And So It Begins......The RESTORATION. (update)

[charge69]

Well, we rolled the Old Girl out of the garage, loaded it on the trailer, took it to and parked it in the garage where the total restoration will now begin! Going to get the various supplies to get started tonight such as notebooks, baggies, markers etc. and we will begin the teardown tomorrow!  Going to go slow and document with pics and notes every move we make including every screw, nut, bolt and fastener as we tear her down. It will take some time to do this but, it is the only way to do this car as it is so close to factory-original as it sits right now.

Once it is apart and on the rotisserie we will determine if it needs to be dipped or blasted and that will be done. My helper will use his metal-working skills to cut, fit , refabricate or whatever is necessary on the body to make it "right" again and then we will paint it wih acrylic enamel as the factory did and slowly bring it back to life looking as much like it did the day it rolled out of the Hamtramck plant on 3/14/1969 as we possibly can!

Been waiting for this day for a long time and the anticipation and nerves are starting just thinking about it! I will keep you guys posted as much as I can, but I will be very busy for a while!  It is gonna look awesome! 

Yes, it is the one in my avatar!  1969 Charger R/T  NOM  426HEMI , 727auto , 3.23 8 3/4 suregrip ,  R6 Red with White Vinyl Top, White interior, White R/T Stripe !!!!!!!!  XS29J9B will live again!!!!!!!

WISH ME LUCK!!!!!!        Carl

[69bronzeT5]

Going to go slow and document with pics and notes every move we make including every screw, nut, bolt and fastener as we tear her down.

Excellent idea. I did the same thing when I tore down my '69. Makes it MUCH easier to put back together. GOOD LUCK!

[68isgr8]

Carl,
I know you've been anticipating this for a long time and I'm happy for you!    She's gonna turn out awesome buddy! 

[charge69]

Hey Lizzy, was going to email you and tell you but you saw the post!   Yeah , I am pretty excited!  After all, it's only money!

[Charger_Fan]

That's awesome! Good luck with what will promise to be cool restoration adventures ahead.

[69bronzeT5]

what will promise to be cool restoration adventures ahead.

Either that or bad rust surprises like I found . Although, your car looks pretty good Carl. Make sure to post LOTS of pics

[Fitz73Chrgr]

Cool! Can't wait to follow this thread!  Good luck!   

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Great news Carl!   Awesome color combo as well.  cant wait to see her "done"

[694spdRT]

Good luck on the resto and make sure to keep us posted on your progress.

Great color combo.....oh the Hemi ain't bad either. 

[charge69]

The Charger does have a few rust issues, mainly in the back of the car! The person I bought it from long ago used it as a daily driver, work car, fishing car, grocery getter for about 6 years and never garaged it!  Overall, it is in surprisingly good shape considering it's life before I got it.  Been garaged ever since I got it and it has stood up pretty well.  Troy Hawkes has seen and photographed the car and can attest to it's originality and the rust.  It is a project well worth doing and will be a fine example of Mother MOPAR's stable.

I will try to keep the pics coming!

[xs29j8Bullitt]

I am looking forward to following your project!  Best of luck... learn from my mistakes (avoid Goodmark).

Bring on the pictures! 

Allen

[69_500]

Your going to restore it now? I definately hope that you take thousands of photo's of the car during the tear down process. They are only origional once, and its very very hard to duplicate what they had on them leaving the factory. Heck I tend to take way more photo's of other people's cars than i do of my own anyways. I know I wouldn't do very good at detailing my own car in photo's. Now if it was someone else's, I'd cover it from top to bottom.

[tan top]

 good luck with the resto Carl  would love to see some pictures 

[skip68]

    Right on.  Make sure you don't forget to take pictures at every stage and step or day. 

[charge69]

Well, no work today as we spent all day getting and putting together a commercial grade blast cabinet and parts washer for his shop. His blast cabinet was an old one that was not commercial grade and he did not have a parts washer bin so we took care of that! When we get thru with mine we will be working on a full restoration of a 1970 440/6bbl shaker hood Cuda he has! It will also get the rotisserie restoration as has a 1969 Roadrunner he just finished for his wife!

I got my books for detailing all expenditures and daily work, the baggies for the parts, and my Sony camera for the pictures as we go. Naturally, the tear down will be slow and fully documented in the book and with pictures on a daily basis!  I will share pics as we go along. Hope it will be interesting. My friend wants to do it as a No. 1 car but, realistically, I will be happy with a strong No. 2 car.  It would not be a No.1 car for long anyway as I fully intend to drive it! Because of this, I will be making the motor a little more modern with an improved ignition system and , probably a solid roller cam.  He has a Comp Cams solid roller in his Roadrunner and it is awesome! That motor is a 451 stroker (400 block) with stage Vl MOPAR heads, 11 to 1 forged JE pistons and numerous other goodies that make it a great running and fast (mid 11"s at 117mph) Roadrunner.

Thanks for the words of encouragement and I will keep the Board informed.

Carl

[69_500]

So you intend on driving the car quite a bit after the restoration is done? I think that a roller cam would be a good idea if you intend on driving the car quite a bit. If you need someone to come down and run that camera for ya, I'm free most weekends. JK Texas is a bit far for a weekend jaunt.

[charge69]

Well, I wouldn't say I will drive it "quite a bit", but it will be driven and the roller cam in my friend's car has a great loping idle and plenty of torque and power yet semms to be plenty streetable I think his has .550" lift and 244 degrees duration on both the exh. and intake at .050 set up at 106 degrees with 110 degrees lobe separation.  Fairly mild cam but has great low end power.

Something similar, maybe a little hotter would be nice in the 426!

Edited to add: someone to run the camera would be nice but they better be ready to turn a wrench too!

