**Mickey Thompson Challenger IV restoration**

[Rory]

Here are a couple of images I found and scanned. These are from the 1978 Parker 400 that was moved to Mexicali just a few weeks before the event. I think the car was brand new at the time, the body was not painted.

Roger

Roger,

WOW, great pic's! You are correct on the race and it being the first race for Challenger IV. It finally occured to me that it was after THIS race (roll over), MT cut the car in half at the cab and lengthened it about 10". If you look at how tight the cab opening is in your pics and then look at the pic's with the yellow body you can see the difference. Not very many of those pictures exsist from this car at that race so I appreciate it. Jim Ober from Trackside had a couple that I bought so to see more is AWESOME. I bet you have a pretty cool collection of off road racing photo's from back in the day eh? Thanks for posting!!

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[El Hueso]

The wiring is pretty impressive as well, I was reading one of the old articles on the car and it seems MT used wiring from the Apollo missions and is all top notch stuff. This was only day 1 and I didn't get too crazy, just wanted to start tearing the car down slowly and take notes/pictures so i know how it all goes back together. More updates and pictures coming later this week.

[/QUOTE]

Referencing the quote above would you be able to scan and post these articles you talked about if you haven't already?

This is an incredible find Rory! I have been a big fan of this car after first seeing it in that video you referenced a few years ago. Mickey always pushed the bar in everything he did in his short life. It has been great to be able to watch this story develop as you dig into the car.

I am also curious as to where the car was found/hiding? Thanks again for sharing this story Rory!

[Rory]

Wesley,

I'll try scanning in the article when i get home this weekend. One was from Off Road, the other was Hot VW's, both from 1978. As for where the car has been hiding, it actually was probably down the street from where you live in Eugene. Going through some old pic's and articles, I was under the impression that Challenger started life as a short course car, then was cut up and turned into a desert racer.....here's why:




These two pic's were taken off of Larry Gaynor's flickr page from the 1980 Riverside Off Road World Championships. I have some pic's of this car and thought they were from early 1977 before the car started racing in the desert. The reason I thought that way was in one of the articles it said Challenger IV started out with a 104" WB but was then quickly changed to 114". Without investigating I figured the car started as a short course car, then was lengthened and converted to the desert car for the 1978 Mexicali 300. Well, Danny Thompson set me straight, the short course car still exists and is still in his possesion. It's hard to make out but if you look at the front end, the nose is narrow and the front shock mounts are different. Not only that, the front suspension almost has a VW style front end on it but more heavy duty. To the naked eye it looks like the same car but it's not when you start looking at it real close.



You can see the front end a little better in this pic from Trackside photo. This was quite the mystery for me up until about a week ago when I talked to Danny Thompson......I thought it was cool anyways

[El Hueso]

Wesley,

I'll try scanning in the article when i get home this weekend. One was from Off Road, the other was Hot VW's, both from 1978. As for where the car has been hiding, it actually was probably down the street from where you live in Eugene.

I thought it was hibernating in Eugene. A close friend of mine(ksmith) could have swore he saw the Challenger sitting in the rafters at Thompson Motorsports(Mickey's daughter, Lyndy's shop) when he was in there years ago getting some work done on his fathers Chenoweth race car. He might chime in on the subject.

Thanks again for continuing to share all this information with us on this car as things develop. I am looking forward to seeing those articles. Keep up the great work!

[Rory]

Update #2: Last couple days I've been able to tear into Challenger IV and make some headway. First day consisted of taking LOTS of digital pictures and the getting freezer bags ready to be filled with nuts & bolts and labled. So far so good, taking my time as not to screw anything up.



I'm sure we'll see comments like "Whats THAT going to be when it grows up" but from back in the day that was probably a pretty big 3 link. It's all of about 18" long.



Challenger IV ia almost completely stripped down now minus wiring and a couple other things. From here it gets a detailed cleaning and then hopefully start collecting/building parts to get this beast back on all fours.





Here's a shot of the rear sway bar that also acts as a secondary suspension. When the sway bars go up, at a certain point the center sway bar finger hits the frame and pretty much is a bump stop......I assume anyways.



This was a treat trying to get out of the back of the car. I'm pretty sure they used a shoe horn to get it in, would have made for some great TV with the "Benny Hill show" theme music in the background......



Well, I'm no brain surgeon but I'm thinking it might take a little more than duct tape to fix the bladder on the fuel cell. Actually, it looks a lot better than I thought it would after 30 years. I'll order a new one but that will be later in the project. Thats it for today, have to clean out the garage AGAIN and find a place to put all these parts.

[harleys dad]

Here are a couple of images I found and scanned. These are from the 1978 Parker 400 that was moved to Mexicali just a few weeks before the event. I think the car was brand new at the time, the body was not painted.

Roger

That is forsure the mexicalli 300 and the storm clouds were building, I went over the summit at that race at night in a blinding snow storm and complete flooded conditions, that race had a record entry for Parker that lost a lot of entrees when it was moved, it was not moved several weeks in advance, it was moved the week of the race, infact we pre ran parker the weekend before the mexicalli race! In all the times I have been over the summit that was the hardest, there were dozens of broken and drowned race cars stuck on the summit. the water was so deep in places it would have come in the windows had we not had them! It was also the only time I personally saw a black driver. he was driving a class 3 jeep and he was underwater up to the back of the jeep! He told me I had zero chance to make it, I said thank you and floated across! I felt bad for all those people because we were 100 percent dry with windows and the heater was working at the time!

[cosmo]

I spy a coil over/bypass shock in the rear.

Looks like the 12 car next to it?

[Rory]

Looks like the 12 car next to it?

Cosmo, I think Mark is talking about the first pic I posted. I'm pretty sure Marks eye's aren't that good he just knows what was on it....
I've blown the pic up a little so you can get a better idea. I'm pretty sure MT was the first to use a by-pass/coilover on the same shock. I have the upper part just not the shaft and a couple of the spring retainers.

[Mark Newhan]

My eyes are perfect... Watch the video and pause it around 1:22-1:24... It's clearly a coil over, external bypass. It looks like at least a 3.0. Pretty cool stuff!

[partybarge_pilot]

Yup, nothin wrong with Marks eyes........