[Willowrun]

The Dodge showed up Sunday and made the 3 mile drove home from the truck stop where I met the auto transporter. It's a 318 with a Carter two barrel and it was running pretty poorly. I've made that drive several times with long distance purchases and this drive was definitely one of the ones I was unsure if I would make it. But I made it so happy about that.

This truck is very original with a claimed 60K on it which seams believable. Rather than driving it apparently spent most of it's time sitting in a high altitude sun which destroyed the paint. It's very rust free and straight so it might be a repaint candidate which usually isn't my style but the truck may deserve it as the original paint is just too far gone.

As far as options, it's a '79 with manual windows and no AC so compared to a Chevy of the era it's pretty spartan. I'm not in love with the quad headlight grill so I may think about swapping to a '78 single round headlight grill but probably won't unless the quad headlights really start to bug me, or I find all of the parts I need a reasonable distance from home. To swap to the single round headlight grill includes a core support and lower filler panel swap so it's pretty involved. Might as well add the "birdbath" hood from the earlier years while I'm at it also.

Hopefully I'll have time to tinker with the 318 in the coming week to see if I can get it to run right. The PO said it ran well and I saw a video of it prior to purchasing so I'm wondering if it's the ~2,000 ft elevation drop between where it's from and here or something else. Seems like carburetion is the issue.

Overall, I'm very happy with it. It's different!