It is a long story that I won't go into, but I have been long overdue in completing my 1932 Plymouth Project. This winter (2019/2020) was to be the time when I would finally complete the build. My son who is going to graduate soon and be gone said he really wanted to get an old Challenger. I told him that I was not the kind of guy to spoil my kids by buying them an expensive muscle car. However, I WOULD buy a project and he could earn it. I told him that if he showed ownership in the car that he would indeed own it.
In September 2019, I bought a Go Mango 1970 cHALLENGER R/T.
The car seemed pretty solid and a great starting point for a good build. I should have taken a magnet when I looked at it because it was all bondo. The last guy to work on it was a terrible welder but was awesome with the bondo.
(//)
Off the trailer for 1 hour and the work began.
(//)
fender tag
A 383 1966 block with stock bore. A very buildable core.
This is going to be a great thread. I'm on the hunt for a car to do the same thing with my boys! Enjoy
My youngest son in 2002 said he wanted to do a father/son project on a 1971 Challenger I was going to part out. I made him strip it down to a shell, we did all the mechanical work, body work and paint, electrical and interior. He got to drive it to school the last 4 months of his senior year in high school. Total cost was $9000. The best investment was in a fine young man. The car turned out nice also. It's the yellow one in photo. He does all his own car work now.
Terry
What a fun project! I'm envious! Enjoy the ride! :clapping:
Yeah that sucks about the bondo. Looks can be deceiving. Good luck with the build. Should be a nice looking car when done.
Your son will learn a lot and the experience and memory will build character. :slapme5:
Great Color. Good luck with the resto, will be following along.
Looking forward to seeing your guys progress. Keep the pictures coming.
The first step of bodywork was to replace the LH lower rear quarter panel. I bought the AMD replacement panel but only use the part that I felt was really needed to be replaced. We also had to fabricate and replace the lower 2 inches of the inner panel that extends down from the trunk. I might have just bought the replacement panel had I realized at the time that there was a replacement panel available. Also, I later came to realize that it might have been easier to just replace the entire LH rear quarter panel.
The next step was the RH quarter panel. We decided to just replace the entire panel since there were big problems both front and rear on the panel, along with about a half-inch thick layer of bondo. Also, there was a lot of rot on the rear end of the rocker where it overlapped with the rear quarter panel, as well as rot in the front of the inner wheel well. The mount for the front of the RH rear spring was a total disaster. Someone previously had made a VERY bad repair there. I cut it all out and bought the replacement part from AMD at Summit. I had to fabricate a new section of the subframe and a new inner rocker panel.
The next hurdle was the dutchman panel. It was coated in layer of bondo about 3/8" thick across most of the panel. This was apparently done to hide some very bad weld repairs. I decided to buy a new dutchman panel and just replace it. Good thing Summit Racing is only 20 minutes away.
There was one spot on the edge of the LH fender well that needed to be patched. I had saved this section of the RH quarter panel to use for this repair.
Nice progress! Like others have written, I'm looking forward to seeing more.
I knew that there was rot on the inner panel in front of the LH wheel opening, but when I went to repair it, I discovered that the rot went through the outer panel as well. This is the point where I decided that I should have just replaced the entire panel. Instead, however, I went ahead and fabricated a replacement for the lower portion of the outer panel as well as the inner panel. I had to make the outer panel twice. The first time wasn't really a failure so much as it was the piece I made in order to gain the experience to make it right.
This is my 18 year old son welding a patch on the trunk. The second 2 pictures are for a compare/contrast of the same boy at 11 years old welding on the frame of my 32 Plymouth. The Iron Man helmet was a gift from Lincoln Electric for some work I did helping them with the Welding Merit Badge. So far, I have taught more than 50 kids to weld by teaching the Welding Merit Badge. My son actually works at a local welding shop running the CNC plasma table.
Also, note all the clean metal on the underside of the Challenger. My boy has countless hours with the angle grinder and the wire wheel cleaning all the rust, dirt and undercoating off to prepare it for painting.
Patched a spot under the rear seat on the passenger side.
There was a large dented spot on the LH quarter panel. We ground off all the bondo and found a bunch of holes where the dent was pulled out. It was not done very well, so I pounded it out from the inside and welded over the holes.
