ebay photo--what bird is this?

[nascarxx29]

Cool superbird nostalgic item from Sox and Martins days
http://rides.webshots.com/photo/1401105854039034472bDrXPq
http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae240/Wingcars69/martin-1r.jpg

[taxspeaker]

Finders fee increased to $2500 for successful finding and me acquiring engine. Also looking for original A727. I'm the new owner of the car, thanks
Bob J

[held1823]

four now, bob? awesome.

you're gonna need a bigger garage

[moparstuart]

Finders fee increased to $2500 for successful finding and me acquiring engine. Also looking for original A727. I'm the new owner of the car, thanks
Bob J

Will you Adopt me   

[Birdflu]

Congrats! 

[taxspeaker]

Thanks guys. Adoption papers being sent. Garage has room for 3 more but the bank is watching me very closely though.

[moparstuart]

Thanks guys. Adoption papers being sent. Garage has room for 3 more but the bank is watching me very closely though.

i can bring a convertible  with the adoption paper signage   

[maxwellwedge]

Finders fee increased to $2500 for successful finding and me acquiring engine. Also looking for original A727. I'm the new owner of the car, thanks
Bob J

Will you Adopt me   

You are a fickle son little Stuart.   No soup for you!

[moparstuart]

Finders fee increased to $2500 for successful finding and me acquiring engine. Also looking for original A727. I'm the new owner of the car, thanks
Bob J

Will you Adopt me   

You are a fickle son little Stuart.   No soup for you!

[hemi68charger]

Finders fee increased to $2500 for successful finding and me acquiring engine. Also looking for original A727. I'm the new owner of the car, thanks
Bob J

Will you Adopt me   

You are a fickle son little Stuart.   No soup for you!

A millennial.

[moparstuart]

Finders fee increased to $2500 for successful finding and me acquiring engine. Also looking for original A727. I'm the new owner of the car, thanks
Bob J

Will you Adopt me   

You are a fickle son little Stuart.   No soup for you!

A millennial.

at 51  i dont think so   

[taxspeaker]

Update on the Karl Gould/Tim Richards Superbird/Paul Messemer.

After this weekend's NHRA summernationals at Indy I realized it was 50 years ago July 19 that Tim Richards drove this Superbird to the SS/EA Summernationals championship, beating the supposedly unbeatable 454 LS 6 Chevelle of Ray Allen at the York, PA Dragway. Although not as well known as the much faster 5 and 50 Bird of Jack Werst, the Gould Bird was the only Superbird to actually win an NHRA national event at the time.

The following year the car was sold to the Carpinet Brothers who raced it as "Infamy". I recently had a long phone conversation with Bob Carpinet and he confirmed a number of things, filled in some holes, added some great stories and also told me the original Hemi that Mike Hill and I have chased for nearly ten years is long blown up with a piston through the block wall. The Carpinets painted it white and owned it for about 4 years and then sold it to Frank Obitz.

Frank had the car painted its current metal flake purple and installed a 440 in it for reasons unknown, and sold it 15 years later to Michael Rollman. A few years later Mr. Rollman sold it to our own member Sy Behrens who owned it for nearly 20 years, before selling to our own member Mike Hill in 2014, along with a period correct Hemi. Mike got the car running for the first time in many years and showed it at the Barn Finds at 2015 and 2017 MCACN and Carlisle and then sold it to me around Christmas two years ago. At MCACN, the scale model companies went nuts, and released 2 limited edition scale models of the car: Autoworld edition of 1002 cars at 1:18, and Johnny Lightning 2502 limited edition 2 pack of the car as it sits with the car as a B5 original. Interestingly, the diecast folks did an incredible job but list the car as a pistol grip 4-speed. It is an automatic and the broadcast sheet confirms it.

I have not modified the car's paint or interior or engine and have no plans to, but there are so many interesting things about this 50 year old time capsule I thought an update might be interesting. It was originally B5 Blue, white interior, bench seats, automatic on the column (changed to floor shift 50 years ago). Bob Carpinet told me that Messemer wanted bench seats because they were substantially lighter than buckets, and he confirmed the lead wool in the wing, plus some special double-thickness rear glass for better weight transfer on launch. VIN is RM23R0A161573. It is sitting on less than 1,500 actual miles on the odometer, so it may be the lowest mileage Superbird in the world, and clearly the lowest mileage Hemi Superbird! Tough miles though when they are 1/4 at a time.

