Typical problem areas

[artstar]

Hello,
I have been into 2nd generation chargers for over twenty years but I'm just now starting to consider the purchase of one.  I would like to get an idea of what to look out for in purchasing a 68-70 charger. 
Other than the common rust areas and obvious stuff are there any specific issues or repairs that are particularly expensive, etc?  Thanks

[aifilaw]

I highly doubt you will get a response without a specific question, the ambiguity of this one tends to be ignored...

Obvious rust problems are the worst, these are 30+ year old cars, and only those lucky enough to live in great states see them not destroyed by the weather.
rear quarters are most prone to rust, as is the rear window....

A lot of suspension damage is coming into play at this point, such as rusted leaf springs.....luckily the costs are fairly low for leaf springs, torsion bars, et cetera.

interior and dash work are usually a common part of the problem, and that can run you some expense...

honestly the two most expensive things on restoring a car, or making it so you would want to drive it, are paint jobs, engine work, and drivetrain work (transmission/rear end) in that order.

[69bronzeT5]

Well for rust. Id have to say quarter panels, rear window and Ive seen alot of Chargers that have roof rust. Thank god my 69 didnt get any rear window rust or roof rust when it was sitting. My car sat for a few years in a field and it had rusty quarters, front floor pans and thats about it.

[terrible one]

Other than the common rust areas

Well for rust. Id have to say quarter panels, rear window and Ive seen alot of Chargers that have roof rust. Thank god my 69 didnt get any rear window rust or roof rust when it was sitting. My car sat for a few years in a field and it had rusty quarters, front floor pans and thats about it.

[69bronzeT5]

Other than the common rust areas

Well for rust. Id have to say quarter panels, rear window and Ive seen alot of Chargers that have roof rust. Thank god my 69 didnt get any rear window rust or roof rust when it was sitting. My car sat for a few years in a field and it had rusty quarters, front floor pans and thats about it.

[Nacho-RT74]

tipical problem areas ?

POCKET
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but your pants pocket, not the map pockets on car...

[supserdave]

Grilles are pretty spendy.

[dpm68]

Trunk. Trunk extensions. (wheelhouse - inner and outer) Frame rails.

[Troy]

Grills, pot metal trim/bezels, upper door pads, wood grain steering wheels, and wiring are some of the tougher ones. Buy a car that's as complete as you can get (preferably with straight metal). Drivetrain parts are fairly easy to come across so if you're not worried about originality then it's ok to find a nice car with no engine or trans. All those little linkages and connectors can be a pain though (for some reason it seems that people throw away/lose all the brackets, bolts, clamps, and other important parts when pulling an engine).

Troy

[bull]

Yea, that pot metal gets ruined pretty quick in damp weather areas and anything vinyl of course (as Troy mentioned) is shot 99% of the time. The problem parts to replace are the things Charger-specific such as interior parts and things like taillights and gas caps. The hard plastic stuff survives pretty well or can be restored pretty easily if it hasn't been abused too much. Fortunately the list of reproduction items is getting larger and still growing.

[Chatt69chgr]

Your post has been read 125 times and you have only got four or five responses.  The reason is you have to be much more specific about your situation.  How much money do you have to spend.  What is your level of expertise in fixing a car.  Do you want to fix a car or buy one complete and already restored.  Do you have a place to work on a car and store it.  Do you have tools.  What would be a good deal to a guy that has the knowledge, desire, place, and tools, not to mention money, might not be a good thing for you.  What kind of drivetrain do you want.  Does it have to be numbers matching.  Get the idea.  So provide more info and you will get some good responses. 

[Troy]

My response wasn't good? Now I'm depressed...

OH! I forgot one: rear window glass - especially non-tinted. There's no gasket and it's easy to break during removal but nearly impossible to find.

There's probably $3,000+ worth of rechroming costs on these cars so try to find one without pitted or rusty chrome. The bumpers are reproduced but the quality can be hit or miss. Console bodies are reproduced for a reasonable price but the metal trim, covers, and doors are pricey. Trying to convert to a 4-speed isn't cheap either.

