Hello friends!
Check it out, been crazy busy in the last few weeks getting ready to take the van to it’s first car show – the Chrysler Performance West’s Fall Fling! The CPW is all MOPAR – mainly Dodge and Chrysler and AMX – and there were some beauties on the lot! I showed the van but made the a note for viewers that the van was still a work in progress and people got that right away. But! I’m really happy to say that the van actually won a ribbon! I was out with my homeboy Damion (70′s Dodge van and Roadrunner owner) shopping in the parts mall, came back and found a ribbon: “MOPAR of Special Merit” Pretty cool. I had the only 1970′s van in the lot. Jay Leno stopped by for a peek.
Before we look at the van progress, here are a couple of MOPARs from the car show that I say have special merit…
The AMX and the Little Red Express. I don’t know much about AMX, but I was in Love!! And the Little Red Express was a factory truck that Dodge was making in the 1970′s, part of what they were marketing – along with the Street Vans – as “toys for adults.” Indeed!
So what “special merit” did my van have? I’ve done a lot since the last blog update. We’ll start from the bottom up…
First up, I finally got my plates which stand for 1977 Street Van:
And I also found some seriously deep shag carpet – it is black and about 2″ deep. Sweet! I bought an inch of foam padding and, I gotta tell you, it is pretty darned comfortable to lay on! But first I needed to cut a few more custom-shaped ply wood pieces to make the carpet go all the way up front to the dog house that covers the engine…
Bought the carpet for cheap because it had been in the remnants warehouse for quite a while and needed some re-shaping. So I had to warm it up by the space heater overnight so it would stretch when installed.
And then I found Dave on Craigslist to come and install it. This was his first time installing shag carpet in a van. Probably because he was just a kid in in the 70s like me. But he and his understudy, Joey, did a bang up job! Arrived at the Chalet at 9:00 AM and were gone by 10:30.
Job well done by Dave and Joey!
Also, I finally got the seats installed! Dennis from Markel’s Auto in Beverly Hills did a great job (seen here sitting in his 67 Chevy Nova Super Sport Convertible)!
Dennis’ team made some killer brown and cream seats for me that came out just as cool as I was hoping they would!
Ande they go great with the front door panels and overhead panels, painted in matching cream
Next update should show the finished panels installed (and the are going to be effing amazing!!!!) the new roof vent with exhaust fan I installed, the new armrests for the front doors and possibly, a new stereo (fingers crossed!).
PS – before you go, check out my line of LosAngeles-area liquor store tees! There is a brand new Silver Lake shirt that I’m crazy about and I added a tee shirt page to this blog (see the tool bar above) or simply click here!
Thanks for reading and feel free to spread this blog around…
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Cheers from LA!
Ryan
