SRT-8 Daytona Clone

[DonC1]

lovin' it!

[dyslexic teddybear]

once again, this is incredible craftsmanship

Thank you for the encouragement.

I am surprised you didn't hand craft your own uprights!.......From what I've seen so far it would have been an afternoon project for a man of your skills!,,...LOL

I didn't do that because I am basically lazy.

Nope.

Basically lazy people do not do projects like this.

Suspect you could fabricate the entire car if you wanted to.  

[Daytona Guy]

Yes, without the wing being hollow or open at the bottom, they should be "cupped" on the bottom. Just amazing work.

Dane

[Grim Jhaixus]

...And another insomniac adds a post.

Gotta see how this one goes. I'm not a wingcar guy so much as a mod dreamer.

[djcarguy]

  DJ

[Stevearino]

Still waiting on the side glass so I can finalize my doors so I tinkered a little more with the wing.
I cut through the aluminum trunk floor extensions to expose the  1.5" x 1.5".065 square tubing  that I had welded in to connect the 06 floor pan to the bumper support system. I welded two  1/8" tabs to the tube . This is where I will connect my wing support. I made up some wing washers out of .060 mild steel bending a 1/2" flange around the perimeter so that I could shrink the edges to help fit the contour of the quarter panel. I also ran it a bit through the English wheel to dome the center so that when I tightened the wing down it would not flatten the quarter.

[Stevearino]

The first picture is of the bottom side of the wing washer showing the tabs I welded on to make my connection to the trunk extensions via adjustable rods.
I added some 1/16th double sided foam trim tape to dampen vibration. I left the release paper on as this tape is impossible to remove should I need to remove the wing washers.
I made up 3 adjustable rods so that I would be able to fine tune the tilt of the uprights fore-aft and side to side.
The last picture is of the rods installed.   The main reason for the need to adjust the wing is that my right quarter panel was in pretty bad shape when I got the car and had to be hammered out.  The top surface not being perfect once the wing washers were in place this helped me true the wing uprights.

[dodgedartgt]

Steve,

I just joined this forum so I could add a bit of info for you. First, this is an AMAZING build. You've got much more vision and skill than you give yourself credit for.

I see the challenges you are having with the door side glass. If you'll surf through this thread, the author give info on the source he used for all new glass for hi notchback Barracuda. Since you already have a pattern for the glass, I'm betting they will be worth talking to.
http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=134292  See post #89 on page 4

Hope this is useful,

Mike in FL

[Stevearino]

Steve,

I just joined this forum so I could add a bit of info for you. First, this is an AMAZING build. You've got much more vision and skill than you give yourself credit for.

I see the challenges you are having with the door side glass. If you'll surf through this thread, the author give info on the source he used for all new glass for hi notchback Barracuda. Since you already have a pattern for the glass, I'm betting they will be worth talking to.
http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=134292  See post #89 on page 4

Hope this is useful,



Mike in FL

Thanks for the information Mike. This will give me a good fall back if the glass that is on it's way proves to be unworkable. I would prefer tempered glass but everyone I talked to said the people who were doing this kind of work have new DOT test protocols which has shot the price of this out of reach. But who knows maybe these guys are still doing it reasonably.

[dodgedartgt]

In adding, since the car will be titled as a '68, I just can't see why a piece of glass, ANY piece of glass has to meet other than '68 Federal Standards. Please let me know what they tell you. What I do remember from reading what Michael had written, was that auto glass, least wise side glass, comes flat, and in varying degrees of bend, measured by it's radius.

Also, wouldn't the glass break into the proper size bits, regardless of the final outline it is cut too? Is DOT trying to force a production car standard onto one-off custom work?

Mike in FL

[Stevearino]

From what I was told by a pretty prolific car builder who has built cars that have won first place at Pebble Beach the anealing process is specific to the size of the glass and a number of test pieces must be broken to assure the size of the pieces fit the DOT standard.I imagine that if you were reproducing a piece of glass from a known pattern the specifics of time and temperature would be known. Not so for a one off pattern. He said the company he had been using would no longer do this type of work because of that. He was willing to give me the name of a company in Michigan that still did but they would charge north of $5000.00 for just a yield of two pieces of glass.  
I still intend on calling the folks you suggested if the laminated glass I have coming proves not to my liking. We will see. Thanks again for the contact. I only wish I had heard about them 6 weeks ago before I committed to the laminated glass.

I just took a look at  www.sandersreproglass.com and under FAQ they state that on cars 1965 and beyond they cannot supply custom tempered glass because they do not have the technology to produce custom curved glass .

