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

[hemigeno]

This is one more shot of the latch tray and radiator yoke with its blackout pattern, and a couple shots of the rear wheelwells

[hemigeno]

I took a ton of shots showing how the headlight doors fit, as they were really wrestling with getting it all to work properly.  Actually, Timmy (from Vance's shop) ended up redoing the entire left headlight pod/bucket because it just didn't suit them.  You can see in several of the pictures that the adjustment bolt was way out on that one side.

[hemigeno]

This is the right side, that seemed to fit a TON better than the left side did.

[hemigeno]

Some more shots of the left side, including one showing how tightly the headlight pod/door came to the nosecone's opening.  I took a shot of the right side, showing how it should look.  In the end, they completely re-did the left side door to where it mirrors how the right side looks.

The last picture was intended to show how they had the bucket adjusted on that ill-fitting left side. 

[hemigeno]

The next several batches of pictures were related to a discussion we had about how to mount the hood-to-nosecone seal.  When Creative mounted the seal, they must have had a jig of some sort that laid out the holes.  The holes themselves were NOT drilled, they were punched.  The first three of pictures show the straight lines inside the holes - which are the original holes from my nosecone.  The lines are covered up once the screws or pop-rivets that hold the seal are installed (my car used pop rivets, which is confirmed by the fact that there are no thread marks inside the holes), however, I took the pictures to show/prove that the holes were in their original locations.  Why that is important will become apparent here in just a bit.  The middle two pictures were taken looking straight down at the top of the latch tray, so the nosecone seal's mounting surface would be on the left side of the picture (for reference).

[hemigeno]

The middle picture shows the original seal, which has the exact same mounting hole pattern as the NOS seal I was able to find.  There is a rivet/hole on the far left side that did not use that last elongated hole - and that same hole will have to be drilled on the NOS seal in order to use Creative's original hole locations (see next batch of pictures for more info & pics on this quirk).

[hemigeno]

The first two pictures show the offset margins that the NOS seal will have if it is installed using the original (remember the punched witness marks I logged) mounting holes.  Creative gets the blame for this look, not Vance or his guys.

The last shot shows that the last hole will have to be drilled.  The original seal also had its same far-left hole re-drilled in order to be fastened to the nosecone.  This was exactly how the original seal was installed, so that's the way we're going to install mine - for better or worse.

[hemigeno]

I snapped a couple of pictures showing the original grille screen material, alongside the reproduction material from Wayne Perkins.  Wayne's stuff is dead-on, exactly the same as the original.  If anyone was considering getting his stuff, don't worry a bit - it gets the Vance Cummins seal of approval...   

Oh, and if you get one of the grille screens, you will have to do some trimming to get it to fit the frame - plus, the radius of the screen has to be bent carefully around a proper-diameter rod as it's not a sharp 90-degree corner. 

[hemigeno]

I took a couple of pictures of some engine parts Vance had pulled out of his stash to use on my engine (he has some incredibly rare parts squirreled away).  One of the "good" parts was the valley pan cover.  There are still later-style NOS and reproduction pan covers available, but the stamped grid pattern is not the same.  Apparently the OEM supplier changed the stamping in the very early '70s, as Vance has looked at hundreds of seals over the years and only seen a few new parts that matched up to the original seals he's removed.  It's hard to describe the difference, but the discerning eye can spot a correct/original-style pan cover by looking at the depth and crispness of the grid stamp.

He also had original-style head gaskets and some other goodies that will be used on the engine build.

[hemigeno]

I snapped a couple of pics of the water pump housing that will be used.  There was one in my pile of parts that I had assumed was a correct piece, but there are differences in the castings that showed it was cast too late for my car.  Vance had several laying around to choose from, so he grabbed one with a good date and will use it.

[hemigeno]

Ever seen an NOS Charger jack label?  I hadn't, until I stumbled across this - or at least David Patik and I believe it to be NOS.  David had me take some pictures of the front and back for his records, and he's not aware of any reproductions that used this type of material.  If there are any other experts that know what the source of this label is, I'll stand corrected if it proves to be a reproduction. 

**EDIT**  - DC.com member UFO believes this to be a reproduction label from Jim Osborn, as he purchased one from Osborn with the same label backing.  That's the most likely source of this label, not NOS as I had believed.  I'll make sure David gets the word.

Thanks for the correction, Brian!!!

[hemigeno]

I took a couple of pictures of the oil pan, showing the stamping imperfections that it has.  They still smoothed out a lot of things with this pan (it wasn't in horrible shape to begin with), but there are not many stones left unturned in a restoration shop like Vance's.

The motor mounts have a date code molded into the side, and I happened to find some with nearly identical dates to the original (rather crispy) mounts.

