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

[hemigeno]

I'll do it!  Just throw me the keys to that big red car when it's done and I'll teach the boy how to drive a stickshift.  We'll only go through a tank or two of fuel, I swear!

How about using the 1992 W350 6x6 dually company truck with worn out seat springs and the factory-optioned "XHD Log Wagon Suspension Package?  It has a 5-speed manual, and goes into reverse most of the time!  

[Dave Kanofsky]

That sounds like a lot less fun 

[hemigeno]

I'm not worried about you, Dave (OK, maybe a little worried), it's young master Jonathan... after all, if he starts out driving a 4 speed 440-powered Daytona, what would he aspire to drive as a "step up" after that?  

Just lookin' out for the boy...

[Aero426]

...after all, if he starts out driving a 4 speed 440-powered Daytona, what would he aspire to drive as a "step up" after that?  

This one... it's still for sale too.   

[Dave Kanofsky]

Mine will also be 12 in one month, maybe we can give them a group lesson?

[hemigeno]

This one... it's still for sale too.   

I'd never have to worry about him sneaking home after curfew, would I?

[notabird]

teach him to drive in a dodge diesel pickup--cant hardly kill the engine.
Brent

[hemigeno]

Well, it's been a long time since I posted an update, mostly because there hasn't been a whole lot of progress made on the car over the summer.  That was a self-inflicted wound, since I had Vance and his guys busy working on the transformation of the R/T from its early-90s pearlescent HemiOrange version back to the original Dark Metallic Green version.  In the process of doing so, we solved several problems... one of which was the less-than-perfect condition of the R/T's sheet metal from the dutchman panel back.  Of more interest to this thread is that the R/T served as a pretty nice source of unpitted suspension, brake and a few mint interior parts for use on the Daytona.  Yes, I used an original 4-speed HemiCharger as a parts car...   

I picked up the Charger right before the Monster Mopar show in September (a long story by itself, but this isn't the place to tell it), which freed up Vance to start back on the Daytona.  The past month has been spent "de-painting" the undercarriage of the car.  This particular Daytona suffered from a fair amount of pitting on many parts, as did lots of other cars from that era.  Because I hadn't provided anything different to Vance, the best solution in most instances was to fill in the pits and paint what would otherwise be bare-metal parts/castings with a faux cast/bare finish paint.  Most of those were given a coat of cosmoline over the faux paint, to mimic how a bare metal part might have been protected and in part to mask the fact that the part was painted not bare.  As time has gone along (and especially after several mint bare parts were sourced, some from the "parts car" and many from Vance's parts sources), it became a goal to drop back to replace or re-finish many of these undercarriage parts. 

Just as important in this process as finding/having unpitted parts to work with is having a way to protect the metal from rusting - which is what the original parts did literally from Day One.  Enter Dave Walden and ECS Automotive, who recently rolled out a new product called RPM (Really Protects Metal).  Dave provided an advance supply of this new product before it was formally introduced, and we've since ordered more as creative ways to use it have emerged.  You'll be hearing a lot about this stuff as this update goes along.  I have the rest of the pictures resized, and will see how much of the narratives can be written before leaving the office tonight.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the "parts car" after I dropped it off on Saturday for more work on a few detail items we weren't able to finish up prior to MMW. 

[hemigeno]

One of the areas we spent a lot of time going over was the brake assemblies.  As nice as what you see looks, this is still a work in progress.  Vance pointed out that the star wheel assemblies (see last picture) were still pitted and need to be replaced.  He has a set of originals all set to be sent out for replating.  Incidentally, all the star wheel adjusters are right-hand thread on the non-adjustable brakes present on Sales Code S15 XHD suspension cars like Daytonas and C500s.

Most of what you see will stay, but it's still being tweaked a bit here and there.

[hemigeno]

In the first picture you can see the exhaust hanger bracket added on all dual-exhaust vehicles.  This was a bare-steel bracket which we had to replace due to pitting.  Hard to find these suckers without a fair complement of pits.

The second picture is of the brake hose support/attachment bracket, also left bare.  

I took the third photo to remind myself of a comment Vance had made, about the exhaust hanger attachment bolt being an "H" bolt without a washer.  It seems like there should be a washer, and the assembly line drawings call for a washer (P/N 120393, FWIW), but the bracket is often found without anything but the bolt and that's the way Vance did this car.

