F M J Body Cars . . .

Wow . . .where did these cars go ?? Seems like they have vanished . . . Volare/Aspen (Road Runners, Aspen RT, Super Coupes, Kit Cars), Caravelle, Diplomat, Gran Fury, 80''s up Cordoba, Mirada, etc . . . how about a shout out for the forgotten cars !!

I’m trying!
Come to MCACN in Rosemont IL in November and see the Malaise Era display I’m getting together. Getting a lot of attention already.
We already have a cool group of often forgotten cars signed up but seeking some more. I’ve been trying to find someone with a nice Supercoupe to sign up! I could use a 80s car or 2, GLH Omni maybe?
It’ll be an interesting display, I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
https://www.mcacn.com/invitational-displays

i have a 82 cordoba and of course its missing the 1/4 panel pieces

Those corner pieces are reproduced but I hear they fit like crap.

They have never been forgotten, just more noticed now for the ones who want to profit off of them. Lots of sellouts but also lots of committed owners that wont forget the years of abuse from the "important" people that now want to ride that train. The cars have not changed but there values have. Why do you think its hard to find people interested in the mainstream mopar world to offer there cars up?

I've always been a fanatic of the F and M. I do like the J's too. I've owned one civi M and at least five AHB's. I only have one AHB now with stroked 360 and I use to have an A38/E58 Aspen which some are probably tired of hearing me praise. I will always own one of these. The later M's especially are pretty darn good cars. Good body integrity for the times, and the very last of a long lineage of T-bar front suspension, solid rear axle and leaf springs RWD cars from Ma Mopar!

I have had a all original 76 Road Runner - 318, 4spd OD - great driving car ! And a 80 Plymouth Caravelle (like the brochure I posted - Canada only cars!) . . . and again, it was a great driving car. By 78/79 Mopar got their crap together on the F bodies and they were pretty good machines. . . . but they were tainted from the 76/77 buckets they put out . . . And yeah, last of the t bar, rwd mopars . . . .

Beautiful ^

Yep, come '79/'80 the F bodies were much improved. My '80 A38 had obviously never seen a garage and had been beaten by Police use and driver training afterward and only had rust a bit of the typical rust bubbles around taillights and minor floor scale!

w/lightbar

Nice long old school flat hood

Unfortunately around here most of them rusted to the ground before they were 10 years old.

I have a decent 78 Volare at my shop. It's a fairly low miles Florida car.

I had an 87 Diplomat I ended up swapping a 360 and an A833 into. Swapped out the original 7 1/4 (2.26 gear) and rear suspension for a cop spec setup out of an 87 Gran Fury, 2.94 gear.

It ran much better, lol.

Mine still has the stock 8.25 with rear sway bar but now has 3.2 rear instead of stock 2.9 and I added a Mopar sure-grip

Dad's is the 80 S-Type with T's and mine is the Fifth. Been a father/son project going back years now.

Nice cars a12rag. The 1980-1981 M-body 2 doors are extremely rare.

Another neat M-body is the 1981-1982 Dodge Magnum. They were only sold in Mexico and were equipped with a 300 hp 360 V8.

https://bangshift.com/general-news/car-features/random-car-review-dodge-magnums-mexico/

https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cc-...of-the-1980s-coming-down-from-a-v8-high/

Yeah, I really miss my 80 Caravelle . . . hopefully it is still running around Saskatchewan ! . . .

Great father/son project !! . . . love the t top 2door - major unicorn car !!! . . .

To the best of my knowledge Chrysler never made a 300 hp 360 in any country, magazine articles are typically FOS. So unless they can cough up some factory literature I'm going to call BS on this.

Not talking about the later 5.9 Magnums either.

My first brand new car was a '76 Volare`. 318, 4-spd OD, in 'Silver Cloud Poly', black bucket interior. Wish I had that car now.

Love the Conan style music in that commercial! hah

Nice !! . . . After I had gotten my 76 RR, I also ended up getting a 76 RR (minus the flares, but had the decals) that was spec'd out same as your car. My buddy ended up with that . . . we took both cars to Mopars at the strip one year, both got 22mpg all day long ! LOL . . .

