My '72 charger - the odyssey so far - update 5/30

[defiance]

*NOTE* - I ran out of space, so see my posts later in the thread for updates.


So I was looking through the build thread at some of the amazing cars that members have done, and I realized - 4 years in now, I don't have any real consolidated documentation of what I've done so far.  So, I decided to make this thread just as much for myself to look at as anyone else.  

--Chapter 1: Known History--

I bought this car from my brother or dad (ownership was ambiguous ) in late 2004.  I guess a bit of pre-own history is in order.  No pics for this chapter of the story.
The first history I'm aware of with the car is when my dad bought it.  I was 19, so that would have been 1996?  Anyway, at the time I was doing really serious car audio competition - had just gone to USACi world finals with my car and was on track to do so again in '96, and dad thought it would be fun to work with me on a competition car, but to bring his perspective into it.  So, he wanted to find a ragged out, huge old car and turn it into an SPL monster - something like a wall of 15's in a big 60's family sedan.  

So he found a guy selling one such car - don't even remember what exactly it was, but it was some huge old boat.  So I went with him to pick it up.

We got there, and as we pulled in, I noticed another car out in his field behind his house - a black '72 charger.  I'd never actually seen a 3rd gen charger, and immediately thought it looked awesome.  Well, let me put that in context: it was in a field, had bunnies living in it, hadn't been run in who knows how long, etc... but I could see the potential, and dad loved it as well.  Needless to say, we left with a different car than intended, and being a charger, the idea of walling it was scrapped in favor of fixing it properly.  Still wanted a nice audio system, but more sound quality and installation focused instead of just boom.

Dad was a bit slow to start on the project, and by the time he did, I was actually away at college, so I missed out on this whole portion of the car's life, but dad had some local fly-by-night shop do the body work... it actually looked good, but more on that later...  He fixed up the interior, tried to make some repairs on the electrical system, and had a 440 built to put in it (it had a near-dead 383 in it when we got it).  He also tried to put a Holley pro-jection tbi system on it.  

At that point the car looked pretty good, and would basically run, but still needed lots of work.  This was probably late '97.  

Then it sat.  Dad ran out of interest, I guess, or something -- not really sure why, but I wasn't around, and he just stopped working on it almost entirely.  Maybe he was only interested as long as I was around ...  
About that time I got married, withdrew from college, and started on a long stint of what I now refer to as "the dark ages" - no money, bad jobs, continuous fighting at home...  needless to say, I didn't keep up with the charger.  As far as I know, it just sat in the weather for years.

--Chapter 2: Becoming Mine, Work Begins--

So fast-forward to August 2004.  I'm now well past my divorce and subsequent custody battles, have a good job, well on my way to my degree, happily remarried - finally really stable again.  Meanwhile, my dad has been trying to get my younger brother interested in the car and restarted on the restoration... but I guess he just isn't interested in it.  So, I step in and finally do what I should've done long ago: buy the car and get started getting it finished (and later completely redone).

Here's a pic from a few years before I bought it.  It sat for a while after this, so not quite this clean, but close:

And here's after getting it and doing some minor work on trim, cleanup, etc


So the body looked pretty good.  Engine needed some fuel injection work: the ECU was toasted somehow.  Carpet was nasty-looking, huge crack in the dash, etc., and the wiring was thrashed.
So for the end of 2004 I focused mostly on the engine wiring and the ECU.  I built a megasquirt ECu and got it basically started, but never could quite get it right.  Meanwhile I spent a lot of time on the interior, body/interior wiring, and the audio system.

ecu:

some interior:




By august '06, I had the wiring throughout the car up to snuff, carpet replaced, dash pad rebuilt,  kickpanel pods built, stereo working...
trunk

halo lights

dash and driver's side kickpanel

pass kickpanel


But I *still* couldn't get the fuel injection working right.  It was working, but I couldn't get it tuned.  At that point I blamed my own capabilities, so I found a local shop that did lots of ECU tuning and had a chassis dyno and handed it over to them.  They found that the problem was not tuning, but bad injectors.  Holley no longer sold the injectors for the system, and I wasn't using their ECU anymore anyway, so I decided to have the shop fab me up a manifold and convert it to port injection.  They finished up the mechanical work, I did the wiring work, and meanwhile added on a classic auto air a/c conversion and a march serpentine pulley conversion.