The area where the quarter panel meets the roof was pretty rusty on the LH side. I was pretty nervous to tackle this spot, but it turned out to not bee too hard to fix. I also found a rotted inner channel when I cut off the outer panel.
Rust patch on the rear of the roof. Normally, I butt weld to be flush but for this small spot, I put the patch panel inside and lap welded it.
This is what it is to be young and flexible (and skinny)
I have a good friend who is an expert in Muncie's. He is helping us rebuild our A833 OD that I picked up at a swap meet. I also had to get another friend to turn down the bearing retainer to fit my bell housing and to machine the holes for the shifter to bolt to the tail housing.
Rear axle assembly needs some TLC.
All the patching, welding and cleaning is done on the underside from the doors back. We bought a sway bar, but the brackets that bolt to the subframe were rusted more than I was comfortable with. We fabricated new brackets and welded them to the subframe. I know they are supposed to be bolted, but we welded them instead. We bought new Energy Suspension bushings and links to use.
I did about 90% of the painting but when my boy came home from school, I let him finish it up. He should have had something covering his head, but it was a last minute thing for him to jump in and finish it.
I used a Nason 2K etching primer and the Ceramic Chassis Black 2K from Eastwood for the black paint.
As of this post, my build journal is now up to date.
This is a great thread. We are still looking for a father and sons project. this sure has lite a fire under my butt to find one before we are price out of the market. Keep the pictures comig
This will be a cool ride :twothumbsup:
Got the rear portion of the car totally cleaned up and a coat of etching 2K primer on it. Ready to keep moving toward the front now.
Awesome progress :twothumbsup:
That's cool to be able to do that with your son !!! :clapping:
Excellent work
Thank you for sharing it with us
Thank you for doing it the right way too
You are a inspiration to us all
God Bless,John
Sent from my SM-S727VL using Tapatalk
Very cool. He appears to be into it properly. Will make the car that much more appreciated.
It's good to see a kid getting there hands dirty, some grease under there fingernails. :wrenching:
Quote from: GoMangoBoys on March 04, 2020, 06:47:34 PM
This is my 18 year old son welding a patch on the trunk. The second 2 pictures are for a compare/contrast of the same boy at 11 years old welding on the frame of my 32 Plymouth. The Iron Man helmet was a gift from Lincoln Electric for some work I did helping them with the Welding Merit Badge. So far, I have taught more than 50 kids to weld by teaching the Welding Merit Badge. My son actually works at a local welding shop running the CNC plasma table.
Also, note all the clean metal on the underside of the Challenger. My boy has countless hours with the angle grinder and the wire wheel cleaning all the rust, dirt and undercoating off to prepare it for painting.
What a great project and leader you are to these young men. I wish somebody would have taught me to weld back in the day and wish my father would have had a father son project like this. Welding is still the one thing I'd really like to learn. That's a skill set your son and others will value long into their lives. :bravo: :clapping: :twothumbsup:
Got some floor patching done over the last week or so. Replaced the LH front section of the floor. A previous owner had done a real hack job of adding a 4 speed hump. We cut it out and added a new AMD hump. After that, we found a bad spot on the RH front floor, so we fabricated a piece and replaced a section. It is far from perfect, but it is sound and will be covered with the carpet. The boy is cleaning up all the light rust on the inside and we will be ready for rust converter and primer very soon.
Got the fenders pulled off. Both are in good shape. The inner fenders need some work. The LH inner fender has 4 patches that need to be made. The RH has 3. On both, there is rust around the frontmost hood hinge nut, rust with a really crappy weld patch where the brace attaches and a hole in the front end under the outer fender. So far, we have patched one of the hood hinge nuts. The LH inner fender has a really bad patch under the battery tray. We will cut this out and do it over. Work in this area is not finished.
The welds on the underside of the hood hinge nut patch don't look all that great. I was trying not to overheat the panel and I was welding from both sides. The welds are ground flush on the visible side. I also welded all the way around each piece of steel that I put in so that moisture does not get in as easily.
