I found a 74 Elky on craigslist at a pretty good price (no engine, but everything else is there). Anything I should look for or ask for pictures of? What's the stats on the '74, i.e. weight, suspension setup, what rearend came stock? How are they overall? I'm afraid there's not many 74 parts available.

You'd want to make certain that the body is complete. There used to be a company that made filler panels for the bumpers, but I can't seem to find them anymore.

Weight on those things is way up near 3800 lbs I would guess, maybe more if it has a lot of options. Is it a big block? In most cases the rear is a 10-bolt 8.5", usually with 2.73 gears. Late production '74s could have come with 2.56 gears. You could also get factory 3.42 Trailering gears.

It seems to me that you can get seat upholstery for the bench or swivel buckets. The dash pads are known to crack if they have seen a lot of sun loading.

Most likely it came with a 350 & TH350. A 4-barrel version was offered in California. Also offered was a 400 2-barrel small-block with TH350 (4-barrel in California). They were still offering a 454 in all 50 states that year. They would have likely come with a TH400 but also could have come with the last of the Muncies, an M21. The 454 would use a strong 8.75" 10-bolt with 2.73 or 3.42 gears (4-speed was 3.42 only). I am trying to find the engine code as identified by the 5th character in the v.i.n. All that I can remember is a Y for the 454 or J for 350 2-barrel.

Yeah, it still has the TH350 in it, but I'm not sure it's original. I haven't gone up to look at it yet since it's about two hours away...just wanted to make sure it was worth the drive. I knew there was a billion parts for the 64-72 crowd, but wasn't sure if I'd be junk yard crawling for this one! So "Y" would probably indicate the strong 10 bolt? Any other way to tell?