After getting the car from Mike, I drove it, slicks and open-headered Hemi and all, to a car show several miles away! The looks on people's faces and the car's crowd attraction capabilities were a joy. When I fired it up to leave I was scared-it is a beast to drive with huge slicks, 1 barely working brake, one of those old tiny steering wheels, and non-functioning power steering, but I was able to get back to the shop without any issues.

Last fall we trailered the car to the 50th reunion, and I drove it to the Wellborn estate on Friday and to the museum on Saturday, again with slicks, open headers and all. It barely stops, barely turns has non functional headlights and wipers, bursts your eardrums at start and overheats quickly, but my buddies said the s***-eating grin on my face the whole time told the real story.

When we got home from Talladega I decided it was time to test it out. Across the street from my shop is the back side of a Menards and an open parking lot. I tuned it up to the best of my ability, rebuilt the carbs and drove it across the street to the parking lot 2 weeks later. Backing it up to the property line I rapped the throttle a few times (3,200 stall converter), did a quick couple of "tire cleans" and then backed up to the line again. The parking lot is big but at the end of it is a fairly busy road and then about 50 yards of grass and shut down area in front of my shop. I waited until there were no cars in sight and looked in the rear view mirror-the entire Menards crowd and employees were standing there, so they needed to see the show. That 50 year old Hemi race car launched like a slingshot to 4,000 RPM's of 50 year old, open-headered earthquaking elephant Hemi, and that s***-eating grin returned bigger than ever. Getting shut down was quite an event, but nothing was damaged. I drove it back for another pass when the manager of the Menards came over and asked me to shut it down because all the employees were outside and he was afraid of theft while the store was empty. Out of politeness and looking at the temp gauge I did so, but what a treat.

Now to bring it up to date. The complete absence of braking and steering is a real safety factor, so in March I decided to completely re-do the entire brake system. Mike had given me a box with the original power booster, which I sent off to Booster Dewey for rebuilding, and somehow I managed to find an incredibly expensive original Hemi master cylinder from the Ramman.

Starting at the back I began replacing brake lines all the way to the front-they had been cut, spliced and modified over the years and safety has to be first. We found a number of things changed over the years. The old line-lock (non functional) is still mounted on the inner fender, but it was so badly cobbled up and meter blocks bypassed that we left it on for history but put all new metering and proportioning blocks and valves in, and all new lines front to back. When I pulled the rear brakes off the first thing I found was one wheel cylinder full of a waxy substance (dirt & grease & brake fluid?) from not working for 50 years and the other was just empty. Because the broadcast sheet showed an 8 3/4 rear end with 10" drums, I had ordered parts for a 10" drum system. Not paying much attention, when I tried to put the new rear shoes on they did not fit. I had taken the drums to NAPA and had them turned on the lathe, so they were right behind me and without thinking of anything else I measured them and they were 11" drums.

Something was amiss here. Mr. Brilliant (me) then looked again at the rear end (it was up on a lift-how could I have missed it?) and saw it was actually a Dana rear end with 11" brakes. Mr. Carpinet swears it was delivered with the Dana, but the broadcast sheet clearly shows 8 3/4-who knows? Also interesting in the rear end is the 4" solid steel metal block bolted to the top of the pinion snubber, and the modified leaf spring mounts. There are 2 old electric fuel pumps still mounted back there but now unused.

When we pulled the old master cylinder and power booster we found that at some distant time in the past the Hemi pieces had been replaced with 440 pieces including under the dash. Bob Carpinet told me he hated that Superbird because of the difficulty in working on it between the nose and the requirement to pull the brake booster every time they needed to work on the engine. The front discs were ok, we turned the rotors and rebuilt the original calipers ourselves. I am just waiting on the valve covers to be repainted when I get home to clean up the engine a bit, then we will put the brakes back on and hopefully the car will now stop safely.