The last picture is of the valve cover grommet.  Vance had a non-HP set of valve covers with the same kind of grommet that he's seen regularly on the late-'69 model era engines.  Note that it does not have the Chrysler pentastar, but instead has the DPDC logo.  Bill Alphin caries a spot-on reproduction of this grommet with the correct part number and logo, although I am wondering if Vance will use that or whether he'll pull yet another part out of his stash.  It's all in the details - and those little details are EVERYWHERE...

[hemigeno]

OK, this next batch of pictures kicks off the stop-off I made at Vance's shop in mid-June.  The car had been moved out of the main workspace area, as they had pretty much done everything to it from a bodywork standpoint that needed to be done.

I believe that by this visit they had re-worked the left headlight door/pod to fit the opening the same way the right door had. 

Since there had not been much actually done to the car, I only snapped off a few pictures at the time.  I'll go ahead and post them, mostly to document what stage the car was at during that month's visit.

[hemigeno]

More pictures, including one of the battery tray (again, to serve as a reminder to me that Vance's guys hadn't switched it out to the original tray Vance had planned to use).

[hemigeno]

Last pictures from this particular visit.

Incidentally, the lower valance was originally constructed of stamped galvanized sheet metal.  This explains why MANY cars had paint adhesion problems with that area.  Dave H., the guy I purchased my car from, has a Daytona whose owner lost his lower valance paint after taking the car to a carwash right after he bought it.  That's not the only such story I've heard from back in the day.  Nowadays there are better ways to prep and paint galvanized metal, but there is no reason to push our luck in this area - so we won't be re-galvanizing the valance.

[hemigeno]

I had the chance to take my (then) 9yr old son with me in mid-July to check on the car.  We had a great time, and I think he enjoyed everything but the trip through Central Illinois (my apologies to the corn farmers out there, but Jonathan was looking for some different scenery after the first hour or so...).  He had lots of fun chasing Vance's shop cat around the building, although I think the cat eventually started chasing him.  Mean cat...

Anyway, I mostly took pictures of Jonathan with the car, as he won't be that young forever, and I sure hope the car is not in this condition forever.

[hemigeno]

Jonathan also got a few minutes behind the wheel of the Daytona.  Well sortof...   

We borrowed a nearby Corvette's wheel for the proper effect.

[hemigeno]

On my next trip up in mid-September (the weekend before Monster Mopar this year), they had taken the nosecone back off the car.  Since we had decided the rubber seals needed to be replaced with better reproductions, the only way to properly install a new/different set of seals is with the nosecone off.  So, they went ahead and took that step.  This may also have been when they sorted out the headlight door/pod/bucket problem - I forget. 

Anyway, these first four pictures are of a plastic connector on the steering column wire harness that had melted from the engine fire (which also caught the interior on fire).  I took some pictures to see if I could locate one myself, but Vance ended up scavenging a really nice one from a parts car he had access to.

[hemigeno]

I took the opportunity to snap some additional detail shots of the nosecone since it was back off the car.  These are of the headlight actuators & wire/vacuum hose harnesses, and overall shots of the turnsignals & Z-braces.

[hemigeno]

These are some additional pics of the turn signals & housings.  In the last two, you can see the spacer blocks that they used to position the turn signals just right.  Danny and I have seen some old factory documentation that outlines the entire process that Chrysler went through to get DOT approval on the Daytona turn signals.  It was QUITE an involved process, and included very detailed instructions about how the spacers were to be installed in the nosecone assembly process. 

[hemigeno]

The first two were an attempt to show the mounting method of the turnsignals on the headlight bucket side, but there's not a good way to take that shot.  You can just barely see the spacers sticking out from the turn signal assemblies.

The last two shots are just the outsides of the headlight buckets, the sides that face the nosecone sidewall.

[hemigeno]

As with the turn signals, there was a prescribed method for installing the headlight actuators.  The washers you see between the actuator and the bucket were spelled out exactly.  This was undoubtedly what the engineers figured out was required to get the headlight doors to open as they wanted them to. 

A lot of you guys have spent countless hours trying to get headlight doors to open correctly, and I don't think I would ever have the patience to figure some of those details out.  Anyway, I took some pictures just to show how these were originally assembled.

The last picture shows a grommet used to protect the headlamp wiring and the vacuum line feeds that travel inside the headlight bucket.  My car had one of its original grommets, but the other one is MIA.

[hemigeno]

Some detail shots of the grommet - still need to find one of these somewhere.  If anyone has ideas about where to find one or more, let me know.

You can tell from the original piece that they took a pair of snips or some other relatively blunt cutting instrument to split the grommet.  Nothing fancy or sharp like a knife blade, that's for sure.

[hemigeno]

More measurement shots of the grommet I need to find...

[hemigeno]

I took a couple of pictures of the nosecone's center section mounting flange, which shows that the holes they drilled pretty much took up the whole width of the flange.  They may have oversized these holes by a little bit to give them some adjustment room   

Also, although they weren't working much anymore on the body of the Daytona, Vance's guys were beginning to organize the individual components that needed to be refinished.  I snapped a couple of pictures of the parts in progress.