Front Frame Rail Repair / Engine bay make over.

[Canadian1968]

I pulled the trigger on tearing the front end apart when I discovered my drivers side frame rail was rotted out at the shock tower/ control arm brace.  The condition of the engine bay it self had been bothering me for some time as well. So I dove head first and have the entire front end disassembled, motor removed and engine bay components pulled out.  I should have taken a few more pictures during the tear down but I didn't really think about making a thread about it at the time !

Here are the pictures that I have of as I pulled the motor with the help of a couple buddies from work.  And pictures up to my current state.

[Canadian1968]

Engine Out,  Transmission cleaned up,

[Patronus]

Well, ya gonna smooth it all out or what? 

[fy469rtse]

cleaning up and painting and detailing that engine bay,
will just improve an already nice car ,   keep posting , threads like this will always help the guy's with similar problems to whats involved

[Canadian1968]

last one from today....

[Canadian1968]

Well, ya gonna smooth it all out or what? 

I will probably smooth out some of the big spot welds and anything else major I don't like 

You barely see the mess in the picture , with the motor still in from drivers side.  In the shock / control arm area.  Its just a mess!!
Again in the picture where I started to strip the driver side inner fender, you can see a garbage patch that someone had put in a number of years ago !

I will post some more detailed pictures of what is there/ what is left of the part I need to repair , before i cut it out.  Which a little bit way, I need want to make up some better rolling stands and get the car leveled where I want to start cutting pieces out !!

No body laugh at my jack stands sitting on my tire dolleys !!!   Hey it worked ok!! lol 

[Patronus]

I love doing the engine bay. With motivation it usually happens quite quickly, as opposed to the 18 months of the block. With all the bits/etc. you really make it your own.

[fy469rtse]

we dont laugh at fellow charger members on here 
what ever works ,
i had similar rust and damage in one off my other cars , new rails weren't availiable back then , but i think i still would have repaired just the area like your doing

[tan top]

 

[Canadian1968]

I snapped a few pics of what I found when I went to remove the control arm.   When I tried to hammer the cam bolt out of the control arm bushing, it started to peel back the brace in the center of the shock tower.  That is why its been cut.   Then you can see the top of the rail is pretty much gone and had just fallen inside the rail.  I am hopefully going to try and save the section where the bump stop, flex hose bracket are, but will see when I get it cut out.

Further down you can see where someone has patched where the rail meets the rear bottom splash shield/ rocker attachment. I will be ordering a new piece for that.  The other picture is me leaning over the fender and taking a picture of the other side of the rail from the top. You can see another patch , and where they had welded the brake distribution block to  .

[Canadian1968]

other side patch

[72Charger-SE]

FWIW:  I found that a John Deere Planter Frame is the same (height and width) size (a little thicker steel) as the frame rail in my car (72 Charger).  When I patched an area was almost a perfect fit...   

Total Cost: $2 for the frame part from the local junk yard.   

[Canadian1968]

Well I have not done to much in last 3 weeks I got a horrible cold that kept me off week for a week , and then still made me miserable for the next week and a half !.  I am back on my feet now and was able to get out to the garage to do a bit of work.

I got the car raised up to a comfortable working height, and made sure it was was level.  Then I  took a various measurements to record the placement of the old shock tower.

I got as far as drilling out all the spot welds that hold in the tower, and then called it a day. Next will be to removed the tower and start making templates for me frame repair. !

[fy469rtse]

looking good so far , i like seeing the owners of these cars go the extra mile to repair properly ,
taking shock tower out the way will make the repair to frame rail a lot easier,
shock tower can be repaired out of car and those nice neat spotweld removals will make it a easy one to re in :popcrn:stall 

[Canadian1968]

It took a bit of work but I got the shock brace removed today.

The upper reinforcement brace that goes from the top of the shock brace to the inner fender gave me some trouble as it has been worked on before and had addition welding holding it along with the  factory spot welds. So I was not able to move this out of the way like I should have been which would have made pulling the shock brace easy. Instead had to do some prying and cutting of the brace to get it out, was either that or hack into the inner fender which I did not want to do.   I will have to figure something out for when I put the new one back in.

The metal of the inner fender is very thin it didn't take much to cut threw a bit as I hammering around with seam splitter.  Not to mention the fact that some of spot welds were right on the edge of inner fender itself.  I am going to cut a new piece and replace it.

I can now see down into the frame. I happy to see the bottom still looks very solid and I sure I can save it.

[fy469rtse]

  nasty , but half way now ,
? Goings do the side first then top , or pull the rail , almost to that point , but good work , keep at it 

[Canadian1968]

I took off a section of the top today and scrapped/ vacuumed all the crud that was in there. The bottom part, and K frame anchor area are very solid. This should make things a bit easier as I can leave an original section in for measurement purposes.  I will start on the engine side, top and probably , wheel side last. Then put the new shock brace back in.  I will cut out mangle lip of the inner fender , this will allow me to slide the new tower right in with out the problems I had removing it.  Then final piece will be the inner fender lip, and weld it all together !

[Dmichels]

Looks better now that all the rust is cut out. you will have is welded up solid in no time keep up the good work
Dave

[fy469rtse]

Yep looking good , it won't take long from here,
This is going to ensure this car survives a bit longer, engine bay in paint to match rest ,
No more ford black out engine 

[tan top]

    

[matrout76]

i may have missed it...but the two shock towers look different...

is it just the photo, or are they actually different?

[Canadian1968]

They are the same , well as close as a reproduction will be !  They will look different because I cut the bottom off the old one , there was no sense in trying to take it off cleanly as I knew it was garbage so I just savedy self some work and cut it out .  It also sitting at slightly different angle which may make it look a bit different

[Canadian1968]

Well another productive day out in the garage.  I was able to make up my first template of the inner side of the frame rail. And get it cut out. 

[Canadian1968]

Time for another update.

I picked up my steel . We measured a piece of the original frame  that I had cut out to try and match, of course it didn't have a consistent area to measure with the 40 + years of age. I ended up going with 12 gauge which was slightly thicker than the biggest measurement we could find on the original piece, but my other option was 14 gauge which was under.

I got the template cut out. I just used a simple thin-cut off wheel and my patients. Honestly didn't take that long at all. A couple test fits and a bit of grinding to removed the old welds and make everything line up. 

The break I have access to is not big enough to do the 12 gauge. So to get my 90 degree lip I cut along the seam and left 1/2 gaps. This allows me to bend / hammer it over in the vice.  I then welded up the gaps left by the cuts, worked out great !

[igozumn]

Nice!