Looking great
Thank you for sharing it with us
L9ce seeing great work being done and time with family is priceless
Stay safe out there
God Bless,John
Sent from my SM-S727VL using Tapatalk
Patchwork is pretty much completed on the front inner fenders. We have also patched a couple of spots on the outer sections of the firewall. We have also started patching spots on the sides of the cowl and front end of the LH rocker panel.
The first group of pictures is on the top of the inner fender where it was originally spot welded to the support brackets. A previous owner had tried to fix the rust by just piling up a bunch of weld. I had to grind all that out and first patch the bracket, then patch the top surface of the inner fender. The next group of pictures is my son making a patch for where the front end of the inner fender meets the core support.
It turned out that we patched 5 spots on the LH inner fender and 4 spots on the RH.
Coming right along :bigthumb:
Awesome work. Very professional looking results!
These pictures are the LH side of the cowl. Also cut off the front A-pillar and the corner of the roof.
Wow! You guys are really moving along. :bravo: The area on both my inner fenders where the hood hinges bolted were also in bad shape. However, we cheated and bought patch panels and then just welded those in. Keep up the good work. I'm very envious of you getting to do this project with your son. :twothumbsup: By the time I did my Cuda all my sons had moved out and gotten married.
We are a bit behind in updating the build thread.
Once the roof skin was off, there were several places where the support channels needed rusty metal cut out and replaced. This was done in April.
We needed to replace part of the gutter, so I fabricated replacemens for the 2 bad sections. Fortunately the bad parts were in straight sections so it was easy to replicate them.
The new roof skin came out of the box with 2 good sized dents. The roof skin is good quality I think, but it was poorly packaged. I decided that if I returned it, the next one would not be packaged any better and might be damaged too. It was easier to spend some time fixing the dents and keeping some momentum on the project rather than returning it and waiting for another one.
On the advice from several on this forum, we used panel bond to attach the roof skin to the gutters. I used plug welds to attach it to the front and rear window frame. We happened to have a bunch of short pieces of 1/2" rebar the put in the gutter to facilitate clamping.
Replaced the front side of the A pillars on both left and right sides. These were plug welded ever couple inches and ground flat. We also had to recontruct the area where the cowl meets the A pillars on both sides.
We cut open the end of the cowl on both sides to more effectively clean out the rust before coating with rust converter and internal frame coating paint.
With every nook and cranny of the underside cleaned to the bare metal, it all got a coat of rust converter, etching primer and Eastwood Ceramic Chassis Black paint.
Had to do some body work to one of the fenders and one of the doors. Didn't take many pictures of this step
Got the engine block back from the machine shop and painted it. We now need to do the clearance cheecking for our 478CI stroker kit from Hughes Engines.
Fantastic job the best thing is you are doing the job with your son :australia:
We had to fit and drill the deck lid for the Go Wing. The Go Wing is from Josh's Muscle Car Parts. I bought the deck lid last fall at the fall Carlisle swap I was already planning to go there and bought the Challenger 1 week before the show. I was warned by some on this forum that I would not find much Mopar there. That was correct. There was one guy however that did have some Mopar. I bought almost all of what he had including the deck lid. I also got a 4 Speed OD transmission from him. The deck lid was a new AMD. It was dented and did not have Go Wing holes. I corrected both of those shortcomings.
Had to do some final touch ups to the body work on the LH rear quarter panel. Guide coat is a useful thing.
Sanded all the paint off the hood down to bare metal. Coated it all with Eastwood rust converter. Painted all the insides of all the chanells with Eastwood internal frame coating. Painted the hood with etching primer
Cleaned up the car and sprayed with 2 coats of heavy sanding primer. I sprayed the rear half, the boy sprayed the front half.
Spent some time hand sanding the primer in all the hidden areas and then fired up the gun to shoot some FC7 Plum Crazy. For these hidden areas, I used a single stage Nason Urethane. For the main body of the car, I will use the Nason Basecoat Clearcoat.
I know at this point some are saying What? GoMangoBoys are spraying Plum Crazy??? The story is that my son really wanted a Plum Crazy car. We bought a Go Mango car. On the drive home, we decided to keep the Go Mango color on the car. A few months ago, I heard "Dad, I think I would really like to go with Plum Crazy instead of Go Mango." 1. I have had trouble gettting him to make decisions, so if he has made a decision on something, anything, I want to support it. 2. We are building the car for him. 3. I like the FC7 better also. 4. We have already deviated from the fender tag quite a bit, so the wrong paint code wont hurt.
