Tav 1970 Challenger

[cataclysm80]

Let's take a stroll down memory lane.   
Can you remember what it was like back when you didn't know anything about what you were doing, and didn't have any of the right tools or parts to get the job done?
We all had to start somewhere...

I graduated high school in 1998 in Kansas. Fresh out of high school, I knew I'd need a job, a place to live, and a vehicle. About a month after graduating, I found a job halfway across the nation in Florida with an empty house on the work property. Solved all my immediate problems, job, place to live, walk to work. I worked hard, and after two years I bought the property along with the one next door. Now I run & manage the business for the owner who is semi-retired.

I didn't really know much of anything about cars, but I did know that I could teach myself to do just about anything I wanted to do. I'm not bashful about trying new things.

Traditionally, my mothers side of the family has always liked Fords, while my fathers side of the family leans towards Chevrolets, but just regular vehicles, and I never really hung out much with anyone that worked on them, they just drove them. In high school my cousin had a 1969 Mercury Cougar. We had a lot of fun with that! Boys will be Boys. Then one night he flipped it end over end!  After going without a car for a while, he replaced it with a 1966 Mustang. Still a classic car, but a 289 instead of a 351. By the time I finished school, I figured cars were alright, and thought that if I could pick any vehicles in the world that I wanted, I'd have a muscle car, a truck, and any vehicle from the 1930's. (love those curvy bodies) Like I said, I didn't know much at all about vehicles, but after moving to Florida, I'd been to the Don Garlits museum of Drag Racing, and after seeing that, I figured a 426 Hemi was the engine to have! I hadn't yet realized that it only came in Mopars. So I was thinking maybe I'd like a muscle car like a 70 Chevelle, perhaps white with black stripes, and a Hemi under the hood.

In December of 1998 after moving to Florida, my Great Grandmother passed away. I went back north for the funeral and while I was there, since I'd saved a little money, I looked around for my first car. I found a 1948 Chevy truck with straight six, and a 1970 Challenger with a V8. I guessed I could drop a 350 into the Chevy truck. Neither of the vehicles ran, but I figured that was alright since I could walk to work, I'd have time to fix it up like I want. Tough choice on which one to get, but it turned out that the 48 truck had an enclosed drive shaft which would require a full trailer instead of a car dolly to get back home to Florida. I didn't have the money for a full trailer, so I brought the Challenger home. $500.

It looked a little rough. Someone had tried to make it look like a T/A. Screwed a metal scoop onto the flat hood with thick bondo around the edges, MAS racing fiberglass universal cuda/challenger trans am spoiler screwed on the decklid, woven boat fiberglass added to the rockers and lower quarters as some kind of rust preventative, and a backyard sublime paint job with flat black painted on T/A stripes, and flat black hood, tailpanel, grill. Real poor prep work and masking on the paint, even had a little sublime on the end of the dashpad. Also put in a Mopar electric ignition conversion, headers with glass pack mufflers, rear air shocks, and removed the AC compressor and lines. Missing the passenger bucket seat, drivers door panel, and egg crate from the grill, mismatched wheels, no battery, and the wiring had been chopped on a lot. It came with a wiring diagram, Year One catalog stuffed with receipts and an old speeding ticket. The car had been owned by a guy named Brian. Brian had the drivers front floor pan and trunk floor replaced by a shop, but couldn't pay the shop. The shop stopped work. The panels were welded in, but left unpainted bare metal. The shop took the car from Brian with a mechanics lien and sold it at auction. A local guy named Bob bought it. Bob likes cars a lot, especially Mopars. He buys them up whenever he finds a good deal and stores them at friends houses, etc. anywhere he can find a space. He's like a car pack rat, he's got cars hidden all over the place. Unfortunately he never seems to have the money to fix any of them up because he's always buying another car. Bob stored this Challenger at Pedro's shop. After 5 years Pedro was planning on moving to a new shop and kept telling Bob to come get the car or he was going to sell it or leave it for the new owners. Bob never came. Pedro took some parts off of it for his sisters Charger, sold me the car for $500 and promised me he'd get me a title through a mechanics lien. Being a first time car buyer, I didn't know any better, so the car came with me to Florida.