Here’s a similar one though a Dodge, even has T Tops!
https://www.oswegoautosales.com/details/used-1978-dodge-aspen/80886411
Not that far out of my way if anyone wants me to check it out.

Sure go check it out at near 16k, 145k miles on a repaint and pigged up a bit..... was a much better car before the flip at 4k. Yep, yall in the loop.

yah thats what i have seen on other posts , you think some one would take a shot at 3D printing some

I've had a few F, M & J's over the years. Not a B body but were good cars.

Yes, end caps are horrible, but workable.

I would love to find a nice survivor for a good price, I'd even be happy with a 4 door or wagon...

I've picked up several F bodies over the years from a few hundred to a few thousand. They used to be a very budget friendly way to get into the Mopar hobby and used to be easy to find nearly anywhere. They respond well to all the traditional small block mods. My last one was an '80 with a '78 front clip. Ran low 12s in Denver.

Unfortunately, prices on these have gone up too and any one you can find that is decently good shape is $10k+ I've seen some Super Coupes and Kit Cars in $20k asking range.

Never paid to much attention to J and M market. Not sure how it looks these days, but I'm sure they are spendy, when you can find them.

As far as M's go just depends on which ones. You can still find some real nice Fifth Ave's since they were mostly owned by older responsible people and cared for. Finding a decent AHB is a different story and when you do they have definitely gone up in price due to availability.

I've had quite a few F, M, & J body cars in my past. They didn't survive around here very well. The rust killed the front fenders and lower rear quarters. The interior head lining fell down after a couple of winter/summer cycles, and the end caps around the taillights self destructed after a few years. Many Mopars guys would overlook stuff like that, but the general public wasn't so forgiving. The value of them as a used car dropped like a rock long before the cars were 10 years old. Once the public lost interest, repairing them for anything more then as a cheap beater, sent many to junk yards for pretty simple parts breakage. Even to try to part them out was a pretty sorry adventure. The hard parts that remained good were not desirable for the hard core Mopar guys (no one wanted a 318, 904 lock up trans, or a 8 1/4 with 2:94, 2:76, or worse yet a 2:45 rear gear), and the bodies with screwed up or missing trim pieces made made of unabtainium made them pretty undesirable for guys that might fix up old cars as car shows.
Pretty much everything that was needed for a car to survive as a survivor, didn't last long enough to get them through the amount of time needed for them to be around long enough for the aftermarket to pick up on the the parts that were needed.

It really is too bad. They were pretty good cars during that time period, which really isn't saying much, only a very few select car models have made it though that time frame.

"It ran much better". You couldn't undersell that point any more if you tried, LOL.

FMJs have two problems: they've been overlooked forever and there is near-zero aftermarket support. You need to be very skilled, very patient, and very committed to the task. I've owned six M-bodies (including the above-mentioned car) and two J-bodies (Mirada and Imperial) and they are a great platform for a build that just doesn't have the aftermarket backing of other platforms. My late-B Charger has more options.

I have a 79 Diplomat coupe I am working on. Need a trunk lid for it if anyone knows of one out there. They are cool looking under appreciated cars in my opinion especially the 77-79 coupes with the swept quarters and boat tail deck lid. I might be biased though as the one I am working on was my first car in 1988.

On the plus side being overlooked is what kept prices affordable for so long with them. The other plus is that unlike other makes that varied things by body style and generation at least the mechanical side of mopars never changed much so there are countless things you can do drivetrain wise. But for everything else time is taking a toll and anything body related can be tough especially in the northern rust areas.

F,M,and J's not created equal. I know the some of those had much worse bumper issues than later M bodies for example. The bumper fills got better too as did end fills. Same on R Bodies. They had some quality issues that were much better on M's. The '88 and '89 M's at the end of their run were pretty darn good. Still 80's cars and there weren't any big three that were much better. M's got more galvanized steel in '85 and pretty darn durable. Only thing missing was EFI and there was plenty of problems with that and many preferred carbs.

I have a '80 Mirada that I bought back in 2001 that I swapped a 360 and and 8 3/4 into .I ran it with an a 727 for years but finally got the 4 speed installed in 2017 or so.