Lastly we have considered legally changing our name, but we will still call ourselves GoMangoBoys. :)
Looks fantastic!
Can I bring an original Plum Crazy R/T Challenger up next for some work?
I'm real close to you. :wave:
:perfect10: Welcome to the Plum Crazy crowd! I'm really enjoying the pictures of your project progress with your son.
That's a ton of work so far.
:bradsthumb:
Congrats on getting it into Paint , I love Plum Crazy also !!
Great progress on the Car. Keep it coming
Impressive work you have done! Keep it up. I like that you are not afraid of anything including spraying in your home shop.
I want to thank everyone for the kind comments. We are working hard on this car and feeling pretty good about the results. The comments help for sure.
Sprayed the door insides, underside of the deck lid and some misc parts like door hinges etc. The hood hinges are not quite ready to paint, but will be soon.
What a great project, even better when your son is your build buddy.
Colour looks fantastic, nice gun work.
Got the deck lid on tonight. The boy worked on the front steering parts/
:banana:
We are a little overdue in posting our progress on the car. After the main bodywork was complete, it was time to reassemble the suspension. We converted the front to disc brake using 1973 parts (larger inboard bearing). September 2020 was the first time that the car supported its own weight for many months.
I picked up some 14" rallye wheels at the Canfield swap meet back in July. With the front brakes assembled, it was time to verify what I was told in that they DO fit with disc brakes.
Worked on repainting the dash frame and glovebox. Also, we discovered that there was a broken bolt on the front of the core support where the hood latch plate bolts. I drilled it out, tapped the hole threaded in a piece of 1/4-20 and welded the back side.
Seats are redone. Legendary Interiors installed by a local guy.
During the efforts to align the doors, I discovered a problem with the new RH quarter panel. The door was still on when we installed the quarter panel, and we thought that it was aligned well, but when re-aligning the door, I discovered that when the top of the door was aligned to the top of the quarter panel, the midway body line did not line up. The line on the quarter panel was too low. I was advised to bump up the corner, but I do not have that skill. I actually just gave up and used duraglass to reshape the corner. I hated that solution and ground it back off. I was concerned that the corner made out of filler was bound to fail. Instead, I built up the corner with weld, and a very tiny amount of duraglass.
While aligning the doors, I also discovered another problem with the door mating up to the quarter panel. The upper part of the quarter panel had less curvature compared to the door. I was able to cut the corner and pry it out and re-weld. It now matches up much better.
As best that we can figure, the RH front fender is an aftermarket replacement. It had no antenna hole. One of my gold nuggets from the swap meet at the nationals in Carlisle this summer was the project car for sale right near the entrance that I came in. It was literally the first thing that I saw when I came in.m I was able to get all the required measurements to locate the antenna hole.
Before I re-installed the hood, I wanted to paint the springs. Since they would be stretched when people see them, I needed to stretch them to paint them.
Once everything was all aligned, I primed the whole car again. In blocking and prepping to paint, I found some dents in the hood. I was able to mostly pound out the one behind the hood scoop, but the ones in the very front of the hood were not able to be pounded since there were 2 layers of steel right there. I used duraglass to fix that area as well as a little in the area behind the hood scoop. Someone else may have known how to fix it otherwise, but I don't.
Finally, we got to the point of painting the car. The basecoat went well, but the clear coat did not. I had the gun pressure set too low and we had a huge amount of texture and orange peel after 2 very heavy coats
We decided that the best course of action to correct the bad clear coat was to sand it down and re-spray the clear. We sanded the whole car with 800. We had a few spots on the LH front fender where we broke thru to the primer. The fender was easy to tape off and respray the base coat before re-spraying the clear. We also had issues on both front pillars and re-sprayed the basecoat on them also. Unfortunately, there was a spot on the LH rear quarter where we broke thru the clear but did not appear to have harmed the base coat. Once the new clear was applied, there was a very obvious blemish to the base coat. Otherwise, we are VERY happy with the end result of our paint job.
