hemigeno's Daytona restoration - a few more tweaks... again!

[hemi68charger]

Dang Geno !!!!  She looks great, beyond Great !!!!!  Where did you get those exhaust tip hanger brackets? Are they NOS or did you replate them?
I remember those Q-clamps on Whitey, she had the original exhaust on her and those same clamps were on the tip-2-tailpipe.....

Troy

Thanks Troy!  The hanger brackets are indeed NOS.  I had some fairly decent reproductions, but the shape of the strap that wrapped around the rubber isolator just didn't look right.  As with many of the parts left without much protection from the weather, original components get quite pitted.  You can see some slight pitting still evident in the tie-down bracket... same deal, although Vance did the best he could with the parts I had and/or gave him to work with.

Geno.. I correct my last question.. The plate that the brackets fit into, the plate that's bolted to the frame rails, where did you get those or are they replated originals.....

[hemigeno]

The first three pics are of the headlight wiring harness extension that Creative Industries had to fabricate (P/N 3412665) in order to connect the reworked 2983438 "regular Charger" headlight wiring harness.  The 2983438 harness modifications were only made to the vacuum tube lengths, so some provisions had to be made to connect the headlight harness extending from the firewall (which terminates behind the battery) and the headlight harness in the nosecone (which makes it to about the radiator yoke if you stretched it like a guitar string).  Even though you'd only have to have maybe 12 inches to make the connection, they chose to make this harness +/- 26" or so.  Length dimensions on these harnesses varied wildly, as this is an example of a part/modification that Creative hired day-workers -- literally off the street corner -- to perform.

The last picture was one Vance took to show me that the alternator housing has been repaired.  In case anyone didn't know already, just because you have an "NOS" part, it absolutely does not mean you have a perfect part.  When I got it, one half of the alternator case (the clamshell) was not machined to receive the locating pins from the stator, so there was a 1/8" or so gap between the shell half and the stator all the way around.  That's probably why it was not used on the production line, and why it survived all these years sitting on a parts shelf somewhere.  Vance had to machine the shell to receive the pins, and it now fits together nicely.  I'm not sure about the pulley though - were the original pulleys not supposed to have paint in the V-groove?  

[hemigeno]

Geno.. I correct my last question.. The plate that the brackets fit into, the plate that's bolted to the frame rails, where did you get those or are they replated originals.....

AFAIK, those are the refurbished original plates from my car.  I'll have to double-check to confirm.

[nascarxx29]

Probably another case of random workmanship or changeout on the line .But my videos and pictures show my daytona with the non Q clamps.Going on memory I recall the mufflers having the pentstar logo on it and clearance indents .Got to check pictures and video for other numbers and marks

[XS29J8]

What a nice new Daytona, makes me want to get the brillo pads and WD40 out and start cleaning....hehheh

Great work Geno!

Steve

[maxwellwedge]

Looks awsome.

I'm not sure if it is just a case of the assembly lines workers using whatever they had laying around, but I've never seen an original unrestored Daytona that had Q Clamps holding the Chrome exhaust tips to the tail pipes.  I remember talking to Frank Badalson about that too.  The clamps on original cars I've seen were the regular types with 2 nuts.

Dave Benasutti's car before it was restored was the way i described.

I have to say I have never seen/have/had any original 69 B-Bodies with Q-clamps either.....but as a famous Mopar dude once told me - "We ain't seen every car"!

[maxwellwedge]

Probably another case of random workmanship or changeout on the line .But my videos and pictures show my daytona with the non Q clamps.Going on memory I recall the mufflers having the pentstar logo on it and clearance indents .Got to check pictures and video for other numbers and marks

Gonna check the ones on my X

[maxwellwedge]

 I'm not sure about the pulley though - were the original pulleys not supposed to have paint in the V-groove?  

Pulley looks perfect to me. 

[hemigeno]

Looks awsome.

I'm not sure if it is just a case of the assembly lines workers using whatever they had laying around, but I've never seen an original unrestored Daytona that had Q Clamps holding the Chrome exhaust tips to the tail pipes.  I remember talking to Frank Badalson about that too.  The clamps on original cars I've seen were the regular types with 2 nuts.

Dave Benasutti's car before it was restored was the way i described.