Well, it was time to learn something about cars. I picked up a few mopar magazines, a Chiltons 65-72 Barracuda Challenger book, bought a battery, starter relay, and someone gave me an old test light. I cleaned the car up, looked over what I had, and studied the wiring diagram. Starting at the battery, I went over every wire in the car. That took a lot of long nights and some electrical tape. In the end, I cut off a lot of extra wires that had been added on for who knows what, spliced on a new tail light socket, reconnected the horn relay, jumped across the fried ammeter, shorted the neutral safety pole of the starter relay to ground so that the engine would turn over, and connected the green wire on the electronic ignition as shown in the Chiltons wiring diagram.

I got a new air filter, put some gas in the car, and changed the oil. I found some of those old cardboard oil cans with the metal top and bottom. Different brands, and maybe viscosities, but I used them anyway cause that's what I had. (wish I would've sold them as collectibles now, but oh well.)

Well, I needed and got a new starter, and replaced the neutral safety switch so that I could hook up the starter relay correctly. The neutral safety wiring plug was fried, so I spliced one on from a Plymouth minivan in a junkyard. The guy at the parts counter will tell you it won't interchange because the wires are different colored, but I tried and it fits & functions fine. Now I could get the car to turn over, but it just wouldn't start. I put in a new distributor, cap, rotor, and plugs, but no difference. I fiddled with the dual vs. single ballast resistor quite a bit, and replaced the ECU, no difference. Thoroughly discouraged, it was after 10:00 at night when I got through to year one tech support. The guy there told me to cut the green wire to the ECU and tape it out of the way. I still don't quite understand why you'd have to do something different from what the wiring diagram says, or how he knew what my problem was, but it worked. Finally the car was running.

After a few days looking over the car, checking the trans fluid, tire air, etc., I took it over to the neighbors house about a mile up the road, and up to the local corner store. The key got stuck in the ignition. You could start the car and turn it off, but the key wouldn't come out of the switch. The next night I took the steering column apart to see what was going on. When I got it apart I saw that the spring on the steering column lock was out of place. I put it back together properly and tried it out a few times. When everything looked OK, I put the column back together. It worked for a couple days, then the key got stuck in the switch again. Next I took the column apart again and saw that the spring had come off the steering wheel lock again. Fed up with taking the column apart, I removed the steering wheel lock, bagged and tagged it, and put the column back together. Luckily I didn't have the problem again after that. It wasn't until a couple years later that I learned the problem was actually caused by the missing 70 only column lockout linkage. My problem had nothing to do with the steering wheel lock, that was just coincidence.

Keep in mind that all my car work was done late at night after dark parked in the grass with a trouble light in one hand.

At work we were clearing the property line to build a fence and had piled a lot of brush up to light on fire. The brush pile was behind a building, but a good distance from the building. We started the fire, and it wasn't too long before two firetrucks showed up. A neighbor had seen the smoke above the building and called in that the building was on fire. (The neighbor didn't bother to come tell us about the fire, or they would have seen us standing around it.) So the fireman came back next to the fire with us and helped me push the Challenger out from behind the shed where I kept it so that it would be a little further from the fire. The firemen liked old cars, so we talked cars for a while, then we talked hunting dogs, then they told us that next time we have a fire make sure we're drinking beer.     That would make the fire recreational and then they wouldn't be able to fine us or anything like that. They let us off with a warning this time. Good thing, I wasn't old enough to drink beer yet.

The next morning, there was a female peacock in the tree above my car. Someone tried to take a picture of it, but you can't really see her because she's brown, so they gave the picture to me. Here it is. This is the first picture I have of my first car. You can see the charred ground over behind the shed. The car doesn't look to shabby from this far away, but up close it looked like someone washed it with a wire brush.

[cataclysm80]

It was at this point I realized taking pictures was a good thing...

Here's a shot of under the hood.

[cataclysm80]

The next thing I learned how to do was decode the fender tag.

