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

[hemigeno]

Those are awesome pics.  They have helped me out tremendously on my own car.  One question though.  On the inside of the trunk pan.  The gap that you took pics of at the rear end of both trunk extensions.  How do those get filled in, or do they?

Thanks, glad the pics are helping out!  Do you mean these gaps?





They remain pretty much just like that - except for the addition of a bunch of seam sealer on the topside seams...  Lemme check to see if I have an old pic showing that area.

[charger01]

I would really appreciate it.  Iam using alot of your pics for reference to give to my body man.  They are a life saver and I appreciate it tremendously.  Those areas are supposed to be open?  Seems very odd.  Any addtitional pics would be great.  thanks agan,
bob

[hemigeno]

Bob,

I dug through the pictures I have, and did not find the ones I was looking for (long story, but they were taken in the last year and weren't archived on any other disc so they're lost).

So, I went out and shot a picture of the passenger's side trunk corner of my '69 R/T.  Same thing, and this should give you the idea of how it should look.  The trunk mat covers everything up pretty well, so that is not a visible area in a finished car.

[charger01]

Bob,

I dug through the pictures I have, and did not find the ones I was looking for (long story, but they were taken in the last year and weren't archived on any other disc so they're lost).

So, I went out and shot a picture of the passenger's side trunk corner of my '69 R/T.  Same thing, and this should give you the idea of how it should look.  The trunk mat covers everything up pretty well, so that is not a visible area in a finished car.

thanks so much for all your help....will relay to my bodyguy.

[69_500]

Gene is there no hope of salvaging the hard drive? Have you tried taking it out of the computer, and putting it in another computer as a slave drive, and just trying to access it that way?

[hotrod98]

I had a hard drive totally crash a few years ago and the computer nerds managed to get it working just long enough to get all of my info off of it.

[Troy]

Gene is there no hope of salvaging the hard drive? Have you tried taking it out of the computer, and putting it in another computer as a slave drive, and just trying to access it that way?

I had a hard drive totally crash a few years ago and the computer nerds managed to get it working just long enough to get all of my info off of it.

From what I know of it - the heads crashed. You know, that eerie screetching noise of metal on metal. Hard to repair that. I've had drives with bad sectors or a corrupt boot sector that I've been able to get working but never one with a mechanical defect.

Troy

[hotrod98]

Mine was related to the part of the hard drive that moves across the face of the disc to read it.
I know how to turn a computer on and that's about the extent of my knowledge. I'm 52 years old...what wo you expect?

[hemigeno]

Gene is there no hope of salvaging the hard drive? Have you tried taking it out of the computer, and putting it in another computer as a slave drive, and just trying to access it that way?

Danny,

Troy's right - the heads were making contact with the platters.  A cousin of mine who's an IT guy for a major corporation dropped by the same day that it crashed, and we tried hooking the problem drive up as a "slave" drive on another PC.  It didn't even recognize that there was a drive there, as something went wrong with the file allocation information.  Jeremy (my cousin) said that it was the equivalent of having a library full of information with no way of knowing what was on any of the shelves.  The PC's just couldn't make heads or tails of what was there.  That wasn't the bad part though.  Jeremy has some high-powered and quite expensive software which can handle problems like this, so we tried making a copy of the raw data onto a new drive.  It was while that copying process was ongoing that the buzzing sound started, and it got progressively worse as time went on.  Eventually, the copying process stopped - but I honestly don't know if the copying was done or if the drive just stopped spinning (even though the loud buzzing continued).

Anyway, the data that was copied ended up being totally unusable by Jeremy's software so the only option we had was taking the drive into one of the data recovery places.  There's a really good one about an hour away from my shop, so I took the drive to them.  This is where they physically crack open the drive's case in a clean room environment and take the platters out.  Normally, they can put them on another machine that can spin & read the info - but in my case of course, the platters were scored up so badly that all of the data was totally unreadable.

My luck...   

I did have backup copies of a lot of the important files & spreadsheets, so things could be way worse.

The pictures from last weekend and the previous trip are on the new drive, and I'll try to resize them and post 'em up yet today.

[hemi68charger]

Man... Geno.. That stinks................. My boot sector crashed on my PC a few weeks ago.. Had a firm come to the house and bascially rebuild the thing and also recover all my data,  luckily..... He had his software magic and was able to suck it off my bad drive, unto his, then copied back to the new harddrive in my machine........

Look forward to more updates.............