The problem with the M body was the simple fact they were 4 door cars. These days, its much easier to convince a young driver that a 4 door car could ever be a performance car. Back then, 4 door cars were grandpa & grandma cars, real performance cars HAD to be 2 door cars. A 4 door could be a "sleeper" which was fun for a while, but not something you wanted to keep, and certainly not something you enter car shows with.
I bought my son a very nice 87 5th Ave for his 1st car, around 1998. It had a few tweaks and could run pretty hard, but he hated that car, even though it was a great car. His friends made fun of him for driving grandpa's car (even though nothing any of them had could run with it even while it was hauling 4 big guys).

At the time, all of the 2 door F & J Mopar car line up had poor trim pieces, huge overstuffed sofa style seats, and nothing performance rated. Both the 318 and the 360 were pretty wimpy power plants in factory trim, and poor rear gear choices and lock up transmissions that were locking up at 25 mph sure didn't help. The closest thing to a performance car was the B body Charger, if it had a big block. Sadly the big block wasn't on the option list for either an F or a J body car, that probably would have changed everything.
A couple pictures.
pic 1 My F body dirt track car. in this pic, the car was 3 weeks old, and junk. This was the good side! A guy came up along in left side and caught the front bumper as he was going past me. Him just catching the front bumper caused the driver side front frame rail to pull 4" away from the transmission crossmember. That was the time I decided I wasn't cut out to be a race car driver. The 1st week out I blew up the 318 (strictly stock class), the 2nd week it got squished between two big boats, then the 3rd week the chassis pulled apart. As for my cloths, I'd just got off work from my factory maintenance at a forge shop, my cloths pretty much looked like this at the end of every day. The time frame would have been around 1983. That 76 Road Runner was already a bad rust bucket, the guy gave it to me to race.
pic 2, My other toy at the time. This pic was probably taken at the 82 Mopar Nationals.

M bodies were available as 2 doors thru 81.

this was my build, sold 3 years back or so. I loved the build and the result, love the looks of the car that's why i built it. But I just didn't like driving the car. Seat position overall just didn't fit my style, I am really a pre 70 B Body guy. or older hot rod. i cant put my finger on what it was. anyway

I remember following your build . . . great result !!! . . . funny how the "driving" part of it, makes all the difference. I totally loved my 74 Duster360 - restored it in 84 and drove it for over 100k miles !!! . . . In that time, also had my 1970 - 300Hurst cars, the F body, M body, . . .gotta say, even though the F & M were only 318 cars, they were GREAT drivers for me ! . . .

The truth is almost every single time I drive my four door M body (89 AHB) I get a comment, thumbs up or something, and it's almost always from someone in teens or early twenties!!!! It's the strangest thing but it's the truth. Totally not what I would expect but this has been the case the last five years or so! And no, I they are not being facetious, lol I can tell the difference.

Forgotten F bodies . . . late 70's T Top cars (M55 option code) . . . here is my 79 Road Runner . . . T top, E58 360, console auto/buckets, tuffy wheel, Road Runner option . . .

Factory am/fm/cb radio with Chrysler mike !! . . . oh and engine swap out to 440 with A518 auto !

I had a '76 Aspen that been overheated badly and the original 318 was junk/barely ran.
I swapped a '68 318 in. (engine came from a free '68 Satellite).
It was metallic black 2 door. I worked really hard on it, but in the end I just didn't like driving the car very much.
Looking back, it seems like the suspension felt driving a bowl of oatmeal, or maybe the chassis was super flexible, or something like that.
I drove it for about two weeks and put it up for sale.
If I did one again it would have to be built up more, at least a 360 if not a big block, and the mushy suspension would have to go.

I still like the way the Aspen/Volare 2 door looks, and think they look especially great as a street/strip or drag car when all done up.
They did a nice job on the styling of those.

Later I got an '83 5th Avenue, it had well over 200,000mi on it but ran halfway decent, and I actually enjoyed driving
it for a few years until I started hauling PA for my band and it was too small for that. I did a bunch of maintenence to make sure it wouldn't
die (timing chain, de-sludged the lifter valley, de-coked the intake heat crossover, stuff like that).
I can't remember if it had 255k or 275k on it when I sold it.
Midstream I hit a deer with it but all it did was break the grille.
It was just a good car.

I always wanted an Aspen Super Coupe!

If ever there were cars crying out for GenIII Hemi swaps, it's these.