318 2 barrel engine
A904 auto trans
base model Challenger hardtop
318 2 barrel engine
1970
built in Hamtramck Michigan
EF8 Dark Green Metallic top & bottom
Green Vinyl Bucket Seats
Scheduled Production Date August 26 1969
console
bucket seats
drivers chrome remote control racing mirror
air conditioning
drip rail moldings
AM radio
V7F pinstripe
built for USA
26 inch radiator
EN2 (many years later I found out EN1 = built on assembly line 1 at Hamtramck, EN2 = built on assembly line 2 at Hamtramck, END = built at LA plant. This # corresponds with the first digit of line 1 on the broadcast sheet. Some people claim it indicates working shift car was built during and not assembly line #. I guess those people think the LA plant only worked one shift? LA build sheets start with a "0". The LA plant had 1 assembly line, and the Hamtramck plant had 2 assembly lines.)

[cataclysm80]

By then it was November of 1999. Being as I was walking to work, it was a bit difficult to get around. I still hadn't received a title for the Challenger from Pedro, so it wasn't registered with plates or insured, hence not exactly driveable.

Up to this point in my life I'd only ever seen one other Challenger besides mine. It was back in middle school. I used to pass by it walking home from school. It was a dark green car, sort of plain but in pretty good shape, nice paint etc. It just sat in a driveway up by a house that I walked by. I only noticed it because it was an old car, not newer like all the others. I went up the driveway and walked all the way around it once, but that's it.

There's a BIG car show down here in Daytona Beach every November called the Turkey Rod Run. It's 4 days Thanksgiving weekend at the International Speedway. 5,000 + cars in attendance every year. I had never been before, but was really looking forward to going, hoping to get a good look at another Challenger. I had a lot of questions, and it seemed like the only good way to answer them was to have a thorough look at another Challenger. There's a big swap meet too, and I had some money saved up for parts if I got lucky enough to find any.

I went to that show all 4 days and still didn't see all the cars. Sensory overload. I had to learn to scan down the rows and only walk down one if it had something I wanted to look at. E bodies have unique flush mounted door handles. That helped to look for those. Of the approximately 5,000 cars, I think I saw about 20 E bodies. (These days there's usually only about 5-10.)

At the swap meet I met some guys that specialized in Mopar parts, which was a great find. One of them has an old Mopar specific junk yard about 3 1/2 hours away. If I could find a way to get up there, I could go look at another Challenger anytime I needed to. While I was there, I managed to buy...
a smashed up grill that I could scavenge the egg crate out of,
right & Left black door panels (one of mine was missing and the other one was green),
both kick panels (mine were missing),
a repaired taillight lens (mine was missing a corner),
a door lock tab,
the passenger inside door handle (both my handles were missing),
the 70 Challenger only curved plastic trim that goes around the bottom left corner of the dash (mine was missing)
and a power disc brake setup which included no spindles, no rotors, old used brake hoses & pads, only 1 caliper (it turned out to be stuck), and a brake booster.

Later, while putting the door panels on the car, one of the little square white plastic sliders in the horizontal window track broke. Well, I couldn't leave the window down with it parked outside, so I made my first parts order. Using the catalog that came with the car, I called Year One and ordered the window slider listed (but not pictured) in their catalog. When it showed up, it was a large green rectangle slider for the vertical track. It was the only type of window slider available. I still have it uninstalled in its little Year One bag. Perhaps one of these days I'll try out their no questions asked return policy, tear off the little return label on the invoice, and send it back. I went down to the local junkyard, rummaged through cars until I found the slider I was looking for, broke it prying it off, found another, got it, took it home and put it all back together with fresh grease. The new slider was round instead of square, but the inner & outer diameters were the same, and it worked well.

I also removed the rear interior panels at this point. They were green, but had been painted black. The black paint was flaking off, so I cleaned them up and re-sprayed them black again.

Next I wanted power brakes. It seemed simple enough, just add a power brake booster and a vacuum line right? I unbolted my four wheel drum brake master cylinder. I had to get a new master cylinder because the manual drum brake master cylinder has 4 studs instead of 4 holes, so it won't mount to the booster. When I tried to put the swap meet power brake booster on the car, it wouldn't go because the car had two studs coming Out of the car where the brake booster studs were supposed to go Into the car. I looked it all over, cut off the studs with a hack saw, drilled through what was left, and used a chainsaw sharpener to finish it off because I didn't have a round file. That was way more work than I had intended on doing, but it would have been easier with the proper tools. Using the swap meet parts, I was able to get everything bolted up ok, and went for a test drive around the lake the next day. (not far, total trip about 1 mile.) Not much of an improvement, the brake booster had a vacuum leak.
Similar to manual brakes, but once you started pushing the pedal, you got a slight hissing sound.
Oh Well, guess I won't have power brakes just yet.