Troy

[RAC95054]

Man... Geno.. That stinks................. My boot sector crashed on my PC a few weeks ago.. Had a firm come to the house and bascially rebuild the thing and also recover all my data,  luckily..... He had his software magic and was able to suck it off my bad drive, unto his, then copied back to the new harddrive in my machine........

Look forward to more updates.............

Troy

I've got two words for you all:  automatic backup.    It's well worth spending the $79 on a 150GB portable Maxtor drive that you just plug into a USB port, then use the software that comes with it to setup an automatic backup.  Works like a charm.  No fuss, no messing around. 

-Russ

[hemigeno]

Man... Geno.. That stinks................. My boot sector crashed on my PC a few weeks ago.. Had a firm come to the house and bascially rebuild the thing and also recover all my data,  luckily..... He had his software magic and was able to suck it off my bad drive, unto his, then copied back to the new harddrive in my machine........

Look forward to more updates.............

Troy

I've got two words for you all:  automatic backup.    It's well worth spending the $79 on a 150GB portable Maxtor drive that you just plug into a USB port, then use the software that comes with it to setup an automatic backup.  Works like a charm.  No fuss, no messing around. 

-Russ

Oh, I've learned my lesson well.  I already have a 500GB second hard drive that automatically backs most everything up from the main C: drive - PLUS a 750GB external hard drive that I'll do a complete image of the entire C: drive periodically.

Trust me, I don't want to go through this hassle again      I just assumed that with a PC only a few years old that I was safe and only needing to back up my data files every so often.  I guess I'm spelling all this out for all the folks out there just like I was, living on borrowed time.

The pictures from the April trip to Vance's shop are now resized, and I'm in the process of sorting them into groups.  Still hoping to get them posted, but I have to leave the office in 45 minutes.  The May trip's pictures will have to wait a little while longer unfortunately...

[hemigeno]

Ok, here are most of the pics I took on my trip to Vance's back on April 12th. 

This first batch shows the engine compartment, and some R4 showing on the upper part of the inner fenders.  There's a reason for painting just that section which will be apparent in the next reply.  It was quite a relief to see some actual color on the car after all.

All the priming and painting done so far has been sprayed in the "dirty" side of the shop, although they did take as much in the way of precautions that they could to keep dust & other contaminants from wreaking havoc.  You can still see a lot of masking which keeps overspray from building up.

[hemigeno]

This first picture shows what they were up to with spraying just that section of the inner fender.  You can see that the fender itself does not have any R4 red on it.  That's because the Daytona fender was not attached to the car when they sprayed all that red.  At the time, they borrowed a set of regular '69 fenders and attached those for the sprayout.  The inner fender was primed in the correct color, the fender fitted/bolted, and then the red sprayed on.  That way, when the '69 regular fender is removed, you see a nice outline of where the bolt head was when the other fender was mated up. 

There isn't a whole lot of difference in where the bolt heads meet up, but there's invariably a little difference from one sheet metal part to the next.  You should be able to see the paint ring around where the original bolt head was at when the red was applied.  Depending on where the bolt has to be, there will be some that show grey primer peeking through in spots as well.  In that first picture, the bolts aren't tightened all the way down just yet so you can see the bolt/washer spray pattern.

The hood hinges were on the car when Hamtramck painted that section as well, so they positioned the hinges for the proper hood clearance/margins and then sprayed it in place.  There will be no attempt to touch up the hood hinge bolts from adjusting everything, since Creative Industries could have had to mess around with those to get the new Daytona hood to fit properly.

[hemigeno]

Here you can see the front part of the inner fender, as well as the radiator yoke.  The '70 Charger style fenders bolt up totally differently from the '69 style.  The fender essentially bolts to the front of the radiator yoke rather than to the front corner.  More on that in a moment.

You can see the radiator blackout treatment that the cars still received at Hamtramck even though the majority of the yoke is not exactly visible through the nosecone opening.

DC.com member FJMG has been studying the battery cooling holes in the radiator yokes of Daytonas, and they all seem to have just the one.  Anyone have any ideas when the transition from two holes to one occurred?  I don't think that is just a Daytona thing, as I thought all B-body cars went to just the one hole sometime fairly late in the model year. 

[hemigeno]

This next batch of pics explains why they shot the R4 in the inner fenders.  They had to shoot this area so the undercoating could be applied over the top of the color coat.  You can see the inner fenders in place and the color coat peeking through here and there.  In stark contrast is the backside of the Daytona fender which is still in primer.  That's the way the inside of the fender will remain too, as they were never oversprayed with undercoating like the originals were.