[Baldwinvette77]

The whole glass thing looks like a bigger pain than i ever would have imagined, i know there are a couple companies that make 1 peice windows for early mustangs, el caminos, things like that, have you tried getting in contact with any to build you some? or even throw them into production for other b-bodies, i remember on a corvette forum, just an ordinary guy donated his 82 corvette to dakota digital gauges, to have custom gauges made, and to have the car used as a prototype to put 78-82 corvette gauge clusters into production... ambitious yes... but so is the rest of your car 

http://www.onepieceproducts.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=OPP6768%20MUSTANG%20F/B

thats one company 

[Stevearino]

The whole glass thing looks like a bigger pain than i ever would have imagined, i know there are a couple companies that make 1 peice windows for early mustangs, el caminos, things like that, have you tried getting in contact with any to build you some? or even throw them into production for other b-bodies, i remember on a corvette forum, just an ordinary guy donated his 82 corvette to dakota digital gauges, to have custom gauges made, and to have the car used as a prototype to put 78-82 corvette gauge clusters into production... ambitious yes... but so is the rest of your car 

http://www.onepieceproducts.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=OPP6768%20MUSTANG%20F/B

thats one company 

Thanks for the link Baldwinvette77. I am not willing to shoulder the start up cost for something like that though. The mopar market is tiny when you compare it with the GM stuff. Compare the numbers of second gen Chargers built (around 240,000.) A sales success for Chrysler and one of GMs biggest failures the Corvair (1.2 million) and you get the idea. I have just gotten the laminated glass in from California and it is heavy by looks great and am looking forward to seeing if it is going to work out the way I want. Lee at Alan Auto Glass told me that after advertising this one piece glass on Ebay I was the only inquiry so B body folks are not exactly knocking down the doors. He said just 60 requests would have justified tooling up for tempered glass. So it is all about the numbers in the end.

[Mike DC]

  
No "custom" glass for "1965 and beyond"?  Who is to say what year of car a "custom" piece is being made for?



This whole thing is weird.  

I can't imagine that a law was recently changed for anything resembling this kind of situation.  I wonder what more common situation was being addressed with it.

[Stevearino]

 
No "custom" glass for "1965 and beyond"?  Who is to say what year of car a "custom" piece is being made for?



This whole thing is weird.  

I can't imagine that a law was recently changed for anything resembling this kind of situation.  I wonder what more common situation was being addressed with it.

I don't know Mike but I have grown weary of chasing this unicorn. I have mounted my laminated glass and it looks good so I am officially moving on.
Let me qualify that. I am in the process of mounting the glass as many of the things that worked fine with flimsy lexan don't quite line up with a piece of rigid glass.  Chop Cut .......

[fez340]

amazing fabrication skills. really enjoying reading and learning about your build 

[Stevearino]

amazing fabrication skills. really enjoying reading and learning about your build 

Thanks for  the thumbs up. It is much appreciated.

Well the glass finally came in and I must say I am pretty pleased with it. It is pretty heavy and right at the limit for what the window motor will handle but the main thing is it is frame less on top and in front and has a clean look to it. Also it is plenty strong and has a positive engagement with the roof and A post seal. As far as the seal is concerned after struggling to get the quarter window to not ride out on it I swapped it out for the secondary or inner seal from the 06 Charger. It is much more compliant and has a finished edge to cover the edge of the head liner. One way or another there will probably be some wind noise compared to a newer car. Not much to be done there. I just hope I can keep water from driving in should I get caught in a rain storm on a drive.
Anyway since this is laminated glass I had to make a channel to capture the bottom of the glass. Initially I tried to use a "U" channel but I wasn't satisfied that it  would be enough to protect the glass. I ultimately got some .060 mild steel and stepped it in a press brake at work to create a two part channel that I could sandwich the glass in.  After I adhered the rear glass trim piece with a new seal I sprayed a little contact cement to stick down some  1/16th"  rubber/cork  strips to pad the base of the glass. I then through bolted the bottom channel on the glass.
  Nearly everything I had done to the inner door up until now had to be cut out and re worked. What was fine for a piece of flexible Lexan was no good for a rigid piece of glass. Took me forever t adjust every thing and line it up with the quarter window but it is in.
  I am not looking forward to trying to get this set once the door skin is on and I have to work blind but that is the nature of these things. If it was easy little kids would be doing this stuff.

[Indygenerallee]

Looking real nice Steve!! 

[Baldwinvette77]

I wanna smack it 

[70-500-SE-EXPORT]

 I got the nose and tail second hand from a guy up in Troutman N.C. who used to work for Ray Evernham and has a tidy little business building General Lees for customers. Over the past few years he has built over 40 of them.

