70 Challenger going Plum Crazy

[Dakota]

While I've had doctor-ordered time in a chair, I finally (hopefully) finished what's been a 6+ year wandering journey on making a decision on what wheels and tires to put on the car.  To all of you who posted pictures and size info on your wheel and tire choices in the sticky thread, all of you who were kind enough to respond my many PMs and emails requesting details, and those who helped put together the spreadsheet that's been here and on c-c.com, thank you thank you thank you.  All of that really helped me move forward with confidence. The highlights are these:  Boyd Junkyard Dog wheels and Nitto 555 tires.

I will post pictures and the details once I get them on the car (and I start breathing regularly again once I see everything fits).  For now, this emoji dance will have to do....

[JS29]

 

[Dakota]

I did a quick test-fit of the new wheels and tires.  I'm happy.  Lots of work to do on height adjustments.  The back axle has jack stands under it.  The front wheel is hanging free.  And yes these are for the other side of the car based on the tire rotation arrow.

I've got exactly 1/2" of exposed stud.  As best I can see online, that's adequate for 1/2" diameter studs.  If I'm off base here, please correct me.

[Dakota]

For the most part, I've been very happy with the quality of the work done when I had my car painted which included re-installing all of the exterior trim.  This is an exception.  I wanted to replace the rubber gasket on the side view mirror.   After about 1/2 turn on the front screw, the screw fell out.   It turns out if was only held in by a wad of Bondo. 

The proper sized hole for a nutsert was already there, so I bought a installation hardware kit on eBay.  The threads in the hole for the rear screw were also buggered up a bit so I drilled it out with a step bit.  I used an impact driver with the appropriate sized hex bit mounted in a socket to put the squeeze on the nutsert (this was alternative to buying the nutsert installation tool at Harbor Freight).     It's all back together again. 

I'm trying to be happy I found it this way instead of the mirror popping loose and scratching up the paint.

[RUNCHARGER]

Good job, that's hard on the nerves with a finish painted car.

[Dakota]

Another little fix involved repairing the button used to release the driver side seat latch.  Both of the rivets that hold the button on the side cover had broken at some time in the past.  A pair of holes about 3/16" deep were drilled, and then a Dremel was used to shorten a pair of 8-32 screws.   The holes were filled with epoxy and then everything was reassembled and clamped overnight.  Should be good to go from here.  The passenger side is shown below for comparison.

[JS29]

  On both repairs. 

[GoMangoBoys]

Awesome work.  Thanks for sharing this.  I have both of these repairs in front of me in the very near future.

[Dakota]

As mentioned in a separate post, I had trouble pulling out the timing gear shaft on my rebuilt 340 ahead of priming the oil system.   The short version of a long story is that I ended up dropping the oil pan and oil pump so that I could nudge the shaft out from below.  I eventually found a strong magnet that worked to pull the gear from the top too.   I have primed the oil system a couple of times before without any issues removing the gear shaft.

I wanted to make sure that I could get the initial timing set before putting the pan back on.   The gear shaft wouldn't drop all the way down with the oil pump installed even with rotating the engine manually.   With the pump off again and a little downward pressure from the distributor applied by my wife, after a couple of tries we were able to get the distributor all the way in with the rotor in the right spot to be 16* BTC on #1.  With the distributor clamp in place to keep the gear shaft and distributor from raising up, it was a simple matter of partially engaging the gear shaft on the oil pump and then rotating the pump into position to be bolted back in place. 

Yeah, this was a completely bass ackwards way of doing things but at least it's done.

As for priming the oil system, I'm not going to do it again before starting the engine.  With the windage tray off I got a good look inside the engine.  I could see that the break-in oil had been spread around pretty well from the past priming efforts.   For a little added insurance, I sprayed some Comp Cams Valve Train Assembly Spray onto all of the cam lobes.   The spray stream is very tight so it was surprisingly easy to hit where I was aiming. 

[Dakota]

I also want to do a shout-out to @Chryco Psycho for coaching me through a long list of questions I wrote him about the timing settings for my 340.   Those of us that are going through a car project for the first time are truly fortunate to have people like him able and willing to help.

[anlauto]

He's da man when it comes to all things mechanical 

[Chryco Psycho]

You can see the wear pattern on the lobes so I would bring up the rpm & get some oil moving around but the cam has already been run in so no need to do a 20 min break in run 

Glad to help as well 

[Dakota]

The issue of working in a garage in Buffalo is usually in the winter because of the cold.   This past week it was the heat - 97 degrees today!  But work I did and work I must if I'm ever going to get this thing finished.

Spent some time on the exhaust.   Ideally the tips would be up just a little higher but this is the best I can do with the brackets I have on hand.   I'm pretty happy with it.

[Dakota]

Also made a bracket to hang a carbon cannister to which the tank and fuel neck vents will be tied into.   This is an AC Delco cannister with a connection point for the vent tubing and another one for the purge line.   I've got a vacuum control valve that I'll be adding shortly that'll use a small ported vaccum (normalluy for distributor advance) to open and pass the fumes from the cannister into the same vacuum line that the PCV will using off the FiTech throttle body.

The cannister is held on the bracket with a pair of large hose clamps.   I glued a small amount of padding between the bracket and the cannister to provide space for the bolt heads (managed to miss that in my "planning" stage).   The bracket is mounted on the engine side of the body panel that's behind the headlights.   As shown in an earlier post on this thread, my MSD box is on the other side of the panel.   The two hoses for the canister are routed between the K-member and the splash shield.   I still need to make a small bracket to hold the hoses against the wheel well.   This bracket will probably hang off the end of the bolt by my thumb in the 3rd picture (the bolt is for the heater water valve).   All of this stuff is pretty tight but I didn't want to make any extra holes if I can avoid it.

[Dakota]

While working with the taillight harness, I ran my hand on the underside of the seam where the rear quarter joins around the trunk lid.   Hmmn. Kind of rough.   It was disappointing to see some rust in this area that wasn't addressed when the car was sand blasted.   I'll get some Rust Encapsulator on it to slow it down. 

This was the first time in the 8 years I've owned the car that I ever looked in this area, so a word of advice for those of you about the get your car sand blasted:   look here too!