still, I couldn't wait any longer. It was time for the first real test drive. Not just a mile around the neighborhood lake, but something a little more significant. I checked all the fluids (except the differential fluid because I didn't know there was such a thing), made sure the tires and rear shocks had air, and away I went. I had my route planned out, about a 12 mile loop on two little used highways connected by one country road ending up back here at home. When I left the oil level was just a little above the full mark. It felt great to finally be out driving my car with the windows down. I was also very nervous though.  Everything went OK. When I got back home I checked all the fluids & pressures etc. to see if I had any problems. Left air shock leaked a little, oil level under the add mark halfway between add and the end of the stick. The oil didn't leak out, it burned it. I needed a new engine or a rebuild if I planned on driving this car regularly.

Someone gave me an their old auto CD player. My original radio was long gone, and a couple others since then I think. The CD player fit nicely in the hole in the dash, regular DIN size, so I installed it. The CD part didn't work, but the radio did. I picked up a universal antenna from Autozone on one of my few trips into town. I used an old 4x10 speaker from an S-10 truck. It wouldn't have fit under the speaker grill, but since my speaker grill was missing anyway, it was better than a hole in the dash. The green dash pad was cracked and was covered with carpety cloth thing that just laid across the top, so you couldn't see the speaker anyway. Maybe I couldn't Drive the car anywhere, but sometimes I'd sit in it at night and listen to the radio. Without a passenger seat it was fairly comfortable to lay down over there.  Someday I'd be able to leave home/work.



December of 1999, It had been a year since I bought the Challenger. I had gotten it running, but didn't want to put much more money into it unless I could get a title and actually drive it around. Turns out Pedro couldn't get the mechanics lien for the title. As an apology he offered me a 318 engine. It had been rebuilt nicely and was supposedly the hottest 318 around. It was in a 1973 four wheel drive Dodge truck that was rolled about 5,000 miles after the engine was put in. Turns out I needed an engine, so...

I took a trip back north to get the engine and track down the Challengers previous owner Bob, and offer him $1000 for the title. He would've rather had the car back, but he didn't have a place to put it, had plenty of other cars around to work on, and couldn't come to Florida to get it. He accepted but said he would need a few days to get the title from his mothers lock box where he kept all his important papers. I spent the time looking around for another vehicle just in case the deal with Bob didn't go through.

What I found was a 1970 'Cuda. FY1 Lemon Twist with black interior, 340 with 727 trans. In 1980 a guy my dad went to school with had bought an AAR without an engine. Then he bought this 'Cuda for the 340. This 'Cuda had been sold to another racer without the engine as a parts car and stored inside for 11 years before the AAR was totaled in a wreck racing. When the AAR was totaled, the 340 engine came back home to this 'Cuda that it had come out of, along with some other AAR parts (trim, spare wheels, etc.). With the engine & car reunited, the car was sold to a chevy guy that wanted to restore it. He had rebuilt the rear end, had the heads done, and cleaned the engine block up and set it out to dry. When he came back the next morning, the engine block had been stolen. He thinks he knows who took it, and that it's racing around circle tracks now, but the police couldn't help much and in the end he found another 1970 340 engine for the car, but had lost interest because it wasn't the matching engine. Car was for sale, $2,500. So I bought it. If the deal with Bob didn't go through, at least I'd have something else cool to work on, and most importantly, the car knowledge I'd already learned would still be applicable.

The deal with Bob went through just fine. I bought the Challenger again that year, for $1,000 this time. And for the second year in a row found myself hauling home a cool Mopar.

Here's the 'Cuda the day I found it...
Nice to find a building full of cars. I was told there was an old Chrysler back there with an early Hemi, but I only had eyes for the 'Cuda.
The 'Cuda is done being restored now. Maybe I'll have another thread for its story someday, but for now I'm going to keep this thread about the Challenger.

[cataclysm80]

After I got them both home...
Yes, this is January in Florida. It's Chilly, but with a Flannel shirt, I've found that some of the best working time is around 1 AM in Januaries. No one interrupts you outside at 1 AM in January.