I'd paid for some dyno time at Polk at this point, so I had the car towed to their shop for some serious dyno/efi tuning time.  We got it all going right, and it was FINALLY running beautifully!  Awesome  Was a bit disappointed in the dyno numbers (220-ish hp), but I knew dad had built the engine as a minimalist 440.  Anyway, the shop was about half an hour away from my house, so I got in and drove it home - farthest the car had driven in the time I owned it, and it ran great ..... .except that I had to pull it over 2-3 times and let it cool.  
Long story short, I fought the cooling problem for a month or so...

[defiance]

*NOTE* - I ran out of space, so see my posts later in the thread for updates.

--Chapter 3: The Honeymoon Is Over--

During that time I started considering body work... I had noticed some rust bubbles building up under the vinyl on the top, and some rust bubbles under paint in the bottom of the quarters .......  So I started doing some digging, and nearly lost it when I figured out how bad things were.  the roof was Swiss cheesed with massive rust.  Apparently the body shop dad used didn't any kind of decent prep under the vinyl.  Also, huge rust pockets were developing under the paint in the quarters - as I checked these out, I found that there were thick swaths of bondo all over it, and the piece behind the window was probably 90% bondo.








Then I found the temp issue --  The engine had a blown head gasket. 

That was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.  You see, I had been disappointed with the power from the current engine for quite some time, but it was supposedly in good condition, and I really didn't want to take the engine out.  As I tried pulling the heads in the car I realized it was going to be nearly impossible- I really needed to pull the engine.  Further, when I did get them off, I found that one of the rings was broken and the cylinder was seriously scarred...  And since it had already been bored .040 over, I really didn't want to re-bore it.
So one evening I sat down, frustrated and depressed, and thought, what would it take to make this car PERFECT?

--Chapter 4: Makin' Lemonade

When I finished with my project plan, I was no longer depressed or frustrated.  I had managed to stop thinking of the car as "nearly ready to drive" (which it had supposedly been since I got it two years earlier!), and finally started really thinking of it as a long-term project, and the end result was MUCH different from what I had been thinking as well.

So I pulled the engine, stripped off all the components I wanted (pulleys, accessories, that sort of thing), and got rid of the rest.  I then sent the car went to the body shop.  The plan was to media blast the exterior and engine bay, cut out any rust damage and repair the sheet metal, repair some damage to one of the shock towers and surrounding firewall, prep it all and paint it.  It's taken them just over 2 years now, but things are finally going well on that front.  I didn't get many pics of early in the process, but when the media blasting was done, massive cavities of rust were exposed on pretty much all quarters, lower parts of the door, fenders, etc.  nearly 18 months of the time has been spent patching in new metal.  Now that's done.  Here's from just a few months ago.

and here it is from earlier this week






*update* - 12/30-31/2008 - Just got new pics from the body shop, they have the rear stripe and door stripes (and now bulge hood accent) on! 



The rear stripe is *perfect*.  My first thought at seeing the door stripes was, wait, that's not right ... but I went by and saw them in person yesterday and it actually looks amazing. 


So yeah, still a bit to go there, but it's getting VERY close.  Meanwhile, I've been busy with the drivetrain:
I already had an aluminum radiator for it, but I didn't like the silver housing, so I fixed that:

You can see the fiberglass fan shroud I made for it as well, but I need to do much more work on that

I converted a truck Dana 60 and put discs on it:

and built up a 727, though I don't have pics of that.

Also, I know it's not the interesting part to most of you, but I decided to revamp the stereo install as well.  I built a much better looking box:



I've also got a shop working on making some nicer, more contoured fiberglass kickpanel pods, and I'll be doing a LOT more detail work in the trunk

*update 12/30/2008* another pic from the shop: kickpanel pods are mostly built:




Also new, I've started work on a completely new custom console.  The stock stereo location is troublesome because (a) at a normal seated position, the steering wheel mostly blocks visibility of it, and (b) you have to lean pretty far forward to do anything with it.  Plus, I love the reversing face, but I want mp3, bluetooth, and USB support, but no reversing face unit was ever made with those features.  So, I'm going to build a console that comes up to meet the dash and put the stereo there, in the driver's reach.  Here's the started skeletal structure for it:

I'll put it in the car like that, then take more detailed measurements for the trim and edging, then fiberglass mold it all (rounding edges, adding cupholders and such), and finally wrap it all in vinyl.  

