The Story of Dan and Cindy's American Graffiti Coupe Clone

There is a lot to the story of our car.

Apparently the body (fiberglass-chopped 5W) was built in the late 70's when American Hot Rods was in Mexico City.  The body was ordered by someone through Nikki Lauda Total Performance Cars (Nikki used to drive for Ferrari in F1, but later took over a dealership in New England).  The person that ordered the body never took delivery and it sat for years in the back of the dealership.

We verified timing and the vintage of our body with Alan Thornton of Flatlanders.  Flatlanders got the molds from American Hot Rod when the owner decided to get out of the kit/street rod business.  The body is very true to the original steel, with all the character lines, rain drip gutters and functional cowl vent.  I have had people tell me that it is steel until I show them the inside of the roof (no headliner) and they can see the mat and reinforcements.  Flatlanders sold the body business & molds to New Age Motorsports so he could concentrate on building finished cars.

The first person to build the car purchased the body when they were clearing out old stock at the dealership.  He built it into a drag car that ran at Epping and at the Worcester (Mass) Summer Nationals.  The drivetrain was a 12.5 to 1 small block Chevy with an automatic and a 4.56 gear. The car ran 11.30's and carried the wheels out of the hole.  From stories I heard from the person I bought it from (3rd owner), the car was a memorable race car in the early 80's (not sure what color it was then).  The builder then retired the car to race a front-engined flathead rail in Nostalgia Drags.

The car sat in a barn in New England for a while until the second owner bought it in the mid-80's.  He lived in Massachusetts and drove it on the street as he started to make the car a Milner coupe clone.  He switched to the manual trans, added a milder small block (.030 over 327) with a 4 barrel.  Seats and door panels match the movie car.  Dash doesn't have the polished insert around the gages, but otherwise looks like it. He actually drag raced it with the manual trans,but had trouble shifting properly since the hydraulic clutch had a delay on engagement. ( I later found a restriction in the system and removed it... no problems now).

The person I bought it from (New Hampshire) owned it about 3 months before deciding he wasn't a street rod person.  He didn't like the old Ford pickup steering box with the drag link, and he had a lot of trouble with the hydraulic clutch.  The guy that did most of the conversion to the Milner coupe clone actually had a set of Rochester 2V's on a Man-a-Fre that he used when he showed the car, although they were not hooked up to fuel or linkage, just sitting on the top of the engine.  Those came with the car when I purchased it in late 1999.

I have subsequently rebuilt the carbs and linkage.  The carbs needed to be rejetted way lean vs. stock since there are 4 of them running all the time. Similarly, I had to insert fine wires (.010") into the accelerator pump shooters to keep from putting out the fire when I jumped on the gas.  It is much better, but I think I still need some work there.  I have had advice from Charlie Price of "Vintage Speed" on tuning the carbs.  He rebuilds and sells full multiple carb setups as well as parts.  He said that since the carbs on the Man-a-Fre sit so close to the ports (no plenum) that I would continue to have transition problems, although I could get close to crisp response if I continued to modify and dial them in.  Of course everything you do, you need to do 4 times - once per carb, then see how it worked.  It gets a bit tedious when I'd rather be out driving it.

Charlie said the Offenhauser 4x2 setup with a plenum works much better (and looks almost correct).  I have the Offy setup, but am determined to make the Man-a-Fre work.

My car has disc brakes in front, a scattershield, rear suspension from its drag racing days, large wheels (15" chrome reverse, narrow front but about 10" wide in rear with large BFG Drag Radials). Headers are close to correct, but have broken and been re-welded numerous times from vibration and lack of support with the long side pipes.  I was looking at the Sanderson pipes, but would need to have them make some changes to be able to hook up the mufflers correctly.

I have a rumble seat deck instead of trunk lid (opens backwards) and a 16 gallon fuel cell in the rumble seat area.  The dropped front axle is black not chrome.  The shocks are chrome. The front spring was chromed but someone later painted it black over the chrome (needs to be stripped).  I have chrome hairpins to locate the front axle, not the old wishbone. The coil is mounted inside under the dash instead of outside (made a big difference when we got caught in the rain at the Street Rod Nationals).  Interesting that the real car (and mine too) had an alternator, not a generator.. Alternators came along a bit later than 1962...

While there are lots of things that keep it from being a correct clone, I cannot believe the number of people that stop me to ask if it is the real mc coy.... (sometimes they tell me it is, even as I am telling them that Rick Figaro has the real one).

We met Rick at the Detroit Autorama in 2004 when he was there with Paul LeMat and both the Milner coupe and the black '55 Chevy.  He seemed like a really nice guy, but he was way too busy at the time for us to talk much about our car.

Am looking forward to the members site.  Thanks for the tip on the rear nerf bar.  I was going to build cycle fenders out by cutting a motorcycle fender, but the mounts are the tricky part.  Most guys I talk to that have them say the brackets fatique and they fall off in time (of course Michigan roads pound everything to pieces on old street rods).  I will look into the ones you are making, even if I have to modify the brackets to mount on the disc brake front end.