Just before we painted the car, we realized that we had not done anything with the front and rear valence panels. When we got them out to work on them, we discovered that they both needed a lot of work. Lacking the energy for doing more bodywork, we ordered a couple of new AMD panels. Tonight we got them primed and will paint them in a couple days.
A few months back, we rebuilt the A833 OD transmission that I bought at the 2019 Fall Carlisle. My buddy that helped us rebuild it is a Muncie guy and he and my boy finished it up without me. Shortly after my boy got home with it, my buddy called and said he thought that he installed the 3-4 shift lever incorrectly for the OD version. I told him that he had put it on wrong. I have yet to correct it. We ran into an issue with excessive wear on the case where the shaft for the cluster gear goes thru the back. Brewers set me up with a cast-iron case to replace the aluminum one. Sadly, I had to buy some expensive parts for the cover to go with the otherwise inexpensive cast-iron case but it is now a beast of a transmission. I think this will pair nicely with the 3.23 sure grip and the 478 CU IN stroker that we will build shortly.
You're making tons of progress. It's going to be a fun car to drive!!
I bought this car to do a project with my son. We gave done a ton of work together. Since he went to school in August, I have been working solo. I wanted to get the car painted sooner, but I am glad that he was able to help me while paint the car while he was home on break. Once the car was painted, we still needed to paint the valance panels. While I painted the car, I felt he should paint the valance panels. He was nervous but I told him that if he screws it up, we can redo it. He did a great job. I should have let him paint the whole car. In the end, he can say that he painted part of his car.
That's very rewarding right there :worship: :drinkingbud:
Thanks for posting. This is one of my favorite threads on the site. I'm hoping I can start my own one with my boys. Keep it up
Very nice, all in all...I'll be trying it myself soon with F8. Looking forward to your assembly pics.
Tons of progress there.
Thanks for the detailed write up.
Been a while since I checked in on this build. All I can say is Wow! You guys just continue to amaze me with your fabrication skills along with others. Great work! :drinkingbud: :twothumbsup:
I want to thank everyone who has made such nice comments about our work on this project. It means a lot.
Cutting and buffing is pretty much done. Might be a few little spots that I need to touch up with the small buffer. There are a couple of small spots that are hard to see where I will need to touch up the paint due to going thru. There was apparently a high spot near the lower edge of the driver's door because there is a 3/16" diameter spot with no paint. It will be easy to touch up this hard to see spot. I also have 2 places on the edge of one rocker where there was a run when I painted the thresholds. Then I painted over that with the basecoat/clearcoat. When I did the cut and buff, the high spots from the run went thru. Again, an easy spot to fix. By easy, I mean that if it is not perfect, it won't matter because it is down low and hard to see.
I want to thank the people that helped me when I posted questions about cut and buff. The comments were very helpful. There was one, in particular, that was extremely helpful from
@Rich G. (https://forum.e-bodies.org/mlist/rich-g_641) His comment was a simple statement that I repeated in my head and aloud many times. "There is a fine line between perfection and disaster." I thought this was a good way to look at it. I tried to make sure I stayed off of that line and I know I sacrificed some perfection to not risk disaster.
I also want to thank a former member of this forum, Mike Ross. He was extremely helpful. He spent 2 hours of his time and paid one of his employees for more than an hour to teach me and my boy how to sand and how to buff the clear coat. He then came to my place several times to check on my work. He also lent me 2 buffers to get me started. This is a man that I had never met before. I have since bought my own and returned his.
In the end, I am thrilled with the job we did painting and buffing the car. It is not perfect, but I knew that it wouldn't be, no matter how hard we tried. You can't paint a car once every 5 years and be any good at it.
Re-assembly starts tomorrow.
I thought it was supposed to be orange :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha:
Just kidding...great looking job :twothumbsup: you guys will have a great Summer cruising around :burnout:
:ohyeah: Great progress so far!
This is a tremendous amount of work you're doing. Very impressive. What great satisfaction you must have seeing it slowly come together one section at a time. And now you're really at the fun part in my opinion. Once everything is painted and clean, and assembling all restored parts onto a clean body, it really gets exciting and you don't wanna stop.
