Rolled the '68 out of the garage to its new home (update 2/28)

[68RT440]

Hey guys. Ive been a member here for a few years now. I visit everyday, but only have a few posts. I thought Id share a couple pics with you guys from earlier today. Heres a little back ground on whats been going on. Back in 2009, I started restoring the Charger for my dad when I was 26 years old. At that point in time I moved back in with my parents because I was living in PA for a couple of years prior while attending WyoTech, so I was getting a career established and saving money to move out. Well the girlfriend (now wife) and I found a house that we wanted, so in 2010 we bought the house and progress slowed down on the Charger. I made it a point to go over to my parent's once a week to work on it as well as visit with my family. Well between hanging out with the family and friends stopping by because they saw my truck in the driveway, it was slow going on the car. However I managed to get a decent amount of work done despite distractions as well as going slow and taking my time since I never restored a car before. I have a ton of pics that show the process, but they are in my dads camera, but Ill post them up one day for anyone that's interested. I ended up putting rear frame rails in the car. There were a few pinholes at the rear, and instead of patching, I elected to find a nice set of clean originals and just replace the complete rails. So I replaced the rails, installed a one piece trunk floor from AMD, fixed the lower inner wheel housings, sectioned in new lower outer wheel houses, new rear cross member, new trunk extensions, new rear valance and valance corners (fun fun) and new CBD full quarters. A couple of years ago my parents bought some land and had a house built. My mom was not a fan of welding and grinding going on in her new garage, so we decided that we would take my Mustang (2003 street/strip toy) to sit at my parents house and bring the Charger over to my house. Ive done all of the work so far in a one car attached garage, and my garage is a two car detached, so I feel spoiled...LOL So a couple weeks ago I fabbed up some dollies at work and bolted them on the car, and today my boss came over and we loaded it up and brought it to my house. It feels good to have it over here with more room and best of all no distractions. First thing that Im going to do is replace the front rails and I have a one piece floor pan and floor pan for under the rear seat. Thanks for looking!

Pulling it out of the single car garage and loading it up onto the trailer:









Snapped a shot going down the freeway. Even as a partial shell the car got a lot of looks LOL:



And finally at my house. Its a 20 minute drive but it felt like an hour. Glad to have it here:







Turned into position to start on replacing the front rails:

[Baldwinvette77]

Im liking this 

[TPR]

Sweet.

TPR

[toocheaptosmoke]

Nice.  Gonna have to get rid of that Chevys only sign.  

[keepat]

Car looks to be in good shape, and having it at home should make for more time to work on it!
Thanks for posting!
Pat

[68RT440]

Nice.  Gonna have to get rid of that Chevys only sign.  

Haha, I usually get flamed for that when I post Mustang pics on the Mustang forums. I put it up as a shout out to my late father in law. He was a die hard Chevy guy, he had a '68 Camaro that he got brand new for a graduation gift and turned it into a 10 second car shortly after. Well as soon as I started dating my now wife, he gave me crap constantly for having a Mustang and a Charger. It was all in good fun. He unexpectedly died of a heart attack and he had that sign in his garage. I figured there would be no better place for it than in my Ford/Mopar garage. He would get a kick out of it ..

[68RT440]

Car looks to be in good shape, and having it at home should make for more time to work on it!
Thanks for posting!
Pat

Thanks, the car wasn't too bad, but there was some bogus repair work done back in the day. Someone put lower quarters on but there was about a foot of overlap where the old ones ended and the lowers started, so there was a big flap in the trunk on both sides, the rear valance was a straight piece of sheet metal and they bonded the shape of the valance in. So rather than doing patch work, I just replaced the entire part. Id say that I have the most time in the rear valance corner area. I want it to look stock in that area, which meant a lot of cutting, wedging, adding metal, subtracting metal, etc. to get it to look right...

[keepat]

Nice.  Gonna have to get rid of that Chevys only sign.  

Haha, I usually get flamed for that when I post Mustang pics on the Mustang forums. I put it up as a shout out to my late father in law. He was a die hard Chevy guy, he had a '68 Camaro that he got brand new for a graduation gift and turned it into a 10 second car shortly after. Well as soon as I started dating my now wife, he gave me crap constantly for having a Mustang and a Charger. It was all in good fun. He unexpectedly died of a heart attack and he had that sign in his garage. I figured there would be no better place for it than in my Ford/Mopar garage. He would get a kick out of it ..

Very cool!

[Dino]

I'm sorry to hear about your dad.  I have no doubt he'd get a kick out of seeing that Chevy sign there.  That was very fitting.

I'm looking forward to your resto thread.

[68RT440]

Thanks, my wife had a really hard time with losing him, but my dad is doing a pretty good job of being a father figure to her...they get along very well and have become close...

