Junkyard Find: 1976 Dodge Tradesman Van
The Dodge Tradesman cargo van of the 1970s was quite popular among customizers back in the days of 20% annual inflation and talk-box guitar solos, as we saw with this ’72 Tradesman Junkyard Find last year. In the very same San Francisco Bay Area wrecking yard, here’s a Slant-6 Tradesman that doesn’t quite qualify as a custom van— not with just tinted glass and aftermarket wheels— but is still a nice time capsule.
Chrysler kept the same basic design for its truck HVAC controls for nearly 20 years; my 1966 Dodge A100 has nearly identical cable-operated controls.
Slant-6 engine, 3-on-the-tree. Not very quick, but about as reliable as you could get in the 1970s.
You don’t see many of these vans with the single rear door option.
Just a plain steel box with the base engine, but it kept going for nearly 40 years.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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those rims are kinda awesome. a little elbow grease, i'd put them on my tacoma
The floors tell the story in old vans ~ no plumbing was hauled in this one . These vans were very good yes but they had their dangerous quirks : the steering idlers (they had two) would rip loose from the frame without warning . We bought a '79 Plymouth Voyager clone from Cal Trans , it was a special ordered 3/4 tom long frame with full interior , rows and rows of seats , rear AC , a 360 and 727 slushbox tranny ~ it ran for decades , always breezed through Ca. smog tests and eventually Jason had to seriously monkey with the smog devices to force it to fail so he got $1,500 for it , being a " passenger vehicle " in the Ca. vehicle retirement program . What a shame but by them it was badly dented up all 'round . When my Son was 12 he announced " look Pop , another RAPER VAN ! " as one rolled by . A Friend special ordered the long body passenger version in 1985 , slant six engine and four speed manual with 4' long stick shift ~ it went plenty fast fully loaded with bodies on the freeway . I'm waiting to see what Crabspirits does with this one . -Nate