1970 Challenger T/A First Start in Years!

Nick’s Garage pulled a rare 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A Six Pack out of nine years of storage and waited until after closing to attempt the first start alone. A 340ci engine that’s sat that long can seize, hydro-lock, or simply refuse to catch — and the only way to know is to turn the key. Watch to see which way it goes.

Some engines come back to life the moment you turn the key. Others spend nine years in storage forgetting how, and there’s no way to know which kind you’ve got until you actually try. When Nick pulled this 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A into his shop, he waited until after closing time, alone, before he’d let a camera near the moment of truth — a stuck ring, a seized bearing, or a hydro-locked cylinder can turn a hopeful first start into an expensive lesson. The Challenger T/A wasn’t the flashiest muscle car Dodge built that year, but it carries one detail under the hood that makes this particular gamble worth watching all the way to the end.

Why the T/A Badge Actually Means Something

Dodge built the Challenger T/A for exactly one reason: to go racing in the SCCA’s Trans-Am series, and federal homologation rules meant Dodge had to sell a street version to the public before it could compete. That street car got a 340ci small-block instead of the big 440s and 426 Hemis that usually get the headlines, but it also got something those bigger engines didn’t — a trio of two-barrel Holley carburetors feeding it, a setup enthusiasts still call the Six Pack. On paper it was rated at 290 horsepower, a number most historians agree was deliberately underreported to keep insurance companies and NHRA class officials off Dodge’s back.

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Nine Years of Silence Under the Hood

This particular T/A had been sitting for nine years before Nick got his hands on it, and nine years of inactivity does more damage to a car than nine years of hard driving. Fuel turns to varnish inside the carburetor bowls and float chambers. Rubber seals dry out and crack. Rings can seat themselves against cylinder walls hard enough that turning the engine over by hand becomes a fight. Nick’s approach — checking for spun bearings, verifying oil pressure, and manually rotating the engine before ever hitting the key — is the same triage routine any experienced mechanic runs before waking up a long-dormant motor, because skipping that step is how a simple first start turns into a cracked block.

The Moment the 340 Turns Over

The actual moment of ignition is what the video builds toward, and it’s tense precisely because nothing about a nine-year-old fuel and ignition system is a sure thing. A rough, sputtering catch followed by a puff of white smoke usually means condensation burning off, which is normal and nothing to worry about. Blue smoke, on the other hand, points to oil getting past worn rings or valve seals — which is exactly the detail commenters on this video have zeroed in on, watching the exhaust as closely as they watch the engine bay itself.

What a Rough Idle Can (and Can’t) Tell You

What makes a first-start video like this compelling to gearheads specifically is that it’s a diagnostic moment happening in real time. The sound of the idle alone tells an experienced ear whether a cam is stock or swapped, whether a cylinder is misfiring, and roughly how healthy the bottom end is — information a written inspection report can’t fully capture. That’s part of why storage-car revivals have become their own genre of car content: the uncertainty is real, not staged, and the outcome genuinely could go either way.

The Six Pack That Made the T/A Different

The Six Pack setup on this 340 deserves its own mention, because it’s one of the more misunderstood pieces of Mopar history. Unlike a single big four-barrel carburetor, the three two-barrels only opened the outer two under light throttle, keeping fuel economy reasonable during normal driving. Stomp the pedal, though, and the center carburetor’s vacuum-operated secondaries kicked the outer two wide open, dumping fuel into the engine for a surge Mopar drivers of the era nicknamed the “Six Pack hit.” It’s a mechanical trick that modern fuel injection has made unnecessary, which is exactly why cars that still have it draw such a dedicated following.

Why Storage Cars Split Viewers Into Two Camps

Storage-car revival content tends to split viewers into two camps, and the comments on this video are no exception. One side wants to see every barn find and forgotten project preserved exactly as found, mechanical warts included, arguing that patina and originality are part of the car’s story. The other side wants a full teardown and rebuild before the engine ever turns over again, worried that running an unknown motor on old fuel and dried-out seals risks doing real damage. Nick’s decision to attempt a careful, monitored first start rather than immediately tearing the engine down splits the difference, and it’s clearly part of what keeps this channel’s audience engaged.

What a Failed Start Would Have Meant

Had the 340 refused to catch, or worse, locked up solid the moment Nick tried to turn it by hand, the next steps would have looked nothing like a simple carburetor cleaning. A seized engine on a numbers-matching Six Pack car typically means pulling the oil pan to inspect the bearings and crankshaft journals for scoring, checking each cylinder with a borescope for rust pitting, and in the worst cases, a full teardown to assess whether the block itself survived nine years of stagnant moisture. That’s the outcome every viewer watching this video is implicitly hoping doesn’t happen — not because a rebuild is impossible, but because it turns a straightforward afternoon into a multi-month, multi-thousand-dollar project before the car ever moves under its own power again.

What Happens After the Cameras Stop Rolling

Whatever the outcome of this particular start, the bigger story is what a nine-year gap represents for any classic muscle car. Every month spent parked is a month closer to needing a full fuel system rebuild, a new set of gaskets, or worse. Cars like this Challenger T/A survive today specifically because someone was willing to take the risk of waking them back up rather than leaving them to decay quietly in a corner — and that’s a decision every long-term owner of a stored classic eventually has to face.

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