My 1981 Chrysler Imperial
as of 2/23/2012

I just added this car to my collection on the 18th of February, 2012. So I only have a few pictures of it for the time being. As I work on it I will add more. Overall the body is in great shape but at some point in the past the top of the car was repainted and you can see where the new paint merges in to the original paint. The interior also looks great and I was told it is all original except for the bottoms of the front seats as they were redone not too long ago.

While the body and interior are in great shape she does have some mechanical issues. The original electronic fuel injection was replaced a long time ago. When she was converted to a regular carburetor I don't know if a 2 barrel carburetor or a 4 barrel setup was installed. She currently sports a Edelbrock 1406 carburetor on a factory Mopar spreadbore intake. This requires a thick adapter be used between the carb and the intake manifold. This is causing the top of the air cleaner assembly to touch the insulation on the underside of the hood. The carb looks almost new so it hasn't been on there for long. But there is some grime and oil residue on the intake manifold bolts so she's at least had the spreadbore manifold for some time before the Edelbrock carburetor. I don't like the way the top of the air cleaner is touching the hood insulation but I have yet to decide how I want to proceed on this issue. I can either switch to a spreadbore carb or a sguarebore intake manifold in order to get rid of the spacer to allow the air cleaner to sit lower. Another issue she has is the front steering has some play in it. She wants to wander back and forth.

Note: This page contains low res pictures of the car and I created it for those that have a low speed internet connection. If you have a high speed modem I have larger versions of the pictures at this link.

Future plans for the car:
The first thing I want to do is rebuild the front suspension. After that I would like to replace the stock 318 with a mid 90's fuel injection 5.2L Magnum engine from a Dodge truck. Years ago I researched a lot of the electrical requirements to do this and the only thing that I know of at the moment that may be an issue would be hood clearance. The intake manifold used on the '92 on up 318's is a rather tall one. As long as I have enough clearance for it she should be fine. One last thing I would like to do is replace the stock wheels with some wider aftermarket mags with wider tires. The stock tires just look way too skinny.