[cataclysm80]

The same day...
That front tire was too big. It bent the fender lip a little.

[cataclysm80]

With a title, I set about getting the car registered and insured, etc. (The insurance guy was surprised when I listed my driving distance to work as 10 feet.)

The 'Cuda was in decent shape, but wasn't anywhere near being driveable.
I promptly borrowed off the 'Cuda...
4 14" rallye wheels,
a passenger seat,
drivers seat back (mine was missing)
the dash ashtray (mine was missing),
the female ends of the front seat belts (mine were missing,
fuel tank ground strap (mine was broken),
woodgrain console plate (mine was cut on).

That was a big improvement.

I managed to scrounge up 3 of the 72-74 style rallye wheel center caps. I went up to the mopar junkyard and bought another center cap so I'd have four of them. Also picked up a set of gauges to replace my fried ammeter, and the 70 Challenger only curved plastic trim that goes around the edge of the dash by the radio. It was fun looking around the junkyard. My favorite car he had was a 70 Challenger RT/SE dealer demo car from Jacksonville. 383, AC, power windows, cruise control, just loaded, but rusted very badly. He wanted $2,000 for it, but I thought it was too rusty. Now I wish I would have got it. Oh well. Several years later an 18 year old girl from Jacksonville bought it. Her father owns a body shop and they're going to fix it up together. Maybe I'll see it again some day.

I went out and had four matching brand used tires put on the rallye wheels and came home to put them on the car with the 72-74 center caps. With all the parts the 'Cuda came with I was able to round up 19 lug nuts, which was a big improvement over the 12 I had before. (I suggest running 20 lug nuts at all times if possible.  )

At the end of February 2000 with spring in the air, it was time to get that new 318 from Pedro into the engine bay so that I could go drive my car. The new engine was a little stuck from sitting. I could turn it a little by hand, but not all the way around. I decided to open it up and have a look, hone the cylinders, and install new gaskets. I ordered up a gasket set, some new hooker super competition headers (my old headers were rusted through), new plug wires, some kerosene to clean parts with, the honing tool that is used with a hand held drill, upper & lower radiator hoses, bypass hose, heater hose block off caps, oil, transmission fluid, and whatever other odds and ends I thought I might need. It took a while for the headers to get in. Upon disassembling the stuck 318 from Pedro, I found it was actually a 360 with a Mopar Performance purple camshaft! 

Mid March I was at the spring Daytona Beach car show (which is about half the size of the Turkey Rod Run) and picked up a new copy of the 1970 Challenger / Dart Factory Service Manual. I Highly recommend the Factory Service Manual to anyone who plans on working on their own car! It is an essential book, and I think I would recommend it over any other publication.

I took the 360 apart, honed it and put it back together. Learned all about the inside of an engine, and overall it went pretty well. I painted the engine Chrysler Blue like the 318 that came out of the car. That's what was in the car, it must be the right color.

Next, how to get the old engine out of my car, and get the new one in? I found 2 pine trees in the yard that were barely far enough apart that I could get the fenders in between them. Using a ladder, I knocked the bark off the trees & wedged a landscaping timber between them so that they couldn't get pulled together. Then I strung a log chain between the two trees up by the landscaping timber and secured it firmly to each tree. Then I hung a come-along in the middle of the log chain.

I got the car up between the trees and lifted the old engine/trans out. With them out of the car, it was easy to verify that they were the numbers matching engine and trans for the car.

[cataclysm80]

Next I decided to clean up the engine compartment while I had the engine out. Looking back, I think that's how restorations get started. First you take off one part, then you have to take something else off to make it look good next to the first part, etc...

I cleaned all the grease and everything off with kerosene. It didn't look very nice, EF8 with sublime overspray everywhere. I cleaned it up, taped it off, and went over it with the best rattle can I could find. The parts store didn't sell sublime in a rattle can, so I used black. (sometimes I wish I wouldn't have painted it black, so I don't recommend doing that.)

I had been having some problems with the power steering box feeling sloppy and loose and couldn't seem to adjust it properly, so I ordered a new box and put it in after cleaning up the engine compartment. I also tried out a different used power brake booster.

