Fiddling with vacuum power door locks...hmmm.
If my father ever knew half the horrors I put his '71 Dodge Polara Brougham 2 Dr Ht through, he would have had a stroke.
His had the 383 4V motor, and I used to thrash it regularly.
I'll never forget the time I got a 4-wheel droop out of that chassis while flying off the end of a dropping street. I was racing my friend Joey, he in his father's Oldsmobile 98 with a 455, and we were neck and neck. Then he braked short...
I looked ahead. Too late. The road just sort of dropped off, cliff-like. I flew over it, and with the aforementioned 4-wheel suspension droop, bottomed the car when I landed some 40 feet later.
The car bottomed on the front K-member, and the impact blasted the ashtray out of the dash and flung it into the back seat.
It drove ok after that, but I took it to Arthur Groves Mobil in Waltham, Mass. I begged him to put it on the lift and check it out. Arthur was an old-timer, and a legend in Waltham. F.Lee Bailey used to pump gas for him when he was a kid.
He looked at the scuffed K-member and skid plate and said: "You've been rat-racing in your father's car again..."
He checked the alignment and for possible damage. The car was ok. Lucky me, all he did was give it a minor alignment tweak, sprayed some undercoating on the underside to hide the scuffs, and sent me on my way. No Charge.