I have to say I have never seen/have/had any original 69 B-Bodies with Q-clamps either.....but as a famous Mopar dude once told me - "We ain't seen every car"!

Here's the engineering graphic portion which shows the optional clamps...  Whether they actually used Q-clamps or not in '69, I can't swear either way - and I certainly haven't seen every car either!

The bottom picture shows the date when the Q-clamp was added as an optional clamp - and with an 8/68 introduction date you'd think it was at least possible some '69s - especially later in the model year - got the "new" style of clamp.  I may still pick up an extra set of saddle clamps in case this is one of those things that proves not to be what I thought earlier...  and there are lots of things like that as I've gone along!  Worse yet, there are a few things shown in documentation which were not done at all on the cars like the details show.  In instances like that, I prefer to follow how the car was built, rather than the documents.

[maxwellwedge]

True to that about lots of engineering not making it out to the floor. Seen a bunch of '67's with them (they were a different style - part# to these). I have a few '70's with them as well. Can't comment on '68's.

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Man Geno, since you said it already you ARE certifiably nutz!!   But I love it

[maxwellwedge]

The first pic is shot of the newly-installed muffler's stamping... no part number or pentastar on either side, just a date code and whatever the "H" meant  You can also see in the top left-hand corner how the pipe stub was spot-welded into place.

On the end of the muffler which faced the rear of the car, there were drain holes to allow condensation to escape.  You'll see these holes on the top and bottom of that end cap, because the mufflers were not handed for the left or right side.  One side was flipped over when compared to the other side's orientation.  

Geno the original mufflers on my X do have a Pentastar and some numbers under it (2 or 3 lines of characters) I couldn't make out - the car is stacked over top of another at the moment. And the writing goes the other way - from side to side not from front to back. I thought I have pics....gonna look. I have some NOS - I'll check those as well. May have been a vendor thing - I know they used Walker and Arvin and at least one other. They have the stamping one one side only - there was no left and right part number. One shows all the characters, the other has them facing up towards the floor. All "Hemi" mufflers (Big-block) have the one squished corner at each end - opposite corner for driveshaft clearance.

[nascarxx29]

My old daytona I recall seeing the pentstar as well

[xs29j8Bullitt]

I will have to check it out to be sure, but I believe that my NOS mufflers have a small Pentastar... maybe 1 to 1.25 inches in "diameter".  I am certain the NOS resonators have a larger Pentastar... about 2.5 inches in "diameter".

Allen

[hemigeno]

Vance had mentioned Walker, and at least one other vendor of OEM mufflers for Chrysler back then, and it may have been Arvin.  Did they have a location in/near Grand Rapids?  If so, then Arvin's the one he was thinking about, but I'll find out which Mfg. it was next weekend. 

I still have another single NOS muffler, from a red/white/blue-label box, but it didn't look even close to the assembly-line style since it had a bunch of visible spot-welds all around the 'barrel' where they secured the internal baffling.  It did have a pentastar though.  The one with the 2-69 date (but no pentastar) is definitely NOS Chrysler-issue, as it came in a blue/white/blue-label box with the right xxxx300 part number label.  I'll still have to do more research on the other nuances.  Good stuff...  Years ago I remember people bashing the reproduction "date coded" mufflers as having a part number that was never on the originals.

Keep it comin', guys!

[maxwellwedge]

I will have to check it out to be sure, but I believe that my NOS mufflers have a small Pentastar... maybe 1 to 1.25 inches in "diameter".  I am certain the NOS resonators have a larger Pentastar... about 2.5 inches in "diameter".

Allen

Here is an original resonator - still can't find my muffler pics 

[Hemi_tyme]

I don't know if this will help, but here's a couple pictures of the original mufflers that I removed from my white Superbird.
Ken

[nascarxx29]

.I didnt save any old mufflers  but I saved and still have from mufflers on back from a low mileage superbird original tail pipes from a non tip car .Just keep them to copy from

[hemigeno]

Here is an original resonator - still can't find my muffler pics  

Yeah, original resonators definitely had the pentastar - here's a pic of the ones I have back on the shelf:

[hemigeno]

I don't know if this will help, but here's a couple pictures of the original mufflers that I removed from my white Superbird.
Ken

Wow, those were pretty far gone...  Was the car still on the road with those?      I had a timing chain jump a tooth or two several years ago, and the engine backfired so badly that it blew apart/split both mufflers.  Sounded pretty sick (not in a good way) after that.