[tan top]

 aww man , sorry to hear about you dad !

looking good !! looking forward to seeing more pictures & updates & stuff , as & when 

[Charger_Fan]

Uhh, guys...

Haha, I usually get flamed for that when I post Mustang pics on the Mustang forums. I put it up as a shout out to my late father in law. He was a die hard Chevy guy, he had a '68 Camaro that he got brand new for a graduation gift and turned it into a 10 second car shortly after. Well as soon as I started dating my now wife, he gave me crap constantly for having a Mustang and a Charger. It was all in good fun. He unexpectedly died of a heart attack and he had that sign in his garage. I figured there would be no better place for it than in my Ford/Mopar garage. He would get a kick out of it ..

Looks like you're doing a great job on this, looking forward to future updates!

[68RT440]

Uhh, guys...

Haha, I usually get flamed for that when I post Mustang pics on the Mustang forums. I put it up as a shout out to my late father in law. He was a die hard Chevy guy, he had a '68 Camaro that he got brand new for a graduation gift and turned it into a 10 second car shortly after. Well as soon as I started dating my now wife, he gave me crap constantly for having a Mustang and a Charger. It was all in good fun. He unexpectedly died of a heart attack and he had that sign in his garage. I figured there would be no better place for it than in my Ford/Mopar garage. He would get a kick out of it ..

Looks like you're doing a great job on this, looking forward to future updates!

LOL thank you...

[will]

It's a whole lot easier to walk into your own garage and work on it than it is to go over to the folks. I lived that scenario for close to ten years. Progress was very slow. I am all done ( are they ever ), having it 20 feet from you is more motivation than the 20 minute ride. It took me the better part of a year to do the brakes. But you will have to hurry, because the kids take up more time than anything.

[Sublime/Sixpack]

Good luck with the Charger. Looks like you're doing good work on it.

[68RT440]

Thanks fellas. I need to do as much as I can now because the wife has been talking about kids for the last couple of years. I'm 32 and she's 30, so if it's going to happen its gotta be soon...

[oddis]

sorry to hear about your dad.         

keep up the good work...     and remember, its no problem having toddlers and still have a project car....     you just make it into a father/kid project.  that way you can spend even more time in the garage.. 

[68RT440]

Worked on the Charger for a couple hours toady. It was in the 50's and from what I hear the crap is supposed to hit the fan tonight...near zero temps and snow  , so I figured Id get some stuff done. I ended up pulling the torsion bars, lower control arms, strut rods and the K member out so I can start replacing the rails. This is the first time that this stuff has ever been out of the car, so the torches and PB Blaster came in handy:









Here's why Im replacing the front rails. The drivers side has some holes in it. The inside had about the same size hole on the inside part of the rail directly across from the hole on the outside, and it was previously repaired by welding a plate directly over the hole...nice. Plus both rails are pretty bad in the upper control arm mounting pocket. So rather then try to repair it, Im just going to replace the rails with some nice western rails that we bought a couple of years ago:





Does anybody know what these holes would be for? It loos like cruise control mounting holes, and the guy we bought it from thought that it was a cruise control car, but the car is manual drum brakes and manual steering and I thought power brakes were mandatory with cruise. We don't have a build sheet for the car, just the fender tag:

[68RT440]

Well, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather this weekend and do some work on the Charger. I was out of welding gas, so I got that issue resolved and got some stuff done. I started to make a fixture for the front of the car so I can pull the front rails out. I got it braced enough that I can pull the inner fenders and core support off. I am going to add a few more braces before I take the rails out just to be safe. I need to buy a couple more lengths of tubing to finish the fixture:

Making the fixture:







Grinding the edges to find my spot welds. I suspected some rusty/bonded areas because some spots were smoothed over which were covering the spot welds:





And the passenger side inner fender out. I have a few spots that I need to fix, then I will have the inner fenders and core support blasted so I can have clean sheet metal to reassemble:











Im hoping to get the other side off and the core support out tomorrow, then get some tubing this coming week and the rest of the way braced up. Its supposed to be very cold by next weekend, so if I can get the rest of the front braced up and the rails ready to start drilling out before the cold hits Ill be happy...

[keepat]

Nice progress!
Pat

[68RT440]

Thanks!

[68RT440]

Spent a couple of hours yesterday getting the drivers side inner apron removed as well as the core support. The apron was really bad...lots of rust and Bondo.











Next step is to add a couple more braces to the rails, then remove them. Then Ill have the aprons and core support blasted and do my rust repair. Then reassembly!

[Cncguy]

Nice work!

[CDN72SE]

Thanks for sharing your story and good luck with the resto.

[68RT440]

Thanks guys. I'll keep the thread updated as I go...