As for the new engine... well, new to me, anyway :

Still, that's nearly all surface rust, and it bored to .030" with no problems.
I put in a 440source 505 stroker kit, a comp cam 292 duration cam - can't remember the lift, but it was recommended here   The heads are 440source stealth, CNC ported at modern.  I used BCR cap and girdle system.  I didn't take pics after machining until the heads were on it:

The beefiness that is the cap/girdle combo:

Bit more assembly and aesthetic improvement:

Some people have complained about me painting the heads, or painting the engine black instead of a Chrysler color.  They can deal, or not paint their own engine, or paint their own engine some other color
intake (victor EFI) and front-end accessories on:

Mostly assembled:

That intake elbow is a bit long after I put the throttle body on it, so I'll need to switch it out with the slightly shorter version.

So that's where I stand now - only I've disassembled a large portion of the engine to track down a persistent rear main seal leak - that's the only thing keeping me from having the rest of it together and running on my test stand.  The body shop is doing assembly right now, then will do some detail paint (stripes, door and hood accents) and then it's just getting the drivetrain on it. 

[tan top]

good pictures ..nice work  .....

[skip68]

   Very nice. 

[Beer]

I love these threads! 

Keep it coming, I should have one of my own threads started this spring 

[FLG]

Only took a quick glance but when i get off of work ill read it through. Just cought something that interested me, where did you get the halos and how are they mounted?

Looks great 

[defiance]

I actually wasn't looking for them, I just wanted to convert to housings that used H4 bulbs.  Found something like this on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/7-ROUND-HALO-DIAMOND-CUT-HEADLIGHTS-CONVERSION-H4-H6024_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trkparmsZ72Q3a1205Q7c66Q3a2Q7c65Q3a12Q7c39Q3a1Q7c240Q3a1318Q7c301Q3a1Q7c293Q3a1Q7c294Q3a50QQ_trksidZp3286Q2ec0Q2em14QQhashZitem350143823674QQitemZ350143823674QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories
That may be the exact one, not completely sure.  Anyway, I thought halo was the brand name or something    but when I pulled them out of the package, I noticed the extra wires coming from the housing... huh... put power to them and thought "oooooo neat!" heheh  - so I wired the halos into my parking lights.
They bolt directly in just like the original headlights.

[RallyeMike]

Looking good in BLACK. Is it an original Rallye car?

[firefighter3931]

Very cool project....lots of nice detail work going on. 

I luv the color choice....very well done ! 



Ron

[defiance]

Yep, original rallye.  Thanks for the comments

[Rolling_Thunder]

Looking great!   

Are you using the MSII as a fuel only or fuel and spark controller ?  How do you think the whole set up will work together ? 

[defiance]

It's fuel & spark.  The MSD distributor is locked down to feed it a constant signal.  I had it working with the old engine, and it worked relatively well, once I got the issues worked out with the hardware (see above about the pro-jection tbi injector issues).  Didn't get to use it much since once I got it working I found out about the heat issue, which led to the big re-start of the whole project

[69*F5*SE]

Very cool.   

[Rolling_Thunder]

I have an MSII just chilling on my shelf - along with a complete intake set up...    Edelbrock victor intake, Bosch injectors, MSD 1000cfm throttle body, fuel rails...       it might go on the 512" stroker in my 66 Satellite - but not sure...     We'll see....   

[TK73]

Stunning!!   

[AKcharger]

... but when I pulled them out of the package, I noticed the extra wires coming from the housing... huh... put power to them and thought "oooooo neat!" heheh  - so I wired the halos into my parking lights.
They bolt directly in just like the original headlights.

Richard...looks great, that is no ordinary "resto"

Hey, I really, really like those lights as well so help me out. I understand there is the halagen bulb which uses the standard plug and then seperate wires for the "halo" right?
I just have to check since I converted to the "hidaways" if the headlight doors close when turned to "parking lights"...wouldn't really do any good if they were on with the doors closed huh?

[quapman]

NICE! Nice, nice, nice.

I hope your job situation gets on track and you can get the car finished soon. We dooooo like these threads. Makes me feel like a sloth compared to the (lack of) progress I've been making on my cars.

If you get a chance, c'mon over to the 71-74 Charger site   
http://wichargerguy.proboards101.com/
and let all the 3rd gen guys there see your awesome ride.

Happy Festivus!

Steve

[defiance]

... but when I pulled them out of the package, I noticed the extra wires coming from the housing... huh... put power to them and thought "oooooo neat!" heheh  - so I wired the halos into my parking lights.
They bolt directly in just like the original headlights.

Richard...looks great, that is no ordinary "resto"

Hey, I really, really like those lights as well so help me out. I understand there is the halagen bulb which uses the standard plug and then seperate wires for the "halo" right?
I just have to check since I converted to the "hidaways" if the headlight doors close when turned to "parking lights"...wouldn't really do any good if they were on with the doors closed huh?