Thanks for the pics, Ken!  Looks like 10 69 (no dash) with a pentastar and 5-digit vendor code to me, but at least the stampings are oriented the same as mine. 

[hemigeno]

Vance had mentioned Walker, and at least one other vendor of OEM mufflers for Chrysler back then, and it may have been Arvin.  Did they have a location in/near Grand Rapids?  If so, then Arvin's the one he was thinking about, but I'll find out which Mfg. it was next weekend.  

*Follow Up*

I asked Vance today about the muffler vendors.  He mentioned both Walker and Arvin like we've thought.  The third vendor I couldn't think of was A P Parts... oddly enough, they were located in Grand Haven, MI, and were a supplier of mufflers (and maybe other exhaust components) for Chrysler as well as the other Big 3 Mfg's.  The former owner of A P Parts only passed away a short time ago.

Vance said that a lot of OE mufflers did indeed have the pentastar, but not all did.  He seemed to think it may have been the A P Parts versions which did not have a Pentastar, but it's hard to track the source of a particular part which also doesn't have a vendor code.  Doesn't really help much, other than Vance wasn't concerned at all with the lack of a pentastar on the pair of mufflers I found.

[nascarxx29]

I looked thru what I could.  Found more pages on the exhaust

[69_500]

Gene I'll be patiently waiting for you to resize the photo's you took of the car yesterday. If your waiting on me to resize some photo's and post them you might be waiting a while. I'm going to try to sort through them and put them on a DVD for you but it will probably be 2 DVD's. Wound up with about 5 gigs worth of decent pictures yesterday.

You know even after 11 hours of  over your Daytona I don't think I wound up getting a picture of everything I wanted to see. Thanks for allowing me to tag along and I hope you had a safe trip back home last night. I made it here around 1:15 am or so which is an easy 2-3 hours before I told my wife I'd be back so I might have scored some brownie points with her for being home before they woke up this morning.

[hemigeno]

Danny,

Yeah, I'll get around to resizing the pictures sooner or later.  Thanks for trekking up there to see & photo the car - your camera skills & equipment definitely dwarf mine, so I'll be anxiously awaiting a copy of that DVD with your photos myself.

My head hit the pillow at about 4:15am Sunday morning.  Would have been sooner, but dense fog from just south of Chicago until I got home slowed me down a bunch.  Plus, I witnessed a pretty bad one-car rollover accident while going through downtown St. Louis at about 2:20am and spent time making sure the drunk guy was OK.  

Fun time on Saturday though, for sure!

[69_500]

Okay so I tried to resize just a few detail shots for you Gene. I'll leave the narration up to you as well. I don't narrate my own DVD's why narrate photo's right?





I would not normally modify people's threads to interject my own comments, but since it makes no sense to re-post Danny's pictures with my own comments, I'll take a little Moderator liberty and add my comments/narration to Danny's posts.  My comments will be in red, so blame me for anything in those sections.  Oh, and THANK YOU Danny for resizing/posting these pictures!

If you look at the first pic, you'll see the gray primer with R4 red overspray from the main body painting, along with gloss black overspray from where the pinch weld at the bottom of the rocker panel was blacked out.  More details on this area a little later in the pictures I took.

The second picture shows the rear valance corner and the differences in the way the seams were treated.  The one on the left side (the quarterpanel seam) was filled, but the one on the right (the rear valance seam) was left open since it was sealed off from the "backside".  As Danny mentioned, there are a bunch of things I had loosely intended to take photos of myself, and the backside seam sealer (and the big glob of sealant at the bottom edge) was one of those areas I totally forgot to check on or photograph either one.  Oh well.

The third pic shows the U-joint strap with its date code and the style of bolts used to clamp these down.  One of these days I'll need to take better pictures of the U-joint itself (or the extra one I just brought home with me) showing the metal bands/clips used to hold the endcaps on before and during installation of the driveshafts at the factory.  Neat detail to me, anyway.