Troy

[Mike DC]

First off, I'm not gonna comment on factory options & desirability & resale value.  That's a whole other subject worthy of its own thread.  I'm gonna say all this stuff in the rest of this post as if you never plan on re-selling the car.  I'm just gonna assume you're not buying a Hemi car, and probably not even really looking for a factory R/T.  You just want a long-term fun cruiser, right?

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If you've got a budget to worry about, then youd be wise not to think much about motors & horsepower during the initial purchase. 
I assume you'll eventually want to make it into a decent quick car; maybe you had a medium-strength 440 in mind like most of us . . .  but my advice is to wait on that.

If you're spending under $15-20K, then your #1 job, BY FAR,  is to get a fully-assembled running/driving/licensed car with the best-condition overall body that you can possibly afford.  (And this very well might mean passing up a 440 car to buy a 318 car for the same price.)  Don't even let powerplants into the equasion until you've got a solid $15K worth of Charger under it. 

And avoid rust like the plague.  (Don't try to outsmart it by mentally adding up the costs in dollars & cents & panels in a catalog -- Just think to yourself: RUST = HELL.  It's almost always worse than what is visible upon inspection.)  There's almost no such thing as a literally "rust-free" Mopar anymore; the term is usually applied to cars that are really just "limited-rust" at this point.  The questions are really: "How badly did this car rust before it got restored?" and "Was the restoration work done correctly or not?"

The only one-sentence rule I could say about amounts of rust is "don't buy rusted subframe rails."  Rusty subframe rails are still restorable technically, but the subframe rails are one of the last (and most important) things to succumb to rust.  If the rust has gotten to that point, then you can be 90% sure the rest of the body is BADLY eaten-up too.  So you could pay to have the subframe rails fixed but the car is probably not a good money investment overall.

The coversion costs of a smallblock 318 car are a few grand more than a car that's already a big-block car from the factory, but that's not a major issue.  You would still have probably been beefing-up most of the parts invovled anyway at some point.  And most Chargers were built with automatic transmissions.  The conversion costs of turning an automatic into a stick-shifted car are several thousand dollars too.  But these are all things that you can just spend money and fix at any point later on without a huge penalty for not buying them in the first place.

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The big thing you need to realize when it comes to old Mopar purchasing is this:

It's not cost-effective to try to significantly improve the overall condition of a car's body.


Can you pay someone to weld a rusty car back together?  Yeah.
Can you take a car with a bunch of mis-fitting panels, and have it reworked & improved?  Yeah.
Can you get a car's panels smoothed out better and repainted?  Yeah.
Can you have the chrome/brightwork replated?  Yeah.

But each and every one of these operations will definitely cost you more to have redone than they would have added to the buying price of the car in the first place.  So you need to decide what is important to you, and you need to be willing to spend as much as you need to spend to get something pretty close on the inital purchase. 

It's not that any ONE THING is terrible.  (Even major rust is fixable by itself.  What makes rust a killer is that once you have to tear the panels off & disassemble the whole car, you're basically comitting to starting at the bottom of the list and re-doing it ALL.)  There is virtually nothing on these cars that can't be fixed if you're willing to spend enough money and labor to do it.  What your job as an owner/restorer is to decide what you're willing to get yourself into fixing. 

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Another factor is what you're willing to tolerate un-fixed in the long term.  Realistically, there will always be things about the car that you're not entirely happy with.  You can't fix everything, but you can pick your battles.  Many of the car-restoration battles aren't yes/no answers; they're a million shades of grey.

I'm serious about saying "Give up on ever being 100% happy with a car."
Even if you're comitted to fixing EVERYTHING, you still won't win.  At that point, you're gonna be exasperated & weary that you ended up spending too much money/effort/time on the whole car.  You may have mixed feelings about the whole thing at that point.  And the flawless end result of that effort?  That amount of perfection i's gonna be too fragile to drive as much as you wanted to anymore.  So you still just traded one source of aggravation for another.

