Where Do I Start???

[speedfreak68]

Well spring break is comin and I'm going to go home and work. My charger is VERY rusted as in it needs floor and rear frame rails and I have pretty much all of the floor and I was wondering if it would be better to put the floor in first to keep everything straight. Or if it would be better to replace the frame rails first, which now that I'm writing this i don't know what the frame rails would be welded to. But any advice from anyone whose been there would be awesome.
Thanks
Martin.

[Mike DC]

By "rear frame rails" are you talking an entire subframe swap?  If so, then this is the thing to do first.  Do the floors later.

Get a copy of the factory's measurements for the unibody and use that to keep the car aligned. 

(And I don't need to tell you what an irrepairable mess it makes to weld that stuff into the car even a fraction of an inch out of line in certain places.  "Measure twice, cut once" doesn't even cover it in this case.  It should be more like, "Measure 17 times, cut once, measure another 12 times, and then tack-weld once.   The measure another 5-10 times before the final welding.")

[speedfreak68]

Ya pretty much everything is gone so i was gona change out the whole subframe. Where can I get my hands on a copy of the factory measurements? What do you think of building the framerails out of some square tubing? I was going to move the leaf springs in closer because i eventually want to narrow the axle.

Martin

[yeahitsgotahemi!]

Making some frame rails out of square tubing could dangerous, especially in an accident. If it were me, I would get some donor frame rails and carefully replace them, but since you mentioned a narrowed rear end, maybe just backhalving the car would be something to consider?

[Brian in GA]

Here's the body measurements from the Moparts Tech Archives.  A very helpful spot.  And good luck with the project. 

http://www.moparts.org/Tech/Archive/paint/11.html

[speedfreak68]

I was thinking of doing something like what Phat69charger did, would rectangle tubing be so bad for this if i got some thin walled tubing? but I don't have the money to narrow the axle and buy metal right now.