I just found this thread. Nice project! Speaking of that guy you got the parts from in Troutman, NC who builds general lees. He's a certified scam artist. Building Bondo bucket general lees out of junkyard heaps and unloading them on ebay. I was one his victims in 2007 when I knew very little about mopars and bought one of his heaps sight unseen. I paid $15,000 for a 70 that was advertised as a driver. It was far from that. The car was fabricated with pop rivets, road tar, fiberglass, bondo and had one lugnut holding each wheel on and had no brakes. It didn't run the motor was blown. Thank you Mr Bud Cram for stealing my dream of having a general lee!

[Stevearino]

I got the nose and tail second hand from a guy up in Troutman N.C. who used to work for Ray Evernham and has a tidy little business building General Lees for customers. Over the past few years he has built over 40 of them.

I just found this thread. Nice project! Speaking of that guy you got the parts from in Troutman, NC who builds general lees. He's a certified scam artist. Building Bondo bucket general lees out of junkyard heaps and unloading them on ebay. I was one his victims in 2007 when I knew very little about mopars and bought one of his heaps sight unseen. I paid $15,000 for a 70 that was advertised as a driver. It was far from that. The car was fabricated with pop rivets, road tar, fiberglass, bondo and had one lugnut holding each wheel on and had no brakes. It didn't run the motor was blown. Thank you Mr Bud Cram for stealing my dream of having a general lee!

Wow. I only bought a few items from him. I had no idea he was up to that stuff. I wondered how he could build GL drivers for under $20,000.00. I guess that explains how.  Very sorry you had that bad experience. What did you end up doing with the car?

[Stevearino]

Well after many different versions I finally got to where I wanted with the side glass situation in the drivers door. Adjusting it to seal and operate smoothly  was a bit of a nightmare to say the least. I ended up going back to the original 68 seal after all was said and done. I moved everything around so much between the back window and the front I won't be surprised if everything doesn't collapse from metal fatigue. There is definitely a sweet spot where the rear window is just far forward enough and angled in enough to where the front window closes against it just right with out causing friction running it up while still sealing at the top and not leaning too far out when rolled down.
  I ended up cutting the stainless channel that holds the rubber seal so that I could reshape it to better seal bot at the top and at the "A" pillar.  After that was done I re welded the front edge back to it and installed it. The roof edge that I had already welded on when I removed the rain gutter was all wrong at this point and had to be cut back away and a new one fabricated that would properly capture the stainless track.
I primed and painted the inside of the door shell and then prepped the outer skin to finally be attached to the inner. Since I am not running the outside belt moldings I had to re-make the upper rim of the skin to eliminate all of the holes on the top side.
I also had to install some fiberglass honeycomb board just below the door handle location to stiffen it up . This was applied with 3M double sided trim tape. If you ever use that stuff if you'll clean both surfaces with acetone you will have a hell of a time getting it back off.

[Stevearino]

One of the other things I had to do was to make a backer piece for the rear view mirror to strengthen this area. I worked a piece of .060 steel to the shape of the area then stuck it into place with the 3M tape. When the mirror is bolted on this will hopefully reduce any flex in the skin there.
  One thing I did once I got the inner door placed where I wanted it was to drill a couple of 1/8" holes in the hinges so that they would be easier to re-align when re-installing them.
  Finally I attached the skin to the inner door. Pretty satisfying having a solid door back on the car.

[Stevearino]

The window project really made me feel like I was stuck on a one way dead end street. Seemed like whenever I thought "all it needs now is a little tune up" I would find something that would make me go back to square one. To keep up the momentum I decided to fool around with the nose. At the outset I had thought I would build a steel nose and just use the glass one as a guide. I decided that Dane had a pretty good argument about the durability of the glass nose so I decided to just go with it. I needed to come up with a way to hang it on the car so I first installed an "L" bracket at the inside top of the nose. Then I put a "Z" flange on the lower back rim. The idea being that it will hang from the top and then be captured at the bottom.
The next thing I had to do is create a solid mount off of the bumper support on the SRT. I used some .060 steel angle to pick up both front rails of the car and then found bolt up positions on top of the support.
  I built a 3/4" x 3/4" frame that fit the inside back of the nose. I then mocked the nose up so that I could attach the frame to my new supports. The nose hung on quite nicely when all was said and done.

[Stevearino]

As you can see by this picture I decided to glass in the Daytona grill and cut a Superbird style grill in to the bottom of the nose.
This is something I had thought about  since I first saw the two cars. Seems that the Charger got cheated out of the better styling because it was a rush to get it to the track. So I am taking this opportunity to add those few touches that I think made the Bird a better looking front facia. I got some Coronet turn signal lenses from E-bay. A whole lot cheaper than the Bird re-pops at over $200 for two lenses. They should work fine.
  I also went the route that Dane and Daytonalo  took and pushed the nose back to the fenders to eliminate the 1" gap. This does cause some issues with the fenders being wider than the nose but I think I can sort that out.