If you stay realistic with yourself at every step of the process, then owning a Charger is absolutely awesome.  Just look out for all the pitfalls and you'll love it.

 

[Chargen69]

You are either going to spend big money on a good car, or big money fixing a not so good car.

[artstar]

Thanks for all of the great information.  I will try to add some specifics to my situation.
I am looking to spend between $15 and $25K for a charger.  I have reasonable mechanical skills - I used to own old Jeeps and have replaced clutches, brakes and performed minor engine work.
The key issue for me is determining what to look out for as I look at chargers that are up for sale.  In my price range they will all need work and I was not entirely sure I knew what to look out for. 
Sounds like the condition of the body in terms of rust is the biggest issue.  I know with CJs you had to look out for certain transmissions or front ends, etc.  Just was not sure if there was anything similar with 2nd gen chargers.  Thanks again for the input.

[bull]

I know if I had it to do over again I'd much rather save money like a madman and buy one that's finished. The problem with that is not knowing what kind of quality has gone into the car. Often you can find a good deal on one that someone has given up on midway through the restoration process.

[myk]

This is more of a personal gripe of mine, but I say don't buy the '69.  If you have to replace your ignition switch/key assembly it'll cost ya a few hundred; meanwhile the '68 and '70 guys laugh all the way to NAPA and buy $40 brand new pieces...

[Chargen69]

This is more of a personal gripe of mine, but I say don't buy the '69.  If you have to replace your ignition switch/key assembly it'll cost ya a few hundred; meanwhile the '68 and '70 guys laugh all the way to NAPA and buy $40 brand new pieces...

What is the difference between the 68 and 69?

[Arigmaster]

You are either going to spend big money on a good car, or big money fixing a not so good car.

No doubt about that!  Even if you find one that is done, you still have to be very careful to inspect it close to make sure that the work was done properly. I've seen some pretty nice cars but once you get under them you find more patches in them than your Grandma's quilt.

[Troy]

This is more of a personal gripe of mine, but I say don't buy the '69.  If you have to replace your ignition switch/key assembly it'll cost ya a few hundred; meanwhile the '68 and '70 guys laugh all the way to NAPA and buy $40 brand new pieces...

What is the difference between the 68 and 69?

Every car from 1962-1968 used a small switch mounted in the dash. For whatever reason Dodge used a different, larger switch in 1969 only. The lock cylinder is also unique to this switch. Maybe it had something to do with going to column mounted switches in 1970. Any way, they are/were hard to come across but I thought I had read that they were being reproduced (I just can't remember by whom).

Troy

[The70RT]

I know if I had it to do over again I'd much rather save money like a madman and buy one that's finished. The problem with that is not knowing what kind of quality has gone into the car. Often you can find a good deal on one that someone has given up on midway through the restoration process.

Exactly like bull said.........If you can wait and save more then do so....but when trying to save more remember you have to comensate for the rising cost as they just keep going up.... so to save for a better one or buy one now can throw you in an imbalance. Buy one that you will be satisfied with though. You can always tinker with the the small stuff but if you get one that needs a ton your pocket will have to weigh the same!

[SnoPro440]

I agree with bull and 70R/T, find one that is done.  I'm into mine for 17K on body work alone and it wasn't a rsuty POS to begin with.  I don't even know how much it's going to cost to finish it, but it's probably going to be another 10K for paint and who knows how much for more for replacing parts that got damaged or lost during the process. 

[dpm68]

I couldn't agree more - finished ones are the way to go. I need a lot of steel on mine, and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg...when I get a real job and have real money, it's going to cost me a small fortune to finish. Oh well, at least I'll know what lies underneath the paint...

[Silver R/T]

lower quarters, rear window under moulding, trunk/compartment floors

[road/track]

I will say that wife & garage are the biggest problem you will face...