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  #31  
Old 01-19-2014, 08:00 AM
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Carmine Carmine is offline
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Charlie, saw your thread a bit late. Would have offered you the 1% under MSRP discount, but it also appears you scored that deal!

I have owned two of them (sold the first black one, too hard to keep clean)! Obviously I like them. Gen III has been around for a decade now with no meaningful issues, so I wouldn't worry about any of that. I test drove the stick back-to-back with the auto, and 0-60 was always faster with the auto, as virtually every report will back up.

Oh yeah, I also have an '89 5th Avenue in my "car collection" precisely because it was the last V8 RWD Chrysler (till '05).

As for who would buy white... Well only with orange stripes!
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File Type: jpg Roseville-20131027-03210.jpg (122.0 KB, 19 views)
File Type: jpg St.%20Clair%20Shores-20131027-03211.jpg (101.6 KB, 15 views)
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  #32  
Old 01-19-2014, 12:59 PM
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Username1 Username1 is offline
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Carmine, I like those old Dodge M-body cars, Thought about buying one last year, the old lady car only driven to church.... But then we already have more cars then we drive,.... Post a few pictures and lets hear the full story.... please.....

Very nice Challenger you have ! ! !

Allpar has a nice writeup on them.....

http://www.allpar.com/model/dodge-diplomat.html

Thanks...
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  #33  
Old 01-19-2014, 11:40 PM
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Carmine: I, too, am a fan of the last V8 5th Avenues. My mother had a red 86 model... that car was sooo comfortable to sit it! Those velvet red fluffy seats and deep red carpeting... that car was like a whore-house on wheels!!

As far as the 1% under invoice goes, I might be able to squeeze just a little more out of them. Come to find out, my father ordered a new truck from the same dealer a few weeks back (a 4-dr with 8ft bed). He's getting it for 500 under invoice. He didn't have to twist their arm for it, either. This dealership has recently been bought by someone else, and they are currently trying to undersell everyone in the area. So, I am going to meet my salesman this week, and see if I can get the same deal. It only saves me another 150 bucks, but, that's 150 bucks that could otherwise be used to buy beer!

Curious... did your RT come with the original style script lettering in the grill, or did you put that there? I've seen some guys place that in there after getting the car. Hell... that's my favorite thing about the Classic... they use the "cool" letters instead of the newer block letters.

I am still trying to decide if I am going to keep the stripes or get rid of them. My main concern with stripes is wondering how they will look several years down the road. They come off pretty easy, and it's my understanding that it's best to remove them while the car is still fresh.

As mentioned by many people online, I also agree that they could have put a little more thought into the inside of the car. The instrument cluster is a hand-me-down from the Charger. It's not that they look bad, but they could have come up with something a little more reminiscent of the 70's Challengers.
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  #34  
Old 03-07-2014, 10:09 AM
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Charlie Charlie is offline
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I haven't been around VK for the past several weeks. I got my new car a month ago, and been dealing with some troubles... but seems they are straightened out now.

Got my car Feb 4th. Was a dreary cloudy day (we've had a lot of those lately). On the drive home (I live an hour from the dealership), I noticed an unusual vibration throughout the car. I decided to drive it a few days and see if it would go away (which I figured it probably wouldn't) and then ended up back at the dealership about a week later.

The service mgr drove the car with me, detected what I was describing, and told me they would check the balance on all the tires. I kinda felt like it wasn't a tire... this vibration had a weird rhythm to it. The dealer had the car ready for me the next day (Friday evening) and I went to pick it up. He said all four wheels were off. I got on the highway to go home, and after about 5 miles, I realized the vibration was still there! Since it was almost 5 pm on a Friday, I just continued home.

Over the weekend, I did a lot of reading on Dodge forums. I noticed a few guys talking about driveshaft issues. One guy in a new Charger had a vibration, and it was corrected by rotating the shaft 180 degrees. A few others talked about having them replaced on other cars.

