70 Charger R/T question

[Don_Lightfoot]

This is relative to the article on Jim Grdina's Top Banana car in the latest issue of Musclecar Enthusiast. In the "Quick Specs" it states this car had 15" x 6" Rallye wheels with F60-15 tires. Did these machines only come with 6" wide wheels? Seems surprising

[njsteve]

That's incorrect. There were a lot of errors in that article. The only optional 15" wheels available on the 70 B-body were the 15x7 rallye or the 15" stamped steel wheel with dogdish hubcaps. My 70 hemi RT/SE Charger was originally ordered with 14x6 rallye wheels. The car was downright dangerous with those skinny tires, plus it has been riding on mags since day one anyway. Another annoying thing about the article is where they keep calling the interior "granite" colored. The correct SE optional color was called "charcoal", a metallic black leather. There were no regular black leather interiors made, only charcoal, green, and tan. No white leather either! And as for numbers, I just got the updated production numbers for the 426 Hemi R/T-SE Charger from Galen Govier and it seems that the current "known to exist" numbers are as follows: 10 four speeds and 4 automatics. (the reverse of what we all believed over the years). These numbers were compiled from actual surviving cars as well as orphaned broadcast sheets.

P.S. Here's a shot of my R/T-SE from last week. It just turned 16,000 miles today. I celebrated by filling the tank with 10 gallons of Cam 2 fuel. Wow! It's amazing how well these cars run on the fuel they were actually designed for.

[Mr70]

I found the line about the Exhaust tips interesting.
N42 chrome tips 0n a Hemi illegal in Calif.,but Govier found at least one that came that way.

[Steve_Hoog]

Very nice car Steve!!!!!

[Don_Lightfoot]

Thanks for the clarification Steve, that makes more sense. By the way, do you think you can get the "Hemi" letters on your hood a little bigger . Cool car

[Casey Marks]

Another tidbit on Steve's car ....

The hood-call-out is quite rare on '70 Chargers. It only came on 440 and Hemi equipped cars. We did a lime green '70 Charger R/T back in 1994, and there was virtually NO documentation on placement, etc. of the hood decals.

Neat car Steve !

[njsteve]

I have an extra NOS set of "hemi" hood decals and they have no placement info with them. The only reference to where they go on the hood is a tiny photo in the 1970-71 parts catalog. That photo shows a 440 as well as a hemi charger with the decals in the center of the hood. It was a fun time to get them in the exact same spot on both sides. Very frustrating to say the least. As for the exhaust tips on the California car, California had some bizarre noise control laws that restricted exhaust pipes that came out at certain angles based on their propensity to produce more exhaust noise. So the B-body cars got regular steel turn down exhaust tips and the majority of the Cudas and Challengers got the full rear valance (no cutouts) with turn downs as well. -NJSteve