While the brakes are all apart I sent the power steering pump off to powersteering.com for rebuilding, so hopefully we will also have safe steering now and the car will be safe to drive on and off trailers, at shows, etc. Again, I have not changed, and have no plans to change the exterior or interior of the car from its 50 year old time capsule status. The wiring is still really sketchy, but I am not sure I want to change it just because it is such a history lesson. I did rebuild the transmission but no one can tell it other than it is clean now. The engine starts and runs fine with good oil pressure. The Dana (!) was 1 and 3/4 quarts low but it works fine too.

So, if car shows ever start up again you may see the purple LS6 eater at a show. I can pull it on the back of my old car hauler and take it anywhere and hope to soon-by anywhere I mean anywhere-I like to drive.

Sorry for the wordiness. I wanted to get this stuff down somewhere so it is around while I can remember it for the future.

Bob

[birdsandbees]

Thanks Bob!

[Birdflu]

Glad to see you're having fun with it Bob! That's what it's all about! 

[WINGIN IT]

Good stuff Bob.
So where is the video from the Menard's employees outside watching?!
You can't tell me not one of them didn't take some video ! 

[held1823]

most excellent, mr j

[taxspeaker]

Joe-that's an excellent idea-I will ask Menards manager if anyone has a video, thanks

[taxspeaker]

I work slowly but finished this up today. The brakes-wow it stops!. We had all kinds of issues with the power steering hose including finding that the hose in the car was a flared end hose in a non-flared end pump, but after 3 trips to the local pressure hose maker we have one made that fits, looks original and best of all doesn't leak while giving power steering.

So the purple bird is now tied down on the trailer, and ready for a car show somewhere. It stops, turns, looks the same and starts and runs like a dream.

[birdsandbees]

NICE Bob! Glad you're having fun!

[chargervert]

IIRC Pete Veights Hemi Superbird has around the same milage as your car. It was also a racecar most of it's life as well.

[taxspeaker]

Well, the Purple people eater deserves its own special hauler. I just got the old blue hauler back from the paint shop where it has all the rust fixed and the paint matched to the Hemi Bird. Here are a couple of pictures. It was going to get pulled up on the trailer but it is so cold out and the Hemi is so loud with the open headers that it will wait until the weekend. Plate on the Bird is my favorite.

[Birdflu]

Lookin' GOOD Bob! 

[erndog]

very cool

[moparstuart]

Love the new look to the Hauler Bob   glad your having fun 

[taxspeaker]

On April 21, our own 69_500 (Dan L) texted me and asked to confirm the VIN on this purple psychedelic Bird. He told me a friend of his had seen a posting on Facebook with the numbers. And he gave me some pictures and a phone number of a guy in the middle of nowhere in upper Michigan. As you can imagine I called the guy before finishing reading Dan's text and agreed to a fair price on the engine, not telling him what it might fit.

On April 26 (yes that would be 426) my wife and I drove all the way up there, examined the engine and bought it from a particularly nice guy who had bought it to drag race, and then changed his mind. The story I got (and I am a bit foggy on this) was that he bought the engine from some old racer who had used it in a blown car of some type. The numbers matched but looked a little wonky to my untrained eye. I am not an expert on these stampings even though I do stay in Holiday Inns sometimes.

I immediately sent pictures of all aspects of the block including casting dates, VIN stamp and the serial number down near the starter to 1 of the nationally known experts and sat back. Lots of questions and phone calls, followed by "80-90% sure it is correct", but unwilling to put it in writing without a detailed, in-person physical exam, tieing down casting dates and serial numbers to proper plants and sequences, careful exam of fonts and stampings, and more. Yesterday, he flew in to our shop and spent the afternoon examining the engine where it sits on an engine stand in the shop.

Early this morning he called me with a great way to start Saturday and confirmed that the original engine for this Bird was now reunited with it in my shop! Without this Board, and more particularly my buddy Dan, this never would have occurred.

A big thanks to the Dodge Charger website, Dan Liebrand and the other folks I have met through here. I have been a bit bummed recently from some of the comments from my YouTube videos, but a day like this brightens up your perspective.