Mitch's 69 Charger restoration -sheet metal

[charger_fan_4ever]

I just had the passengers side door hinge pillar changed on my 70. I bought a set of rust free ones that already had the spots drilled. Luckily the inner rockers and inner beside the kick panel,firewall and splash shield were not rotten. The whole cowl is cut off and the inner and outer cowls are seperated blasted/primed ready to be installed in 2 pieces.

I'll have to start a thread too.

I'm going to be another AMD poster boy lol.

How is your inner rear window frame ? Thats the only stump i've come across. Mine is non existent about 6 inches up from the corners. For everything else there is AMD 

[green69rt]

I just had the passengers side door hinge pillar changed on my 70. I bought a set of rust free ones that already had the spots drilled. Luckily the inner rockers and inner beside the kick panel,firewall and splash shield were not rotten. The whole cowl is cut off and the inner and outer cowls are seperated blasted/primed ready to be installed in 2 pieces.

I'll have to start a thread too.

I'm going to be another AMD poster boy lol.

How is your inner rear window frame ? Thats the only stump i've come across. Mine is non existent about 6 inches up from the corners. For everything else there is AMD 

My rear window was good except for a couple of holes down in the lower corners.  A little weld metal and some epoxy putty and they are good as new.  I'll be interested to see the cowl work.  I have to do some repair of my lower front window frame.

[charger_fan_4ever]

Shoot me your email and i'll send you a pic of it with the upper and lower cowl completely off. The pic is larger than 200kb. My cowl was rotted in the lower corner drivers side where it met the top of the firewall, lower window channel non existent rot came over onto the top side of the upper, vent grille was even pitted. Lower cowl was rotted around where the 2 large vent holes are. Passengers corner of the lower cowl out over the splash shield was rotted. We contemplated patching the lower, but chose to replace all with a  rust free cowl, separated it blasted/primed it. Lower is 1/2 welded in. Before the whole cowl was cut out the front floor and new passengers hinge pillar was welded in along with a piece of tubing spotted between the A pillars. New cowl and door pillar fit in like a glove, measured out identical to the original.

My two brothers run a body shop. I do most of the dismantling,blasting,priming. The welding I left to them.

[green69rt]

PM sent.

[green69rt]

My two brothers run a body shop. I do most of the dismantling,blasting,priming. The welding I left to them.

You're lucky to have blasting and painting facilities available.  I'm still trying to get a blasting setup for my home garage.  Just bought the biggest compressor that I can run off my house current.  Ingersol Rand 3 HP with a 60 gal tank.  Folks tell me that it will barely do the job with a blaster but what can I do?

[charger_fan_4ever]

You're lucky to have blasting and painting facilities available.  I'm still trying to get a blasting setup for my home garage.  Just bought the biggest compressor that I can run off my house current.  Ingersol Rand 3 HP with a 60 gal tank.  Folks tell me that it will barely do the job with a blaster but what can I do?

They have a 7hp compressor and when blasting you can't do much else on another hose.

[green69rt]

You're lucky to have blasting and painting facilities available.  I'm still trying to get a blasting setup for my home garage.  Just bought the biggest compressor that I can run off my house current.  Ingersol Rand 3 HP with a 60 gal tank.  Folks tell me that it will barely do the job with a blaster but what can I do?

They have a 7hp compressor and when blasting you can't do much else on another hose.

Yes, I figure I going to be spending some time waiting for my new compressor to catch up when I go blasting.

[XS29L9B2]

there is so rusty 

[green69rt]

Working on the pass side rocker is the same story as the driver side with the addition of the door post repair.  So no big news here.

First pic is the old pass inner rocker, same story as the driver side, lots and lots of rust and holes.

Second pic is the pass side front spring hanger, again same as the driver side, it will go!

Third pic is the new inner rocker installed.  No pic of new outer rocker, it would be repeating driver side.

[green69rt]

So now that the rockers are solid, a little repair of the firewall and it will be on to the next job.

First pic is inside of pass side firewall.  I didn't spend a lot of time grinding down the weld since it's going to be buried under the sound proofing.

Second is the outside of the pas side.  I did grind this side down smooth, I know it's not very visible either but I did it so no wise cracks.

Third is starting the same process on the driver side.  I got both patches off of a donor firewall.

[green69rt]

Next thing I took on was the torsion bar cross member.  It had been patched sometime in the past, as you'll see.  AMD makes a replacement so I'm going to take a shot at it.  Turns out it was actually pretty easy.  Demo is always the messy part and this was no different.

First pic shows the bar gone.  I have to leave the connections to the front frame rails in as an alignment reference to the new Xbar.  Hopefully AMD will get production of the front frame rails going soon!!  I plan to get a pair.

