1973 Challenger Rallye JA5

[Burdar]

Most people from CC.com have seen my Challenger already.  I decided to post the pictures here because while I was building this car, I was motivated to work on it by looking at everyone else's projects.  It can be a very long and frustrating experience when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and when you haven't done anything like this before.  This was my first restoration project.  I definitely did some things the hard way and would change some things now looking back.  For those of you who haven't seen this before, this is the story...

In the fall of 1972 my dad was in the market for a new car.  He was pretty sure he wanted a Challenger but test drove a blue 72 Cutlass to keep his options open.  I guess he wasn't very impressed because he ordered a new Challenger shortly after.  He ordered a 73 Challenger with the Rallye package. Dark silver metallic paint(JA5), black interior and a black vinyl top.  He opted for the standard engine(318) and the auto trans.(with console)  Dad has never been a guy to want a lot of extras so the Challenger didn't have much in the way of options.  The car has a single drivers side chrome remote mirror, AM radio with rear speaker, the light package, full underbody undercoating with hood insulation and road wheels.

The car was built in mid October of 72 and he took delivery a couple weeks later.  When the car came in, it had a broken side marker light and side louvers that my dad wasn't expecting.  The Rallye package got you the louvers.  If you didn't want them, there was a delete code.  Apparently no one at the dealership knew this so the car was built with them.  According to dad, the dealership took a few bucks off the price because of the mistake.

Picture of the car when it was new.  Parked out in front of my grandparents house.

[MOPAR FANATIC]

  Was one of my favorite builds of all time burdar and you did one awesome job on the car itself and also the step by step and posting of pics on the build.one of the nicest '73 challengers out there IMO.

I was also following your build on the vert,for quite awhile also until I quit going on the net.how is that car coming by the way,knowing you it's coming out fantastic,how about some latest updates on that also. 

Dave.....

[Burdar]

In 73 dad was on a construction crew that had him driving to multiple states day after day.  The Challenger served daily duty and with a trip to the east coast and back it racked up over 30k miles within the first year.  In 74 dad bought a new Dodge maxi van so he had more room for his tools.  July of 1975 my parents got married.  The day before the wedding, dad's brother washed the Challenger for him.  That's when this picture was taken. 



Over the next 8 or 9 years, the car would be driven another 60k miles.  By the late 70's the car was rusting pretty badly from long Iowa winters.  Dad had a couple young guys bondo it up and shoot it with another coat of paint.  This is when the original strobe stripes were removed and shorter, solid stripes were installed.  The solid stripes are what I remember being on the car.  By the mid 80's, the car was retired to a corner of the garage.  The car sat in the garage until around 93 when we started trying to get it road worthy again.  The starter and carb were rebuilt.  The exhaust was replaced and extra leaf springs were added to fix the sagging rear.  I started driving it in 94 and put around 3k miles on it.  When I took the car apart in the late 90's, the car had 96k on the clock.

A couple pics of the car in the mid 90's.

[Burdar]

The Dart is slowly coming along.  Cody said it would be OK to post progress pictures of it on this site.  I'll probably start a post about it once I get a few more things done.

[Burdar]

Body shop horror stories are all too common.  This car was no exception.  I think it was around 95 when I sent the car off to have new quarter panels installed.  I didn't know anything about cars at the time.  I didn't know how flakey some auto body guys could be.  To make a long story short, the shop had the car for around a year and half.  They overlapped the quarter skins and smoothed everything out will buckets of filler.  The valance seam was just mudded over, flat pieces of sheet metal were welded over holes in the trunk and metal was welded over the non existent frame rails.  Obviously this all had to be cut out and done again.

[Cuda Cody]

One of my all time favorite builds!!!!    looking forward to watching your dart come together.

[RUNCHARGER]

Great thread Burdar. This will be good inspiration to those who are in the throes of finding more rust in their project cars right now.

[Burdar]

That was my thought too.  I know a few people on here have big projects on their hands.  It might be nice for them to see that another one with rust issues came out OK.

[Burdar]

Well, after the car came back from the body shop(I use that term lightly) I pretty much started tearing it apart.  I labeled a few things but overall, I just threw nuts/bolts in a large bin and was very unorganized.










This is basically how the car sat until about 2006 or 2007.  My family moved and the car was transported about 100miles south.  It spent about a year in a storage unit until dad could built a small shop at the new house.

[Burdar]

I found a shop that did some sand blasting on the side.  It cost about $200 to have the engine compartment, jambs, interior, trunk and underside blasted.  At the time, this looked like a lot of rust.  I've seen way worse since then.  Still, it needed a lot of work. 

[Burdar]

After the car was blasted, it sat for a year while I looked for someone to do all the metal replacement.  I found someone about an hour away who did really nice work.  While waiting for him to finish a couple other projects, an opportunity came his way that was too good to pass up.  He ended up selling his business and moved to Ohio to run another restoration shop.  I was initially pretty  but I talked to him at the Mopar Nats in depth about the situation.  He still wanted to work on the car so arrangements were made to ship the car to Ohio.

[Burdar]

Here are a few pictures I found interesting once the car was disassembled.  Dip line clearly visible...


Some sort of writing on the inner door frame.  Couldn't make it out...


61 written on the under side of the hood.  This one I put back with a tire crayon.


Large identification number written on the floor pan.  It was probably the top piece in a stack of floor pans while at the factory...

[Brads70]

Lopts of great reference picture for future restorers! Funny how your trunk pan was in such good shape as compared to other area's. Usually the truck pan is the first to rot. 

[Burdar]

The center part of the trunk was in perfect shape and was saved.  The trunk drop offs were obviously junk though.  Right above the leaf spring shackles, the trunk was rusted through.  The frame was swiss cheese there as well.  It would have been easy to weld in a couple patches but the "shop" who worked on it originally, just slapped huge sections of metal over the area.  You can even see grinder marks where they cut through the trunk floor.  That area of the trunk was in good shape.  They just destroyed it with a grinder for some reason.

A friend of mine had an old two piece trunk floor that he wasn't going to use.  He bought it when that was the only option available.  The one piece floors came out and that's what he used instead.  He donated the two piece trunk floor to the project.  The body shop cut up those panels and replaced the damaged sections over the rails but saved the original center section.

[Cuda Cody]

Super cool photos.  I wonder what the number on the floor was for?     Didn't @ScottSmith_Harms  just find a similar number on a floor pan?