Then it was time to put the new engine in. Wait a minute,...
the 318 drivers motor mount bracket is wider than a 360. I added some washers to take up the slack.
I wonder if I can use the 727 trans from the 'Cuda in place of the 904? Nope, the 727 is about 4 inches longer than a 904, which would make my driveshaft the wrong length. ('Cuda was missing its driveshaft)
The Hooker Super Competition Headers won't go in unless the steering center link is threaded through them. I used the puller that took the pitman arm off the steering box to separate a tie rod end from the center link, threaded it through the header and reassembled. (pickle forks will ruin your tie rod dust seal. Only use the pickle fork if you plan on replacing the tie rod end.)
Now the rear sump truck oil pan is hitting the center link. (Sigh) Had to search the local junkyards and pay $50 for a center sump 360 oil pan with oil pickup tube. Changed out the oil pan with the engine dangling half installed. Removing the oil pump to install the new pickup tube, I took all the bolts out, tried to pull on it, wiggle it, even tapped on it with a rubber hammer, but it wouldn't budge. It was 3 AM and I laid my hands down by my sides exhausted. BAM the oil pump came down on my head! Please be careful.
Got the new used oil pan all buttoned up, and the engine sitting in place finally. Now the new headers are in the way of installing the driver motor mount bolt. I ended up buying a die to thread the bolt all the way up to the head, and installing it from the front.
I got a new parts store transmission mount that didn't want to go on. The 727 mount fit just fine, so I slotted the holes in the new mount to match the 727 holes.
Autozone had their rear transmission seals mixed up in the computer. I asked for the 904 unit and they gave me the 727 one. I took it back and had them give me the one they had listed for 727 and it fit the 904 perfectly. Installed with an old jelly jar, piece of wood, and a hammer. Hopefully Autozone has that straightened out by now.
I had a kinked transmission line and couldn't find the correct fittings to replace it with a new line in any local parts store, so I used some rubber hose and clamps as a band-aid.

After all that was through, I figured I should rebuild the carburetor. I got a carb kit and installed it. Maybe it was my own doing, or maybe it was just plum worn out, but that carb never did seem to run right. It didn't take long for me to decide I wanted nice reliable fuel injection as soon as I could figure out how to do it.

Before starting it up I took out the distributor and primed the oil pump with a drill. I primed and primed, but never got any oil pressure reading on my aftermarket gauge. Finally, I unscrewed the oil sending unit and tried to prime it with the drill again. Oil shot up out of the sending unit hole over the windshield and landed on the roof and trunk lid. I had plenty of pressure, just a faulty aftermarket gauge.

Only working at night, it took me quite a while to accomplish all of this. I kept a rag and a clean empty butter tub over the carb, with the whole compartment covered by a piece of an old tarp when I wasn't working on it. Well, one night it rained HARD. Water puddled on top of the intake manifold and went sideways into the engine through the carburetor shaft, filling up cylinder #8. When it was time to start it up, the engine wouldn't turn over. It was hydro locked. liquid won't compress like air. I took the spark plugs out and cranked the engine to blow the water out the spark plug holes.

I didn't reinstall the old rusty exhaust with glass packs. I just left it with open headers. I never did like those headers much and wouldn't recommend them for any street driven vehicle. It's next to impossible to get out plugs #5 & #7 plus the wires are always getting burned. Also with a tube running under the steering center link, ground clearance is very low. It was about 2 inches on this car, and I kept hitting (and dented them with) a tree root going out of the driveway.

If the engine looks like the front is tilted upward, that's because it is. I hadn't yet realized at this point that the transmission crossmember was bent causing the transmission to sit low and the seats to lean inward.

[cataclysm80]

With open headers, it was LLOOUUDD, and had a resonating quality inside the passenger compartment. It was a little finicky, sometimes it would take a while to start, and other times it would start right up. The open headers would cackle and pop now and then until it got warmed up. In the cool winter nights of 2000 I'd start it up at night in the yard and lay on the hood watching the stars until I felt the hood warm up beneath me. I drove it a little, a couple miles at a time around the neighborhood fairly regularly. Once I took it about 9 miles round trip to fill up the gas tank. That's about it. It just never really felt reliable and I wasn't sure what to do to improve the situation.