Second pic shows the new TB Xmember installed.  Only work required was rebending the flanges on the end to match the slope of my homemade inner rockers.  Otherwide I just stripped off the EDP coating from the weld points, primed the weld points with weld thru primer, stuck it in and welded away!  Oh, I forgot, I also installed the torsion bars just to insure good alignment with them.

Third pic shows a cross section of the TB Xmember with the multiple layers of metal someone had added.  I could see the original metal inside the patches and, again, the new was just welded on top of the old so as the old rusted away the rot continued into the new metal.

[green69rt]

Spent a little time cleaning up the driver side quarter window regulator parts and replacing the rollers.  Sure was a  lot easier to install with the quarter gone.  I should have waited to pull all the parts out till I had the quarter off rather than do is as part of generally stripping the car.

[The70RT]

Looks like your doing a great job. After you get this one done you will know all the tricks to get the next one done easier. Oh yeah I got the part today. Thanks again.

[ionracer24]

wow,  congrats on ur ingenuity,  i'm probly going to have to do alot of "freestylin" metal work on my 70 also,  ...looks great though, love the pics

[DC_1]

You're lucky to have blasting and painting facilities available.  I'm still trying to get a blasting setup for my home garage.  Just bought the biggest compressor that I can run off my house current.  Ingersol Rand 3 HP with a 60 gal tank.  Folks tell me that it will barely do the job with a blaster but what can I do?

I would go rent a gas powered compressor and Sandblaster (if you don't have one) and do all your blasting at once. The small compressor you have will be difficult to use for this job. Something that small will not have the CFM to supply the blaster consistent air volume. You'll spend more time waiting to build pressure than blasting. Also the compressor will run continuously and as a result build up moisture which will end up in the lines and then clog up the blast nozzle.( don't ask how I know all this, its a frustrating experience I want to forget.)

[green69rt]

You're lucky to have blasting and painting facilities available.  I'm still trying to get a blasting setup for my home garage.  Just bought the biggest compressor that I can run off my house current.  Ingersol Rand 3 HP with a 60 gal tank.  Folks tell me that it will barely do the job with a blaster but what can I do?

I would go rent a gas powered compressor and Sandblaster (if you don't have one) and do all your blasting at once. The small compressor you have will be difficult to use for this job. Something that small will not have the CFM to supply the blaster consistent air volume. You'll spend more time waiting to build pressure than blasting. Also the compressor will run continuously and as a result build up moisture which will end up in the lines and then clog up the blast nozzle.( don't ask how I know all this, its a frustrating experience I want to forget.)

I  have received the same advice from others so am strongly considering you plan.  Was actually considering just sending it to someone to have it done.  Probably the $$ will decide which plan I follow.

[bakerhillpins]

WOW, you are my hero! Looking great.  And I am with you on smoothing down the welds regardless of their visibility!

As far as sandblasting, maybe just send out the big stuff and work the smaller ones with the setup you have put together?   

[green69rt]

I've seen several threads and notes on how to replace the rollers on the windows but when I got to it I adopted a fairly simple method.  Pics show how it works:

Pic 1:  place a suitable open end wrench in a vise.
Pic 2:  place the window roller assembly in the opening of the wrench.
Pic 3:  knock the assembly out of the nyloin roller with a pin driver (punch with a flat face.)

Use a pair of large pliers to press the new roller onto the pin, take some care to get it all the way on, that it goes on straight and that you don't mar the roller or the assembly.

[green69rt]

Ok, so now with the frame in good shape, the window regulator working nicely and the wheel well and rocker repaired I have moved on to tackle the driver side quarter.  So the good part is that my decision to use only a quarter skin vs. a full quarter really worked well.  I bought skins (yes both sides) from AMD and they really fit nice.   The old ones had been patched at least twice, had lots of filler on them and I had to cut big holes in them to replace the wheel wells and rockers so they weren't worth saving.  At this point I am actually adding more metal to the car than I am cutting off!!!

First pic shows the finish of cutting all the old quarter off.  The new parts are actually reproduced to be replaced up to the line on the roof (white band) but I didn't want to get into messing with the trunk gutters, roof bracing etc, so I just cut the metal into the top part of the quarter and bought what's called a "skin".  Blue paint is the trunk floor in primer and the black thing is the new wheel well.

Second pic:  Ok, so the first fit-up.  I've been emailing with people that have done this and compared to some of the horror stories I've heard, this seems to fit like a glove.  Just a little massaging around the tail light panel and it was done.  The biggest worry I had was the little flip-up at the back end of the panel and blending the new metal to the old so I just left the old flip-up alone and cut the new panel to butt up to it.

Door fit is great, wheel well fit is great. It took a little work at the very bottom where the panel connects to the rocker but not too bad.  Now take it back off, strip all the EDP paint off (black stuff) at the points that I'm going to be welding, prime the weld points up with weld-through-primer and on to the final step!!