[hemigeno]

In these pics you can see a few more picky details.  The first shot shows the underside of the fender scoop opening and the primer coating which will remain exposed from here on.  The second picture shows the pattern that Hamtramck used to spray the undercoating around in the inner fender area.

Those last two pictures show an unusual detail.  When the '69 fenders were installed at Hamtramck, their U-clips were installed when the undercoating was shot on both the inner fender and the inside of the fender itself.  Creative Industries (probably looking to save a buck), scavenged the U-clips off of the original '69 fenders that were being pulled off.  They stuck the clips on the new fender and re-used the same bolts as well.  So, you'll see remnants of color coat and/or undercoating on both the clip and bolt - but NONE whatsoever on the inside of the fender itself.

[hemigeno]

These pics show the inner fender on the passenger's side, which mirrors the details & procedures on the other side.

[hemigeno]

This next set of pics show another couple of weird Daytona traits.  The first picture shows where the original '69 bumper braces were attached, which differ slightly from the Daytona crash bars.  The '69 bumper brackets were installed after color coating, but prior to the undercoating - hence the shadow effect.  The crash bars will cover most of this area up, but if you look closely around the edge of the finished product you can still see the hints of this treatment still showing.  We did not skip this step even though it's hard to see evidence of it later on.

If you take a close look at the second picture, you'll clearly see the outline of the primer where the '69 regular fender mated up with the inner fender.  In fact, you can see where the undercoating went through the extra slots in the fender.  There's red color coat that leaked through from the edges and from the backside as well, which would have permeated the joint a lot more than the undercoating would have.  Again, Vance's guys borrowed a pair of regular fenders to create this effect with the color coat and undercoating.

Once again you can see some of the scavenged hardware that has color on it which stands in contrast to the primered inside of the fender.

[hemigeno]

Here's another easy to miss detail that I tried in vain to capture on the camera.  The hood hinges were installed on the car when Hamtramck painted the color coat, which meant that there should be just primer behind the hood hinges and on the backside of the hinges themselves.  I tried taking a shot of the backside of the hinges, but it didn't turn out as well as I'd have hoped.  The upper part of the hinge will still get paint on it from the "official" paint work that Vance will do in the paint booth.  However, he'll make no attempt to coat the backside of the hinge bracket much better than what you see right now.  Overspray only...

[hemigeno]

The front door jambs were painted now rather than in the paint booth, since it'd be impossible to properly cover the jamb without getting way too much paint in places where it's not supposed to be (if they tried to paint the jambs later).  The color coat was sprayed on at Hamtramck before the fender splash shield was installed, so the backside of the splash shield is plainly visible with it's black "primer" showing.  You can also clearly see the grey primer of the Daytona fender, which will pretty much remain visible just like you see it here.  Vance will not do too much masking in the paint booth to keep overspray off of either the splash shield or the backside of the fender, since Creative Industries didn't worry too much about overspray.  What it gets is what it gets.

[hemigeno]

This first picture shows a visible area of the backside of the fender, visible when the door is open and you look directly down from the topside.  Again, this might get a very light dusting of overspray, but that grey primer will still be quite apparent if you look for it.

I also took a shot of the fender and hood, which were still being massaged at the time the picture was taken.  When one of the fender mounting bolts was tightened, it created just enough of a wave in the fender top to send Vance's guys back to the fill/block/sand routine for a while.  Picky does not begin to describe the level they've attained on the straightening the sheet metal on this car.   

[hemigeno]

This first shot was intended to help another guy out who is trying to fit his A-pillar trim.  There just isn't much clearance between the door and the A-pillar, and when you try to fit the trim it's EXTREMELY easy to nick the top of the door.  Scratching up a fresh paint job on a car like this would ruin anyone's day...

I also took a shot of the battery tray, just as a reminder to me that Vance's guys haven't switched this one out to the factory-original tray that he has there in his shop.  The cowl shot looks a whole lot better now that they've fixed the heat damage to the sheet metal, doesn't it?? 

[hemigeno]

I took some shots of the interior / passenger compartment.  They have gone through and cleaned up almost all of the pitting that used to be visible.  Even though carpet covers pretty much the entire floorboard, it bugged me that the pitting was still there - so I asked Vance's guys to spend some time cleaning things up.  This was the first time I'd seen the finished product and it looks a TON better.

[hemigeno]

These are yet a few more shots of the rear glass area.  Vance will still paint the original Charger sail panel areas in color coat even though the headliner will cover everything up.