[hemigeno]

One of the coolest improvements made to the car recently is in the area of the driveshaft.  Even though this was an NOS piece, it was really, really hard to get it to look right without having surface rust form on the shaft almost immediately.  Up to this point, Vance solved the problem by using a light coating of cosmoline to let as much of the details show through yet keep it from flash rusting.

After seeing how good the RPM protectant works, they stripped the driveshaft back down to bare metal and applied it rather liberally.  They lightly prepped the cast ends to show the tooling marks, and added the burn marks where the welds were.  You can not tell that anything was ever applied to the tube at all.  Vance also sourced a different collar for the pinion yoke, as the other one was pitted and had been painted to give it the right look.  The one on the rear axle now is perfect, and the color difference highlights the fact that it is separate from the cast pinion yoke.

The pictures I took do NOT do this driveshaft justice... it is absolutely awesome, and should never need a bit of work to keep it looking just as fresh as it is now.  I am really impressed with how well this RPM stuff works (although I suppose the real test will be seeing how it performs 10+ years from now).  DC.com member Davtona tagged along on this trip and I think he was just as blown away as I was with how good this thing looks.

[mikepmcs]

Holy cow that's unbelievable!  

[hemigeno]

I snapped a couple of pictures of the transmission which has - yet again - been refinished.  Vance has got to be tired of taking this thing apart and reassembling it.  This last rebuild was necessary when I asked him to replace the tailshaft and cover plate with unpitted parts from the parts car, and to strip the cosmoline off the main case.  Everything was given a good dousing with RPM, which on really porous areas such as rough castings does soak up enough of the product to make it feel like a very light coat of wax was applied.  

There is still some visible pitting on the bottom of the main case, but it is much less noticeable in person that it appears to be in the last picture.  Vance considered playing around with some grinding and bead-blasting procedures to remove the pits and (hopefully) give the case a fresh-cast look, but with this being the numbers-matching case it was not worth the risk.  

Another thing worth noting here is that you can easily see the distinction in colors between the cast parts.  No two cast iron parts will be exactly the same color, and by removing the cosmoline coating it is much easier to see the differences.

[hemigeno]

Holy cow that's unbelievable!  

Thanks Mike!


Sorta following up on the color distinction mentioned in the last reply, I took some pictures of the rear brake drums.  Vance has perfected a way to give color distinctions in dissimilar metals, and drums are an area where those distinctions are rather pronounced.  In the first two pictures, the center section (which is actually a stamped steel part that is embedded inside the cast iron outer part of the drum) is a lighter color than the outer cast iron portion.  The lighting wasn't ideal for my little camera, so it isn't perhaps as visible in these pictures, but you can see the distinction better in person.  These drums are actually going on the "parts car", and its rear drums will be removed and swapped out since they are in even better shape than the ones you see here.  That explains why you don't see the red paint applied (my Daytona is a W21 Road Wheel car, so it will have red paint brushed on whereas the Hemicar had W25 steel wheels and therefore no drum paint).  Vance intends to leave a little of the stamped center section without red paint slathered all on it, just to show this distinction in coloration.

Which brings me to another point... I took the last two pictures to remind me to ask anyone with an original/survivor 1969 W21 (Road Wheel) car to check if the rims of their car's wheels had red paint drips on the inner rim...  Vance observed this trait on 1970 Rallye Wheel cars, and we're thinking the same possibility existed on 1969 Road Wheel cars as well - where the paint was applied immediately before the wheels were installed, with the runs in the paint dripping onto the inner rim.  Inquiring minds want to know...  

Also visible in the last pictures, you can see the tooling marks still evident on the rim of the brake drum.  Very cool detail.  

[hemigeno]

I took a few pictures of suspension components that had been removed, and coated with RPM to make the look perfect without sacrificing durability.  Lower ball joints are one of several examples of such.

An exception to the use of RPM lately is the brake shoes.  These were originally coated with something akin to shellac, and you can see the yellowish residue in the third picture.  Vance's next-door-neighbor recently retired from a company in Grand Rapids that has been a supplier of shoe stampings to the Big Three for many decades including the late '60s.  He gave Vance the    on his replicated finish of the shoes, and said he's seen millions of them which looked exactly like these do.

The last picture shows the tooling marks still evident in the brake backing plates.  I'll get into the backing plates a bit more in the next reply, but suffice it to say you pretty much can't replicate these marks.  A great detail item in my book.

