1980 Chrysler Avenger V8 Wagon

aaalrighty then

Thanks, less is more sort of sums up my build, which is the look I was going for.

We can't get laminated screens over here so we all stockpile old toughened ones. I have 2 more spare, and some of my friends have spares also.



Haha, yeah, it is quite an enjoyable build thread.



Haha! Yup, that is exactly what I was thinking when I was driving through town! Didn't use his parking technique though. Like a glove!



I'm using a Gopro hero 5 with it's built in mic. It is stuck to the inside of the window, just behind the mirror. It does give good sound.

Sweet! I have heaps more videos my cars on the track on my channel. I have the wagon at Pukekohe and drag racing, and my 75 Avenger at Teretonga, Highlands, levels and Ruapuna tracks.

I quite like that Manfeild one though because it is basically just me overtaking jappa turbos for 15 minutes The look on their face when an old Avenger wagon leaves them for dust is pretty classic

This is why I love wagons/estates. While i was in Europe, i spent 20 nights all up in my wagon. Even at 50 a night for a hotel room, that's still 1000 I saved!

Plus I got to park in some pretty choice locations.

It almost looks like yours has had a slight roof chop with the black with window surrounds, etc..

An exciting update this time!

My wagon was featured in this months NZ Performance Car Magazine (Issue 271). Definitely one ticked off the bucket list, I never thought I would have one of my cars featured in a magazine, so this is super exciting.



It's a really great 7 page article, it's out in stores now so pick up a copy if you get a chance, well worth the read



Back to upgrades on the wagon. Finally got my custom carpets installed. I brought a standard set of Avenger carpets from Autodec, then got them modified and installed by Supertrim.



It makes it look so much more finished now



The rear carpets didn't need to be modified, I only needed to customise the front for the bigger transmission tunnel



Also got carpets for the boot, and brought a bit extra to do the back of the rear seat



Got some New Old Stock tail lights from Ebay UK. The shipping was more than the lenses themselves! Ouch!



Also got some NOS clusters also



New tail lights installed. Looks really nice



Now that winter is coming™ I wanted to figure out a way to still be able to show my engine bay at car shows but also keep rain out of the trumpets. I took one of my trumpets off and went down to the local hardware store to find a sink plug that fits the trumpets. They are 50mm trumpets which is a common size so I had a good selection of plugs, so I could find one that I liked.



I brought a little "Remove before flight" tag so I can just pull the chain and take them all off in one go, and also it will remind me to take them off before I start the engine, not that the engine would start with them in place.



What do you guys think of the plugs? I might tighten up the chain, and also change the hoops on top of the plugs for something a bit smaller, like a little keyring.

As long as you don't have 8 sinks in your house that need plugs you will be ok. LOL

Well done on the magazine spread,

Thanks, yeah, photos don't really do it justice. It's not until you see it in person that you see how well the engine and everything fits.



Thanks.

They did look at me funny when I brought 8 identical plugs, they must have thought I had a very big house with lots of baths

Really fun weekend at the Kaspa Transmissions CAR-nival. It's a 3 day track meet with cruising, drags, drift, burnouts and racing.

The drag racing was super fun. The car was hooking up perfectly and I managed to win the drag racing tournament in the Naturally Aspirated class!! I was up against some tough competition in the form of a 300KW Holden Commodore, and 396ci big block Holden Premier and another big block HQ Holden. I also went up against a 323, Intgra Type R and an RX7 but that wasn't really a fair fight. I was quite surprised that I managed to beat the big block chevs, I guess it was just down to how light my wagon is and how well it hooks up.

Here is a video of all of my runs, I went undefeated 7-0



And they had a sweet as trophy, I also won best engine bay but they didn't have the trophy there so they will send it out to me.



Had a real blast hooning around the track.

Went a bit too hard on the first day and wore out my brake pads. It was a total nightmare trying to find some Wilwood race pads at 4:30pm on a Friday in Taupo. None of the brake shops down there had any so I had to call around my friends and found one of them who had a close enough match, so I had to drive out to his place with pretty much no brakes and swap some pads over.

In the morning I had to go get the rotors skimmed.



The petrol stations loved me down there. The Avenger is pretty good on gas when you are on the road, but it chews through the gas on the track.

I absolutely love this Avenger. Great to see it gets used properly too.