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This is a tremendous amount of work you're doing. Very impressive. What great satisfaction you must have seeing it slowly come together one section at a time. And now you're really at the fun part in my opinion. Once everything is painted and clean, and assembling all restored parts onto a clean body, it really gets exciting and you don't wanna stop.
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This is a tremendous amount of work you're doing. Very impressive. What great satisfaction you must have seeing it slowly come together one section at a time. And now you're really at the fun part in my opinion. Once everything is painted and clean, and assembling all restored parts onto a clean body, it really gets exciting and you don't wanna stop.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This is a tremendous amount of work you're doing. Very impressive. What great satisfaction you must have seeing it slowly come together one section at a time. And now you're really at the fun part in my opinion. Once everything is painted and clean, and you're assembling all restored parts onto a clean body, it really gets exciting and you don't wanna stop.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This is a tremendous amount of work you're doing. Very impressive. What great satisfaction you must have seeing it slowly come together one section at a time. And now you're really at the fun part in my opinion. Once everything is painted and clean, and you're assembling all restored parts onto a clean body, it really gets exciting and you don't wanna stop.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Looks great, something to proud of knowing you did the work. Now that the major stress part is over the fun part begins. Every part installed is one step closer to the finish line!
I am glad Mike showed you how to do the job, You can read and get the concept, but there is no better way to learn than an experienced person teaching you hands on. :bravo:
Great work on the buffer.
looking forward to the jigsaw coming together.
So I am WAY overdue in updating this thread. My last posting on it was Feb 2021. A lot has been done since then. I just got lazy in keeping up on this diary. I will attempt to get caught up over the next couple of weeks.
In Feb 2021, After the painting was done, we worked on restoring the dash assembly.
All the gauges were cleaned and tested. The only thing easily accessible with a set of points that I could use to test the tach was my old Massey tractor. The tach worked but read the wrong RPM since it is a 4 cyl.
I polished the clear lens for the gauges.
We restored the light bar. Replaced the green / blue lenses and replaced the bulbs with green LED's.
We redid the wood grain and repainted the openings.
Using a toothpick, the lettering for the heater controls got a little silver paint touch-up.
We have the blue tooth etc radio from Vintage Auto Radio.
Just read this whole thread. Amazing job and great you did it with your boy. Now I'm looking forward to this with my boys!
March 2021 Pedal assembly installed
March 2021 The previous person had replaced the trunk pan. The gas tank fill pipe hole was in the wrong place. Had to rework that.
March 2021 Heater box restoration. I bought the gasket kit from Detroit Muscle Technologies. It was great. One of the biggest problems that we had was the heater core replacement. We went thru several that were made poorly and did not fit. In the end, I did have to make a slight modification to the one that I used.
:clapping:
I'm about to start this on my heater box. Any words of wisdom you learned? Who did you get the heater core from? Do you have any other recommendations for a better core that maybe you found out about after the fact?
Yours looks like it turned out great. I'm hoping for the same result. :cheers:
Stephan Fournier is now retired. :'(
I believe Bob at Glen-Ray radiators also rebuilds factory heater cores at a reasonable price :dunno:
Quote from: anlauto on December 13, 2022, 06:28:23 PM
I believe Bob at Glen-Ray radiators also rebuilds factory heater cores at a reasonable price :dunno:
I replaced mine probably 30 years ago and it let go on the floor after about a month. So, I bypassed it and it has been that way ever since. Will be nice to have it working properly again. Not that I will be driving it much in the cold, but there could be a few times. :D
April 2021 Heater and pedals installed
April / May 2021 Steering column rebuild. The steering column was in bad shape. Thankfully, Cuda Cody did some awesome videos that are on this site. Without those videos, I am certain that my effort to rebuild the column would have been a failure, or at least would have had some setbacks. Instead, the column rebuild was an easy success. Thank you
@Cuda Cody (https://forum.e-bodies.org/mlist/cuda-cody_1) for investing the time to make these videos.