Third Pic: Ok, for better or worse, it's on!!  The body line down the middle of the fender is now visible, on the old fender it had been repaired so many times that it had been smoothed over.  I did have one small problem that we'll see in the next picture.

Pic 4: Here's the ugly!  People have told me about this and it happened to me but not for the reason that others told me about.  If you look closely at the top of the fender near where the roof connects you can see some waviness in the metal, this is called "oil canning" because it resembles the crinkles in old time oil cans (you can actually see it in the first pic if you look carefully and this is before any welding.)  Anyway I caused this because I decided to use my flanging tool to set up the old metal.  Trouble is that the flanging tool is meant to be used on FLAT metal not curved.  Every time I clamped down with the jaws it tried to flatten the metal in the immediate area and put stress between that area and the rest of the curved metal, result is oil canning.  So it will take a small amount of body filler and some block sanding.  Looks like nothing thicker than about 1/16 inch.

So with this lesson learned, it is on to the passenger side!

[BB1]

You are a body GOD! Nice work 

[green69rt]

Major work completed in the last couple of months. As I talked about in my previous post the driver quarter is on.  I used the lesson on that side to get the pass side on with less pain and time.  First I forgot about using the flanging tool and just did a straight lap weld.  I cut the old quarter along the line where the top goes out and then turns down. This made a nice guide for fitting the line of the quarter plus when you look inside the trunk you can's see the seam because it is in the corner.  Anyway the pass quarter is on and other parts are getting added fast (yeah!!)

I put both the trunk extensions in.  These were a bigger pain than I thought they would be.  Maybe the new AMD extensions work better than these ones I bought 3 years ago from Y1.  But it really didn't matter, just cut, bend clamp and hammer till they fit right and put them in.  I also got the valence corners added and they took some work because they hook up to the valence, quarter and rear cross brace.  But again, I just took my time and I must have fitted them up 20 time before they got tacked in place.

Also put the jack socket (??) and the jack spring hook in place.  ALso added a couple of pieces of sheet metal where MOPAR left the big holes at the corners of the trunk floor,  now it won't take a pound of seam sealer in each corner to keep the water out.

[tan top]

good stuff ! keep the pictures coming 

[green69rt]

SO with the quarters and trunk extension installed I wanted to take a little time to spray some primer inside the trunk and to seal it up.  I was so tired of having a multicolored car that I wanted at least one part to look clean.  SO I shot the trunk with some epoxy two part primer and then sealed all the cracks up with SEM seam sealer.

So the first pic is a general shot of inside the trunk.  All the dark lines is the seam sealer, it really stinks, I mean REALLY stinks!! Second shot is the back of the tail light panel and the driver side of the trunk.  The third shot is the inside where I welded the skin onto the passenger old quarter.  The seam is really hard to see.  If fact if I didn't tell anyone that it was there I don't think they could tell what I did.  So at this point I need to install the bumper bracket braces and the trunk lock bracket, touch up the primer and the trunk is finished till it's time to paint.

[drifter69]

I got to tell you man, when I first looked at your car I said to myself, Looked at cars before I bought the one I am restoring now that were better than yours and passed them up because they were so far along in the rust. That being said I am so glad to see that there are people like you that are able to take a car like this and save it from where I would have let it go. It does make me now wonder if there are more Chargers out there than I originally thought. I have looked at production numbers and what is registered and after seeing what you have done with this car I have to take into consideration that there are more people like you and that the numbers of cars still alive might be more than I thought. You are an inspiration to those who really want a Dodge Charger. I do have to say that now I am wondering if I made a mistake passing on a 69 R/T SE car That was rusted to the center body line on the car. Nice job brother they ain't makin anymore like em.

[green69rt]

I got to tell you man, when I first looked at your car I said to myself, Looked at cars before I bought the one I am restoring now that were better than yours and passed them up because they were so far along in the rust. That being said I am so glad to see that there are people like you that are able to take a car like this and save it from where I would have let it go. It does make me now wonder if there are more Chargers out there than I originally thought. I have looked at production numbers and what is registered and after seeing what you have done with this car I have to take into consideration that there are more people like you and that the numbers of cars still alive might be more than I thought. You are an inspiration to those who really want a Dodge Charger. I do have to say that now I am wondering if I made a mistake passing on a 69 R/T SE car That was rusted to the center body line on the car. Nice job brother they ain't makin anymore like em.

There are only a fixed number of these cars out there.  Every one that is parted out is one less that will be around 30 years for now for people to remember what a muscle car was (does that make sense??)   I may not finish the one I'm doing but when I pass it on it will be better than it was and maybe someone will take it as a family member and keep it alive. 

Enough of the philosophy, and on with the rebuild, slow but sure.