Monday, I brought it back and mentioned the driveshaft. He said they would look into it. I got the car back nearly 2 weeks later. It got a new driveshaft... problem solved. Come to find out, they had swapped wheels/tires with another car on the lot... didn't work. Then they swapped driveshafts (which sounds like a lengthy process on these cars) and that made the vibration go away. Ordered a new one... it arrived the following week. All is well now.

I've made a couple of small trips in it so far... one to Baton Rouge and another to Mississippi. Car does great on trips. I had 3 other people in the car for the Mississippi trip. Everyone was comfortable... even in the back seat. The car is much larger than a Mustang, so if you put anyone in the back seat, they won't be crunched up in a fetal position. The car got 25 mpg... sometimes it got as much as 27 mpg. Not bad for a 375 horse V8.

I certainly dig the power it's got. It's amazing what they get out of these engines compared to just 20 years ago! There's a rumor out that next year's model will have about 50 more hp on the 5.7 engine (apparently to be more competitive with the Mustang). There's a Zero to Sixty timer on the dash. That's a really neat feature. I played with that a few times... my best time was 4.98 seconds.

Seems I also read somewhere that next year's SRT model will have nearly 600 hp! That's friggin crazy! What do you do with 600 hp???

After reading on those forums, it sounds like many guys have issues with timing chains (at least it sounds like that problem was corrected a couple of years ago). There's also the "hemi tick" that they talk about. Mine has that just a little bit. It kinda reminds me of what a slant-6 used to sound like. It's very subtle, but it's there. Even the service manager told me that was normal.

A couple of pics are below... not the best pics, though. It's hard to keep the car spotless out here in the woods, and it seems lately that most days are cloudy.
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File Type: jpg Chall001.jpg (116.6 KB, 32 views)
File Type: jpg Chall002.jpg (114.5 KB, 30 views)
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  #35  
Old 03-07-2014, 11:03 AM
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Jon A. Jon A. is offline
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Badass! The only new car that's worth having in my opinion. Got to get those stripes off soon, they don't look very good anyway. The trouble with leaving them on is that the paint under them will not fade whereas the rest of the paint will.

The shock wave from one of those things passing a Prius would probably rattle the latter apart... hopefully anyway.

Last edited by Jon A.; 03-07-2014 at 11:06 AM.
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  #36  
Old 03-07-2014, 11:10 AM
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Charlie Charlie is offline
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I have been debating over the stripes. Initially, I did not want them. Now, I kinda like them... and since they are black on a dark blue car, they don't scream out at ya like the white stripes would... so I kinda like that.

I am not so concerned about the paint fading so easily... being that the car is in the garage kept. Plus, since I go to sea for 7 months out of the year, that's even less time that the car will see the sunlight.

My main concern about the stripes was what they would look like years from now. I guess if they go to crap later, I can always get new stripes on it... or just buy another car!
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  #37  
Old 03-07-2014, 11:12 AM
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Charlie Charlie is offline
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Also, I might decide to trade it in on a 2015 later. Having the stripes removed might hurt me more on trade in.
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  #38  
Old 03-07-2014, 06:50 PM
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Username1 Username1 is offline
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I like the stripes.............

One day I'm gunna find a pic of my'73 mustang with the 'cuda strips I put on one
evening after work.....
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  #39  
Old 03-19-2014, 12:16 AM
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josephdaniel josephdaniel is offline
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The dodge challenger hapens to be one of about 3 cars that are made today that I will even consider driving. My parents say that if I graduate with good grades the are gonna buy me one so I can have something newer and more reliable than my 74 260z

Four hundredth post!!!
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  #40  
Old 03-19-2014, 08:39 AM
consoleguy67 consoleguy67 is offline
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Beautiful car! Best of luck with it.
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  #41  
Old 03-20-2014, 04:43 AM
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Jon A. Jon A. is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie View Post
Seems I also read somewhere that next year's SRT model will have nearly 600 hp! That's friggin crazy! What do you do with 600 hp???
Order one with a lift kit and huge tires and flatten some imports.

600 horses might be sticking through the hood.
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