybe father owned the body for awhile and I helped deliver it to a buyer in MO back in late 80's I believe.  Then he quickly flipped it.  I do have some pics.  Thanks.