My '68 Charger resto/build!

[MxRacer855]

At some point, someone replaced the passenger quarter panel in a very poor way. I've seen a handful of really bad ones on here and this one is right up there.

They basically used screws, rivets, and some type of tar/glue. So you could see that was splitting by the door jam.

[MxRacer855]

 

[MxRacer855]

You can see that the only thing holding the panel on the car besides the few screws and rivets was the bondo that I ground off.

The entire panel started lifting right on the body line when that came off.

[moparnation74]

Rivets and screws, lol  I had a 70 500 that someone used a "no trespass" sign as a patch panel.

[MxRacer855]

Getting there...

[MxRacer855]

Rivets and screws, lol  I had a 70 500 that someone used a "no trespass" sign as a patch panel.

Lol, you've gotta love that!! 

Beyond frustrating just somehow... doesn't do a justice.

[MxRacer855]

After we sand blasted the entire rear undercarriage and primed it, we started mocking everything up.

The order is definitely off. Remember, I didn't know which direction I was going at this point, but new the whole car was going to get sandblasted. Unfortunately, I no longer had my old 8 & 3/4" rear end to throw on and bring to the sandblast shop, and I didn't want him to sandblast around my new, powdercoated one, so I basically had to spend a million hours sandblasting the whole bottom of my car myself (to perfectly clean metal), while laying on my back. 

Anyway, so we primed the back half first, and did the front half after.

[MxRacer855]

Different view. All of the new metal sure does make me happy! 

[MxRacer855]

Here's the new Dana 60 all mocked up.

I'm NOT sticking with the traditional leaf setup anymore. We're going to Reilly Motorsports 4-link and AlterKation kits. 

[MxRacer855]

Mmmmmm

[MxRacer855]

Shortly after, the torque boxes and subframe connectors went in!

We used stuff from U.S. Car Tool. Great fit for a great price.

[MxRacer855]

The Subframe connectors.

[MxRacer855]

Here's where the Subframe connectors attach to the torsion bar cross member.

[moparnation74]

Love every ounce of this project Great work!!

Ohhh that Dana

[The70RT]

Looking good 

[MxRacer855]

Thanks MoparNation! I'm glad you're enjoying it so much. I'm trying to be as detailed as I can. I think I've got most of the "trash to treasure" stuff out of the way as far as the body goes... but now it's going to get into the cool stuff!  

Looking back, I didn't realize how much I could tackle. I didn't have the greatest job at the time. Now things are much better and I wished we replaced things like the entire driver side quarter, and the torsion bar cross member altogether... but we hit every bad spot and patched them all, and I think it really turned out pretty good!  

I'm new to this and this is my first rodeo, so I hope it at least looks okay!  

Jeff

[MxRacer855]

Now it's time to pull this 440 and 727.

[MxRacer855]

 

[MxRacer855]

Look at the spider web of wires.

[MxRacer855]

Motor and trans are officially pulled!

I had to get a pic of me sitting in the empty bay. 

If you look closely, you'll see that I cut out the upper portion of the radiator core support. Since the car is an R/T clone, it originally came with a 383. The core support was only 24". Since we're putting in a big hp motor, I needed to throw in a 26" core support to really get everything out of the 26" Be Cool rad I threw in. I'll show more pics of the core support process (if I have them, lol).

[MxRacer855]

Really starting to fill the garage up now. If there's one thing I've learned about restoring a car, is that you need a BIG area to work in with lots of space!

[MxRacer855]

At this point, most of the metal work is done at this point. The new AMD 26" core support is back in. 

[MxRacer855]

Better view.

[MxRacer855]

Here's a few pics of pulling the dash and everything behind it. I made sure that I took plenty of pics of this because I wanted to have them for a reference when it came time to put it all back together.

Just a lot of mild surface rust. We've already blasted and powder coated most of it.

[Charger-Bodie]

Very cool car and awesome build thread! I may have missed it,but what combo are you planning? Color etc.