About

Highlights: 

  • 1971 Dodge Demon – repainted in original B7 Blue 
  • We did the basic bodywork and it was sprayed in a garage – goal was driver quality to get it on the road and look presentable 
  • Gage welded up all of the trim holes along the side of the car and applied the graphics 
  • Mild built 318 engine with Comp Cam, Edelbrock heads, Weiand intake, Holley carb, Hedman headers, etc. 
  • 727 Torqueflite from Pavey’s Transmissions in Marysville WA (Check him out for a great Mopar transmission!)  
  • 8.75 Chrysler rear end with 3.55 posi 
  • Hurst Line-loc because they are super fun for melting tires 
  • All new front suspension, steering linkage, drive shaft, rear leaf springs, etc. 
  • 4 Wheel disc brakes from Dr Diff 
  • New 1 piece floor pan and trunk floor 
  • Rhino-lined and dynamat interior 
  • Legendary Auto seat upholstery installed by All City Convertibles and Customs in Kirkland, WA 
  • New dash, gauges, carpet, etc.  Headliner “installed” by Gage J 
  • LED headlights and Digi-tails LED sequential taillights 
  • American Autowire wiring harness (100% new wiring in the entire car) 
  • Lots of blood, sweat and swear words 

The car turned out nice, but nowhere near perfect. Doing a project like this makes you really appreciate the talent and craftsmanship that it takes to build a 100-point car.  Our goal was a super nice driver that perhaps one day, Gage will want to redo again and make it even better.  We are happy with the results and hope you enjoy it too. 

As a dad, one of my dreams was to always build a car with one of my kids. Our middle son, Gage, seems to be the only one interested in cars so when he was 14 I told him to pick his favorite car and we’ll try to make it happen. Without hesitation he said he wanted to build a 1971 Dodge Demon. So the search began.

We found this one for sale locally and purchased it August 28, 2018 as our Father/Son project. The Demon was a 1-owner car that spent its entire life in Santa Cruz, CA. It started life as a slant 6, 3 on the tree base model car. It had the original pink slip title and cool college sticker from the mid-80’s in the back window for “Chabot College” (more on that later).

Unfortunately, the salty air was a bit tough on the car so the floors and trunk were rusted, the paint was terrible, interior was shot and the drivetrain wasn’t much better. It was a great candidate for a rebuild.

Over the next few years, Gage and I removed, replaced, rebuilt, restored or revamped every single nut, bolt, wire and inch of this car with the goal of being able to drive it during his Senior year of High School and bring it to the High School drags. We completed that phase in April and it has been his daily driver since then. Unfortunately, the High School Drags at Pacific Raceways was rained out this year, but we hope to have it on the track soon.

On a recent trip to the Bay Area with the family, we drove through Santa Cruz to see where the car was from. Next stop was our hotel in San Francisco, and as a total surprise, I changed the nav to take us to Chabot College. When we got off the freeway everyone thought it was kind of a weird place to have our hotel, then Gage lit up when he saw the huge sign for the College. We snapped a few pictures and hit the road to the real destination. He ended up putting his high school parking sticker right above the Chabot College sticker on the back window.

The character mark (aka dent) on the passenger door happened on literally the VERY FIRST time the car was driven due to a tight parking situation in the garage. It totally sucked, but in some ways, it’s all just part of the story J. It can be fixed and eventually will be, but until then, it is what it is.

There is still work to do to finish the exhaust properly (will probably have a shop do that) and will do some more tuning, but it has about 1,000 miles on it so we are getting the bugs shook out.