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Hello all:
I decided to add this section to my page because I get a lot of questions about my General Lee, plus I've seen quite a bit of incorrect or incomplete information out on the web so I will try to correct what I know.
First of all, my General is NOT for sale!
Not at any reasonable price anyway.
If you have to ask, you can't afford it!
If you're Bill Gates, make me an offer. :-)
There is one page out there that says the General is most definitely "Hugger" orange. That answer, while partially correct, is mostly wrong. You ask, "how can that be?" Well, let me explain. The first Generals were painted Hemi-orange, a real life Mopar color that a '69 Charger could have come from the factory with. However, over the years they used quite a few different oranges to paint the General Lee, Hugger probably being one of them. Also, depending on how much paint they had available, how quickly they needed a car to be ready, etc, etc., they would mix whatever oranges they had on hand so a General could have ended up Hemi or Hugger or a number of other oranges or any mixture thereof (all of them being fairly close to the original Hemi-orange). So while some Generals were Hugger orange, "the" General was not. If you have to pick a "the" General Lee color, I would go with the original Hemi-orange. But since Warner Brothers didn't care, you shouldn't either. For authenticity, all you need to do is pick a color close to Hemi-orange. Wayne informs me that Street Hemi orange engine paint is an exact match for the color on his General.
There are a lot of electronic musical horns out there that play Dixie but unfortunately none of them (or at least, none of them that I tried) have the correct sound. However, don't despair, I did find a Dixie horn that does sound correct and it is supposedly the same horn they originally used on the show. You can find this horn in the J. C. Whitney catalog. There is/was a Dukes of Hazzard page out there that gave this information, unfortunately, that page listed the WRONG horn! There are two Dixie horns in the J. C. Whitney catalog and only one of them is correct. The most noticeable one in the catalog, the one pointed to by the other page(s), is "The 11 Notes of Dixie" and that horn is NOT correct (I've heard it). If you count the notes, it comes up one note short and is VERY annoying. The correct Dixie horn is buried in a list of other musical horns on the same or adjacent page of the catalog. These horns fall under a heading something like, "Choice of 13 Popular Songs, Air Horns".
To see the J. C. Whitney ads for the horns, check out God 'Ol boys' Dixie Horn page.
As a side note, I do not believe the 12 note horn I received from J.C. Whitney a couple of years ago was made by Wolo so I can't tell you if the current offering is exactly the same as the one I purchased or not (although I have been told it is).
Update: I have an exact number now. Over the course of the series, they used 229 Chargers and 19 survived. So they destroyed a total of 210.
Update on update: Okay I've needed to update this information for quite a while. Better late than never! While the number still isn't 350, it is pretty close to 300.
There were around 80 cars in addition to the 229 in WB's records.
The answer to the second is, No. I don't personally know of any Chargers for sale. If you can't find one through any of your local sources (Auto Trader, Trading Post, newspaper classifieds, local Mopar clubs, etc...) there are always a few for sale in "Mopar Collector's Guide". You can also try contacting The Dodge Charger registry.
There's another site(s) that states categorically that the General has a 426 Hemi.
Not only is it never stated in the show that the General has a Hemi, it is never even implied.
Not only is it never even implied, you NEVER see an engine in a General that looks remotely like
a Hemi!
OK, now for some answers:
In the show, it is never stated what engine the General has but here are some facts so you can make up your own mind. The best look you get at "the" engine in the General Lee is in the episode "Happy Birthday General Lee". In this episode you see a big block Mopar engine on an engine stand but it's not a detailed enough shot to tell if it is a B or RB block. So in theory, that engine could be any Chrysler big block, including the 350 (YES! Chrysler did build a 350), 361, 383, 400, 413, 426 (wedge not Hemi) or 440. In reality, the only B and RB engines found naturally in a '69 Charger were the 383, 440 and Hemi. So you can safely narrow that engine on the stand down to a 383 or 440. A little more reality rears its ugly head and we find out that the engine on the stand was a seized motor that they painted up for that shot and was not actually put into a General. So what engine did "the" General have in it? The close-up car, the car you were "supposed" to see when the hood was up (although you see the hood opened on many non-close-up cars with various engines), has a 383 in it. Of the surviving cars, the vast majority have 383s but a couple have 318s and 440s. So again, if you have to pick a "the" engine, I'd go with the 383 in the close-up car.
That's a good question and I wish I had a good answer. I started searching for a spare set for my General back in March of '91 when I got the car and didn't get a set until May '97 when a friend of mine in Australia found a set and flew them over to me. I was looking for 14" rims to match what was on the car and what they originally used on the show so if you're looking for 15" rims they will be a little (though NOT much) easier to find.
GM was using that style wheel on the Buick Grand National sometime back in the '80s (I've heard this is the reason the aftermarket hasn't been offering any new ones.) so most of the ones you find will have the GM bolt pattern. You can have them re-drilled to fit the 4.5" bolt pattern in a semi-unilug style. It appears that Warner Brothers did this with a lot of the rims on the original Generals (mine included) so it can be done.
You can also try contacting The Dodge Charger registry about the wheels. The registry made contact in 1997 with someone who still had some of those wheels available. After this long, I doubt any of those wheels are left but you may get lucky and possibly the registry has found another contact by now. You never know.
Here are some pictures of the wheels you are looking for. The first picture has one American Racing and one Carroll Shelby (I don't remember which is which). The second picture is a GM Buick T type wheel:
OK, here are some of the measurements (more to come).
Created February 2, 1998
Last updated March 20, 2006.
This is hit number
since September 25, 2004.