I’m still seeking a nice stock Supercoupe to sign up for the Malaise Era muscle car display at MCACN in November.
We already have some cool Mopars registered including a ‘75 Roadrunner, my Magnum GT, a Mirada, and I think we have a Kit Car.
Supercoupe and a couple other makes cars like a Monza Mirage and a 77 Can Am are about the only “must haves” we don’t have yet, we’ve got probably 18 rare cars of the time recruited already!

Solid blocks of aluminum in place of the 4 K member rubber bushings helped the handling a lot. So did reinforcing the upper control arm plate. Chrysler bolted a plate to the K member, curved it up over the frame rail, then connected the upper control are to it without any support. I ran a few of them in the hobby stock class at our local dirt track. The failure point on the cars I ran at the dirt track was the front frame rails at the trans crossmember, if the original floors were rusted, that was the weakest point in the car and would twist, and at some point would pull apart.

What trans did you use?

I put an A body A833 in my 87 Diplomat. Used the pedal assembly and tunnel out of an F body. Other than the firewall no longer having the hole for the clutch linkage already stamped out it pretty much bolted in. I used the donor F body to make a template to locate that hole. Kept the original driveshaft. Forget if I had to swap out the yoke though.

The FMJ bodies went thru some revisions over the years. Back when I was fooling with my 87 the yards were loaded with M bodies, the later stuff was a sight better than the early stuff so, by the time my 87 rolled out it had all the updates. I did add a bunch of cop spec goodies my civilian M body didn't come with. Added coolers, thicker sway bars and rear springs. Throttle knob, put in a AM/FM/CD player out of a Neon, Got the dual speaker dash top out of a 5th Ave. Put in the late B body 11.75 discs adn added the cop 8 1/4 rear axle with the cop 11" drums and a 2.94SG.

Put in a mild 360, 4bbl 340 cam, MP ignition.

Probably did other stuff, but I forget anymore, it's been close to 20 years since I sold it.

One of my favorite F body pics

Been there, ruined that

It’s final motivation: very low buck 498. Over is years it was 318, mild 340, 340+6 (fit under the hood trimming one brace), 340+4 NOS, 340/4 with LOTS of NOS , then finally the RB tractor motor with Stage VI heads. Had it for 27 years. Believe it’s sitting in a shop in SoDak now unless it’s been relegated to a tree belt by now.

Last I heard from the owner, the tractor engine was being freshened up. He wasn't in too big of a hurry, as he has plenty of actual tractors to work on first.

Thanks, that is interesting. The one I had was super clean, zero rust anywhere but had been repainted.

I was thinking they must have made some changes and refinements in the transverse torsion bar/iso clamp chassis, because my M body felt really different, and drove so much better than the F body though the two were very similar underneath. Never bothered to look into it much as the '68 to '70 B body addiction had already set in by that point.

I have been a j body freak since I was a kid. Still have my 80 Mirada thats been in our family since 1993. Also have a 82 Cordoba LS that Im cloning into our family car from 30 yeas ago and a neat 82 Mirada CMX I recently acquired. These are great cars for the money still and accept all the same stuff the more popular earlier mopars do.

The M bodies came along about 4 years after the first F body showed up. Chrysler had more money, and 4 years to correct a few issues. Harder rubber mounts, thicker upper control arm brackets with some support, and bigger sway bars. Even the later F bodies and the J bodies in between the early F & the M were better handling cars then the early F bodies were.

Glad you know what I am talking about

I always thought "They definitely did something, and Whatever they did, it worked" and never went past that point.
Cool to hear about some of the changes they made.

And you're so right about installing the aluminum k frame isolators!

And you're so right about installing the aluminum k frame isolators! [/quote]

I ran 4 or 5 of these F,M & J things at our local dirt track in the hobby class. That first one, an F body Road Runner was a learning experience, for sure. It followed a 73 Duster, so the difference was dramatic.

.
Our only F-body on the road - originally a six, we put in a new K, mild 318-4bbl, TA-style exhaust, B-body 8 3/4. Apparently one of just 76 NL29 T-top cars in 1980.