June 2021 Grill restoration. The grill needed a lot of work. The egg crate portion had been previously painted black and red pinstripe was added. The egg crate part was a lot of work to clean up. I used paint stripper twice, then lacquer thinner, then acid wire wheel cleaner. Each time I used a tooth brush in and out of each square multiple times on all four sides. HOURS spent on this. I originally bought the Argent paint for the surround then discovered that the R/T grill should have a black surround instead of argent. The anodized part that goes between the grill and the bumper is supposed to be unpainted, anodized aluminum close to the bumper. Ours was pretty beat up there, so I just painted it black all the way to the edge. I bought the proper rivets to reassemble it. Mike Ross had the proper rivet gun for them, so I took it to him to help me put it back together. He pointed out that I was missing the center support bracket. I made some effort to buy one, but was unable to. I went to Mike's place where he had a complete grill assembly on the shelf. I was able to copy the bracket using a piece of manila folder. I used that template to then reproduce a bracket of my own. The first bracket picture shown here is the one on Mike's grill. The rest are mine.
Nice bracket reproduction!
Mike Ross continues to shine.
Quote from: 340Challman on December 13, 2022, 03:59:05 PM
I'm about to start this on my heater box. Any words of wisdom you learned? Who did you get the heater core from? Do you have any other recommendations for a better core that maybe you found out about after the fact?
Yours looks like it turned out great. I'm hoping for the same result. :cheers:
FYI....I used an aluminium replacement core from Spectra. The first one I got was poorly welded, the second was much better and fit about 90%. Had to be tweaked a bit for the tubes to fit through the housing
Shouldn't this be "Plum Crazy Boys Project Car" :thinking: :P Great job on the grill, great job on everything so far :worship:
Great work and results on this car. It's been fun for us watching. Of course I would be the guy to colour change an FC7 car to orange so I can understand that too. Project cars can seem like they'll never end and it sure is fun to admire the finished product and look back at the challenges they can bring.
We did a lot of work to restore the wiper linkages. We did not take any "after" pictures. All I have are the "before" pics. We bead blasted and paitned everything and replaced all the bushings. I bought a set of replacement bushings from an E-bay seller.
We used this plastic polish on all the side marker and tail light lenses as well as the clear lenses on the dash gauges. When the lenses were badly scratched, we used 1500 or 2000 grit sandpaper, then the plastic polish.
I bought a trunk / tail light wiring harness from someone here ont he forum and long time ago. When we went to install it, we discovered it was for a later model (maybe a 72 I think). The bulb / socket configuration was not right for our 70. I got a great deal on a less than perfect harness from Mike Ross and cannibalized it to rework the one that we had. After I was done, we used the battery charger to check it all out.
The bumper did not line up right when we installed it. The driver's side stuck out by more than a half inch compared to the aluminum trim above it. I put a lot of effort into reworking the bracket so tat it would line up. I assumed that the previous owner who did the trunk pan replacement had not put it all back in the right place. I then observed many cars at the Chrysler Nationals and the Mopar Nationals that had bumpers that were just as poorly aligned. I am wondering if they were often just not perfect from the factory. What I do know is that ours is pretty good now.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who had to rework their LH side bumper bracket! I had to do the exact same thing to get it to line up nicely, but I always chalked it up to previous accident damage on that corner even though it didn't appear to affect the rear crossmember.
Looks good. I'm really watching your progress and attention to detail. :clapping:
We spent a lot of time cleaning up the wiring harness. We removed and cleaned with sandpaper every connection and every fuse terminal. Figured it was easier to clean all this up on the bench rather than fight with problems caused by poor connections.
My wife was not happy when she tried to do the laundry and could not find her bag of clothes pins. They DID however get the job done with the trunk seal. I added the last picture since when I was doing this trunk seal, I was not sure what direction it went.
We got the doors lined up well and the door and quarter glass fitting tightly against the upper weatherstrip. Many of my other classic cars have loud leaky door window seals. I am hopeful that this one will be better. We did this before the headliner was installed, not knowing that the upper weatherstripping had to be installed AFTER the headliner, so the trim and weather strips had to come back off, but in the end, they turned out just as good.
We used Dynamat sound deadener to cover the floor, doors etc. The 6x9 speakers are bolted in with 6-32 machine screws and nuts with locktite. This was a poor way to do this as we will need to take the package tray out in order to service or replace the speakers. That means removing the back seat and side panels to get the package tray out. Let's hope that we have no problems with those speakers.