That's right, the wires for the 'halo' are hard-wired into the housing, so you have to find a circuit to tie them into.  If your hideaways close for parking lights, the effect would be greatly diminished   Probably wouldn't be too hard to change that, though... but I've never looked into the hideaway control, so I have no idea

[Tilar]

Man, that is lookin good! I like those headlights, and the more I see a black Charger, the more I want to paint my 68 black. Those headlights in a black 68 wouldn't look so bad either 

[rav440]

 

[Tilar]

I actually wasn't looking for them, I just wanted to convert to housings that used H4 bulbs.  Found something like this on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/7-ROUND-HALO-DIAMOND-CUT-HEADLIGHTS-CONVERSION-H4-H6024_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trkparmsZ72Q3a1205Q7c66Q3a2Q7c65Q3a12Q7c39Q3a1Q7c240Q3a1318Q7c301Q3a1Q7c293Q3a1Q7c294Q3a50QQ_trksidZp3286Q2ec0Q2em14QQhashZitem350143823674QQitemZ350143823674QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories
That may be the exact one, not completely sure.  Anyway, I thought halo was the brand name or something    but when I pulled them out of the package, I noticed the extra wires coming from the housing... huh... put power to them and thought "oooooo neat!" heheh  - so I wired the halos into my parking lights.
They bolt directly in just like the original headlights.

Those are 7 inch lights, Don't the Chargers use the 5.75 inch lights? I wonder if they come in the 5-3/4's...

[defiance]

I don't remember for certain if they were 7" or 5-3/4", but I really thought they were 7"...  Either way, whatever size it is, they're definitely available, since I have them


Updates posted - rear stripe/clear coat completed, door stripes completed, and progress on kick panel pods.  Edited them into the original posting where appropriate.

[quapman]

I actually wasn't looking for them, I just wanted to convert to housings that used H4 bulbs.  Found something like this on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/7-ROUND-HALO-DIAMOND-CUT-HEADLIGHTS-CONVERSION-H4-H6024_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trkparmsZ72Q3a1205Q7c66Q3a2Q7c65Q3a12Q7c39Q3a1Q7c240Q3a1318Q7c301Q3a1Q7c293Q3a1Q7c294Q3a50QQ_trksidZp3286Q2ec0Q2em14QQhashZitem350143823674QQitemZ350143823674QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories
That may be the exact one, not completely sure.  Anyway, I thought halo was the brand name or something    but when I pulled them out of the package, I noticed the extra wires coming from the housing... huh... put power to them and thought "oooooo neat!" heheh  - so I wired the halos into my parking lights.
They bolt directly in just like the original headlights.

Those are 7 inch lights, Don't the Chargers use the 5.75 inch lights? I wonder if they come in the 5-3/4's...

Yes, most Dodges (Chargers, Challengers, blah, blah...) have a 4-light system with 5-3/4 bulbs. This post got me interested in them, so I did an ebay search myself and found them. Be careful if you go to buy them as I found some in pairs, some sets of four. Prices varied as did sellers' feedback ratings.

Steve

[Tilar]

I've been trying to find them on ebay and everywhere else since I saw his pic of them, all i'm finding are the 7 inch ones.

[defiance]

Yeah, you guys are right, they're the 5-3/4", I just dug out the old ebay emails (I keep everything).  The seller was symmic.  Now neither seems to exist on ebay.  Oh, here's one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/5001-HALO-XENON-CONVERSION-KIT-5-3-4-High-Beam_W0QQitemZ120087358639QQcmdZViewItem
But the auction is full of crap about being xenon (it's just a blue bulb) and shipping is $30, totaling up to $50 a pair ($100 per car)...   They were all over the place when I got mine, they seem to have dropped off now, though...
(edit) - here's a set of 4 for $75 http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/_Car-Truck-Parts-Accessories__5-3-4-4-HEADLIGHTS-HALO-ANGEL-EYE-HID-XENON-HEADLIGHTS_W0QQitemZ120206559727QQadiZ2865QQadnZCarQ20Q26Q20TruckQ20PartsQ20Q26Q20AccessoriesQQcmdZViewItemQQptZMotors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories?_trksid=p4506.m20.l1116  - I hate linking to sellers that use such blatant BS in their auctions like claiming their blue-painted bulbs are "xenon" and "50% brighter than stock", but as far as I can see, these guys are the only ones selling halo 5-3/4 housings