It's a late 60's A body trans with a 2.66 first gear. As Sniper said it's basically a bolt in deal. In my case the hole for the clutch rod was already in the firewall, a earlier rod boot from Brewer's fit fine. The floor hump and pedals I got from a Volare. I couldn't use the pedal assembly as is because the bracket didn't fit the steering column area, as F and J bodies have a different shaped dash. So I just used the pedals themselves on the J body bracket and drilled the hole for the longer clutch pedal support rod to come through.

The F body came out in 76, the M body came out in 77. Mechanically the same, cosmetically different.

You might be thinking of the J body which came out in 80, again, mechanically the same, cosmetically different.

As the mechanical improved they were implemented across the platforms. F/J/M.

F body, the original K car.

Has anyone that put a Big block into an F body, changed out the power brake booster ? Looks like on car I have, the booster might have come from A body in mid 70's. It is only about 9-9.5" diameter - which allows for left side valve cover removal . . . just curious if anyone else has done same . . . long shot, I know.

Thanks,

Mark

Never done the big block swap but I thought from years ago people were using a K car booster?

K car would use the 2 bolt master cylinder and my car has 4 bolt master cylinder. Pretty sure it came from mid 70s A body

Need MarkZ to chime in

Swap the master cylinder over at the same time. 79 was the first year for the aluminum 2 bolt one in all the RWD cars and full size trucks.

Im guessing there's probably an older power brake booster that fits but the K car one would be easier to find?

No issues with the booster, just changed the master cylinder . . . however went with what should be on 79, which has larger bore than master that would be on the booster (99% sure it is from mid 70's A body), so going to change master again . . .

how big in diameter is a K-car booster, and is it a single or dual diaphragm unit ?

Depends on whether it's a stick or auto car. Rockauto has pics and dimensions

https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/dodge,1985,aries,2.2l+135cid+l4,1069163,brake+&+wheel+hub,power+brake+booster,1884

I think the hardest thing when getting something that SOMEONE else built 30 years ago, is trying to figure out what they did back then !! . . .

I've been driving the M-body coupes for about 30 years now. That has been my only Mopar "muscle car"!

Here are a couple of pics of what I currently enjoy, while the '81 awaits a proper start of the project.

Awesome !! . . . I do miss my '80 Caravelle . . . 2door like your Dippy . . . but just stock 318, ac, pwr wdw, . . . just all round nice driving car . . .

My first very own Mopar was a '80 Plymouth Caravelle...before that it was a '78 Caravelle that my father owned...and in hindsight was crazy enough to let me "tinker" with it...on went the 4 bbl intake, Carter TQ carb, station wagon gears (2.94 vs 2.45 I think?) along with a small head deck shaving pass at his friends machine shop, and lo' and behold, we almost had a stout machine, or as he put it at that time: "too fast, I stepped on the gas and tires started to spin, smoke was coming out"...LOL!

Ahh...good times, I was in highschool at that time...ahh, to be that young and carefree again...

LOL . . . I love the factory Mirada Aluminum wheels ! . . .

My current 79 roadrunner 24k miles not that it matters last owned by Galen Govier

One I just sold

I just stumbled onto a clean 79 aspen wagon while looking for a set of gears for my dakota, it is just way too nice to part out. It is rot free and only has a little surface rust no bondo or metal replacement needed even the interior is pretty nice. Thinking about a maaco paint job and selling it.

Diplomat360's car is legendary to us M body crowd. A12rag that's a beauty and you are right, M's are very nice riding and decent handling to boot. My '89 AHB is an absolute pleasure to drive and I don't car what the E and B body fanatics say. It's a RWD, solid axle, leaf spring/torsion bar suspension V8 car so it's a real Mopar! Bnichols those are beauties you have too!

Galen Govier?

He did say "not that it matters" as far as Govier is concerned. Just an interesting anecdote

Beautiful car!

It's a bump because I'm bored and browsing LOL but does anyone else find it strange that a12rag started the same topic twice... asin the one we're in now and this one two years earlier?

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthread.../all/m-bodies-where-did-they-all-go.html

You can consider this reply helping to keep the board and FMJ bodies active

My black J body was one of my favorite cars I've owned, healthy 440 2x4bbl, 727, 4.10 8 3/4. Miss it!!!!

I've still got a white one left, small block.

They are a fun car to build and to drive.
Here is my old one.