Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 1965 Plymouth Fury Moon Shine car

In the 1960's when minimum wage was $1.25 an hour, a 200 gallon load of shine sold for $5.00 a gallon. Driving a load of whiskey 100 miles from Cookeville Tennessee to Knoxville was how some of us engineering students at Tennessee Tech made a little pocket change. I believe the trip paid us a buck a mile.

One has to wonder how many times that speedo was buried.

I have paced many a car with a "certified" speedometer. Those were the days.

kwg

I want to see the pics AFTER you have restored it.

426 Max Wedge, like a 440

not a hemi (hemispherical valve chamber)

That's a low-mileage vehicle, right there!

Very cool

It looks like a 383, a 400, a 413 or a 440, but it's a 426 wedge.

Really cool car.

I think what people know as the 426 "street wedge," which this one is, was a single four barrel and 365 horsepower. It was basically the same as the later 440 Magnum with 14 fewer cubic inches and 10 less horsepower. The 426 Max Wedge cars were the cars built for race with higher compression, solid lifters and 2x4 carbs. I think they were rated at either 415 or 425 horsepower, depending on configuration, and installed in the lighter "B" body platform (i.e. Belevederes).

My understanding from someone that was not a moonshiner but a young man that was often in a hurry during this era, is that a lighter Plymouth GTX (Belvedere platform) with a 440 Magnum and a 3.23 Sure Grip would peg the 150 mph speedometer and pull it back around a little ways (uncertified), which created a speed that was near the stall speed of one of these cars. The Fury police cars with 440 Magnums (similar to this car) were more like 135-140 MPH cars with the extra weight of the larger car and police equipment.

I drove newer version of the police cars you mention.

Back in the day, Texas DPS would put around 60k miles on a patrol vehicle and go get a new one. Texas DPS would have a parking lot full of used cars. If you were a Texas law enforcement agency, you could come to the lot and pick out patrol cars for your agency at a minimum price. The ones that stayed longer were sold at public auction.

My police chief and I went to get 3 of those cars once, as the tight assed city budgets wouldn't get many new cars for the same money. I think the used DPS cars were around $1500 each back then.

I knew the guy in charge of the sales for DPS and asked him which one I wanted for myself... he grinned and said "Follow me.."

He took me to a Chrysler Newport that had a 360 Premium engine with a Quadrajet carb, and air shocks in the rear to hold the weight of an aviation fuel bladder in the trunk..

I asked him what in the hell was that car used for? It also only had 49k miles on it. Looked new.

He said it was an interstate pursuit vehicle. When they would get vehicles trying to elude police out on IH10 (mostly out in west Texas while running drugs) they would get after them in that car... It blew the doors off anything, and didn't run out of gas.

I used it as a detective vehicle. DPS would paint your car for free... I chose midnight blue metallic.

Man, that car would flat out run! I don't know how fast, because the speedo pegged at 140mph, and it would take awhile to come out of that reading when you backed off.

I really wish I still had that car.

That is not a Hemi but it is a big block.

Good read and good videos, thanks for posting.

I googled wedge, it came up as this ?

I have a 426 Max Wedge engine block in the barn that has been bored for 440 pistons. The Chrysler "RB" (raised block) engines were made in several displacements, 413, 426, and 440, and possibly some of the 361 cubic inch engines back in the early 1960's. "B" engines were 383, 400, and 361, IMHO, with lower deck height for shorter stroke crankshafts. I've got a short wheelbase 92 Dodge Dakota pickup that's eventually going to get retrofitted for a 440 and a Torqueflite 727 transmission.

What you said is true, but remember Sutton was small time. Most of the still you see are 15-30 gallon cookers. Think big!
500 gal or larger cookers and 8 or 10 of them at one site.

Copied and pasted.... The still was capable of producing 1,800 gallons of illicit whiskey each week and was the biggest operation local officials can remember ever being found in the county, he said. The distillery consisted of 16 800-gallon "blackpot" stills and one 400-gallon still.

You’re so full of crap. I cannot believe you actually put fifteen minutes of thought into that lie.

If I may ask a question rockbsmoker… what do you get off of lying on an Internet forum? Does it make you hard? Replace those inner feelings of living your life so pathetically?

What's he lying about troll?

If you can’t deduce for yourself that rockbsmokers story is full of crap, you need mental help.

Just stating the obvious here chaps