[hemigeno]

Brake backing plates... where do I begin...  I've probably been more of a pain to Vance in this area than most others.  First off, it's been a struggle to find unpitted correct/dated backing plates to use.  I compounded the difficulty here by pretty much insisting that we take the plates back to bare metal - which exposes most any flaws or pits in the metal stampings.  Vance has been telling me for a while now that the originals did have a cosmoline coating of some sort, and the first picture was taken to point out the waxy residue still visible around the crevice between the joined parts.  Even though that's the case, I still lean towards leaving the backing plates without a cosmoline coating - and now that we have the RPM product to keep rust away, we could finally do so without ruining mint parts in short order via surface rust.

While Vance may disagree that a bare metal is "more correct" than cosmoline, it is unarguable that these plates turned out awesome after they detailed the weld burn marks and doused them with RPM.  I'm very happy with the results, and we can easily add cosmoline later if it's determined that route is the officially-accepted method (whereas it's harder to do the reverse).

Incidentally, Vance took some original plates over to a Grand Haven area shop that does metal plating to see if there was any type of plating where the axle flange bolts, since that area had been completely protected from the elements.  It was chemically tested/determined that no plating was done, although they discussed the same cosmoline evidence mentioned earlier.


I still have a few more pictures to post, but will have to wait until tomorrow or later to write up the narratives.  Some good stuff yet to come...

[maxwellwedge]

Looks fab Geno! All my 69 cars (even my Swinger) have the H head bolts on the hangers as well. They also have plain loose washers as well but I am sure many washers never found their way on a car.
Getting close buddy!!   

[moparstuart]

       Hemi car as the parts car     

[hemi68charger]

Awesome Geno.. 

[tan top]

  wow  !! thats awesome  !! it deffo should be in a museum !!  amazing     great stuff 

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Wow Gene...totally missed the Hemi car getting redone?   last I remember you were selling it??? 

[Troy]

I forgot to post pics of the Hemi car at Monster Mopar...












Troy

[hemi68charger]

Man... Geno... You don't mess around...... 

[tan top]

I forgot to post pics of the Hemi car at Monster Mopar...












Troy

[hemigeno]

Thanks for the comments, guys!

The R/T project sorta mushroomed into more of a restoration project than originally planned, and I didn't announce to very many folks what was happening.  It was actually humorous at MMW to have people at the DC.com tent looking all around the show field for my R/T, and it was right in front of them   

As Chris alluded, I had offered the car for sale a couple of times starting last fall, but the results confirmed my suspicions that the market is fairly tepid for hemicars without tons of paperwork and a numbers-matching drivetrain.  I'm not complaining, since those factors allowed me to buy the car at a more reasonable price back in the '90s when I was the buyer.  After talking things over with a couple of DC.com'ers including pettybird, both Troy's & 1HotDaytona, my initial plan was to repaint the car, freshen up the trim, maybe change out the glass and a few other high-visibility detail items, and re-list the car.  That plan went up in smoke when we discovered the extent of the sheet metal work which really needed to be done on the back quarter of the car.  I could have ignored that work (the results of the previous owner's 'backyard' restoration effort which left a lot to be desired), done the quickie repaint anyway and tried to sell the car again.  However, since the musclecar market wasn't likely to heat up again overnight, I wanted to be prepared for the real possibility the car might stay in my garage.  If that's the case, it would bother me to know we didn't fix something "right" when the opportunity was there.  Plus, I would have been honor-bound to point out in my advertising what we discovered were the flaws in the sheet metal - and I was already too critical of the car in my earlier ad's descriptions, which hurt those results.  Once Vance gets these last few detail items done, I really don't want to work on this car again (restoration work, that is) - I want to drive it all over the place.  The additional sheet metal repairs added a couple of months to the timeframe, during which we also compared parts between the Daytona & R/T, keeping the best ones for the 'Tona.  The leftovers are still pretty nice (heck, I was going to use them on the Daytona), but it's still an improvement for the more "correct" of the two projects.  We also took the time to install a bunch of correct components I had collected over the years but never added, such as a '68-9 hemi oil pan & bellhousing, late '68 dated distributor, and a '67-9 direct-drive starter.

My current plans are to float the car back out for sale in the late winter or early spring, just to see if an interested buyer is out there.  I would be surprised if it sells then, because the price I'll need to get (after factoring in the restoration costs) will probably exceed where the market values the car.  My bottom-line price isn't horrifically higher than what it might draw, so who knows.  It will not be a disappointment if the car doesn't sell, but I've promised my wife that we would at least see what it will bring.  Thankfully, I don't "have" to sell it.

I will try to get back to the rest of the Daytona pictures later today... last night was class & homework...