[69_500]

Oh I'd turn a wrench too, but I prefer being behind the lens of camera's. Love taking photo's and video's of cars.

[charge69]

I sincerely hope that, one day, you have the opportunity to photograph my car! I will be retiring about the time the car is done and it might make the trip to a national event.

[69_500]

If not I tend to get around to various shows. Sooner or later odds are I'll be in the same show location as the car once its done.


Side note though, you might wanna tap me on the shoulder and make sure I take a few pics of it though. Because if there is a Daytona or a 500 around, I am liable to spend the entire weekend crawling over under those cars. 

[charge69]

A couple of pics from today!                        After removing vinyl top, you can see where the factory stopped painting the roof!  The roof is in very good shape and will need minimal restoration except for the sail panel area and around the back glass.

A grill shot to show it will need minimal restoration too!  Luck there.

Also , I found my broadcast sheet behind the rear seat upright!  Thought I had looked there!  It was missing the lower left side but all the essential info is there to show it belongs to my Charger and what it was equipped with.  Gonna have it laminated tomorrow to preserve what is left.

[69bronzeT5]

Consider yourself VERY LUCKY that you found the sheet!

[bzabodyn]

Congrats Carl and I'm very happy that you are getting the chance to fulfill this dream - hopefully there's 2 restored '69 HEMI chargers back on the road in TX in 2009!

BZ

[charge69]

Been a good while since I updated my project sooooo...................  The bodywork is almost all done. Still on the rotisserie and will be rehanging the doors and reinstalling the front fenders, hood, and trunk lid shortly and then final sanding and blocking to get all the body lines as perfect as we can.

My friend is an absolute "artist" with sheetmetal and it is coming out gorgeous! Everything from the package tray back except the left trunk rail with the VIN and the frame rails as they were in excellent condition has been replaced and it was all spot-welded in just as the factory did it! That's right! ALL spot-welded back together! An amazing job!

Bought my first gallon of R Red acrylic enamel yesterday to paint the interior, door jams and underside of the car (my car was actually fully painted on the underside from the factory and it will go back that way) and a pint of W1 white for the inside of the doors where it was originally white. The Charger has white interior so the doors have white tops and bottoms and got the original code for the paint and got some.  PPG Acrylic Enamel is expensive! A gallon of paint with reducer and hardener works out to about $450.00 a gallon! Gonna be Acrylic Enamel though! My friend's cars are painted with it and they look amazing. Most people think it is a basecoat/clearcoat paint job because the cars are soo smooth and shiny!  Next post will be about the engine!                                                                                                                                                                                         

[charge69]

Now, for the engine!  I am going for a build that can be driven occasionally and not have to worry about sooooooooo.....

The engine is now at Nickens Brothers Racing Engines for a complete rebuild and is about ready for the dyno. Had to be bored .030 over but all else was in great shape except the rocker arms.  It now has 11 to 1 JE forged pistons, Manley H-Beam rods, Manley Stainless steel valves on hardened seats and ARP studded lower end with ARP head bolts as well. The heads are getting ported and "flowed" on both the intake and exhaust side and port-matched. They are doing some pretty extensive flow work and I have already given them the TTI ceramic coated and thermal barrier headers that will be used. The original intake has been "worked on" too for proper flow.

The heart of the engine is the camshaft and we decided to go with a proven and trouble free design. Nickens Brothers consulted with Comp Cams engineers and came up with a custom-grind Hydraulic roller cam setup for my engine complete with all hardware uncluding the special valvesprings, roller lifters, billet cam and custom pushrods. Not too wild and definitely streetable, somewhere (I don't have the exact specs with me at this time) around .570 net lift and 242* duration with 110* separation. Should work well on the street they say.

Carbs are being restored and reworked by Dan DaVinci himself and are looking real good! He will be there for the dyno run to dial in the carbs.

[charge69]

Forgot to mention this but, for reliability on the street, I have purchased a complete MSD Digital 6 ignition system for the car. Billet distributor, MSD coil, digital 6 box and MSD 8.5mm HEMI wires for the spark!

All original engine parts are being saved and will be stored for posterity and, maybe, future use but, I am setting this one up to drive!

The Nickens Brothers dyno room is a sight to behold! Probably the best in the country as they can control temp. humidity, and even barometric pressure and dial in exactly what parameters they want. They were under contract with Chrysler Corp. for about 10 years until recently to build all the factory race team motors and know MOPAR very well. The engine will go to the dyno within a week or so and I am excited!

So much for now!

Carl

[tan top]

sounds like some awesome work going on ! looking forward to seeing more pictures  

[charge69]

Here are a couple of pics of some of the spot-welding in progress that was taken a few months ago.

One-piece trunk floor being spot-welded in.


Tail light panel being spot-welded.


Dutchman panel, package tray and attachments.


Rear end w/trunk floor coming together.

[tan top]

   thats  some nice work     good pictures !  love looking at this kind of stuff   
thanks for sharing 

[charge69]

The outer wheel well housings needed rust repair and we decided to buy new ones from AMD and just use the outer 4" or so of them to save as much of the originals as we could. My guy plasma-cut the old ones and new ones to match the cut off section and welded the new sections back in. Came out great and a perfect fit to the new AMD rear quarters that were all spot-welded back together!

[694spdRT]

Looks like you are on the way! Keep us posted.

[tan top]

The outer wheel well housings needed rust repair and we decided to buy new ones from AMD and just use the outer 4" or so of them to save as much of the originals as we could. My guy plasma-cut the old ones and new ones to match the cut off section and welded the new sections back in. Came out great and a perfect fit to the new AMD rear quarters that were all spot-welded back together!

good idea !! keeping as much as the original metal as possible