My '68 Charger resto/build!

[bull]

70 seats and door panels. You keeping those or going back to 68 stuff?

[69wannabe]

Great looking car to start with for sure!! I'm not a big fan of the green but the car looks great that color. Are you going back with that same color?? The vectors look good on there too!!!

[MxRacer855]

Vinyl top is going. I may come back to it down the road, but for now, we welded the trim holes up. The entire car will be gloss black with dark grey/Charcoal R/T stripes! I'm searching for '68 seats as we speak. They told me they were out of a challenger, I had no idea they were '70 Charger seats. As for the door panels, I DIDN'T realize those weren't '68 panels. I'll definitely replace those as well.

[MxRacer855]

Well... here is the car as we speak...

Even though this is jumping ahead of my chronological posting order, here is my car as it sits at the shop right now. This is after all of the metal has been replaced, all bracing was fabricated in (torque boxes, SF connectors, reinforcement plating in the rocker panels, etc). Most of the stuff is all AMD.

They just keep blocking and blocking the car. 

[MxRacer855]

Rear view

[MxRacer855]

Front view

[cazz]

LOOKS GREAT 

[moparnation74]

Coming along well!  Great work!

[MxRacer855]

 

[bull]

The door panels are a 70 design pattern anyway. Both they and the seats have been customized with two tone but they look the same as 70 panels. People got pretty creative back in the day, for lack of a better word.

[MxRacer855]

So this is how bad the bottom of the car was when I pulled the original 8 & 3/4" rear end. I started chipping away at the undercoating and found a few problem areas. It started with the perches needing to be replaced. That branched out to the trunk floor, then to the floor extensions, into quarters.. and just made its way through the rest of the car!  

[MxRacer855]

The door panels are a 70 design pattern anyway. Both they and the seats have been customized with two tone but they look the same as 70 panels. People got pretty creative back in the day, for lack of a better word.

They're really in great shape. I rebuilt the seat tracks and a few other things on them. We powdercoated all of it for durability and a great look. I'll put them back on if I don't grab an original pair by then. Remember, nothing was really original on the car when I bought it. It's an "R/T" clone, but I wanted that. The reason being was I wanted to build a car my way with a good mix of modern and old stuff and NOT feel bad about it. Kind of a pro-touring car, but keeping the "old school" look with modern performance.

[MxRacer855]

You guys have to love the inside of this passenger quarter! Ever heard of... "Bondo"

[MxRacer855]

This is how and where my car sat when the project began in October of 2013 (last time I drove it)! We were only going to swap out the rear end and repair/replace a bad perch! 

Notice the confined area as my mom still wanted to pull her car in the other spot for the winter.

[MxRacer855]

Here's the old 8 & 3/4" rear end we pulled. It had highway gearing. 2.76 I believe... Axle seals were blown, drum brakes were shot, and the diff gears were missing teeth.
I was really happy to replace this with a Strange 60.

[MxRacer855]

Here's the Strange Engineering Dana 60 that I'm putting in it. It has 35 spline axles, a sure grip setup, Wilwood rotors and calipers, 3.73 gearing, and is powdercoated black.

[MxRacer855]

This is how bad the bondo was and the rot on the bottom of the car. When we were working on the trunk floor, we realized that the corners that tie the rear valance to the quarters weren't even there. They literally formed corners out of bondo. All structural integrity was gone, basically everywhere on the car. If the 440 that was in it wasn't as mild as it was, and the rear end gearing NOT as mellow.. it would have pulled the car apart.

[MxRacer855]

So, since we were replacing the rear valance, cross member, both rear corners, parts of the quarters, trunk floor, perches, and floor extensions... we just began hacking away at stuff after it was braced. Thankfully, my good friends uncle (who's been a metal fabricator for a living for the last 35 years) helped me take on the task!

Here was the first real dent we made, taking a dead blow hammer to the inside of the corner. The piece just flew right out on the first hit! That's how bad it was all held together. There really wasn't any metal connecting it at all! 

[MxRacer855]

Here's a shot of the rotted cross member and valance.

[bull]

This is what my headliner looked like in 05. The door panels matched it.

[MxRacer855]

 , pretty wild!

[MxRacer855]

This picture should show the severity of the Bondo on parts of the car. this is the rear valance.

[MxRacer855]

Drivers side of the trunk floor

[MxRacer855]

Passenger side of rotted trunk floor

[MxRacer855]

Here's when we started cutting the trunk floor out.