My parents originally bought a new 1968 Javelin and I drove it for the first time about 6 months later. My mom had left my sister and me in the car while she went to grab the mail. I jumped up front, put the car in gear and away we went into the garage. When it was all over, the front of the car was damaged and the garage door was sitting on top of the car.
When I was in 7th grade, the Javelin needed some brake and tranny work and so my parents ended up selling it to a farmer who used it to run between farms and as a dog house. And then in 1984, I bought the car back for $125. You could put your hand through the top of the fenders and touch the tires. It took a good day cleaning the interior out and much longer to get the body in shape.
She originally had a 232 with over 100,000 miles when I bought her, but I was still able to get her up to 110mph and still had a little pedal left. I did not open her up all the way because it felt like the front end was lifting off the ground a little bit.
The next year, I had a lot of the body work done and wanted to get some paint on it before winter set in. With living in Iowa, I wanted to protect it from the salt that is used on the winter roads. I had a friend who paints for fun and he offered to paint the car for free by mixing his left-over paint. So we mixed up about 6 different colors of paint and sprayed the car. The color turned out to be a very dark purple.
The summer after I started driving the car, the original 232 was getting very tired so I started looking for a different motor. I found a newer 258, another six cylinder out of a concord, and put that in. The body work was completed and so I had the car painted silver and black. The car looked very nice and for only having a 6 in it, she looked a lot tougher.
The 258 was a decent motor but only lasted for a year and so I was searching once again. This time I decided to put in a V-8. I found a good 304 from a '74 Javelin in a local junkyard that ran great.
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