1968 Plymouth Valiant

1968 Plymouth Valiant, Summer 1989

Photograph taken in late summer of 1989.
See what the car looked like shortly before I bought it as well as other photos of the car.

The car's original 170 slant six engine was replaced by a remanufactured 1968 225 slant six in Feb. of 1993. The only difference in the two engines, mechanically speaking, was the stroke. The 225 has a 1 inch longer stroke than the 170. Because I've had a 2bbl carb (Carter) in it since about a year after buying the car and after replacing the engine with the 225, the engine is now a "Super Slant Six" and packs a lot more power than the original design. The "Super Slant Six" setup wasn't used in Mopars until 1977.
The transmission is a TorqueFlite 904-G 3-speed automatic and leaves a little performance to be desired, but takes a tremendous beating without flinching:

One day on my way into town in South Florida, I had manually dropped the transmission into 1st gear while climbing a steep bridge and had left my hand on the steering-column-based shifter after reaching the top of the bridge. Because I had left my hand on the shifter, I thought that I still needed to shift back into Drive (2 notches up), when in fact I already put it back into Drive. So near the end of the descent down the bridge, driving at 40mph, I shifted 2 notches up and threw the car into REVERSE! The tires screached for about 15 feet before I (in a panic) put it back into Drive. By that time, the car had stalled, so I just let it roll into a near-by parking lot and immediately checked to see if my drive shaft was still under the car along with my transmission. Everything was there as it should be and after eventually getting the flooded carb to start the car, I drove away. The transmission worked slightly BETTER after the incident. 5 years later, I spent $9.37 on a new U-joint to replace one with pulverized bearings.

The car was last purchased (by me) December 4th, 1988 from an elderly lady in Fort Pierce, FL and had 26,052 original miles on the car. It was also white and had 3 of the original tires in near-perfect condition (though dry-rotted) still on the car, along with the original breaks (see the picture of the car before I bought it). As of 10/8/95, the car has 86,873 miles on it.

7 months after buying the car, I had repainted the car "Frost Metalic Blue" (the color of the interior), replaced the original wheels with chrome wheels with wider, nicer tires, and tinted the windows.

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