I spent most of the next year learning everything I could about all the different Challengers & Barracudas. Differences between models & differences between years. Having one of each in front of me to study and compare helped immensely! I also read numerous books on engine building, both generic & mopar specific, automotive math formulas and the concepts of horsepower & torque, etc. Generally educating myself on things automotive, why they work, and how to choose what is best for your application, why you don't use race parts on the street, etc, how individual parts affect the system as a whole, and on and on... I managed to build up a small library of car info. Bodywork seems to be the area where my knowledge is most lacking.

I also built an overhang around 3 of the 4 walls of the shop seen in the previous pictures. The overhangs have concrete floors and are large enough to get the cars under. It makes for a much better work space, and regular lighting instead of a trouble light.

In 2001 I hired a bodyman to come over 5 days a week and work on my cars. 'Cuda first. I was hoping I'd be able to follow along and learn a few things. He disassembled and worked on the 'Cuda while I disassembled the Challenger. (looking back, I think I would have learned more disassembling the 'Cuda myself. I also would have ended up with more pictures of it that way.)

Also in 2001, I got a 1989 Chevy 1500 long bed extended cab with 375,000 miles on it. I had known the truck since 1994 when the previous owner got it. Finally, Freedom. I could go to the grocery store whenever I wanted. (It currently has about 480,000 miles on it and is being turned into a custom truck. Chevy contacted me around 2007 because they were considering putting it in a TV commercial because it had lasted so long, but they seem to have lost interest when they found out it didn't have an old beat up original paint job.  They didn't want non-stock stuff in their commercial.)

[cataclysm80]

I kind of dig the green & black interior. It's cloth & vinyl, but I think it's done using the factory leather pattern. I guess you'd call it custom or modified. It looked alright with the Sublime & Black paint too. The seats were recovered like this in the 90's. The passenger seat was never finished and that's why it wasn't with the car when I bought it. I found someone in Kansas once who had seen my passenger seat in the corner of a shop with the material sitting on top of it, but when they went back to look for me, the seat was gone. Not sure where it ended up. They brought me back a quarter window weatherstrip, but that's all they could find.

If I wasn't missing the passenger seat, I'd consider keeping them covered like this. Except for a little sun fading on top of the rear seat, they're in good shape.

I like the T/A look and have decided to continue with a previous owners idea of cloning the car into a T/A. I'm not horribly fond of the original EF8 color though. It looks OK when freshly applied, but since this is a clone anyway, I figure I can pick whatever color I want. For a while I was thinking of making it white with black like a T/A, but the Sublime paint grew on me, and I decided to stick with it, so the new paint will be Sublime with black like a T/A.

I'll need all my seat covers to match. I've considered trying to get a new matching cover custom made for my missing seat, but will probably just buy a pre-made set of something that was originally available. With Sublime paint you could get either black or white interior. White sounds a little hard to keep clean, so I'm going with Black Leather.  It will go well with the black stripes and hood.

[Cuda Cody]

   That was really cool getting to read about your history.  Love that you and I both got bitten by the E-Body bug a little later in life.  Love this sentence:  "So I was thinking maybe I'd like a muscle car like a 70 Chevelle, perhaps white with black stripes, and a Hemi under the hood."   I'm sooooo glad you bought the Challenger instead of the truck man!     And look where you are now is amazing!!!!!     You're like a brother from another mother.   

Thanks for sharing your history.  Very cool!!!!  Can't believe how hard core you were to work with a light at night in the grass.   

[wanderlustin]

Wow that was a great read!  I love hearing those stories.  I can relate to the pine tree hoist set up.  A friend of mine and I swept out old dried manure from my parent's drafty old pig barn and made a pseudo shop out of it.  We drug an old cast iron pot belly stove out there and it was the best hang out we could ask for at 19 years old.  Again, great story telling Tavis and really glad to have you on our team!

[J-Code Jeni]

Thanks for sharing your journey @cataclysm80 - & you can tell a great story, btw! 

Your passion for e-bodies combined with your ability to learn makes you such a huge asset to this site! 

[blown motor]

And now we know.....the rest of the story!

What a great story and thanks for sharing it. Good luck with the rest of your restoration.

[70chall440]

Man this read brings back many memories of similar undertakings of my own over the years. You are absolutely right as I am sure most on this forum can attest to; it starts with one simple seemingly innocent effort to fix something that snowballs into a full on build or restoration... definitely have that T shirt.